'Tomboyism' is often fondly celebrated by society as an accepted form of gender nonconformity but is not commonly associated with trauma.
However, that is the unexpected finding from a new University of Otago, Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka study published in the Journal of Gender Studies.
When Otago PhD graduate Cassandra Joseph set out to interview tomboys from a range of cultures about their experiences growing up, neither she nor the study participants anticipated the trauma and distress they had sometimes faced would feature strongly in their conversations.
"The media often paints tomboyism to be a carefree experience, with tomboys being heralded as 'rebels'," she says.
"Nobody associates tomboys with trauma."
Dr Joseph interviewed 11 assigned-female-at-birth (AFAB) tomboys aged between ages 24 – 42 of various ethnicities and a range of gender identities from Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Singapore and the United States.
As interviews progressed, it became clear that for study participants there was often a sense of unhealed trauma that came with discussing past or present tomboyism.
Some identified as tomboys as a form of self-preservation, while others were labelled with the term and experienced bullying or ostracisation.
One participant from Singapore described how in secondary school, male students would pull her skirt and say she looked 'like a boy', and the bullying became so bad she took up taekwondo to feel safe.
Another participant spoke of adopting a tomboy persona because her religious upbringing had taught her that within the church, women were deemed sinful by being desirable to men.
When she was 10 years old, two men attempted to assault her. By appearing as a tomboy, she felt she would be less desirable to men and therefore safer.
A transgender study participant noted the male privilege and increased sense of personal safety he experienced when he became male-passing - a sense of 'brute strength' that other participants also identified helped them feel safe.
The study suggests that in such cases, tomboyism has been used as a kind of self-preservation from "the leering eyes of the patriarchy".
"While this is not the case for all tomboys, it is rather telling that AFAB people have to navigate gender norms to embody gender traits that make them feel safe," Dr Joseph says.
For many of the participants, once they reached puberty they felt expected to conform to feminine conventions. Many struggled to reconcile their inherent tomboy nature and the expectations of society, resulting in a feeling of 'gender melancholia'.
"To grow up feeling a sense of freedom that aligns with one's tomboy identity only to have that stripped away during puberty and post-puberty is a trauma that has been previously unrecognised when it comes to the tomboy narrative," Dr Joseph says.
She hopes the study might encourage the public to think critically about gender and to realise that the socially imposed binary of masculine/ feminine is more fluid than people might think.
"We also have a responsibility of care towards anyone who challenges our preconceived notions of gender."
While the concept of tomboyism itself originated in the 16th century and was first used to describe unruly boys, over the years the term tomboy has "shapeshifted" and is bound to do so again in future, Dr Joseph says.
"There is a growing vocabulary around gender-nonconformity, and tomboyism has historically served as a stepping stone into more contemporary discussions on gender and sexuality.
"I think the concept of tomboyism will continue to remain a starting platform in the discussion of gender nonconformity, even if the term 'tomboy' isn't as actively used in some contexts."
