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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Your child isn't trans, she's just a tomboy

106 replies

Birdsweepsin · 23/01/2023 13:47

Mary Wakefield in the Spectator

www.spectator.co.uk/article/dont-medicalise-tomboys/#Echobox=1674450150

At no other point in history would the existence of a boyish girl have raised the idea that she might actually be a boy in some metaphysical sense. But because we’ve been marinating, for a decade, in the glutinous language of critical gender theory, it’s become normal to think a boyish girl or a girlish boy needs treatment.

OP posts:
Delphinium20 · 23/01/2023 20:36

PastMyBestBeforeDate · 23/01/2023 20:32

I'm not denying they exist I just needed to say we aren't all like that. Same with autism.

Completely agree. I wasn't trying to argue with you. I'm so sorry for what you're going through and hope your child will be okay.

PastMyBestBeforeDate · 23/01/2023 20:37

Thank you Delphinium.

GeorgiaGirl52 · 23/01/2023 20:45

As an American, I have often wondered if clothing had something to do with it.
We don't have "school uniforms" to the extent you do. Girls can wear jeans to school, or skorts, or skirts from nursery on. Girls can play competition soccer, softball/baseball, take karate, gymnastics, dance, etc.
Boys are more limited. Pants or jeans only. Very few parents allow or encourage boys to be involved in gymnastics or dance, even if they want to. If they do, it is to "keep in shape" for "real" sports aka soccer or football.
If we didn't call the girls "tomboys" and the boys "sensitive or nerdy" then they would just be children, exploring their strengths and interests and would grow up to be adult men and women with varied interests and abilities. They wouldn't need to change their physical bodies to justify their behaviors.

smileladiesplease · 23/01/2023 20:46

Some of it Is attention seeking from stupid parents who use the trans badge to get attention themselves and to force schools to fear punishing their badly behaved bullying precocious kids.

Badbudgeter · 23/01/2023 20:52

RufustheFloralmissingreindeer · 23/01/2023 14:08

I don’t think they do

I don’t think so either. Bloke who is dressed up as a schoolgirl hanging out near schools. NSPCC bloke who’s dressed in rubber posting videos of wanking off at work then yeah pervert/ fetishist seems to fit. A man in feminine clothes I have no issue with so long he is not infringing on womens rights by using their facilities.

EpicChaos · 23/01/2023 21:27

This reply has been deleted

Message deleted by MNHQ. Here's a link to our Talk Guidelines.

flabbygoldfish · 23/01/2023 22:21

BiologicalKitty · 23/01/2023 19:49

@MNHQ Why was my comment deleted? I was sharing my very real concern about my daughter being told by others she is trans simply because she wears her hair short and is interested in STEM subjects.

😔Just as we are trying to get and promote more girls to get into STEM subjects and careers.

short hair is just short hair. Bet no one has told Annie Lennox she is trans with her very feminine but possibly androgynous look at times. Shirley Manson of Garbage went through a similar phase.

AnnListersBlister · 23/01/2023 22:27

flabbygoldfish · 23/01/2023 22:21

😔Just as we are trying to get and promote more girls to get into STEM subjects and careers.

short hair is just short hair. Bet no one has told Annie Lennox she is trans with her very feminine but possibly androgynous look at times. Shirley Manson of Garbage went through a similar phase.

This is how I feel. It's as if we've gone rapidly backwards. If we want to be equal to men, and/or if we want to look how we want to look ithout considering men, apparently we have to BE them. I honestly hate it.

flabbygoldfish · 24/01/2023 07:28

I had really short hair once (result of a diy colour gone wrong) - no one said I was trans.

we are going backwards. Before we were judged for been too fat, thin, tall, short now girls must be trans for daring to break the stereotype men say we must conform to.

SockGoddess · 24/01/2023 12:34

I did actually think I wanted to be a boy - I was a tomboy but thought I would somehow wake up as a boy one day, and it was a shock at 8 or 9 when I thought it through and realised it would never happen. I’d have been pushed towards transing if it was today for sure. However, there were reasons I felt like that - not least sexual abuse in the home and the sexism I was surrounded by, which of course made me think being a boy was a better life. I also liked practical clothes, short hair and stereotypically “boy” interests. However, when people mistook me for a boy, I corrected them - I knew I was a girl. It was part of growing up to figure out how to be myself, a tomboyish but straight girl, woman and mother. And yes puberty was fucking tough as it is for many kids, and I worried endlessly about my body. It’s a normal life stage, where ideally you mature into greater self-acceptance.

