Dysphoria goes way beyond that. I still enjoy boy things. If you want to call them boy things. That's one issue there: we gender activities and clothing needlessly.

Instead, it's a matter of your body being completely and utterly wrong. To the point where looking in the mirror is a nightmare to be avoided. Absolutely no pictures. For the longest time I couldn't even recognize myself in a photo without trying. It didn't come naturally for me like it did with other people. That picture just *wasn't* me. It was *wrong*.

So yeah, in his case, being a tomboy and being transgender are completely different places on the spectrum. A tomboy doesn't feel pain over their appearance the way a transgender would. I remember first finding out that boys and girls actually had different parts. I wished every night that it would fix itself, until finally, at age 11, I resolved to remove it myself. I didn't succeed, but the scars still exist.

Additionally, the "he" and "she" parts are painful. It's the same as if someone picked a mean nickname for you and refused to ever acknowledge your real name, but insisted on calling you by the offending one instead. It's our identity. It's part of the core of who we are, and by ignoring that, you ignore us. You ignore one of the most fundamental things that makes us who we are.

You'd be surprised just how much kids ages 3-4 understand gender identity and roles. I mean, most of our childhood is learning societal roles we play, and kids really pick up on that. So when a transgender kid sees other girls being treated one way, and they're being treated like the boys, or vice versa in this boys case, it's demoralizing beyond understanding as a 4 year old.



I don't mean to rant at you, but I hope that helps you understand why it's different for us. Oh, and I also didn't go into the science of it. But strictly speaking, our brains are different. Chemically, and even physically, we exhibit the sex characteristics of the gender we identify with. Even the hormones our body produces naturally due to our natal sex causes great discomfort and pain until they are eliminated. Even minor doses can go a long way to eliminating the physical pain we feel.

It's interesting that your traditional fantasy strongmen types (Robert Baratheon, Ned Stark, Robb Stark, Khal Drogo, Jamie Lannister) fare so poorly in this universe, while the outcasts (bastards, dwarves, tomboys, cripples and book readers) find a way to survive.

what you said at the end, that i think is the real issue. youve got a documentary crew filming bullying on a bus and yet the officials (whoever that lady was, principal i presume) are in complete denial instead of looking into it further and taking appropriate disciplinary action.



by and large children are products of whoever raises em, whoever their adult influence is. you could take virtually any "bully" look at his parents and find the root cause (most of the time anyway). i know a lot of the boys who bullied me in jr high and high school i later came to find out almost all of them had no father figure. do you really think anti bullying rules or something is gonna stop that? the problem is deeper than that, much deeper. do you think bullying stops after high school? do you think it doesnt take place at work, at college, at a park, at the movies, at anywhere?

i think overall the point im getting at is it really doesnt matter what we do or dont do, we cannot prevent bullying. it will happen, it always has and it always will, and thats not a "swept under the rug" answer to the issue, its the reality. so how can we resolve it? by changing not only our mindset as adults, but positively influencing the mindsets of our children as well.

as a side note, as far as the 24-7 thing is concerned, i was bullied at school and at home almost a full decade before the internet and looooong before myspace and facebook. i had an older sister who was such a tomboy growing up she was practically another older brother. but i mainly got picked on by my older brother who was just a year apart from me. i got shit from him and his friends at school, i got it from him and his friends when we'd play in and around our neighborhood and i got it from him at home. in a way, thats infinitely more invasive and inescapable than e-bullying. i lived with him, and for a number of years i had to share a room with him. so ya, to me, it isnt different at all. and while my testimony may be a special case, its far from being unique and youd be naive to think so.

if teen crime rates are declining and bullying is pretty much a constant, that certainly doesnt suggest bullying is becoming worse or even that its a "huge problem". all that suggests is what ive been saying; bullying isnt anything new, and it will always be with us.

