The gap between tomboy and transgender child
Dr Helen Webberley on Triggernometry: the trans debate, with Konstantin Kisin, Triggernometry
Being transgender is just an extreme version of being a tomboy or a feminine boy. If a girl likes climbing trees and playing rough, or a boy likes dolls and dresses, people worry they might be "confused" about being trans. The assumption is that gender nonconformity and gender identity are the same thing.
What I was pointing to there is actually quite simple, and once you see it you cannot unsee it. A tomboy is a girl who loves what she loves: the mud, the football, the boys' toys. She knows she is a girl. She has never said otherwise. A trans child is not defined by what they play with or how they dress; they are defined by what they know themselves to be. "I am a boy" is a statement about identity, not about hobbies, and it is a statement that tomboys, however boisterous, simply do not make. The distinction is not subtle. It is the difference between what you like and what you are, and children know the difference long before adults are ready to hear it.
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