Do Tom Boys have female socialisation?

How does playing with the "opposite gender" effect you as an adult?

No one I grew up with played exclusively with only girls or only boys. Most children have loads of friends of both sexes. The problem is adults saying girls can't do xyz boys can't do xyz. Having friends of both sexes makes for a fully rounded and normal childhood.

I agree with you Dido. I notice the stereotypes thing. Incidentally, I hated pretty dresses (although apparently used to love looking at sari fabric), but as an adult was diagnosed with ASD, and I realise now it was because of sensitivity to certain fabrics. I insisted on trousers and comfortable clothes at all times, but I don't think makes me anymore feminine or masculine than the next person, it was a sensory issue, not a personality one.

To use pink as an example, it's a colour. Liking or disliking it doesn't say anything about you any more than liking or disliking the colour orange. Personally, I find it a bit weird to have such strong feelings about a colour once you hit a certain age, though I understand with pink it can be more about what represents. I've noticed in some feminist circles, there can be a lot of appearance-based judgement. Some women and girls naturally look a lot more masculine than others, and some couldn't look "butch" if they tried. I don't think it makes one a better person than the other, or says anything about that person's interests or traits. I just think we should be careful to not place the same connotations on things that we say we want to escape. I think that's why I prefer gender abolishionist to gender critical. I think we need to do more than be critical of the current gender stereotypes.

I do think if you look more masculine as a child, you can miss out on a little bit of female socialisation, from strangers etc. But you know you're a girl and some people know you're a girl and treat you as such, so you can't escape it entirely. And then once puberty really kicks in, it's largely unavoidable.

Dido you misunderstand. I was saying how ordinary these things are and how they are female / womanly “ this says more about society’s expectations than anything else because I am a womanly”.
Whilst you may not be aware of the fact exams have always comparatively favoured boys over girls - girls results are better when coursework is a bigger component.

The adults and my friends knew I was really a girl so I dont know whether I was ever treated 'as a boy' but strangers would have had no idea

You aren't socialised by strangers.
Of course you're socialised around strangers, and social rules are agreed to within a system that include people you don't know, but ultimately, as a tom boy everyone would have treated you like a girl. Eg "be nice, don't be bossy" etc.

You will have been acutely aware of the expectations put upon girls, so although deciding these expectations were not for you, you will never had the same expectations that are put upon boys.

So yes, tom boys are a type of girls and will have experienced female socialisation like other girls.

Interesting thread. And yes it's what we've always said, that when you start to list what is meant to 'boy behaviour and girl behaviour' it starts to fall apart.

Perhaps it's more to do with the expectations placed on children, which ramp up at puberty?

Because although I did all those things as a kid riding bikes, climbing trees, etc, expectations were still different. Boys had to find a career, but it wasn't 'as important' for girls.

How many times did we see, in adverts, and media, the woman doing the ironing, with the man sitting down reading the paper? The woman doing the cooking, the man doing the carving - always at the head of the table too.

Even if you didn't yet act accordingly, the messages were everywhere. And we all know the power of advertising.

I wanted to be a boy when i was little because they had more freedom/choices.
I even managed to convince myself I was "one of the boys" for years. The house of cards started falling once puberty started and friends weren't just friends anymore and I gathered a few sexual assaults under my belt.

There was a period when I tried even harder to delude myself and was so happy when I "passed". I thought I was special and "safe". Daft really.

And I rejected girls a lot based on what society told me girls were and did .

Took me years to realise it all, and even more to see that despite my "rebellion " in some areas I was heavily socialised female.

Even if some things are so deeply ingrained now that I still can't go against them, at least I see them for what they are.

Maybe what this discussion shows us is that all forms of childhood play, exploration and presentation are normal. Normal for both girls and boys, by nature restricted only according to the tastes of each individual

Agreed- why this has to be turned into "I was a tom boy" is very odd. I don't see the point beyond some sort of attempt to distance oneself from other (lesser?) girls.