Fenlandia · 24/01/2023 13:01

Sorry if I've missed this linked upthread, but this is the article which the Spectator article references, and is worth reading in full (as is the website) : pitt.substack.com/p/sams-story

RLScott · 24/01/2023 16:21

bootsyjam · 23/01/2023 15:33

Having lived in the USA and having been a keen observer of their culture, I see this as just another facet of their rather odd way of having to classify everything. You see it in the terms boomers, Karens, Gen Xers, the list goes on and on. I think it is an obsession of theirs as they (at least in the corporate world) see it as a way of classifying a person which then makes them easier to sell things to i.e. you're a boomer who votes x therefore you will be interested/buy product y.

Having heard American friends come up with the most ridiculous explanations for their racial/family history then the new bonkers gender stuff doesn't seem so crazy. For example, I had a room mate who said that he looked German, his brother looked Danish and his sister looked Russian (all part of their family history).

Once you understand this tortuous classification system and the American desire to ALWAYS appear under a particular heading then it makes a lot more sense regarding why this insanity is happening.

america is a race-based society though, hence their classification obsession.

The global leader in race laws:

1.white only citizenship (1790)
2.white (male) only vote (blacks (well, some of them) first allowed to vote in 1870)
3.white only immigration (90% plus white population prior to the 1965 Immigration Act, an Act which began the backlash among whites which will only ramp up with non whites becoming the majority in 2043).
4.anti-miscegenation (no race mixing/interracial marriage, which ended in 1967)
5.segregation (white only schools to white only graveyards....Hattie McDaniel who played Mammy in Gone with the Wind...she couldn’t attend the premiere in Atlanta as it was a whites only cinema, at the Oscars ceremony in Los Angeles she had to sit at a segregated table in the far side of the room (she was lucky to get in as the hotel was for whites only), and her final wish to be buried in Hollywood cemetery was denied as it for whites only).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hattie_McDaniel

*The citizenship law (whites only) and the blood law (no race mixing) inspired the Nazis who directly copied american race laws for two of their Nuremberg Laws.

RLScott · 24/01/2023 16:39

*bit more on the taboo of race mixing in america (the first ever law banning it was incorporated there in 1691 before the ban was ended in 1967...two other places would emulate america’s ban on interracial marriage, Nazi Germany and Apartheid South Africa):

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miscegenation#United_States

thomas jefferson (aka the “monster of Monticello”), pioneer of scientific racism (wrote about biological differences between blacks and whites) and one of the main architects of the race-based entity that is america, was opposed to race mixing (despite raping at least one of his 600 slaves). In 1785 he wrote, “blacks are inferior to the whites in the endowments of both body and mind", then added, "the improvement of the blacks in body and mind, in the first instance of their mixture with the whites, has been observed by every one, and proves that their inferiority is not the effect merely of their condition of life".

Beamur · 24/01/2023 17:06

It's a strange time we're living in.
I was gently pulled up by my younger friend for referring to a man as 'he' because he had long hair and wore earrings. Apparently I shouldn't assume that. Despite him saying zero about this and not being present during the conversation we were having.
I didn't quite have the heart to point out to her how desperately she was confirming to sexual stereotypes by that comment as I know she means well.
My DD has short hair and has been challenged twice this year already when entering ladies toilets. She's a bit miffed by this but as soon as people see her face realise their mistake (probably also because she's scowling at them). On the plus side there are lots of people out there (male and female) keeping boys out of women's toilets!

EpicChaos · 24/01/2023 17:13

I have not a scooby why my post was pulled. It was about me and the difference in views between my fun filled childhood and what's happening today. Maybe that's the problem, that some people are just jealous because their lives lack fun. Maybe instead of spending time here reporting posts, they could try getting out and about, join a group or 3 that does something a bit more interesting, or learn to decorate cakes or something?

Ofcourseshecan · 27/01/2023 23:31

EpicChaos · 24/01/2023 17:13

I have not a scooby why my post was pulled. It was about me and the difference in views between my fun filled childhood and what's happening today. Maybe that's the problem, that some people are just jealous because their lives lack fun. Maybe instead of spending time here reporting posts, they could try getting out and about, join a group or 3 that does something a bit more interesting, or learn to decorate cakes or something?

Good idea, Epic. To get a life, in other words, instead of trying to police other people's. It would be good to be able to speak freely everywhere.

EpicChaos · 28/01/2023 17:17

Ofcourseshecan · 27/01/2023 23:31

Good idea, Epic. To get a life, in other words, instead of trying to police other people's. It would be good to be able to speak freely everywhere.

