It is social justice of the self, rather than an attempt to effect cultural change. This means they believe that by changing names, pronouns, or categories, they are doing something revolutionary-but in fact, they end up reinforcing stereotypes, and making drastic changes to outrun them. The only release is through opting out of one’s sex category, and they have been taught that sex is a category one identifies into or out of. Īnother way of looking at it is that this generation of young people was raised so utterly baked in stereotypes that they believe that if they are not like a stereotypical girl, they are not a girl. It’s a way of rejecting gender stereotypes by way of rejecting one’s natal sex, which somehow gets you back to the openness of nonsexist parenting and Free to Be You and Me. Some females who identify as nonbinary I interviewed only felt comfortable wearing pink after no longer identifying as a girl.

One way to understand the explosion of non-binary identities is that they take on the best aspects of tomboyism-the release from gender stereotypes-without asserting that either masculinity or femininity is better.īut I think the main explanation is: Just as the vast majority of tomboy girls in the 70s and 80s were simply following fashion-they weren’t necessarily naturally gender nonconforming since it was conforming to have a boys’ haircut or wear Keds and tube socks-now it’s cool to be nonbinary, and fashion accounts for some of the increase. Partly what we’re seeing today is the generational reaction: Kids raised with hypergendering are rejecting the rigid gender roles and rules from Girl Power to non-binary. Not long after this generational reaction to hypergendered childhoods began, there was an increasing awareness about trans kids and a rather sudden exponential explosion in kids identifying this way. Sporty, feminine girls are still with us, they just aren’t dressing as masculine as they used to. The “sometimes tomboys” who might have played flag football but still worn a ponytail-she might have been able to assimilate into the next wave of gender culture by way of Sporty Spice.

Extremely gender nonconforming kids have always existed, and seem to appear in many societies (though in societies where there are categories for them and an acknowledgement of the relationship between same-sex attraction and this nonconformity, there seems to be no gender dysphoria). That means that the hypermasculine girl-sometimes called “always tomboys”-who had been provided cover under the tomboy umbrella, no longer had that refuge, that explanation. So the first thing that happened to tomboys was: They went out of style.

Lisa selin davis tomboy