It's just so regressive

[LucyGru]

There is a 10 yr old boy at school who is quite exaggeratedly 'feminine' in how he carries himself. Flouncy arm gestures, strikes a pose with jutting hip, lots of swishing his hair, often wears make-up and sparkly pink t-shirts.

TWICE now I've heard adults wonder if he "might be trans".

Because, of course, that's how girls behave, isn't it? He can't be a boy because boys don't behave like that. Girls do. Girls flounce about. Girls strike a pose. Girls swoosh and snap. Girls sit with their knees together.

Except, if you have ever spent time with 10 yr old little girls that is not how they behave at all. They sit like a sack of spuds. They are funny, and awkward, and sporty and wear hoodies and write books and forget to clean their teeth and most of them don't yet know that one day they are going to be expected to be feminine.

How have we reached a point where a little boy aping exaggerated femininity must be a girl? And that's a normal thing to casually wonder about. Make it make sense.

Well, 10 yr old girls vary a lot, from the ones borrowing their mums' hair straighteners and trying to add as much pink sparkle to their school outfits as possible, to the ones who slouch in on non-uniform days in hoodies and tell the boys off for being bossy.

I do know what you mean, though. One of my DDs was at school with a boy who was very effeminate and who has turned out to be gay. 15 years ago when they were at primary school, no one thought about trans, he was just left to get on with being him and he seems to have matured into a perfectly happy adult. Now, though, some 'kind' adult or just the whole cultural zeitgeist might have properly fucked him up.

We just need to leave kids alone, let them work out who they are without pushing what you rightly say are regressive stereotypes on them, and sit back and wait.

"We just need to leave kids alone, let them work out who they are without pushing what you rightly say are regressive stereotypes on them, and sit back and wait."

Exactly.!

100%. It's exist, homophobic and regressive.

I agree. I also find it difficult to see it as feminine (as applies to female) because it is often exaggerated - it’s just a behaviour that some males have and that’s fine.

I think youre confusing feminine with 'effeminate'.

Effeminate people is a code word for gay male acting camp. Not eeally used in other contezt any more.

Yes. And not just leaving these kids alone but INSISTING that the adults wanting to dabble in all this, pushing kids in one direction or the other, leave them alone.
Stay out of schools, the Scouts & Guides, libraries, sport & the rest.

@LucyGru

Except, if you have ever spent time with 10 yr old little girls that is not how they behave at all. They sit like a sack of spuds. They are funny, and awkward, and sporty and wear hoodies and write books and forget to clean their teeth and most of them don't yet know that one day they are going to be expected to be feminine.

Just wanted to say I loved this paragraph. It made my heart swell for all the wonderful little sacks of potatoes living their totally right for them 10 year old girl lives out there.

❤

How have we reached a point where a little boy aping exaggerated femininity must be a girl?

I guess mannerisms are probably partly innate and partly learnt. He may just have a naturally camp masculinity rather than aping exaggerated femininity. Unless he’s glued to drag race or something like that. But it’s frustrating that campness in males is read as a feminine rather than masculine behaviour.

Now I'm thinking hard about innate mannerisms, learned behaviour and descriptive language. My OP was not quite right. I used the word 'feminine' but as pp have pointed out that's wrong.

So, do we not have an adjective for this kind of behaviour and mannerisms in males? Camp? I think that's a bit pejorative - I wouldn't use it about a little boy.

Feminine means like a woman. Effeminate is used - usually negatively - to describe a man who is being 'like a woman' (except not, as we've said).

But if it's male behaviour (and it is) and we use 'masculine' the meaning doesn't work.

This thread makes me think of Victoria Redel's Bedecked. The full poem is well worth reading and made me think of my nephews who adored painting, arts, and even crystallised fruit for their jewel like colours as young children but were socialised out of it by their school peers.

Tell me what you need to tell me but keep far away from my son
who still loves a beautiful thing not for what it means -
this way or that - but for the way facets set off prisms and
prisms spin up everywhere
and from his own jeweled body he’s cast rainbows - made every
shining true color.

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/files/2019-01/Bedecked%20by%20Victoria%20Redel.pdf?VersionId=KMBp3b6_Y8KXpKljd2QniGCXuPasUsiD

We just need to leave kids alone

This seems apt.

Surely a pre-pubertal child acting in a hypersexualised way is a safeguarding concern, not an ideological one?

