Tomboys and Sissy Girls: young girls’ negotiations of femininity and masculinity more

Research Tomboys and Sissy Girls: young girls’ negotiations of femininity and masculinity Kerry Robinson, Associate Professor & Cristyn Davies, Research Officer, School of Education, University of Western Sydney Narrative 1 She takes the pale blue denim jeans from the plastic bag that contained other discarded clothes. The jeans belonged to her older brother, who could no longer fit into them. Locking her bedroom door, she slipped off her stretchy pink shorts, and slid into her brother’s caste-off pants. She zipped up the fly then turned around to see how she looked from behind in the full-length mirror on her closet. The baggy fit, with the dangly silver bit hanging from the zips on the pockets gave her more room to move. And they had a fly—a real one. Girl’s jeans were much flimsier, tighter, and zipped up the side, the back, or the front with an imitation fly. The crutch area was lose, but they hung off her body, unlike girl’s jeans which clung to her body. Despite her mother’s vigorous condemnation about wearing boys’ pants, she did it anyway; even in public sometimes, when her mother wasn’t looking! International Journal of Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood Vol 5, No 2, 2007 17 Transgressions from normalised performances of gender in young children often evoke emotive responses from parents, educators and other children. Using our own childhood experiences this paper explores the performativity of gender and heteronormativity. We are particularly interested in tomboys and sissy girls, and the ways in which these unstable categories operate in childhood. Panic in adults’ readings of young boys’ performances of gender (particularly ‘sissy’ boys and boys who cross-dress) has lead to disproportionate attention to boys’ future sexual orientation. Girls’ and women’s performances of non-normative gender seem not to be viewed with the same panic as that related to boys and men (Renold, 2005, 2006). Our own experiences of performing tomboy or sissy girl (Davies, C., 2008) reveal contradictory narratives that undermine binarised understandings of gender, representing more fluid performances of masculinity and femininity in young girls. Judith Butler’s concepts of gender performativity is particularly useful in understanding the construction of gender and how it is heteronormalised and in looking at the ways boys and girls assert their gendered subjectivities. Similarly, we find useful Judith Halberstam’s denaturalisation of the discursive construction of masculinity, demonstrating its performative dimension, and thus creating a discursive space in which masculinity can be read in relation to the female body. Performativity and shifting subjects Feminist poststructuralist and queer theory, through which gender is understood as performative (Butler, 1990; 1993; 1997; 2004), informs our discussion in this article. These theories are invaluable for providing perspectives on the ways in which individual subjects identify and make sense of themselves as men and women or boys and girls through discourses of gender made historically and socio-culturally available to them. Gender is a dynamic process referring to the cultural inscription of bodies into masculine and feminine characteristics. Within these theoretical frameworks, gender is not fixed but rather is an unstable, contested and relational social category, whose meanings and representations are susceptible to change across and within different cultures over time. Within the narratives we offer in this paper, the ways in which each subject constructs herself as a gendered being, who shifts across traditionally masculine and feminine paradigms, demonstrates the fluidity and performativity of gender. Performativity according to Butler is ‘that aspect of discourse that has the capacity to produce what it names…this production actually always happens through a certain kind of repetition and recitation’ (1994:33). Further, she suggests that performativity ‘is the vehicle through which ontological effects are established’ (1994:33); that is, the ways in which masculinity and femininity are played out, establishing, instituting, circulating, and confirming hegemonic forms of masculinity and femininity. It is the repetition of the performance of masculinity and femininity that constructs and reconstructs the masculine and feminine subject. Foucault (1978) reminds us that performances of self are negotiated around strict regulatory norms. Through performances of gender in front of peers, regulatory norms and gender regimes are reified. Various power relations that are inherent in these discourses regulate the possibilities of identity. There are multiple ways of doing masculinity and femininity, however, International Journal of Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood Vol 5, No 2, 2007 18 these performances are strictly regulated through disciplinary discourses that not only manage individuals but also actively constitute them (Butler, 1990; 1993; 1997; 2004). Individuals perform their femininity and masculinity, in order to ‘do it right’ in front of their peers and others (Butler 1990) and it is through this repetitive process that the feminine and masculine subject becomes defined and constructed. Transgressing normative boundaries can lead to isolation and rejection on the one hand, but also make new gender relations and ways of performing gender possible, as demonstrated through the performances of gender acknowledged in the narratives in this paper. Davies (2008) asks the question: ‘What is the fate of boyish girls, of their relationship to tomboys, of their childhood, and their gendered future?’ Much of the scholarship around tomboys and sissy boys has been undertaken through the discipline of psychology (see Bailey, Bechtold & Berenbaum, 2002; Carr, 1998; Corbett, 1996; Morgan, 1998). However, there is a growing body of research that focuses more on the performance of tomboyism as a discursive socio-cultural manifestation of gender and sexuality, highlighting the different ways in which individuals take these discourses up as their own (Blaise, 2005; Halberstam, 1998; Paechter & Clark, 2007; Reay, 2001; Renold, 2005, 2006). Our interest in tomboys is located within this later context and Tomboys are usually understood as girls who take-up traditionally masculine behaviours and interests that may be reflected through their more androgynous choice of clothing for example (Paechter & Clark, 2007). In addition, we are also interested in sissy girls (Davies, 2008) where sissy is understood to amplify girlness (Butler, 2008). Halberstam’s work on female masculinity and queer time and space is also of particular significance to our theorizing of the fluidity of gender, gender as performance, and in understanding childhood as a queer time and space (1998, 2005). Halberstam critiques the perpetuation of the binary gender system, “man” and “woman”, pointing out that it fails to address the multiple performances of male and female that currently exists. For example, the female born person who is consistently read as not female demonstrates the inadequacy and instability of the category “woman”. Within this binary gender system, masculinity is rigidly associated with the male body, not a performance of gender that is also produced and sustained across female bodies. As pointed out by Cristyn Davies (2008), Halberstam is concerned with revealing as fictional the essential relation between male bodies and masculinity. That is, masculinity and femininity have been traditionally seen to be attached to male and female bodies respectively. Halberstam’s aim is to denaturalize the discourse of masculinity, demonstrating its performative dimension, and to create a discursive space in which masculinity can be read in relation to the female body (Davies, C. 2008). Halberstam argues that masculinity is not the sole domain of men. She proposes an alternative to this “compulsory” gender binarism, suggesting a system of “gender preference”, which allows for gender neutrality until children and young adults “announce his or her or its gender” (1998, p.27). Consequently, Halberstam points out, that one could “come out” as a gender in a similar fashion to coming out in sexuality. However, as it stands, those who do not fit into the compulsory gender binary, are often pathologised as demonstrated International Journal of Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood Vol 5, No 2, 2007 19 through medical discourses that label some children as having Gender Identity Disorder of Childhood (Sedgwick, 1990, 1998; Butler, 2004). We propose in this paper that childhood can be understood as a queer time and space. Much of the research that explores childhood and tomboyism alluded to above, continues to neglect the queer dimensions of childhood and of such gender performances (exceptions being Blaise, 2005; Renold, 2005, 2006; Bruhm & Hurley, 2004). Conceptions of time and space, according to Harvey, are social constructions “forged out of vibrant and volatile social relations” (Harvey 1990 cited in Halberstam, 2005). As Robinson (2002, 2005b) and others (James & Prout, 1990; James, Jenks & Prout 1998; Cannella, 1997; Gittins, 1998; Dahlberg, Moss & Pence, 1999) have argued, childhood is a social construction largely based on universalized theories of child development, such as those developed by Piaget, where all children from birth are perceived to proceed through a biologically predetermined set of linear cognitive developments that correlate with chronological age. At the end of this process children reach their destination of ‘adulthood,’ which is identified by the ability to engage in abstract and hypothetical thinking. This dominant discourse of childhood, which perpetuates white, western and middle-class values and fails to adequately acknowledge the importance of socio-cultural factors such as gender, class and ethnicity, as well as historical contexts, defines ‘the child’ in opposition to what it means to be an adult. Within this context, children are perceived to be socially constructed as the dependent, immature and the powerless ‘other’ in relation to the independent, mature, powerful, and critically thinking adult. Thus, this culturally constructed adult-child binary relationship, perpetuated through what are generally upheld as logical and natural