My Daughter is Not Transgender. She's a Tomboy.

[sticklebrix]

Article in the New York Times yesterday. It illustrates the outside pressure to trans that some perfectly healthy children experience.

I wonder what sort of response this article would get in the UK. Would it be seen as controversial?

www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/opinion/my-daughter-is-not-transgender-shes-a-tomboy.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0

@scaryclown

This...
Punk helped, boy george helped, clubbing helped, crusty helped

Is v true and I find it v interesting.

I am punky/crusty. It's v gender neutral.
Haircuts/clothes etc all interchangeable.

I was a "tomboy"...still am.

I reject the gender norms placed on us by society, have short/shaved hair, don't shave pits etc ride motorbikes etc....BUT.....

I hate that I have to quantify my interests in boy/girl gender terms.

Why isn't it "what people like", rather than "whats boys/girls like"??!

As @IAmAmy said perfectly, and succintly...

This is possibly quite a roundabout way of saying once again how nonsensical current thinking on what makes someone "trans" is. Children are individuals with all sorts of interests. Liking one particular thing, having a style of haircut, wearing certain clothes, doesn't make one either a girl or a boy and some of these TRAs should explain how exactly it does. It's incredibly limiting and regressive thinking

He is actually now very proud of being a boy and embraces being a bit different. Weirdly it was David Bowie that seemed to get it all straight in his head - when he died and there were lots of pics around of him wearing feminine clothes. My son spent ages looking at the pictures and telling me David Bowie was wearing a dress but he was still a boy

Not weirdly at all! I'm a child of the 70s and that whole gender bending era allowed multiple identities and ways of being for males and females. I remember Bowie (RIP) as standout. We've gone backwards.

She is not gender nonconformin'g. She is gender role nonconforming. '
Quite.

Don't gender and gender role mean the same thing? Gender is all roles isn't it?

Yes - it should do but the tendency for 'gender' to be used as a polite euphemism for sex has become so pervasive that I think the writer really meant it more as 'She is not sex nonconforming. She is gender role nonconforming. '

I'm somewhat inclined to think that many of the current confusions and nonsenses might be alleviated if we eschewed the use of 'gender' and either used 'sex' or 'gender role/stereotype' . That could help stop the conflation of genuinely transsexual people with 'trans-genderrole' people.

WombOfOnesOwn - that was a very moving and clear description. It's the sort of statement which deserves a wider readership.

Yes I agree Errol.

When I was growing up, lots of girls in my class had short hair. Some had long hair. No one really worried too much about pretty clothes etc.

Now nearly every single girl in my daughter's class has long hair - all of them. It is way more unusual to be a girl with short hair in 2017 than it was in 1977. Why did that happen? It feels like gender is becoming more stereotypical rather than less.

Now nearly every single girl in my daughter's class has long hair

And bows. Bring bright pink bows.

@WombOfOnesOwn

Are you me?

Thank you for the eloquent post. Very well put.

As a primary aged kid I was pleased when people mistook me for a boy. It meant I could be free and not have to "sit and play nicely".

Then puberty hit and the bullying started. I grew my hair out and gave up on freedom.

/derails thread

I just wanted to post this
mobile.twitter.com/Martina/status/854699091200278528
I love Martina, she's a great woman and role model. Great to see her speak up.

I'd love to see some research on the numbers of people who as adults are happy in their own skin but as a child did non-stereotypical things for their gender.

E.g. I was very into climbing trees and playing with mud. I am very much female.

My friends DD was always desperate to be a boy - had all her hair cut off, would only wear boys clothes and underwear- totally offended if anyone suggested she was a girl.

Years on now - she has a long hair, is very sporty, does wear girls clothes (skinny jeans/tshirts) - I think she just rebelled against the girly girl thing which is rammed down our throats daily - you can be a female and not wear dresses/make up - you certainly don't need to have hormones, surgery to fix that.

DD who is 8 has short hair, likes clothes for comfort more than anything - I have had comments. She will occasionally wear a dress etc when she feels like it.

Frankly I can't believe we are in 2017 and thinking has gone so bloody backwards

eurochick to be quite honest, I think most adults fall into that category. It's something I've seen on various forums, not that it's been seriously researched, just in a comversational kind of way.
How many men don't like football? How many women don't like soap operas? Probably a lot more than you think. I'm pretty sure a lot of people pretend to like certain things just to fit in and be accepted, at least on the surface.

