"It was incredibly different and it was incredibly painful and hurtful, this division of Americans that he has embraced of normal people and everyone else."

"I am a normal person. Queer people are normal Americans. I, I mean, I don't, whatever, I don't, I don't divide the world between normal and abnormal people. I don't think that helps anyone. And in a lot of ways, I think I lead a much more average life than he does. I am not a millionaire. I lead a private existence. And, and specifically the term 'normal' really scared me because he has set up a war between 'normal' people and those who are trying to attack them. You know, I, I'd shared some pretty personal stuff with him about my experience as a trans kid, because I know what it's like to sit and cry as a kid and think I have to fix myself. There's no way that I can be this person and be loved and have a job and be accepted and be okay. And that is a devastating experience. And I was so hopeful that it would be easier for future generations...."

Says Sophia Nelson, in the new episode of the NYT "Daily" podcast, "She Used to Be Friends With JD Vance."

She's speaking to the podcast host, Michael Barbaro, who had just said, based on Nelson's text exchange with Vance, "You say to him... 'The political voice you have become, seems so, so far from the man I got to know in law school,' and JD Vance replies to you, 'I will always love you, but I really do think the left's cultural progressivism is making it harder for normal people to live their lives.'"

Here's the background article, by Stephanie Saul: "JD Vance, an Unlikely Friendship and Why It Ended/His political views differed from a transgender classmate’s, but they forged a bond that lasted a decade — until Mr. Vance seemed to pivot, politically and personally" (NYT)(free access link).

I avoided that article because it seemed like a politically motivated betrayal of a private, personal relationship. I almost avoided the podcast.

"I’m a tomboy who is happily married to an effeminate man."

"I suppose it’s only a matter of time until this type of relationship has its own designation and advocacy group. Binary gender labels have always encompassed a wide variety of preferences and experiences. I’m glad to have grown up in a time before gender was identity and sexuality was personality. I’m also glad that I was allowed to go fishing, play baseball, and wear boys’ clothes without any suggestion that my body might need to be altered to fit my interests."

Writes Amanda, in Nashville, in the comments to "Report Reveals Sharp Rise in Transgender Young/People in the U.S. New estimates based on C.D.C. health surveys point to a stark generational shift in the growth of the transgender population of the United States" (NYT). 

The article says: "The number of young people who identify as transgender has nearly doubled in recent years...." 

"Leaders of the British group LGB Alliance warn that lesbians are 'going to become extinct’ as individuals increasingly identify as trans..."

"... a fear echoed both by trans-exclusionary groups and by lesbian feminists who in other ways advocate for trans rights. Feminist writer Aimee Anderson frets about 'the extinction of an entire people,' and Cherríe Moraga worries that butch lesbians, self-actualizing as transmasculine, might 'become a dying breed.' Tomboys, too, have become a point of contention, seen by some as a 'rarer and rarer species' that is 'going extinct' as more tomboyish children identify as trans and/or nonbinary.... As a lesbian researcher of tomboyism trained in queer theory, I find claims like these at once absurd and frightening. Extinction anxieties have long fueled nationalist, fascist and white-supremacist movements and often beget eugenicist agendas. Indeed, tomboyism as we know it arose in concert with eugenics.... Child-rearing manuals began advocating for exercise and comfortable clothing, instead of the restrictive and harmful corsets then common, as means of making White girls fit to produce healthy White offspring.... Lesbians are not a species, and we feed existing racist, ableist and homophobic agendas when we invoke extinction...." 

From "The latest form of transphobia: Saying lesbians are going extinct" by Lynne Stahl (WaPO).

Is it true that "The term 'tomboy' has long sounded alarms among conservative parenting factions for its perceived association with lesbianism and departure from traditional femininity"?

I'm trying to read "'Tomboy' is anachronistic. But the concept still has something to teach us," by Lynne Stahl (a humanities librarian who teaches popular culture, gender theory, and critical information studies at at West Virginia University)(in WaPo).

I'm interested in the idea of a "tomboy," which I remember from my long-ago youth. There was a girl in our neighborhood who was the tomboy. It was what she was. What did she do? I remember only 2 elements: 1. She ran around with no shirt on in the summertime, and 2. She loved the 3 Stooges — especially Moe.