maybe im not articulating myself in a compassionate way. im certainly not advocating turning a blind eye to bullies or bullying. i squash it pretty quick when it happens in class, and whenever appropriate i try to talk to the bully one on one in hopes that i may discern what the issue really is. is he picking on that kid cuz he's just a shitty kid? or is he lashing out over emotional/mental issues he's unprepared to cope with? or is he compensating for severe self esteem issues? those are the things we should be addressing to "prevent" bullying, not creating this bizarre subculture war where its us vs them.
>> ^SDGundamX:

>> ^smooman:
>> ^berticus:
what? no comment yet from someone saying how bullying "toughens you up and prepares you for the real world"? COME ON!

ok i'll start. im all for moderate measures to be taken to monitor and disrupt bullying (man, that almost became full alliteration). that being said, the bullying scandal and the myriad documentaries and specials and exposes on the subject are just redundant. as someone who works in the school system bullying really isnt any different than when i was in school, or when my parents went to school, or their parents, etc. bullying isnt anything new. calling it an epidemic is laughable and just plain absurd.
does my heart go out to individuals who have been bullied? absolutely. i myself was constantly bullied growing up (both at school and at home). now berticus, what you said is true even if you were being facetious. being bullied forced me to quickly develop social skills needed to diffuse confrontations among other things. it sharpened my wit, even as an adult. the point isnt that we need bullies to make men out of our children. the point is bullies arent anything new, and they will always be with us. react accordingly

I downvoted your comment and I just wanted to explain why.
First off, while you may technically be correct in that the amount of bullying has not changed over time, technological advances (i.e. the Internet) allow that bullying to continue 24-7 so that there is no refuge from it, even after you get out of school. In other words, while the rate of bullying may not be changing the severity and impact is--it is more invasive, harder to escape, and therefore is NOT the same as when you were a kid.
But even disregarding that, I think the term "epidemic" is appropriate when you look at the fact that over the past 50 years crime among teens has consistently been decreasing in the U.S. (according to FBI statistics a drop of over 44%) and yet the rate of bullying appears to remain the same. To me, that says there is a huge problem that is not being addressed by either our society or our school system. And taking the attitude that "bullies aren't anything new, and they will always be with us" does not seem to me to be the way to go about solving that problem. Rather, it virtually guarantees that in the next 50 years we will see bullying to continue at the same rate as bullies find ways to circumvent the "moderate measures [...] to monitor and disrupt bullying" that you advocate.
Documentaries like this are critically important because they expose just how deep the problems are--you have school officials claiming the bus is perfectly safe while the documentary filmmakers are capturing multiple acts of violence and bullying on the bus. We need more documentaries like this and much more research into how bullying manifests and how to prevent it because we're clearly doing a piss-poor job of it right now.

fat girls in small bathing suits with gaudy tattoos and dirty tomboy mouths are about as attractive as bill cosby in a sexy maid outfit eating jello pudding seductively. now if you'll excuse me, i have just had a cosby show fan art inspiration.

wtf? have you all lost your minds?

1. you can't compare a womans vagina to a wad full of cash. but presuming that you could... just because i flashed my wad full of cash does not make it less wrong or even permissible for someone to steal it. your rights end where mine begin.

2. women don't get raped because they're scantily clad. rape is less about sexual gratification and more about power and control. i was a wild ass teenager and i put myself in a lot of unwholesome situations, i experienced my fair share of unwanted, boundary violating sexual advances. i was also a raging tomboy/baby crusty... my clothing didn't have anything to do with the creeps who wanted/tried/did take advantage, it was ALWAYS about power and superiority and control. ALWAYS about some mental defect that made dudes get off on the ability to overpower.

3. you can't blame anyone for mistaking your flirtation with interest. anyone who does is probably being a bitch. but flirting and be provocative is not "stepping into the lion's den and asking to get bit" and you're not contractually obligated to put out... anyone who thinks that it is does is a defective asshole and possibly predatory and almost certainly has issues with women and their ability to own their sexual power, again.. its about power and dominance and control.

