Researcher Cassandra Joseph Photo: Supplied
Tomboys are often portrayed as "carefree rebels" - but new research from Otago University has found tomboyism is associated with trauma for some.
Researcher Cassandra Joseph, who interviewed adult tomboys from different cultures about their experiences growing up, told Midday Report there was often a sense of "unhealed trauma" in discussing past or present tomboyism.
"The media often paints tomboyism to be a carefree experience, with tomboys being heralded as 'rebels'," she said.
"Nobody associates tomboys with trauma."
Traumatic connections to phrase 'tomboy': Study
The study published in The Journal of Gender Studies, is based on interviews with 11 assigned-female-at-birth (AFAB) tomboys aged between ages 24-42 with a range of gender identities from Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Singapore and the United States.
Dr Joseph said some were bullied or ostracised because they were seen as tomboys, while others identified as tomboys as a form of self-protection.
"Some tomboys used their tomboyism kind of as a safety measure because femininity was viewed as something that was unsafe or because of the sexualisation elementthat they are were not prepared for or not comfortable with."
One participant from Singapore took up Taekwondo for self-defence because male students at her high school were continually pulling up her skirt and saying she "looked like a boy".
Another participant - who was the victim of an attempted assault by two men when she was just ten years old - took on a tomboy persona in order to be "less desirable to men and therefore safer".
Her religious upbringing had taught her that women who inspired lust in in men were inherently "sinful".
A transgender 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 said helped them feel safe.
In such cases, tomboyism had been used as a kind of self-preservation from "the leering eyes of the patriarchy", Dr Joseph said.
"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.
Many of the participants were forced to conform to feminine conventions once they reached puberty, which was also traumatic for them.
"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 said she hoped the findings would "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."