I think so :-)

mdh2020 · 28/01/2023 17:42

Let’s stop using the term tomboy. Girls play football, play rugby and like to climb trees.

JellySaurus · 28/01/2023 18:09

One of my sons is early 20s, another is mid-teens. Both have had long hair on-and-off from about 7yo. Both liked bright colours and patterns on their clothes. Although their clothing tastes are now more subdued, they still remind me of the hippies of my childhood!

Elder was occasionally teased at school about his hair and clothes.

Younger was frequently asked - by both adults and children - if he thought he was a girl. I've even been called in for discussion about his attitude to transgenderism (he thinks it's nonsense).

Same schools and clubs. Attitudes changed a lot in 6-7 years.

JellySaurus · 28/01/2023 18:14

And I hated being called a tomboy. I was already aware that I was different and awkward. Calling me a tomboy made me feel like something more was being denied me. I was a girl. An awkward, unfeminine girl. Even when I described myself as having a boy's mind inside a girl's body, I was still a girl. I knew I was a girl. Trouble was, I wanted to be a girl like I thought I should be, not like I actually was.

I would likely have been transed nowadays.

bellac11 · 28/01/2023 18:14

NotAnotherBathBomb · 23/01/2023 14:03

I agree with you. But then men wearing 'feminine' clothing get called perverts/fetishists on here.

Does that depend on the context, many men seem to present as if the desire to wear what they might call women's clothing, is a sexual thrill for them?

Other men are just androgynous, think of Marc Bolan, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Boy George, various men from the various 80s new romantic groups

(Im sure there are modern versions of these men too)

But they werent perverts or fetishists.

SockGoddess · 28/01/2023 20:03

Yes there's a difference between men who wear feminine clothing for style reasons, because they're experimental/creative people who like mixing it up, or because it's in fashion, like in the 80s - and men for whom wearing "women's clothing" is a fetish. These men are now being included in the definition of "trans" by the likes of Stonewall, and many of them get an even bigger thrill from being considered actual "women" and being told they can now invade women's spaces with impunity and get a further thrill from the validation and/or transgression and exposing themselves - hence all the videos of men in porn-style outfits masturbating in women's toilets etc.

But getting a sexual thrill from this is an extremely male behaviour. Women don't generally do it the other way round - partly because they tend to be less sex-driven and entitled, and partly because women wearing "men's" clothes ie trousers or boots has become totally normal and mainstream so isn't transgressive.

I think there's a strong argument for normalising men wearing feminine clothes in the same way, i.e. because they like them for style or comfort reasons, as this would reduce the fetish element that is linked to the idea of humiliation and transgression.

After all plenty of men around the world wear dress-like and skirt-like items, especially in hot places, and it's normal not a fetishy thing.

robin5810 · 29/01/2023 18:19

Being a trans boy isn’t just about presenting in a ‘masculine’ way or participating in ‘masculine’ hobbies, it’s crippling body dysphoria and crying for hours and then gender euphoria and a sense of community. Yes, tomboys exist, absolutely, but they’re totally different from trans boys and sometimes trans boys still like ‘feminine’ things, and that doesn’t make them any less of a boy either.

bellac11 · 29/01/2023 18:32

robin5810 · 29/01/2023 18:19

Being a trans boy isn’t just about presenting in a ‘masculine’ way or participating in ‘masculine’ hobbies, it’s crippling body dysphoria and crying for hours and then gender euphoria and a sense of community. Yes, tomboys exist, absolutely, but they’re totally different from trans boys and sometimes trans boys still like ‘feminine’ things, and that doesn’t make them any less of a boy either.

Unfortunately girls who feel they are 'boys' have usually had a combination of other experiences or disorders (usually sexual abuse, trauma, ASD etc) or one on its own

They therefore feel different, isolated, havent got secure attachment, are socially awkward, have images of women thrown at them that as a pre teen or teen they cant understand or identify with. Now with the rise of all of this ideology online, they're mislead into thinking they are this new thing 'trans', it makes them feel both connected to something and a victim of something at the same time, its hugely validating.

They need MH or therapeutic input, not being told they are a boy. They're not a boy and never will be.

mach2 · 29/01/2023 18:57

When I was at school there was a lass around the corner who preferred short hair, Action Man dolls, Tonka trucks etc to long hair and girl's toys. Her parents just let her get on with it. In her teens she turned out to be gay.

I dread to think what might have befallen her these days.