4. i sort of agree with the notion that you attract what you put out there. like i chat it up with a lot of mentally ill/homeless men... so a lot of these guys tend to want to marry me.... when i go dancing at the hip hop club, i dont get offended when i get balls rubbed on my leg or some horny drunk guy wants to take me home.... i just go find a girl to dance with after that.... when i go dancing at the gay bar looking like a big dyke, i dont get pissed off when a lesbian flirts with me... i go bowling a lot, i dont get mad when bowling alley people hit on me.... if you dress and behave in a certain way in a certain place, you're bound to attract someone.. you have no right to be surprised or offended when that happens... it may even be what you're looking for.. ... but it does not negate someone else's responsibility to control themselves and respect your words more than your tits. and anyone who doesn't see that, has issues with women and their sexual power. and rape is, once again, about power and control. it is not about cleavage or temptation.

edit: there is also offensive language... i dont get mad if you thought i was flirting with you and expressed an interest, i do get mad if you don't speak to me with respect. again, its about power and control ooorrr maybe you're a social piarha with no idea how interact with people, either way, you're getting turned down and that doesnt make me a tease. it's your problem.

i don't feel like there has to be a difference in the rhetoric and the reality. and find that statement kind of cynical.

my kids are allowed all kinds of crazy freedoms with their hair and dress and expression and creativity and language and their interests are almost always highly encouraged by me and my tribe.

princesses weren't a non existant part of playtime when my daughter was younger, at that point i thought it was an archetype and all little girls go through that phase. and i still kind of think that. but i think it can be overly nurtured in ways that are obnoxious. anyway, princess phase was short lived and generally took a back seat to her desire to be a fairy or a piano playing shark. i could think of million reasons to hate barbies, but i decided not to, she has barbies ... she just isnt real interested in them. bratz dolls are actually just amazingly whorey and negative and are just way overboard, so.. fuck no. she's too old for them now anyway.

my biggest issue is over commercialization, so we simply have no television. they watch movies and what not. and actually i feel like limiting the television and commercialization has helped them development loads of creativity. which is actively encouraged around here. it's totally possible to imbue your kids with your values without forcing your political agenda down their throats.

i'm extremely interested in how much of my kids personalities and social skills are due to their lack of exposure to what's "trendy" and how much of it is just inherent. . my niece is the same age as my daughter, she's been hooked on the disney channel since birth. "fitting in" and keeping up with trends and being "like" her peers is extremely important to her. my kid couldn't care less. but that was also the difference between her mom (my sister) and i when we were kids.

i used to worry more about my son being able to fit in with more mainstreamed peers. seeing as we have no television, he knows 0 about spiderman or transformers or sports, he has 0 male role model to emulate and has been raised entirely by a bunch of women. but he's having no trouble "fitting in" with other boys. my daughter on the other hand is having loads of issues with socialization. she has no interest in what other 8 year old girls seem to be interested in. honestly, at this point, if hannah montana would help her make friends, i'd consider getting cable. but she just thinks it's stupid.

i'm interested to know if that's her just being a mature, heavily artistic, tomboy, with a dose of shyness or if the persona's of little girls are just so entirely shaped by television and trends that she's finding it impossible to relate them without it. i suspect its probably a bit of both. and i find the latter extremely sad.

>> ^blankfist:

@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://kids.videosift.com/member/spoco2" title="member since August 21st, 2006" class="profilelink">spoco2, good point. But I'd have to wonder why I'd want to stop him or her from following what they want even if it's trendy. Is it because of how I feel about it? If so, that's not a very good reason at all.
I dislike commercialization like the next guy, but is it fair for me to push my own personal politics onto my child? I say no. Sure, wearing high heels at five may be a bit extreme, but most parents use those extreme examples as justification to stifle their children's self-expression at less extremes. In other words, the rhetoric is "my five year old daughter is not wearing heels" but then in reality it's "my ten year old son is not getting a faux-hawk/mohawk" or "my daughter is not getting a Barbie doll".