From the second paragraph of the WaPo article:

The term “tomboy” has long sounded alarms among conservative parenting factions for its perceived association with lesbianism and departure from traditional femininity...

With my memories of childhood, I wondered if that's true. Do conservatives look askance at tomboys? I haven't consorted with many conservatives in the last 50 years, but, growing up, it seemed that people were pleased to see a tomboy. I heard pride. So I clicked that link on "conservative parenting factions" and got:

[IMAGE MISSING/LINK HAS GONE DEAD]

Did the link go to just one book (as evidence of "factions")?

Click the image to enlarge it and clarify and you'll be able to see the URL: "https://www.amazon.com/Parents-Guide-Preventing-Homosexuality/dp/0830823794." I wondered if there was a parents guide to preventing homosexuality and, if so, whether it represented real "conservative factions."

I tried searching Amazon for parents guide to preventing homosexuality and the top item — and the only even remotely apt item — was this:



That's not the Richard Cohen who was my husband in the 1970s and 80s (and it's not the Richard Cohen who's a Washington Post columnist). This person is presented as a "psychotherapist." The description of the book says: "Did you know that every day people change from 'gay' to straight? This is a must read for every parent, teacher, counselor, clergy, and all who wish to understand what drives homosexual feelings and how to respond in love." I don't know how much that has to do with feeling alarmed about manifestations of tomboyism.

Stahl (the author of the WaPo article) continues, saying that the term "tomboy" has...

... come under scrutiny in progressive circles, too, with some critics arguing that it upholds the essentialist notion that anatomy largely determines children’s behaviors and inclinations. The author of a 2017 New York Times essay who wrote that her daughter was more a tomboy than a transboy sparked debate around gender-nonconforming children, and the argument about this trope has also unfolded across Facebook communities and clinical studies.

Yes, I blogged about that 2017 article ("My Daughter Is Not Transgender. She’s a Tomboy," by Lisa Selin Davis). I said:

Davis is trying so hard to be politically correct, and everything she writes is so scrupulously polite. But in the process she's shedding light on an important problem: More pliable parents and children are being urged to interpret gender-role fluidity/nonconformity as a condition that needs treatment with medical interventions.

Stahl, in the WaPo column, is bringing up this topic because there's another Hollywood adaptation of "Little Women" in the works, and "Little Women" has a character, Jo, and she's explicitly called a tomboy. From Chapter 1:

"Jo does use such slang words!" observed Amy, with a reproving look at the long figure stretched on the rug.

Jo immediately sat up, put her hands in her pockets, and began to whistle.

"Don't, Jo. It's so boyish!"

"That's why I do it."

"I detest rude, unladylike girls!"

"I hate affected, niminy-piminy chits!"

"Birds in their little nests agree," sang Beth, the peacemaker, with such a funny face that both sharp voices softened to a laugh, and the "pecking" ended for that time.

"Really, girls, you are both to be blamed," said Meg, beginning to lecture in her elder-sisterly fashion. "You are old enough to leave off boyish tricks, and to behave better, Josephine. It didn't matter so much when you were a little girl, but now you are so tall, and turn up your hair, you should remember that you are a young lady."

"I'm not! And if turning up my hair makes me one, I'll wear it in two tails till I'm twenty," cried Jo, pulling off her net, and shaking down a chestnut mane. "I hate to think I've got to grow up, and be Miss March, and wear long gowns, and look as prim as a China Aster! It's bad enough to be a girl, anyway, when I like boy's games and work and manners! I can't get over my disappointment in not being a boy. And it's worse than ever now, for I'm dying to go and fight with Papa. And I can only stay home and knit, like a poky old woman!"

And Jo shook the blue army sock till the needles rattled like castanets, and her ball bounded across the room.

"Poor Jo! It's too bad, but it can't be helped. So you must try to be contented with making your name boyish, and playing brother to us girls," said Beth, stroking the rough head with a hand that all the dish washing and dusting in the world could not make ungentle in its touch.

"As for you, Amy," continued Meg, "you are altogether too particular and prim. Your airs are funny now, but you'll grow up an affected little goose, if you don't take care. I like your nice manners and refined ways of speaking, when you don't try to be elegant. But your absurd words are as bad as Jo's slang."