differences between adults and children, operates to exclude children from the ‘adult’s world’ (Gittins, 1998). Consequently, the time and space of childhood arises from a volatile and vibrant relationship between adults and children, defined and regulated by adults. Children (like others in subordinate positions) are regularly put back in their place, which means that their subjectivity and agency is negotiated and regulated according to adults’ perceptions of what a child should be. We argue that childhood can be understood as a queer time, which refers to a temporality beyond the markers of heterosexual and class privilege (Halberstam, 2005). Based on Harvey’s scholarship, Halberstam points out that we assign value and meaning to different kinds of temporality and this is clear in phrases such as the ‘age of innocence’, ‘family time’, ‘work time’, ‘leisure time’, ‘Christmas time’, and ‘summer time’. Within this reading of time, we can see the temporality of childhood operating in a similar fashion. That is, childhood can be seen as a temporal space, constituted within the adult-child binary, in which meanings of the child and youth are constituted by adults’ perspectives and values. Markers of childhood are inextricably linked to linear trajectories constituted through set time periods defined in developmentalist theory as pointed out above. Examples of these markers are when a child at a particular age is expected to sit up unattended, crawl, walk, talk, and how these actions are regulated through adult practices, and manipulations of children’s daily International Journal of Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood Vol 5, No 2, 2007 20 landscapes. When the child begins to walk, adults’ regulate the landscape in order to make it safer and to protect valuable commodities. When a child begins to talk, adults request that children learn to respect the etiquette associated with interacting with others in social environments. However, there are other critical markers of childhood that are intimately linked with heteronormativity and normalised through the process of heterosexualisation. As Robinson (2005a) argues: the construction of children’s gendered identities cannot be fully understood without acknowledging how the dominant discourses of femininity and masculinity are heteronormalised in children’s everyday lives. That is, through the processes of gendering children are constructed as heterosexual beings. Markers of the heterosexualisation of childhood are seen firstly through the numerous ways in which the genders are binarised, such as when girls are given a doll and boys are given a truck or a gun; this process cements the perception that these differences are natural and normal. Play is a significant site of the construction of heterosexuality, with mock weddings, playing games such as mothers, fathers and families, doctors and nurses, chasing and kissing, are all markers of the institutionalisation of heterosexuality in childhood. Such activities are often viewed as a natural part of children’s everyday lives and are rarely questioned. Other markers across the progression from childhood to adulthood include the categorisation of particular knowledge as inappropriate to children, and even to adolescents—for example knowledge of sexuality— particularly non-heterosexual sexuality. Seldom, as Robinson (2005a) argues, are these markers considered part of the ‘normalisation’ of the construction of heterosexual desire and the inscription of hetero-gendered subjectivities in young children. Such heterosexualised activities are not linked to understandings of sexuality, but are seen as ‘children being children’, a natural part of growing up that is often linked to biological perceptions of child development. These heterosexual markers continue throughout childhood to adolescence into adulthood (Renold, 2005). However, children and adults can engage in counter discourses that disrupt this process of heterosexualisation of childhood, providing queer spaces in which to do gender differently (Butler, 2004). Childhood becomes a ‘queer space’ when children subvert dominant discourses of childhood, doing childhood differently. Childhood also becomes a ‘queer space’ when children take up different and new ways of performing gender. Queer space refers to the placemaking practices in which queer identities engage, as well as new spaces constructed by queer counter-publics. Counter-publics are ‘parallel discursive arenas where members of subordinated social groups invent and circulate counter discourses to formulate oppositional interpretations of their identities, interests, and needs’ (Fraser, 1992, p. 123). Renold (2005, 2006), based on her research which explores the promotion and production of compulsory heterosexuality in primary schools, and the importance of queering gender in childhood (Robinson, 2005a), points out that tomboy can be viewed as a queer subject position. Through Butler’s (1990, 1997) framework of the heterosexual matrix and the process of subjection, Renold (2006, p. 494) argues that ‘the subject position ‘tomboy’ and the practices of ‘tomboyism’ International Journal of Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood Vol 5, No 2, 2007 21 within young girlhood can simultaneously consolidate gender hierarchies and subvert and queer gender / sexual norms’. To be recognizable as a subject one must undergo subjection to a social or political norm, or regulation under the law, but also, this subjection brings with it the potential for agency (Butler, 1997). When viewed in terms of young girls’ desires to take up and perform gender differently, the paradoxical process of subjection not just highlights the potential for subversion and queering of gendered and sexual norms, but also the productive and agentic nature of young girls’ choices and practices (Robinson & Davies, C., forthcoming). Still, as the narratives in this paper demonstrate, normalising discourses of gender problematise choices that children make in terms of taking up different gendered performances. Bronwyn Davies (1989, p. 235), in relation to children’s agency in challenging rigid gender binaries, points out that taking up non-normative performances of gender is not just about choice, ‘but involves grappling with both subjective constraints and the constraints of accepted discursive practices’. Vignettes of childhood gendered experiences We decided to base this discussion on our recollections of childhood experiences in which we were aware of ourselves as transgressing normative gendered boundaries. In order to convey our personal memories from childhood, we have written vignettes about moments that we now consider pertinent to becoming gendered subjects. We choose not to disclose which one of the authors owns each experience because we are more interested in analyzing the discourses and narratives that run through these recollections and link these discourses and narratives to gender norms operating in society. We have produced these narratives using strategies of autoethnography to make sense of our memories of gendered childhood experiences. This process allows us to document particular experiences, employing narrative to generate data through which we can analyze relations between subjects and their experiences. This approach allows for different points of entry into an analysis of subjective experiences in relation to becoming gendered at the micro levels of desire and affect than what tends to be possible in larger empirically based research. As Davies and Davies argue “we analyse what we understand experience to be by treating the narratives as archives with which we can study the discursive production itself” (2007, npn, forthcoming). A narrative presents information as a connected sequence of events, and conventionally many narratives are linear in sequence. These sequences are generally not random, but are structured logically and causally so that each event leads to the next. According to Franco-Bulgarian philosopher Tzvetan Todorov, narratives involve the following characteristics: 1. a state of equilibrium at the outset; 2. a disruption of the equilibrium by some action; 3. recognition that there has been a disruption; 4. an attempt to repair the disruption; and 5. a reinstatement of the equilibrium (Todorov cited in Lacey, 2000 p. 29). For example, if we are to apply this theory of narrative to the vignette that opens this article, we might understand the state of equilibrium as being the point in time before the child dresses up in her brother’s jeans; the disruption of this equilibrium (or the disruption of normative gender) would be the child’s actual dressing up; the recognition of this International Journal of Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood Vol 5, No 2, 2007 22 disruption might come from an adult (parent, guardian, educator), or the child herself; the attempt to repair this disruption might be adult intervention into the child’s dressing up; the re-instatement of equilibrium might be the child removing her brother’s jeans and putting back on her own stretchy pink pants (directed by an adult, or by time—such as the end of playtime or leisure-time, or in this case, by the child herself). By employing our understanding of childhood as queer time and space, we disrupt traditional linear narratives in which, through the logic of causation, this child would be stereotypically understood as a proto-gay subject, especially if it was about a boy cross-dressing. In addition, we also disrupt practices of gender normativity that heterosexualise children. Reading common threads across the narratives In all the vignettes it is possible to see ourselves as shifting gendered subjects with agency, who negotiate across boundaries of gender norms. As children we were aware of the existence of the gender norms operating in our lives and chose to disrupt them at various points in our daily activities. We did not discuss the narratives before we wrote them, so it is interesting that most of these moments of perceived transgression capture the child alone. This ‘secrecy’ does not mean that children do not transgress gendered boundaries in contexts with other children or adults, but it does indicate a level of self-surveillance that each child takes on. In these queering spaces we can utilise Sedgwick’s (1990) application of the psychoanalytic metaphor of the closet, which