I have a 19month old daughter and I read that article last week along with my wife. We are both very, very concerned about the sexualisation of women in the media (Killing us softly gives great pause). We'll be doing our damndest to make a tomboy out of our daughter (not that difficult I don't think, she has 3 older brothers )

It's interesting that the article mentions Katy Perry and California Girls; There's a family we're friends with who's daughter just started school (so 5yrs old) and last time we were over at their house she was singing and dancing on the table to California Girls. That song and video clip (and Katy Fricken Perry) are exactly the sort of shit that girls should NOT be watching. It purely paints women as things to be looked at and to fuss over their looks and shoot whipped cream out of their breasts... wait, what?

That girl has been raised in EXACTLY the way that is enforcing the consumerist, image focused bullshit that we hate as parents.

When it comes to TV shows I'd like her to watch things like Kim Possible (although still with bloody cheerleading etc.) because she's a ridiculously capable secret agent, rather than tripe like Hanna Montanna or iCarli.

At the moment about the only thing she watches (in small doses) is Austalia's own Wiggles, which she loves and 'sings' and dances to. Actually, this morning when I dressed her I purposely picked out an outfit that had NO pink in it We originally were going to have a 'no pink' rule completely, but then it'd be very hard to actually buy ANY clothes for her.

So, yeah. My opinion is that for all of women's lib it seems to have been swinging way into the realms of getting girls to think about dating and sex and being sexy earlier and earlier and earlier... and it's quite sick.


It's going to be a challenge indeed to raise a girl with a healthy self esteem, no hang ups on her looks, a belief in her abilities AND still not have her be a prude or have any hang up about sex etc. when she's older.

*sigh*... kids, aren't they great?

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I'm surprised pe>> ^sirex:
was about to cry sexism, but that guy has a point ;-/ - and come to think of it, i dont know any women id consider as funny, either personally or as comics.


Why not say he's both being sexist and accurate? There's a lot of posts that apparently believe that any sexist or racist act must be based on a falsehood. That's silly. Many, if not most, racist and sexist beliefs are based on a truth, on a "good point." There was also another post that seemed to say that it's not sexism so long as women match men in some Cosmic "overall" scale. That's like saying whites and blacks are equal, even if blacks are 16 times more likely to be criminals, because blacks can play basketball better than whites or some other silliness. If I say women aren't as good CEOs as men, that's sexist. Simple. Even if, hypothetically, women were superior in every other aspect of life, saying women aren't as good CEOs as men is still sexist.

Anyway, I share Hitchens' sexist views on this topic. Whenever I find a woman funny, I usually assume she is/was a tomboy, grew up with an influential brother or dad, or something like that.

If I may toss in some perspective...

As I already mentioned on Persephone's post regarding this issue, I am not what I would consider 'stunning' or 'gorgeous' (those who love me might say that, but whatever, lets be honest here), but I'm decent looking, and probably, as oxdottir said, "pretty by local standards", I'm thin (a rare commodity these days), my skin is decent, my teeth are straight (thanks to 4 years in braces), and over the years I've figured out how to present myself well (wasn't always this way, in fact, I spent all of adolescence as a kind of a dorky, spindly legged little tomboy who was often covered in dirt with her hair all mussed up, never considered pretty or girlish, so this whole 'being attractive' thing, still strikes me as kind of odd)... so, it could be said that I can go either way, because a lot of it is all based on how much effort I choose to put forth and this has led me to believe that much of what is perceived of as 'beauty' is actually just window dressing... hair, makeup, attitude. The days I choose to not care and just wear my glasses and pull my hair back I can walk down a street and no one will notice me, I could be invisible for all the reaction I get. Next day, I bother with contacts instead of glasses, wear my hair down and find something more flattering to wear, and I get all kinds of looks and even catcalls (depending on the area and number of people)... its weird like that, and as a result, more often then not, I don't bother getting all cleaned up like that, because frankly, I'm a bit shy and prefer to be left alone, I don't always need that ego boost, and as I mentioned on Persephone's thread, dangerous situations can and have arisen as a result.