"If Jo is a tomboy and Amy a goose, what am I, please?" asked Beth, ready to share the lecture.

"You're a dear, and nothing else," answered Meg warmly, and no one contradicted her, for the 'Mouse' was the pet of the family.

These 4 female stereotypes, so crisply reeled out in Chapter 1, are seared into the American mind. I remember reading that, and I thought it was obvious that the one to be was Beth (who's so good it's — spoiler alert — the death of her). But then I thought it was obvious that the best Stooge was Curly, but our local tomboy loved Moe.

Anyway, what are we doing here? Does the WaPo writer, Stahl, have anything new today, anything beyond The Great Tomboy Foofaraw of 2017? She notes — remember, she's a librarian — that "fictional stories about tomboys... also feature plotlines that inevitably pair these characters off with boys, offering uncomplicatedly happy, tidy conclusions in which the tomboy drops her resistance and acquires a boyfriend." (Was tomboyishness "resistance" to love from a man?)

It’s a process that constricts their characteristic independence, and it can feel torturous for those of us who don’t identify with traditional femininity — and who see something of ourselves in fictional figures who reject it. Empathetic viewers might want to see a character embrace her singleness, even if an actual lesbian pairing is too much to hope for.

The attempt to fix the tomboy by marrying her off invites disturbing associations with real-life medical practices that “correct” high levels of hormones associated with masculine characteristics.

Isn't that inviting disturbing associations with real-life medical practices that 'correct' hormones in transgender youths? Speaking of correct, I'm assuming Stahl wants to be politically correct (and she does inject some pro-transgender material near the end, the maximum distance from this disapproval of hormone "correction").

And can't women "who don’t identify with traditional femininity" find happiness with a man? Is there something inherently independent about "an actual lesbian pairing." It seems to me, people who pair up — whether with a man or a woman — may sacrifice their individuality, but they shouldn't, and they don't need to. I'm sure there are plenty of women "who don’t identify with traditional femininity" who pair up with a man, maintain their identity, and have a great time with their man. And the man likes it too. I mean, the lady will go camping.

Stahl observes that writers of popular stories, including Louisa May Alcott, go for the predictable plotline of having the tomboy put on some feminine clothes and realize how much she wants a man. Stahl makes the solid point that readers can and will "ignore contrived endings" and find satisfaction in the meat of the story, where there is expression of tomboy individualism. She concludes:

If we want greater gender autonomy, we have to understand how traditional ideas about gender linger in the stories we tell and the endings we envision for ourselves. Beyond resisting gender norms, tomboys give us a way to see the complex dynamics that shape our expression and perception of identity. And even if the word “tomboy” is reaching its own ending, the tomboy’s refusal to conform keeps its power still.

I still don't see why "tomboy" must die. If you like this character type, why not keep it alive? Beth may have  — spoiler alert — died of her own overflowing dearness, but doesn't the tomboy have the wherewithal to survive?

Stahl purports to value "the complex dynamics that shape our expression and perception of identity," and once we fully understand that — helped, per Stahl, by the tomboy — the tomboy, a stereotype, has no environment that can support her continuing life.

But if we ever got there, all stereotypes would be anachronisms.

IN THE COMMENTS: Fernandistein says, "ngram of tomboy shows the popularity of the word almost linearly increasing since 1860":

"I mean, I'm a girl and I like being a girl, but I've just never been into it like they have. I think I get that from my dad."

"I'd say I'm more of a Jenner than a Kardashian... I was a huge tomboy... I had a phase where I wore boys' clothes. I was always hanging out with guys. I've always connected with guys more."

At some point, the trans-friendly mom gets tired of people inquiring about whether her tomboy daughter is really a transgender boy.

An op-ed in the NYT by Lisa Selin Davis (with a headline that might make you think the woman is defensive and not as pro-transgender is she, in fact, clearly wants to appear).

My daughter... is asked by the pediatrician, by her teachers, by people who have known her for many years, if she feels like, or wants to be called, or wants to be, a boy.

In many ways, this is wonderful: It shows a much-needed sensitivity to gender nonconformity and transgender issues. It is considerate of adults to ask her — in the beginning.