refers to the ways in which one manages taking up non-normative discourses of sexuality in a world of compulsory heterosexuality. Of particular importance are the ways in which each of the narratives acknowledges a sense of the child’s agency and the negotiation of power associated with the self. In each of the vignettes, the child engages in the production of a queer counter-public, in that they take up counter discourses that challenge hegemonic ways of doing gender. Narrative 1 The first vignette that opens this article highlights the ways in which representations of masculinity are negotiated and taken up by the girl child. Other adults and children often called the child in this narrative a tomboy. The child takes up the label of tomboy with some ambivalence, feeling on the one hand that it gave her the freedom and mobility to be more adventurous, play football and climb trees, but on the other, it made the child more aware of the need for self surveillance in terms of her gender performances. Halberstam (1998) argues that tomboyism is often associated with a ‘natural’ desire for the increased freedom and mobilities enjoyed by boys. Tomboyisn is frequently read positively as a ‘sign of independence and selfmotivation’ and may be encouraged ‘to the extent that it remains comfortably linked to a stable sense of a girl identity’ (Halberstam, 1998, p. 6). However, as Halberstam also points out, tomboyism is viewed as problematic when it becomes the sign of extreme male identification and extends beyond childhood into adolescence. The child in the vignette is aware of the need for secrecy (reminiscent of Sedgwick’s theorising of the closet) whilst trying on her brother’s jeans, but she is also aware of the need to hide her different performance of gender. Foucault’s (1977; 1978) concept of regulatory norms or normalisation can International Journal of Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood Vol 5, No 2, 2007 23 be seen to be operating in terms of the child’s secretive behaviour. Foucault argues that normalising discourses operate at both the micro and macro levels in society, constituting and impacting on individual subjectivities, and the ways that individuals negotiate power relations. The child in this vignette challenges normalising gender discourses through enacting her desire to wear her brother’s jeans. However, the young child is aware of the restrictions that these regulatory norms impose on her practices. The child gains some sense of confidence in privately experimenting with her gendered performance before ‘coming out’ of the gender closet and striding around in her brother’s jeans with a newfound confidence. Although her mother is disapproving of her daughter dressing in her brother’s jeans, there seems be a far greater sense of acceptance of the performance of female masculinity, than of male femininity, articulated if her brother was to dress up in her feminine jeans. However, as the young girl grows older this perspective shifts and her behaviour becomes as problematic as the effeminate boy. It appears that childhood for young girls, in this respect, is much more a queer time and space that allows girls a greater time for experimenting with counter discourses of gender without the same policing that is experienced by many young boys. Why isn’t there a similar kind of panic in relation to girls? Are girls and women ‘allowed’ to be more fluid in their representations of gender? Boys dressing up in girls clothing is often read as a major threat to dominant forms of masculinity, which are linked to heterosexuality. That is, not only are these boys read as transgressing the boundaries of acceptable masculine behaviours, but they are often viewed as proto-gay subjects, which elicits the greatest fears in some adults. Boys dressing in female clothing tend to sully the social value of masculinity, taking up the subordinate position of femininity. Girls who choose to dress up in male clothing do not tend to elicit the same vehement and fearful reactions that are associated with young boys; that is, there is not the same fear that she will grow up to be a proto-gay subject. When girls and women dress up in masculine clothing they take up some of the authority and social value that is inherent in masculine subjects. However, Halberstam (1998) points out that women who take up female masculine performances, do not pose a problem if they are read as heterosexual; it is when female masculinity is taken up in the context of queer identities that they meet with greater disapproval. As Davies has argued, sexuality operates as the discursive tool used to regulate gender (2008). Young girls do not tend to be read with the same fears associated with their ‘becoming gay’ that young boys’ tend to be, especially through the process of dressing up. Historically, homosexuality has been defined publicly as the domain of men and the legal regulation of homosexuality has reinforced this by targeting male same sex practices, and these discourses have invisibilised the lesbian until more recent times. This has been further intensified through increasing fears associated with paedophilia, which tended to incorporate the discourse of the homosexual