Do Tom Boys have female socialisation?

Putting it very crudely, the girl who plays with dolls, willingly or reluctantly, is rewarded whereas the girl who does not, is punished. So both are socialised as girls, but one with the message that she is girling correctly, the other with the message that she is girling wrong. A message I'm sure most of us have received and internalised many times, regardless of how feminine our behaviour. And even with tolerant and gender critical adults around us.

I don't think that being perceived as a boy by strangers will have a male-socialisation effect. It may give the girl a candid glimpse into the life of a boy, it may give her momentary satisfaction and a transient feeling of liberation, but it does not change her awareness of herself as female. All the important people in her life, parents, teachers, herself, all know what she is and treat her as a female - even if subconsciously.

I think I might have learned something important from this thread. I’m not that old but rural so my education was probably dated. Enid Blyton’s George was still in the school library. She was a Tom Boy. Definitely a good thing. Aspiring to be as good as the males was a step up.
But I definitely heard sissy (like a sister) as an insult, because males being feminine was a step down in the bully’s mindset.
Has this all changed? Is all gender non-conformity now punished by some?
Any hope?
Some men seem to be able to show their “feminine side”. Someone like Cillian Murphy, a slight, below average height man, is now a leading man, playing the mastermind/gang leader.

Maybe the question should be if you were shamed for doing 'boy stuff' has that affected your socialisation, rather than just doing the 'boy stuff' in the first place.

Agree.

When the label Tomboy is imposed upon you it does affect your socialisation. It may not mean that you are socialised as a male rather than as a female, but you are socialised as an outsider, an oddity, a 'wrong' female.

Is that not a part of female socialisation? For there to be a right way to be a girl, there has to be a wrong way. It would not just be being guided to what we should like/be/do, but also what we shouldn't. Some girls might like playing with dolls and with a free choice, they'd pick to do so, some might play with dolls because they don't know there are other options, some might actively choose not to play with dolls because they resent the expectation, but they all know girls are supposed to play with dolls and the latter is just their individual reaction? And there would also be variations depending on the adults around the child too and their own expectations and values, and family dynamics. The actual experience of female socialisation will be varied and personal to every girl, but they'd all be based on the same thing. (Sorry if this isn't making sense.)

@JellySlice I don't know if timing is important here, with lots of people referring to the 70s, but I don't think every 'tomboy' is shamed or excluded for being so. Maybe the question should be if you were shamed for doing 'boy stuff' has that affected your socialisation, rather than just doing the 'boy stuff' in the first place.
I was born late 80s and my experience chimes much more with @babadoc description.
It is also really irritating to write off the whole of the rest of the female population in OPs school as 'not like her' and surmising they all rejected and excluded her for this one aspect of herself. I think that shows a massively low opinion of women and girls and the focus is on the girls not mixing with her not the boys not mixing with girls in general. I think it's sexist stereotyping.

I don't think playing with Lego/climbing a tree puts this whole gulf between you and 'all the other girls' to the point where your whole socialisation is different and 'other girls' don't want to play with you

When the label Tomboy is imposed upon you it does affect your socialisation. It may not mean that you are socialised as a male rather than as a female, but you are socialised as an outsider, an oddity, a 'wrong' female.

Some girls embrace the label and are comfortable with it, but that does not change the message that society drums in to them, that they are doing female wrong.

I feel very sad for children nowadays, with such rigid gender stereotyping that they are deemed to be “trans” if they don’t fit in the cramped pigeonhole of their birth sex.
My own daughters, born in 1989 and 90, had no such restrictions. Toys came from the Early Learning Centre, and were completely non sexist.
My DDs played with both boys and girls at school and in the neighbourhood.
They had jeans and shorts and practical shoes so they could run, climb trees etc, but also pretty dresses for parties. They liked Lego, jigsaws, board games, books, and played “houses” with sets of Sylvanian animals.
Nobody told autistic DD1 that she was transgender for being obsessed with trains and doing a maths degree! She is now 30 and in a happy 5 year relationship with her boyfriend.
I wish society would tell the TRAs to drop their gender stereotype nonsense and simply enjoy being themselves- a man should be able to wear make up and dresses without claiming to be a woman, which he patently never can be.
In the 70’s and 80’s such freedom existed - you have only to look at Bowie, Boy George et al.

@Didolamebting I agree. I don't think playing with Lego/climbing a tree puts this whole gulf between you and 'all the other girls' to the point where your whole socialisation is different and 'other girls' don't want to play with you. Just more embedded misogynistic bullshit.

Thanks for the belittling lecture, we were given the label

And which label on thread after thread on here is trotted out like a badge of honour. Usually backed up with lists of perfectly normal childhood activities to prove the poster was a tomboy.

I grew up in the country doing all the things you describe as 'tomboyish' with a brother. I rejected any treatment of me that was different to him purely because I was a girl from an early age (that I was aware of). I was skinny and flat chested with short hair as a teenager and was still mistaken for a boy by strangers whilst also being subject to the delightful bra twanging and low level sexual harassment endemic in secondary schools just because I was a girl.
In my adult life I don't do lots of things that are considered feminine but am very comfortable personally being a woman, interacting with women etc. Still irritates me to be a woman in this world but hey ho.
I wonder if it's not so much how you present to others but your home dynamics growing up. My Mum couldn't care less about gendered stuff or bullshit/drama whoever was doing it. I think that's had far more of an influence on my values and behaviour than how I presented to others.
OP - you obviously had a home situation that allowed you to be a 'tom boy'. If your parents had felt that wasn't appropriate for a girl etc then you would have had more traditionally female (urgh) behaviour expected of you and may have grown up differently with a different idea of 'being a woman'. Surely family influence in your formative years is important.