But when they continue to question her gender identity — and are skeptical of her response — the message they send is that a girl cannot look and act like her and still be a girl....

Let’s be clear: If my daughter does begin to feel that the gender in her mind and the sex of her body don’t match, I will be supportive. I will research puberty blockers and hormones (more than I already have).....

Davis is trying so hard to be politically correct, and everything she writes is so scrupulously polite. But in the process she's shedding light on an important problem: More pliable parents and children are being urged to interpret gender-role fluidity/nonconformity as a condition that needs treatment with medical interventions. 

"How did the left in the West come to embrace restriction, censorship and the imposition of an orthodoxy at least as tyrannical as the anti-Communist, pro-Christian conformism I grew up with?"

"Liberals have ominously relabeled themselves 'progressives,' forsaking a noun that had its roots in 'liber,' meaning free. To progress is merely to go forward, and you can go forward into a pit. Protecting freedom of speech involves protecting the voices of people with whom you may violently disagree. In my youth, liberals would defend the right of neo-Nazis to march down Main Street. I cannot imagine anyone on the left making that case today."

Writes Lionel Shriver, in a NYT op-ed titled "Will the Left Survive the Millennials?" Obviously, Shriver isn't a millennial himself, since he seems to remember the Skokie case. He remembers it in a distorted fashion, which might suggest that he's quite old and his memory is failing, but he must be younger than I am, because I remember being in law school — I started in 1978— with students who were questioning whether they could support the ACLU anymore because it had defended the right of the Nazis to march not just "down Main Street," but through a predominantly Jewish neighborhood (one with many Holocaust survivors).

Now, I'll look up Lionel Shriver. Oh! She — she! — is only 6 years younger than me. She was 20 when the Skokie case came out in 1977. I guess it depends on the meaning of "youth." But how did she come to be named Lionel?

Shriver was born Margaret Ann Shriver on May 18, 1957, in Gastonia, North Carolina, to a deeply religious family (her father is a Presbyterian minister). At age 15, she informally changed her name from Margaret Ann to Lionel because she did not like the name she had been given, and as a tomboy felt that a conventionally male name fitted her better.

Okay with me. I'm a strong supporter of the freedom to be as masculine or feminine as you want while identifying as male or female.

Shriver writes novels, the most famous one seems to be "We Need to Talk About Kevin," and the new one is "The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047."

ADDED: After writing this, I saw that I had another Lionel Shriver tab open in my browser: "A Defence of Lionel Shriver: Identity Politicians Would Kill Literature if They Could."

To put it uncharitably, Yassmin Abdel-Magied, a sensitive plant, had a tantrum during the keynote address by Lionel Shriver. Her ire was caused — or triggered, as the kids say — by what is a very conservative notion nowadays: writers of fiction can write about whatever they damn well please.

And here's that keynote address: "I hope the concept of cultural appropriation is a passing fad."

The moral of the sombrero scandals is clear: you’re not supposed to try on other people’s hats. Yet that’s what we’re paid to do, isn’t it? Step into other people’s shoes, and try on their hats....

If Dalton Trumbo had been scared off of describing being trapped in a body with no arms, legs, or face because he was not personally disabled – because he had not been through a World War I maiming himself and therefore had no right to “appropriate” the isolation of a paraplegic – we wouldn’t have the haunting 1938 classic, Johnny Got His Gun.

"These days, at least in liberal enclaves, a girl who likes baseball or wants her hair cut short is more likely to be called 'gender-nonconformist' or 'gender-expansive'..."

"... with any suggestion that she’ll grow out of such behaviors suspect as evidence of condemning rather than honoring them. She may be applauded for transcending another paradigm (the dread princess, with her ball gowns, glitter and wands) or monitored closely for signs to her adult orientation."

From a NYT article "Where Have All the Tomboys Gone?" Is there something wrong with the word (or the idea of) "tomboy" (or something good that should be revived)? I think it's better to use a word that expresses what we are seeing in the way a young girl looks and acts as she is now, than to be making predictions about what she'll do later on in life, especially if we're jumping into visualizations of her future sexual preferences and activities. It's creepy to impose adult templates. Leave the child to her freedom and personal privacy. Let children be children.