Hi Dido, I do think my daughter’s school is lacking. It is considered “Good” by ofsted which I think means average for England. I don’t have much choice.
Girls clearly include some extraordinary humans and many go onto great things. I hope my daughter will be amongst them,

I was definitely ‘like the other girls’ and I’m gender critical as I understood it through second wave feminism. Also believe we are all a mix of things traditionally ascribed male or female but structural oppression means women are expected (at times backed up by very overt societal structures) to behave in the feminine ways. At times it can mean that the person is disapproved of or even punished for not following expectations - and that applies to men and women.

Or that "hard" subjects like medicine , veterinary medicine, law and accountancy are female dominated?

And women had to fight to get into some of those subjects as they were seen to not be able to do them. When societal oppression was very overt.

Walk into a maths, physics, engineering department and start counting up the number of females there. Plenty of evidence socialisation factors impact, but more subtle than a straightforward view that ‘women can’t do them’.

I was a tomboy, desperately wanted to be an actual boy but I definitely still experienced female socialisation (that was part of why I wanted to be a boy, wanting to be treated like my brothers instead of differently because I was a girl)

Wendy

Yes, I agree.
In fact your experience is like the stereotypical trans kid experience. But of course the nerdy quiet pink loving boys still have male socialization and privilege - this is applied to them from the outside whether they want it or not, unfortunately. This means they are eg expected to excel at computers and math and such, will be harassed for failing to be more masculine, etc. if they were experiencing “female socialization” this would not be the case. There would be no expectation that they are failing to meet. As a tomboy presumably at least SOME people conveyed their disapproval to you, once they realized you were female. That wouldn’t have happened if you were actually male.

Maybe what this discussion shows us is that all forms of childhood play, exploration and presentation are normal. Normal for both girls and boys, by nature restricted only according to the tastes of each individual. But society judges and therefore restricts these things by gender.

Is it because of the age of the average FWR poster that we see the 70s as halcyon days of ungenderered expectations?

But this phrase struck me about the OP: As an adult I can be quite tactless with female friends because I dont play along with the hidden code of behaviour we are all supposed to have learnt.

In women and girls being gender non-conforming is associated with autism. I'm not diagnosing you! But it is striking.

OneEpisode

The figures for Scotland are
The Scottish Funding Council says nearly six out of 10 first-year Scottish students are women

In 2015, 41.3% of new Scottish university students were men compared to 42.5% in 2011

Scotland has very few single sex schools- even private schools tend to be mixed so girls doing better in tests isn't down to single sex schools. It sounds as if your daughter is at a rubbish school because exam results and university entrance do not bear out your assertion that being good at tests isn't a girl thing.

I was very much a tomboy and resented being female when there were different expectations on me compared to my brothers. Always got on my nerves. I'm actually fine being female and have (and always had) a good relationship with my body, although in many ways I still don't completely fit in with other groups of women (always a bit of an outlier).
I think the only time I really remember wanted to be a boy was in late junior (age 10 ish), but I'm sure that was just frustration at being told I couldn't do things.
I was called laddie a lot until the boobs grew.

This is so interesting. My best friend as a child was a typical "Tom boy" she actually would only answer to a boy's name , had short hair and wore boy clothes ( or rather just unisex Mothercare as did we all). She liked football with the boys etc but to be really honest she wasn't actually much different from the rest of us. I'm naturally quite girly and liked dolls etc she certainly never played dolls with me. But we rode our bikes fast , climbed trees and built dens. I liked dresses etc but as that wasn't really practical for playing I was also dressed in unisex bright coloured clothes. Honestly if we were up a tree the only difference was hair length.
My friend is now married ( to a man) with 2 young children she may once have only answered to James ( her mother stubbornly just ignored such sillyness) but she is certainly all female now.
Children should be children and girls can do what is perceived as boy things and always have the.
I fear no days my friend would have been declared transgender. In our day her mother just declared the hair and clothes practical and ignored the rest.

