why do people like tomboys?

There’s something that has been sloshing around my head recently, and it is the idea that tomboys are permissible but femboys are visceral, meaning, societically we tend to have a visceral disgust reaction (unless you are deviant) to men who are feminized. 

Tomboys, on the other hand, seem almost permissible. In fact, some men fall in love with the idea of a tomboy. A woman who can relate to him on a different level than most girls and can exist independent of traditional femininity. Why is this, and why do people like tomboys?

Yet, these are both things that in the modern sense we view as bordering on transgenderism. I first must emphasize that just because there is a general masculine nature of a woman does not mean she has ever, once in her life, felt true gender dysphoria.

 Gender dysphoria is a very distinct clinical term of true disillusionment with your form; being extremely rare in woman – it is slightly less rare in men but manifests as Autogynephilia. In the vast majority of male to female “transgenderism” it is actually better described by this paraphilic category whereas the male derives sexual pleasure from imagining himself as a woman.

This is not true dysphoria as it is sexual in nature, and the men who are autogynephilia trans are those who are still attracted to women post transition. I am unsure if this is scientifically vindicated but this is a pattern you will notice, true “dysphoric” men will be homosexuals. 

As previously highlighted, being a dysphoric male / female is not the same as being a femboy / a tomboy. But why are we so chill with tomboys but dislike femboys (at least those of us with disgust sensitivity)? 

Firstly, the mere fact that we feel that disgust when looking at a femboy shows us semblances of profound sociological truths. There is something perverted and wrong about a male in that form, something we can’t quite pinpoint but we simply don’t like! 

Perhaps, this tells us something about masculinity. Perhaps, the most damaging thing that could happen in society is a shift away from masculinity. A perversion of it. Maybe this is what that visceral disgust is telling us, to spit in the face of your form is something we perceive as wrong… or even dangerous. 

Perhaps, femininity is the perverse. This might sound foolish, but the masculine and feminine are compliments of each other. Unchecked masculinity is dangerous, but perhaps unchecked femininity is even more so? Or, moreso the abandonment of masculinity… for the abandonment of femininity seems far less perverse! (We use words like “culturally stigmatized” instead of perverse… but they are the same.)

These are only quantifiable by our gut instinct, and we can see this interplay when we look at societal reactions. These thoughts are convoluted, but I believe this dynamic can speak to something unspoken– the true value of masculinity. These are mechanisms operating far below moral reasoning, but yet it is the egg out of which our moral reasoning hatches. This is important. 

The necessity of stable, masculine order to be put on the highest level for societal flourishing. These feminine men serve as an encapsulation of what we despise as a society. People in favor of the expression of the soul argue that they are not hurting anyone, but why then, do we disgust them so? For, their behavior is antagonistic to our evolutionary history.  

There is no other reason for our inherent disgust, and this, my friend, is an abandoned sensation that we are forced to try to rationalize and suppress. But perhaps our suppression leads us into an abyss of damaging behavior that we used to suppress. 

I want to vaguely give a background on that oh so familiar feeling of disgust. When you find yourself on a date with a woman and she promptly exclaims that she has slept with over 50 men, what feeling do you feel? It is more than likely to be disgust!

 Pathogens used to be the greatest threat to our survival and this innate disgust sensitivity has been our shield. Women who are more promiscuous are more likely generally to carry pathogens, and thousands of years ago that would have been devastating. Those who are disgust sensitive are more likely to then pass down their genetics. Thus, the cycle begins. 

I do believe that lesbianism in the modern sense never existed– but that female bisexuality was both common and permissive. Female friendships are far more intimate than men. Females are also highly competitive, hypergamous, branch swingers. We see a higher branch, and we swing to it. You put women in male dominated spaces and they will subconsciously tear each other down. Men simply operate differently. Very intense, close female relationships were conducive to survival. 

Of course, this is why generally we see them as less viscerally gross than homosexual men. There is something to this– perhaps close female relationships, sometimes (but rarely) expressed in more intimate ways, bolstered co-parenting and female relationships in a way that could almost break though the intense competitive nature of women. 

I haven’t contemplated this enough to draw truly immersive and declarative conclusions, but I do believe there is something to this and as I get older and learn more perhaps I can fill in the gaps and formulate distinct names and rationale for these evolutionary dynamics. Most women, on some level, are bisexual. This is a fact. Trust…

But, that does not tackle the concept that we are often disgusted by male homosexuality. It is not that we hate them, or we fear them. It’s often that we are simply disgusted. This is the most poignant emotion around male homosexuality, just like femboys. But why? Well, the obvious is that homosexual sex is EXTREMELY conducive to pathogen spread. 

Gay men sleep with LOTS of other gay men, to extreme degrees! They also practice anal sex, causing microtears of the anus and thus blood making its way in the mix. 

The two variables of lots of sexual partners interchanging in a minority of the population as well as the types of sex they partake in makes this sort of behavior extreme some nasty bugs. One simply can gander at moneypox and aids— both recent prime examples of homosexual glory. 

Often, we feel this disgust and attribute a quantitative moral value. For example christianity in the middle ages was among the most intense pathogen danger– so both men and womans sexual promiscurity was viewed as one of the most mortal sins. 

The beauty and purity of the virgin was put on the highest pedistle, and premarital sex was spitting in the face of god. These behaviors are less selected simply because of modern medicine– but our thousands of years of pathogen avoidance and thus our evolutionary knee jerk reactions do not simply disappear because the threat is gone.

 We look at people like bonnie blue with disgust, and view her as an immoral person. But is it a violation of a moral code, or is it moreso a behavior of DANGER for the group. Is she a dangerous woman? Her disconnection from her actions and her perverted joy from them riddle people. What spawn of Satan is this woman? But, the real question is how does she rationalize her behavior?
I am clearly analyzing this without an ontological justification to a supreme being for my moral declarations. I would say I have avoided any moral language, and instead tried to understand our feelings about this. This also describes the other side of the picture, people like bonnie blue who do not have their disgust sensitivity.

 These people, throughout all of history, were selected against. To not have this pathogen avoidance behaviors used to lead to death. Pathogens were the number one killer. Moral code followed, a necessity for societal functioning. Modern politics seems to be (in a hope not to be overly reductive) a moral argument between those with disgust and those without. 

Those with more primordially engrained views… such as tribal behavior and ingroup preference, and those without. I will say that we get into dangerous territory. 

We are stepping far too outside our evolutionary norm… and thus finding ourselves walking on a tightrope, teetering with each step and grasping for the straws of our morality. 

We want things to make sense. We want to pace ourselves beyond our innate “moral” qualms, but yet that tope is too thin. We will far, finding everything crumbling below this as we blame it on the abandonment of insert __ (christianity, family values, kids having less screen time… etc). 

Above morality, it is our own humanity. It is our innate disgust that guides us above all else. And as we try to walk away from it, we find ourselves wrapped in a bungie cord always bound to bounce back. We can’t escape something so primordial, something so engrained. 

I truly, truly believe that our current cognitive drift as a society is a ditsy dance into an alienated world. So our permissiveness of the tomboy, and our visceral rejection of the femboy yields insight of our own values and necessities– but what do I know, this is just what I’ve seen in the world so far in my short life. I could be entirely wrong, but more than likely there is a grain of truth in my rationalizations that I will be able to hone as I grow older and wiser. 

Why do people like tomboys? Tomboys have somewhat been discriminated against in modern society – as being a tomboy has no implications for gender identity which are commonly pasted unto them. I have created tshirts for those very tomboys who people project identities onto, which you can find here 

Tomboy lives matter shirts are the best way to support tomboys!