So, having the perspective of both sides (to some extent) I agree and sympathize with a number of the problems you've outlined, pretty girls are not considered smart, nor taken seriously (usually I manage to shatter this preconception quickly, but still it is there), male professors are sometimes seemingly nervous about being associated with or working with a female student if she is attractive looking (lest rumors circulate), it is hard having female friends (I think I have maybe 3), harder still to be 'one of the guys' because there is always a chance that guys have only befriended me in the hopes that they will get in my pants someday (I too have frequently used the tactic of making sure I always appeared 'taken' or 'involved' with someone in order to insure that a friendship did not wander into that uncomfortable zone where I would have to turn a dear friend down should he try to make a move just because I'm suddenly available- it sucks, but I really hate hurting someone's feelings), and even harder still to get a guy to talk to you, especially one worth talking too as usually only the shallow player types are bold enough to just break the ice, but even that is not good as basically that type of guy will fuck anything that moves (and who wants that anyway?)... and also, when one is considered the prettiest of the lot, its hard to find someone interested in a more than superficial relationship, as many guys go for the attractive girl because they want some sort of trophy, kind of like, "hey, lookee here at my woman, she's a hottie, behold my awesomeness!"... a situation I avoid like the plague because there is always the possibility that someday your boyfriend/husband will decide he needs to upgrade his arm candy and then you're out the door. So fuck that, no thanks.

Also, a lot of what Farhad said about the pretty girls using their looks to get something, or somehow feeling entitled to all kinds of stuff, can also be applied to guys as well, as I've known a good many men who behave this way. They are considered hot and they know it and in a lot of them that brings out the worst behaviors (can't even count how many of these types over the years have tried to get me to do their homework for them or 'help' them with their term papers)... this is ultimately, I suppose, why I am rarely attracted to the 'attractive' type guys, they are too much trouble, and I've found, rarely interesting once you talk to them. I prefer conversation and intelligence any day, because ultimately, if a relationship is to work long term, those things are much more important than if your mate is considered a '10'.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I appreciate the way I look, but I understand both sides of it pretty well and there are pitfalls either way.

"You only seem to be interested in dealing dogma, and are dismissive and condescending to any view or comment or video which criticizes Islam." - Fletch

"None of those videos have anything to do with Islam." - Silvercord

The following videos, are all critical of Islamic fundamentalism, and have all been published on this site – in my own Islamica collective:

http://www.videosift.com/video/Muslim-Women-Fight-for-Equal-Access-to-Canadas-Mosques
http://www.videosift.com/video/Riz-Khan-The-Fight-Against-Honour-Killings-in-Jordan
http://www.videosift.com/video/Panorama-White-Fright-Britains-Growing-Ethnic-Division
http://www.videosift.com/video/Divorced-Women-in-Yemen-Struggle-to-Find-Social-Acceptance
http://www.videosift.com/video/Pakistan-Between-The-Mullahs-And-The-Military
http://www.videosift.com/video/Al-Jazeera-The-Plight-of-Womens-Rights-Activists-in-Iran
http://www.videosift.com/video/Female-Author-Talks-About-Women-Sex-and-Taboos-in-Saudi
http://www.videosift.com/video/Muslim-Women-Fight-For-Equal-Access-To-British-Mosques
http://www.videosift.com/video/A-Stranger-In-Her-Own-City-A-Tomboy-in-Yemen
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Doha-Debates-Tackling-Extremism-Must-See-Debate
http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Women-of-Islam-Veiling-Seclusion-Great-Documentary

Hey - but I guess they don't count???

Oh, yeah.

It's a pity she's known for her "tomboy" roles - because she does have an amazing bod.
Wonder if that's her in all of the shots; I hope so.

Anyone out there remember this? I was looking for the commercial for Simon. This was cute tho. I was a bit of a tomboy, so I enjoyed this toy alot.