I’m forty. Pretty much everyone my age or older describes themselves as a Tomboy in childhood.

We all spent our days playing outside in the mud and the grass, climbing trees, collecting sticks, we all wore dungarees and tracksuits. Lego was our go to toy.

My sister was always a ‘feminine’ child as in she always had impractically long blond hair and loved dressing up as a princess rather than a pirate, but she still played out with us all and knew how to fix her bike.

Gender stereotypes have never been more rigid (in my lifetime) than right now. It’s crazy times.

None of that means we had male socialisation though, that’s ridiculous. I remember very clearly being told that the boy who pinched me obviously liked me and that it’s not ok for girls to shout in the street. Despite my cropped hair and brown dungarees.

I think you're projecting a bit

Massively tbh.

Sorry againDidoat my daughter’s mixed sex comp school the popular girls most definitely don’t do well in tests. That is the reason some parents, despite other moral objections, choose single sex schools for their daughters

So how do you explain the fact more girls in the UK than boys go to university?

Across the UK, 27.3% of all young men are expected to go to university this year compared with37.1%of women

That difference is not made up by single sex schools.

Or that "hard" subjects like medicine , veterinary medicine, law and accountancy are female dominated?

I would say that of course you had female socialisation. Strangers thinking you are a boy sometimes doesn't change how family, friends, teachers etc treated you, nor does it prevent you from absorbing the influences of our culture of what is appropriate for men and for women.

Kicking against it doesn't mean you weren't experiencing it.

70s 80s childhoods were much more gender neutral anyway. Partly the culture of the time and perhaps because kids played outside with friends and neighborhood kids - and having any sort of adventure often took place in nature den building, climbing, biking, playing in the dirt. I think beinga 'Tom biy' may be the default but many girls are socialised out of it depending on their parents views. If the girls who really don't like bring outdoors, mud, being physical etc.. there are probably a similar amount of boys with the same feelings. On top of that you have girls and boys on the more extreme end of physical risk takers - adrenaline junkies so to speak. Children are just children and children like to play. Without gender codes and parents to tell them how, would they really play that differently?

Tge differences would be more apparent after puberty.

Today’s parents are offered fashion choices for their girls (heeled, scrappy shoes) for instance that can limit the girls ability to actual use their bodies.

To be fair, for parties, when a child, there was a fair expectation to be dressed up too. I think this is almost a product of fast fashion - that this stuff is available freely, so you can dress your child in basically party-wear every day if you wanted - and party-wear for girls has always been impractical

I was a massive tom boy - never comfortable with being female, horrified by breasts and periods and always good at boy subjects (maths / science) I am 110% lesbian and I think it just went along with this. I had an awful time coming out and I think it made me very uncomfortable with the idea of being a woman - don't know why this is but know it was the case. As I've grown up I embraced the gay scene and various stereotypes (short hair / clumpy boots) but as my career progressed and I started being more confident and met my wife I have changed a lot - I lost 4 stone, dyed my hair blond, grew it and now love wearing make up and frocks and heels and all that sort of stuff. My long term mates constantly rib me about how much I've changed. I put the whole thing down to confidence to embrace whatever look I liked and not one I thought I should have. Don't get me wrong - I still wear very boyish clothes sometimes cos I just go with whatever I fancy. Had I been born now I would have def been in the gender non-conforming/trans bucket but I can wholeheartedly say that even though I was uncomfortable with aspects of my female-ness I never thought I should be a boy.

I was very feminine as a little girl. If asked I'd have said my favourite colour was pink, and I liked dolls and princesses. I've grown up to be a woman who never wears make-up or high heels, I loathe shopping and I chose not to have children. I know other women who went in the opposite direction.

There does always seem to be some change as people grow up - they get more or less masculine or feminine. I wonder if this is because as children, we might be drawn to behaviour that we believe makes us lovable but as we grow we question this or try out other things and find they suit us better.