I'm aware of the historical usage of 'tomboy'. I was referring to the 60's-80's usage of it in regards to growing up then, and Emily's Cat questioning whether gender was a separate thing from sex at that time.
edit: I hope the label has died out nowadays, as females should be able to play with whatever toys they want and wear whatever they want without judgement.
Same as males, they should be able to play with whatever toys they want and wear whatever they want without judgement.
Thing is, gender isn't
actually separate from sex.
Gender refers to all of the non-physical aspects that are associated with sex. This includes presentation, functional roles, and behaviors. And all of those are associated with sex, they're
predicated on sex. Part of the feminist emphasis on gender as opposed to sex was to point out that sex isn't
prescriptive with regard to those gendered aspects.
Sex is being of the
male reproductive category in humans. The
gender role associated with males is being a provider and defender, a hunter, a soldier, a bread-winner, etc. The
gender presentation associated with males is pants, flat-soled shoes, short hair, short fingernails, no make-up etc. The
gender behavior associated with males is decisiveness, control, aggression, etc. All of these are correlated with sex - some of them are very likely evolved behavioral tendencies that increase the likelihood of a male being able to attract a mate and pass on their genes.
But they're not
prescriptive.
Being male doesn't mean that you must be required to wear pants - there's nothing about pants that excludes female from being able to wear them. And there's nothing about skirts that means males are incapable of wearing them. Who wears what types of garment are largely social convention - they're ways to signal our sex. But there's also a fair bit about clothing that is a direct result of sex. Both males and females can wear pants - but they're cut and shaped differently, because our physical bodies are different. If a female wears male cut pants, they're likely to be too loose through the waist and too tight through the thighs. If a male wears female-cut pants, they're likely to find they haven't got much room for their testicles. Hair, on the other hand, is pretty much entirely social. Our hair doesn't grow differently, it's not like male hair follicles only grow a few inches then stop. Both sexes can grow their hair quite long, and in some cultures long hair on males has been the standard. Thus hair length is entirely a social convention. Make-up is also largely a social convention... but it's a convention that is more associated with reproduction than many people realize. Foundation smooths skin, and smooth skin is an indicator of estrogen; high estrogen during ovulation gives females smooth almost shiny facial skin - so it's an indicator of reproductive readiness. Lipstick and blush mimic the visual effect of dilated capillaries in the lips and cheeks that occurs during arousal, mimicking sexual receptiveness.
Being male doesn't mean that you are required to be the breadwinner. Even if there's a reasonable evolutionary explanation for the division of labor along the lines of sex, those roles - those functions - can generally be performed by either sex is the need arises. Female lions are typically the hunters; the male lion's role is to protect the pride (especially the kittens) from other predators. But male lions are perfectly capable of hunting, and young lions who haven't established a pride do it all the time. Similarly, female lions can absolutely wreck a trespassing young lion or an over-adventurous hyena if needed. The division of labor along the lines of sex is one of efficiency and balance, not one of necessity.
The point of feminists discussing the social nature of gender roles and behaviors was never to demand that the two be treated as if they're entirely discrete and unrelated phenomena - the point was to emphasize that these are
conventions that are not
necessitated by sex. Males are just as capable of doing the dishes as are females. And there's no actual physical or biological reason that females cannot be CEOs of large companies. Conventions aren't rules.
Somewhere in the last couple of decades, activists got hold of this notion and distorted it so far out of whack that we now have people arguing that gender is completely separate from sex, with no relationship to it at all. They present it as if gender were arbitrary, as if at some point someone flipped a coin and said "heads, females wash the laundry, tails the males do it". And in the process of that errant (and foolish) idea, they've tried to appropriate all of the language that is associated with gender and pretend that those words have nothing at all to do with sex.
Including usurping the word that has literally meant "female human being".
