People have insisted to me that masculinity is not punished in women/“women” because tomboys are accepted. This excerpt from Female Masculinity puts my thoughts on it into words really well:
Tomboyism may even be encouraged to the extent that it remains comfortably linked to a stable sense of a girl identity. Tomboyism is punished, however, when it appears to be the sign of extreme male identification (taking a boy’s name or refusing girl clothing of any type) and when it threatens to extend beyond childhood and
into adolescence. Teenage tomboyism presents a problem and tends to be subject to the most severe efforts to reorient. We could say that tomboyism is tolerated as long as the child remains prepubescent; as soon as puberty begins, however, the full force of gender conformity descends on the girl…for girls, adolescence is a lesson in restraint, punishment, and repression. It is in the context of female adolescence that the tomboy instincts of millions of girls are remodeled into compliant forms of femininity…as even a cursory survey of popular cinema confirms, the image of the tomboy can be tolerated only within a narrative of blossoming womanhood.– Jack Halberstam, Female Masculinity (1998)
Yes, it does look different from the way “boys” are punished for expressing femininity regardless of age or context. But tomboyish girls being accepted in some contexts does not mean we don’t still get the gender non-conformity beat out of us when it can no longer be considered some girlish phase. And it certainly doesn’t speak to how masculinity is treated in adult “women.” All I’ll say is I got called a dyke at age 11 and I still get called one now.
When I was growing up, boys considered me a “cool girl” because I liked the things they liked. But after I hit puberty, everyone, even my relatives who should have known me better, started sending me makeup, dresses, and other “girly things”. My tomboyism was no longer cute and now I had to Woman like every other girl.