last year i became obsessed with finding the origins of the term “tomboy” after linking it to “Uncle Tom.” i found a bunch of neat sources but ended up having to reset my laptop and lost some of them. recently i resurrected the search, and though i was unable to find some of the original sources i’d found and the Oxford English Dictionary remains behind a fucking paywall (which is a travesty), i still managed to find some good stuff.
One of the articles i found is this Bustle one: Why We Need to Stop Calling Girls “Tomboys,” which claims “the tomboy isn't a throwing-off of gender norms but in some ways an entrenchment” and “that tomboyishness has historically had a distinct tie to the concept of "butchness" in LGBTQ communities, and that policing tomboy girls can be a way of worrying about their sexuality as well as their gender roles.” i also found an article on Shout Out UK where the author, once again a white woman, claimed:
During the 19th century, when abolition loomed, there was a growing concern that the white race would become a minority. White women at the time suffered from diminishing physical health due to restrictive clothing and a lack of exercise. Long story short, ‘tomboyish’ was created: a way of life which emphasised appropriate nutrition and outdoorsy activities as a means of preparing women for their maternal and spousal roles in life, to ensure the continuity of the race.
Not too many articles mentioned anything about race/racialization. So i was happy to find The Racist History of Celebrating the American Tomboy: Lisa Selin Davis on the Endless Privileges Accorded to White Girls on Literary Hub. Davis claims “tomboyism in America is firmly rooted in racism,” and agrees with the previous author's take, that “Nineteenth-century tomboyism was, in fact, connected to one of the white middle class’s great projects of the time: breeding the white race.” Fascinating stuff y'all. Davis writes:
So tomboyism was stitched to whiteness, a form of white privilege, in the nineteenth century, which redefined and broadened acceptable behavior for a subset of American girls. There are more than 2,300 tomboy mentions in the Newspapers.com archive alone, but much of the documented history of American tomboys is white tomboy history; the term was rarely used in African-American newspapers in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and not much applied to people of color in white newspapers until the 1950s, as sports became desegregated and the profiles of African-American female professional athletes like Althea Gibson rose. Most of the psychologists, sociologists, and biologists who study tomboys are white women, and the great bulk of subjects in tomboy studies are white, which complicates—or oversimplifies—the research.
Indeed, indeed.
Here are some etymological sources:
And here are some scans from my reference library:
Wow that's interesting info I never really thought about that but honestly so much of our vernacular is so entrenched in racial and sexual dehumanization it's crazy nice article btw keep it up. Also btw I'm not sure if you've seen the recent drama on twitter not unusual but essentially this teacher called young black boys bitches and talked down on them for having so called feminine traits whatever that means it's so disheartening sometimes the fact that young black children have to deal with this type of bs in and outside of their homes on the daily even from our own communities sometimes sorry for ranting just bothers me sometimes. Hope your doing well and are healthy and happy Queen🥰🥰🥰🥰