Totally agree OP.

Yet somewhere along the line the same people who used to agree with this now nod along to the notion that there is a kind of behaviour that 'matches' the female body.

with a boy who was very effeminate
I used 'effeminate' to mean, who behaved sometimes in a manner stereotypically associated with females. Moved elegantly, danced about the place, flashed his fabulous Colgate smile slightly coyly - you get the idea.

Lovely kid then and now, if notoriously scatterbrained...

My friend felt she had to encourage her DD (9) to grow her short hair a little longer to stop "well meaning," adults asking if she was trans or non binary. She'd been asked often enough that she'd started to wonder why she was being asked and the mum was worried it might, ironically, lead her to start thinking that maybe she was.

Imagine thinking it was socially a good thing to ask thin girls if they had eating disorders, for example. How are adults wrapping up sexism as a cool lifestyle choice for kids without stopping to think WTAF.

It's appallingly regressive, homophobic and utterly dangerous. It is stereotyping to the extreme and a clamp-down of freedom of expression in every way. I worry about a future where every fledgling butch lesbian or camp gay man - or flamboyant straight person - will have been brainwashed, mutilated and transed into the opposite sex.

Yeah, I agree with this.

Lots of people saying he's probably gay rather than trans - imo he's too young for that either.

It's 100% learned behaviour he's getting from somewhere, and that somewhere may well be a source unsuitable for children. Not necessarily but may be.

Most, actually probably all, gay men I have known IRL don't have mannerisms like that. They're just ordinary blokes and you wouldn't know one way or another that they were gay until you meet their husbands or whatever. Maybe it's my age (and therefore the age of my gay friends) but it just seems so outlandish to behave like that outside a TV show.

@RethinkingLife what a spectacular poem. Thank you.

But this is interesting- is 'effeminate' 'camp' behaviour also sexualised or are we associating female-coded mannerisms with sex becausewomen are treated as the sex-providing class? I'm not any kind of expert in this. We do all learn mannerisms from each other- I have a facial expression i picked up from dh - but is there any innate or genetic element? I'm always reading about long separated siblings who turn out to have similar mannerisms - i tend to assume that's wishful thinking though?

Agree with Leave Kids Alone. Let them be.

I love the poem quoted above by @RethinkingLife

In my opinion the mannerisms op described are certainly sexualised, rather than feminine. Sashaying around with a jutting hip- girls just don't do that unless they're trying to be sexy.

We do all learn mannerisms from each other but this boy is not learning these mannerisms from his mum or his aunt or his female schoolteacher or any other woman he sees in real life.

Woman just don't move around like that unless they're on a stage - that could be anything from a Beyonce music video (which is very much sexualised dancing) to something unsavoury.

That's what Queer Theory does - it breaks so many boundaries it is hard for the actual adults trying to work out who is at risk and who isn't.

Hurrah for the Queer Theorists. So Stunning. So Brave.

Camp is not feminine. It's its own thing, nothing to do with women.

I was thinking about this in relation to Blaire White’s mannerisms (GC Tim YouTuber). I don’t know any women with the exaggerated hand gestures Blaire uses. But that’s because none of my friends are particularly feminine.

It must be a learned behaviour. As with the 10 year old girls who want to do their hair and nails and dress in ‘sexy’ clothing - they’re mimicking what they think women should be from what they see in the media.

I love the description of little girls sitting like a sack of spuds. This is my 11 yo DD 😂. And I will not be trying to change her - she’s quirky, messy and dresses for comfort. Apart from the messiness - that I’d like to change!! She gets stains on all her clothes.

'It's appallingly regressive, homophobic and utterly dangerous. It is stereotyping to the extreme and a clamp-down of freedom of expression in every way'

Completely agree, and the adults engaging in it and trying to label young kids as either gay or trans should be ashamed of themselves. Bloody well leave kids alone and let them find who they are in their own good time

Sounds like a chicken and egg situation, I highly doubt this excessive behaviour is natural (more learned probably from watching women on TV, social media etc). He could be naturally effeminate, but this sounds like extreme effeminate.

The boy probably empathises with women more (because he's very likely to be gay), and is now acting in this manner because he's been told to (probably again from social media), he's embellishing his own behaviour.

There is such a thing as "pre-gay" which are markers in children to show that they will grow up gay. Unfortunately this has become medicalised and is now seen as trans instead.