Anyone a lifelong feminist who wasn't a tomboy?

[HarpyValley]

This is something I increasingly muse on, as I see dozens of posts from women here who say "I could so easily have been trans" as they describe a tomboy-ish childhood.

I never really thought of myself as a tomboy. I was lucky enough to be a child in the 70s when it was - or seemed, perhaps with rose-tinted spectacles of nostalgia - perfectly normal to wear trousers and play with my toy garage one day, then a dress and play with Tiny Tears or Sindy the next. The most unease I remember having about my body at that time was that it didn't develop quickly enough compared to my friends; I was a skinny ironing board of a child well up to 14/15. I didn't have lots of friends but those I did have tended to be female rather than male. Physically I was quite risk-averse and not up for the more rough-and-tumble male-driven games. As a horse-mad child I went through phases of playing as a horse (and also a rabbit, after I read Watership Down 😄), but never actually believed I was one.

This isn't to say my childhood was idyllic and problem-free: my dad was an abusive alcoholic with a hair-trigger temper, I was bullied all the way through school, we didn't have much money. But I did grow up with the belief that I could do any job I wanted, that I should earn my own money and be independent. I knew from a very early age that I didn't want children, didn't want to play a maternal role. Then in my late teens, around Sixth Form age, I discovered feminism and never left it. I read The Women's Room, devoured Virago books, discovered Angela Carter and Margaret Atwood and Germaine Greer...I was, have always been and still am happy to declare myself a feminist, even when the word has attracted negative connotations in some people's eyes.

I've never wanted to be a boy or a man, even when exposed to sexism, sexual assault (thankfully comparatively minor) or any other sex-based discrimination. I don't think I would have been ripe to be trans as a child or teen. But I'm not 'cis'. I don't have a gender identity. I'm just me. I have always been me, and that me has always been female, regardless of any insecurities about my body I've had at various times of my life.

Can anyone else here relate?

Me too - not a tomboy, very feminine lesbian feminist.

I was not a tomboy, but I wasn't a particularly girly-girl either. Favourite toys were etch-a-sketch and spirograph, and I read voraciously.My parents never tried to pigeonhole me or make me more 'girly'. I was academic and they let me get on with it.

First time feminism came into my world was the Sex Discrimination Act 1975. The Equal Pay Act was 1970, but it was being flouted left, right, and centre. With the 75 Act coming in, the 70 Act was in the news quite a bit, and I remember being completely puzzled as to why a woman would be paid less for the same job. But it was clear that it was happening, and that really pissed me off! A feminist was born that day.

Me. I'm very feminine and a feminist. And I'm straight too.

I'm not a tomboy - very feminine with the exception of loving all kinds of sport. I think there was a phase in my late teens / early 20s where I didn't really know what it meant, but as I've got older I think I've grown into it more.

If it hadn't been for the suffragettes we wouldn't be where we were today and as a woman, we should remember what they went through to get us the right to vote and be treated equally.

I don't think I was a tomboy. I grew up climbing trees and riding go-karts and building Lego and Meccanno, but I also drew and painted and sewed and wrote. I read Malory Towers and Fifth Form at St Dominic's and Biggles. I sewed clothes for my toys and I built a bookcase from spare bits of wood when I needed a new bookcase (and won a prize for it at the local agricultural show.) It was the '70s snd '80s and I grew up on a farm and did bits of everything.

I didn't take much to breasts, and they never grew big anyway. I didn't really feel like everyone else, but that's more to do with having been on a farm, neither town nor village, and not having a TV and stuff, and being top of the class without much effort, and not really understanding that others struggled. I do remember looking in the car mirror on the way to swimming and thinking I could probably look like a boy, but I knew I wasn't a boy, I just didn't wear make-up (I swam a lot, didn't see the point, still don't.) It was probably more for disguises like in all the mystery books I grew up with, could I be someone else?

My mother and most of her friends were second wave feminists, and I grew up with books round like the Female Eunuch (the cover of which, a female torso like a swimming costume, fascinated me as a child.) I thought everything was sorted, and at my single sex secondary school, they told us we were the business women and academics of tomorrow.

And then in the 6th form, some lessons were shared with the boys school. We were due to go on a lower 6th French trip to France, and all the boys would have individual tents, but the girls would share a big one. At the meeting to tell the parents what the plans were, I stood up to ask why we were being treated differently. Never occurred to me not to. After all, I was doing DofE and stuff and was probably far more capable of putting up a tent than most of the boys.

So I realised not everything was sorted after all. I didn't feel I fitted in a lot of the time, and I have never been a girly girl, but I don't think I was a tomboy either.

<raises hand>

Raised by a second-wave feminist mother. Always had a mix of interests. Dressed pretty typically for girls my age growing up. Liked to wear makeup (and still do occasionally). Was absolutely boy-crazy from early teen years through early twenties. Always been happy to be female, never been happy with how female humans are treated in society.