I'm not s girly girl but I was and am most definitely female. I had a couple of dolls but also cars, soldiers, tons of lego, quite content to be playing in mud, climbing trees and so on.
I hate pink and always have, rarely wear make-up, although I do paint my toenails. Hate shopping and soap operas. Love science and have a science defeee and career. Wear combo of dresses/skirts/trousers. Now I only wear trousers at work.
Most of my friends are and were the same. Not girly girls, not tomboys, but most definitely female. As a child neither my friends or I were the stereotypical girl, so I don't know what we would be classed as now. We were just children.

*science degree

There's a crazy online backlash to the article, with mad transactivists saying the child is definitely trans and the mother is deluded and transphobic:

storify.com/AnaMardoll/nyt-opinion-my-daughter-isn-t-transgender

They are nutters.

But wait this person has essentially made their own tweets into a big story, with a little input from others?

That's weird. If you want to write a response, write one. Don't collect your own tweets as though they're what 'people' are saying.

I think this mother should address some of her own attitudes and contradictions (and perhaps stop making her daughter's life into articles for the New York Times)

This is her first article.

www.parenting.com/article/tomboy?cid=searchresult

The closing paragraph of the first article.

There’s really only one remaining objection to my daughter's proclivity: we have the loveliest assortment of hand-me-down dresses, ones that currently she refuses to wear but that I don’t want to waste. For this, though, I have clear-cut solutions. We wear dresses on Thursdays, and any time she wants to wear her tie, she has to wear a skirt, too. Which she does, as long as she can wear jeans underneath and, as always, her Spiderman shoes

This is bonkers.

A really interesting article and I agree with it but I also take issue with the word "tomboy" because it does reinforces gender roles. She's just a girl who likes certain things, toys, games, clothes. They're not boy things, they're just things. Just let kids be kids.

There’s really only one remaining objection to my daughter's proclivity: we have the loveliest assortment of hand-me-down dresses, ones that currently she refuses to wear but that I don’t want to waste. For this, though, I have clear-cut solutions. We wear dresses on Thursdays, and any time she wants to wear her tie, she has to wear a skirt, too. Which she does, as long as she can wear jeans underneath and, as always, her Spiderman shoes

Yeah, that is crazy.

Effzeh good grief - that link!

Would love to know what Martina thinks about transorthodoxy.

Agree that Selin Davis is inconsistent and intrusive. I aso find her use of 'tomboy' problematic. But can't argue with her basic argument, which seems to be 'let my slightly masculine daughter get on with it and don't assume that she is trans'.

She has some rather rigid views- the opening paragraph for example.

When my daughter turned out to be a tomboy rather than a princess, the feminist in me was relieved…

And
My heart swelled with pride. I mean, my only hesitation about having a girl was that I’d have to endure the dreaded princess phase

And
Let me say that I don’t hold particularly conventional views about gender or sexuality. There are so many lesbians in my family that I fully expect either or both of my daughters to be gay (though of course I will love and accept them if they turn out to be heterosexual)

I know the last sentence is meant to be a joke but the rest of it? Her daughter may or may not be lesbian ; having close family members who are may make things easier but it is certainly not going to determine whether her daughters are gay.

I think far from not holding conventional views she actually does (or rather it pleases her that other people do) and she enjoys , and I don't think I'm being harsh, showing off about how unconventional she and her daughter are.

Lass true, her tone comes over as a bit smug or inauthentic in places. But if what she describes actually happened (e.g. conversation with the teacher), it's horrifying that the girl is coming under outside pressure to trans for normal childhood behaviour.

The thing about long hair is interesting. It is not only girls, but young women too. In fact probably most women under about thirty. Short hair on a younger woman is really unusual these days.

I got mine cut off because I felt like a clone of some feminine stereotype (not that I am young though).

*"I someone had sidled up to me at any time between age 4-10 and asked me if I wanted to be a boy, in my childlike rationale of taking this to mean I could wear trousers all the time, I might have said yes which these days could put me on an irreversible path."

FamilySpartan*, yes this.

I was a self-confessed tomboy (spurred on by my love for George in the Famous Five books), hated dresses, insisted people call me by the short form of my name (which is unisex), and do remember a phase where I openly told people I would rather be a boy.

However, it was a phase that passed. Now I love getting dolled up, I wear dresses most of the time, if offered a choice of colour I usually go for the pink, and I don't feel that I even really understand or bond with men that much (except DH) and have almost all female friends. Not that these are the things that define a woman at all - there are a million ways to be a woman - but they are things that younger me would have absolutely baulked at.

People, and especially children, constantly change, and I think we do need to make sure children have the chance to work out who they are without being pressured to put labels on it.

Wha George and the Gypsy girl in Castle of Adventure are the sexiest Enid Blyton Characters,.