Thanks for the belittling lecture, we were given the label. Most of us just thought of ourselves as kids until we were sneered at or excluded for being ''different''.

I wondered, as per the OP, whether playing out and being physical led to great spatial awareness

In my case, no. I have terrible spatial awareness. I also rode bikes, played in the nearby woods, played with nearest neighbour's son, played with lego and this next one makes me really special- climbed trees! All without having to appropriate the rather silly title of "tom- boy"

DJLippy could have been describing my experience of growing up.
I had a very fucked up childhood due to a long family history of CSA, and I was encouraged to be a tomboy to reduce male attention. At the same time, I was derided for it.
Female socialisation is much more than surface presentation. Few of my female relatives did hair, make up or clothes; but we were all expected to be skivvies, to always reduce ourselves, be passive, never push ourselves forwards. Shut up and put up.
The men and boys came first. They ate first, they got the best of everything. By the age of 8 I could do all of the housework, and cook a 3 course roast dinner. I had to learn to take responsibility.
At the age of 8 my brother got stuck on the roof and had to be rescued. He was told never to do it again.

Because growing up I WAS different from other girls. It's a bit of a cop out to say "we all loved playing with trucks get over yourself." My male identification wasnt arbitrary- I think that i liked those things explicitly because they WEREN'T for girls. I actively rejected my sex it wasnt coincidental. And yes I do believe that being a tomboy was a form of "not like other girls." It would be nice to have an honest conversation about what childhood gender incongruence is really all about and how it impacts your development. I dont think I escaped female socialisation but I'd say that I had a different type of female socialisation to my little sister who was very much a "girly girl."

You presumably had largely similar parental socialisation to your sister, but you responded differently -- her response was conceivably largely against your 'tomboy' tendencies, perhaps in order to carve out a separate space for herself in the family, especially if you were effortlessly outdoorsy and physical. (I was also a tomboyish child in the 70s, with a much more traditionally 'feminine' sister two years younger.) In short, I think that the contrast between you is as much about birth order as anything else.

I also don't feel that being tomboyish was remotely outside the realm of normal female childhood in the 70s, when the 'throw them out on their bikes in the woods in the morning and tell them to come home when it's dark' school of parenting was in vogue.

You can eff off with your rudeness

Oh dear - perhaps I'm not sufficiently "socialised as female".

These threads come across to me as very little more than a form of one-up (wo)manship. Someone has even quoted liking lego as proof of her being a tomboy.

I always think about this but slightly differently as I went to an all girls school. So certainly my experience between 11-18 was that girls were not 'less than' or particularly stereotyped as that was the only option! So no push towards or away from any particular subjects / interests as they were simply all open to all of us regardless if that makes sense??

Didn't really experience any negative behaviour that was directly related to my sex until I was much older and more 'formed'

Hmm.

I have a sister, growing up (and still now, really, thinking about it) she was very much a tomboy - short hair, hated skirts and dresses, v sporty etc. I was much more of a girly-girl - dresses/ makeup, more traditionally feminine interests.

When we reached adulthood we each relaxed a bit - I'm much more androgynously dressed, have fairly un-feminine interests. My sister is much more open to wearing dresses on special occasions.

Like you, OP, my sister was bullied by other girls, so I can see why she wouldn't have wanted to waste effort trying to fit in - or maybe she was a bit different to start with and the bullying crystallised around that?

Our mother was very glamorous, and very controlling and critical. She was openly critical of my sister's appearance and openly praised me for wearing dresses etc (although not for working hard at school). I think it's quite possible that my sister rebelled and I then saw an opportunity to ingratiate myself.... but then again, my mother also had a sister, who was a tomboy, so how many generations back might it go?

I think my girly-girl-ness was very much learned - I hate even pattern on clothes now. Pretty much everything I own is plain, and I'm just not comfortable in skirts and dresses.

Answering the question first before reading thread

Yes I think tomboys do/ did get female socialisation
Your parents and family always know
Every teacher knows if you are male or female. So did every other child, because we had 2 to a desk, boys left, girls right.
You couldn't talk to a boy in our primary without being accused of fancying the lad, so if you didn't play with the girls you played alone
Although children who would avoid me at school would play with me outside of school

And once you are past primary, unless you are very lucky, you get a female shape which no amount of baggy clothing will disguise

Sorry DJ crossed post

Can we change back to the subject? I think we do take roles based on the opportunities and circumstances. For a while I was the girly girl and chose the pink cake, my sister had the blue one. We are both fully women.
My husband believed he liked the soft centred chocolates because those were the unpopular ones in his birth family, unfortunately, he grew out of that defined role.

Dido I think you've missed the fact that I was comparing myself as a child to my sister as a child, and how now my sister is different to me and less practical. I wondered, as per the OP, whether playing out and being physical led to great spatial awareness.

I am ex Army and ex fire brigade and have never ever been anything other than female. I fought for my rights to be treated equally as my male peers and made some headway. I'm old now but the baton was taken up by other women and now we have better equality than we had when I was a young woman. My stance is nothing to do with anything trans but very much pro women.

You can eff off with your rudeness.

This is a nice little summary of the academic results www.themarysue.com/gender-in-test-taking/
As well as the girls having internalised sexism it showed internalised racial stereotypes too.
I’m sure few families actually tried to teach black girls not to be clever, but this study shows society has achieved a statistically observable result,

I will try and find the American research about their tests. There is no discrimination in the marking (multi choice). If at the end of the test they ask for sex, the results are similar. Girls do a little better than boys of the same age. Better at tests, maybe clever, maybe spent longer practicing this particular skill. Dunno.
If they ask for sex at the start, girls do worse. It’s not in the marking. And it’s probably not every girl, but on average, reminding the subjects of their sex before they do a test of ability drops their performance.
This is modern US teenagers.