I’m the same. I have no gender identity, I have no inner feeling that I’m a girl or woman, I just am one. I was born female, I hate the term “assigned female”, I was observed to be female. It wasn’t randomly assigned. I’ve never been a tomboy, but similarly to you I did want to be a bat for a while after reading a novel about them.
I have been victimised and abused by men since I was a child, and none of it was because of my gender identity, it was all because of my sex. Most women I’ve spoken to feel the same, especially mothers. Maybe there’s something about giving birth that makes us feel very female.

Agree with the PP who said that 'I could/would have been trans' usually doesn't indicate ever having actually thought you were or should have been a boy. It's more about having had a lifestyle and attitudes that in the current climate would have a lot of people assuming you were trans and encouraging you into it.

Had I been growing up now (and perhaps been someone like me but less fiercely Me) I could quite easily have found myself identifying as at least non binary.

I didn't see myself as a tomboy, but spent a significant portion of my childhood up trees, wielding pickaxes, building dens in the woods, or knee deep in ponds. I was given a few dolls but didn't know what to do with them, once I'd taken them apart to find out how the joints and eyes worked. I never felt 'like a girl' or had much interest in acting like one. But I was also never under the illusion that I was anything else.

Growing up in the 70s, in a progressive school and family, I learned that girls could do anything and that I could grow up to be a woman who did anything I wanted. But never that I could grow up to be anything but a woman.

I wasn’t a tomboy but was seen as a bit weird.
I wasn’t interested in make up or anything until my first serious crush at about 15.
I grew up in a rural community close to a big oil town, so at the time (90s) it was mainly “men went to work, women looked after the kids”.
I was very interested in drama and literature and I very much remember a feeling that men had lives that were more “3D” if you like, only because the books, films and music I was exposed to were centred around men. I think if I was young today I might convince myself I was trans because I wasn’t interested in babies, dating or any of the things I associated with women.

I must stress that I don’t feel this way any more, I credit Kate Bush’s The Whole Story as my introduction to feminism 😄.

I always called myself a tomboy, but I never actually wanted to be a boy. I just wanted to be able to do the same as my older brothers and not be treated like a girl.
I do think if I was young today, I would be tempted by the trans or non - binary route.

Also, it wasn't a body thing as I've always been pretty confident with my body (although never been overly interested in make up, hair or fashion), it really was how I was treated that annoyed me. I hated being treated like a girl.

I doubt it's that every feminist woman on here was a tomboy, but more that there's noone in the world fits every single stereotype about their sex, so everyone has something about themselves they can point at and say "Well these days they'd call me trans"

I'm male, and as a kid I loathed sport, watching and playing it. I didn't have a favourite football team, I had no clue who Michael Owen was. I didn't want to hang around the goal every break time, so I hung out with the girls instead. I got called a wuss, and gay by my male friends for it, because that was what 8 year olds did in the 80s.

These days the 8 year olds probably think less of it, however I bet there'd be a nice well meaning teacher somewhere thinking, "Hmmm, I wonder if he's trans". No, Mr. Bishop, I'm not, I just fucking hate football!

I bound my breasts and also went through a dodgy curtains hair cut and waistcoats phase, also randomly really got into American Football for a while. I don't remember thinking "I want to be a boy", though. More just general confusion and self-loathing. I started puberty younger than my peers, when I was 10. I hated it and it would make me cry, feeling so different.

I got over that phase at around age 15 when I found the grungers (my people!), had my first boyfriend and sex for the first time.

I have been feminine since, although didn't believe I earned my stripes as a feminist or understood the importance of feminism until much more recently, in my 30s.

Absolutely agree, huge and currently quite ragey feminist.
However, very similar 80s experience and just feel like me. Sometimes feel more 'masculine' and sometimes more 'feminine' human nature to me!

I think I probably was. I climbed trees, so did my female friends, and fell out of one once, seriously enough to go to hospital (was 50s so tetanus was the problem, I think) but wore dresses and grew my hair long (like my Polish friend, Sandra, whose sister fell out of a window, I remember, so we were quite adventurous) and I read books with heroes (though I also found Violet Needham's books) - lots of stuff about Renaissance Italian politics. But I was not a tomboy. Later I was into science fiction as well as G Heyer, which is apparently gender non-conforming - and sixties sci-fi was very teenage boy orientated, very few women writers (I did not know that James Tiptree Jr was a woman). But, no, not a tomboy. My own stories that I made up always had heroines, not heros, though maybe they were not strong women.

I wasn’t a tomboy but I wasn’t overly girly either. I loved my toy cars and trains and my Pippa dolls too. I loved anything spooky or sci-fi related and wanted to be an astronaut. I was an early developer too, unfortunately, and that was rough - a good couple of years earlier than other girls in my class.