That doesn't mean you have to say the word "tomboy," which could be objected to because it's calling the girl a "tom" and a "boy," saying she's somehow male. It was a lighthearted word in the old days, and maybe for some it still is, but wearing comfortable playclothes and engaging in sports doesn't need to be associated with maleness. I'd step back and not go all gender-y with children. Let them be individuals and try to support whatever healthy, positive interests and attributes they find for themselves.

ADDED: Proofreading this post, I think I sound absurdly, flat-footedly sensible. The answers here seem so obvious to me. I don't know why so much discussion is needed.

In 1993, "50% of the women were scoring as masculine" on the Bem Sex Role Inventory...

... "a 1971 survey that uses gender stereotypes to classify personalities as masculine, feminine or otherwise," which surprised Jean M. Twenge, who was a student at the University of Chicago and — we're told in this NYT article — a "Minnesota native and a childhood tomboy" who "had once planned on a career in gender studies."

Dr. Twenge decided to dig up as many old studies using the Bem survey that she could find, average out their scores by year and chart them over time. “I found that across all the studies from the ’70s to the ’90s, there was a very clear upward trend in women scoring higher on this measure of stereotypically masculine traits,” she said.

Twenge went on to use this method of studying generation change to focus on issues of self-esteem and narcissism, not masculinity and femininity. The article seems to attribute this shift on her happening to perceive that theme in the data. Much of the article is about critics of her methodology and what the negative dimension of narcissism really is. (Personally, I suspect that survey-takers get a higher score on a narcissism test because we used to get a stronger message that it's wrong to be selfish and "self-centered," so we self-assessed differently in the old days.)

I'm putting up this post because of the connection to the previous post, which I ended with a recommendation against seeing one's masculinity/femininity balance as any kind of a problem. Twenge took her research in another direction, and I wonder why she may have seen a career advantage in not delving into masculine and feminine stereotypes. In the constitutional case law that I teach, there's a very strong rejection of the use of sex stereotypes, but in the general culture, at least among elites, there's a lot of empathy for those who claim that their body doesn't match their psyche. But I think it's risky to point to that discrepancy. Who wants to step into that crossfire?

By the way, when I got to college, at the University of Michigan in 1969, we were given a bunch of tests, one of which gave a masculine/feminine score, and we were told all the scores but that one. The scores were reported on computer punchcards. We figured out how to read the holes on the punchcards and found our secret scores. I don't remember what I got, but the questions were such that the test was referred to as something like the "cooked carrots test," because a typical true/false statement was: "I like cooked carrots."

A second-grader's idea for the student newspaper: "How about a story about why people are transgendered?"

Described, in the WaPo, by a mother who was volunteering in her son's class.

I had no idea that the girl’s younger sister was about to officially become her little brother.

The next day, my son came home from school and said: “Mom, you know how you really didn’t know what transgender is? It’s just when you have a boy mind in a girl body. Duh.”...

At a birthday party a few weeks later, I saw the transformation. The 4-year-old’s hair was shorn, the clothes were mini-macho and the child was bouncing and wrestling with the pack....

A week later, the mother e-mailed me, asking whether The Post would be interested in doing a piece on their struggle....

ADDED: Whatever happened to just being a tomboy?

So your 5-year-old boy wants to dress like a girl....

How far should you go in supporting him? What if you're the teacher and the parents send him to kindergarten wearing a dress?

Doctors, some of them from the top pediatric hospitals, have begun to advise families to let these children be “who they are” to foster a sense of security and self-esteem. They are motivated, in part, by the high incidence of depression, suicidal feelings and self-mutilation that has been common in past generations of transgender children. Legal trends suggest that schools are now required to respect parents’ decisions....

Cassandra Reese, a first-grade teacher outside Boston, recalled that fellow teachers were unnerved when a young boy showed up in a skirt. “They said, ‘This is not normal,’ and, ‘It’s the parents’ fault,’ ” Ms. Reese said. “They didn’t see children as sophisticated enough to verbalize their feelings.”

And then there are the parents who think they ought to give hormone treatments to young tomboy girls on the theory that they need to be spared the shocking evidence of femininity that is menstruation.