My family were very egalitarian - both parents cooked and cleaned and I was taught how to wire plugs and fix appliances as well as cooking and sewing. My feminism really kicked off at high school where girls were made to do domestic science and boys could do technical drawing and woodwork. We protested and the school changed the rules to make it a choice. I then became aware of all the other assumptions that were being placed upon us and was a good-natured pain in the arse about it.

I grew up mainly in the 1970s and all children were far more active and adevnturous than they are now. Children played out on bikes, climbed trees, made dens, and none of that made you a 'tom boy'.

It wa also perfectly normal for girls to have short hair; in fact I had short hair quite often and remember at the age of 12 having my hair, once again, cut short and getting my ears pierced at the same time and thinking that this was who I really was. All of my adult life I've gone back to short hair when I want to feel most myself.

I recall, age 10, my family being on holiday in Llandudno and I used to wander about the resort on my own. I was down on the sea front, once, standing by a couple of fairground rides when a boy, referring to me, said to another boy " See that boy over there....". Initially I felt a flash of insult at being thought a boy - but after a couple of moments I decided it was actually an interesting position to be in. I sensed how differently I was perceived and responded to on account of 'being male'.

Later on in my late teens, whenver I'd look at attractive young men on the street I would instinctively identify my gaze as a male gaze, and imagined that If I was male I would be gay. I've always been attracted to beautiful young men with slim, but athletic bodies ( not muscle bound or stocky) and young men who are not afraid of adornments such as earrings, jewellery. It reflects those personal aspects, and tastes, which might be could be seen as 'bisexual' 'cross-sexual'

After I discovered sex i really got into 'goddes' type feminism. Centred in the female body and in the power of female sexuality. I also used to keep a we-moon menstrual diary and would often feel really creative around ovulation.

After that the sort of feminism which is rooted in the specifically female experience of the body is what feminsim became for me - not so much about 'equality'

I think so many women now want to escape their body, or deny that their body makes them any different to men. the female body is seen in negative terms as being all about oppression.

I suppose I was considered a tomboy (my mum cut off all mine and my sister's hair when we were very little because 'she didn't want to deal with it ') and very outdoorsy, but wanting to be male never crossed my mind because I understand basic biology. This is something I find utterly baffling about the trans rhetoric - do kids not learn about mammals and biology anymore???? I didn't question my femaleness because it wasn't something that could be changed, unlike growing my hair or piercing my ears. When I got kicked out of school aged 17 science was definitely not my strong point but I had managed to learn basic things like gravity and reproduction. Do kids not learn about tadpoles anymore? That humans are mammals? How mammals reproduce??

I’ve never understood make-up. Have never used it in my life.
Was more of geeky kind of tomboy, computerprogramming my own textbased adventures. Had to get a special library card so I could lend books for grownups , because I had read all the childrens books.
I would definitely go for non-binary if i was a teenager now.

It seems logical to me that the first women to demand equal rights as men, were the women that wanted to do the same things as men… like riding bikes and going to uni and getting into politics. So not weird many of them consider themselves a tomboy.

I think "tomboy" is quite a problematic term. I was called this as a child. It reinforces that only boys do certain things and if you enjoy them as a female, there is something missing or you are not quite female and are part "boy".

It's not a word I associate with or would use to describe any child.

'I think "tomboy" is quite a problematic term. I was called this as a child. It reinforces that only boys do certain things and if you enjoy them as a female, there is something missing or you are not quite female and are part "boy".'

Totally agree. A little girl who loves football and trains (for example) is just a little girl who loves football and trains. Theres nothing 'boy' about her

The word 'sissy' has pretty much disappeared for boys, I'd like to see the back of 'tomboy' for girls too

I had a flirtation with some kind of hybrid Wicca/paganism when I was younger and it was definitely the idea of having a body that could be in tune with an earth goddess / cycles of nature that appealed.

Good point about the problems around the word “tomboy”, food for thought.

Some really interesting “origin” stories here, so many times I’ve thought “oh yes, that was/is me too!” Thank you all for sharing.

I wasn’t but my (lesbian) sister absolutely was a tomboy. She had short hair, wore ‘boys’ clothes, played with action man and construction kits, played football… she would have been so ripe for a school transition these days (we were in Scotland then).

I enjoyed some of the ‘boys’ games and toys we had, and I never likes ‘girl dolls’ (apart from the automaton ones).

Mum and grandma wouldn’t have called themselves feminists but they definitely had a philosophy that women were very much different from men - not an inferior version of the ‘default’!

wanting to be male never crossed my mind because I understand basic biology

Wel quite. I also never tried to walk on the ceiling, breathe water, or warm up on a cold day by sticking my head in the freezer.