abuse of innocent young boys, which was linked to societal anxieties constituted through the figure of the predatory homosexual (Robinson, forthcoming). It is interesting that in two of the three vignettes cars and trucks—often symbols International Journal of Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood Vol 5, No 2, 2007 24 of masculinity—play a significant role in realising the female child’s agency. As narrative 2 reveals, the child borrows her brother’s Tonka truck and uses this traditional symbol of masculine power within a typically feminine narrative— doing the week’s grocery shopping. Narrative 2 Sitting cross-legged on the patterned green carpet, she clutches She-Ra, Princess of Power, and prepares to play. Today She-Ra is going to leave behind her sword of power and drive a canary yellow Tonka truck—a front-end loader— to Jewels to do the shopping. Gripping the Mattel character tightly, the child carefully lifts her brother’s heavy truck, pushing the Princess of Power through the small opening at the truck’s bottom and into the driver’s seat. She-Ra’s taught legs hang down, but the princess is nevertheless, firmly lodged behind the steering wheel. She-Ra drives off at a cautious speed raising the front-end loader’s shovel in preparation for the grocery shopping. This time She-Ra knows she’ll definitely get a park. She-Ra, Princess of Power, is a heroic female fictional character created by Mattel in the mid-eighties (and is the twin sister of He-Man). She also appeared in a cartoon with the same title as her name, which was designed to get young girls to consume a narrative similar to the then popular He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon series. She-Ra possessed superhuman strength, speed and agility, is highly resistant to damage, and has a healing touch. In addition she is able to speak with animals telepathically. In the child’s narrative, it is perhaps no accident that She-Ra leaves behind her Sword of protection, with its super-powers that are no doubt associated with its operation as a phallic signifier. Unlike He-Man who has a sword of power, as well as an axe and a shield, She-Ra’s sword of protection suggests a subordination of femininity in which the female is in need of protection (sexual and otherwise) in a male universe. In the child’s narrative, the sword of protection is cast aside, and instead the Tonka truck front-end loader is adopted as a mechanism through which the female character can assert her agency and power within a relatively banal narrative that involves doing the grocery shopping. The child abandons fantastical narratives and She-Ra’s superhuman powers, and instead has the female character use her commonsense—not only does the frontend loader have a greater capacity to carry more shopping than the average sedan, but it is likely that the vehicle will operate to intimidate other drivers out of the way of a good car-park. The need to secure a car space in a busy urban shopping centre is a narrative that is familiar to the child, often experiencing her mother’s frustration on occasions when car parks were rare. In this vignette, the child challenges the fantastical narratives of the Masters’ of the Universe, taking She-Ra out of this construction and places her in the everyday. The child perceives that the everyday context of shopping requires something more than superhuman powers to actually survive the experience. The child, resignifying the Tonka truck in terms of taking it out of its usual earthmoving context into a domestic shopping scene, queers traditional understandings of gender relations by disrupting both masculine and feminine power. If we are to apply Todorov’s theory to demonstrate the child’s queering of gender in this narrative, the state of equilibrium at the International Journal of Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood Vol 5, No 2, 2007 25 outset is the child playing in a typical domestic scene; the disruption of the equilibrium is the child’s taking her brother’s Tonka truck and placing it in a typically feminine scenario, as well as taking She-Ra out of the fantastical and inserting her in to the battles of the everyday; the only recognition that there has been a disruption is encountered as the child struggles to insert a Mattel character, who has not been designed to fit into the truck, and forces the character into the vehicle; the child refuses to repair this disruption, leaving She-Ra’s taught legs hanging out of the bottom of the vehicle; and the reinstatement of the equilibrium is a return to the domestic shopping scene in which She-Ra drives away cautiously. Although this is a rather conventional narrative, the child can be seen to be queering this space and time in several ways: firstly, she queers the traditional feminine role of shopping by utilising the masculine Tonka truck to make shopping easier – and to get what she wants; secondly, the child queers She-Ra’s feminine superpowers by inserting the masculine Tonka truck to get the job done rather than the feminine powers associated with the sword of protection, She-Ra’s usual weapon of choice; and finally, she queers traditional femininity through She-Ra’s competency in handling the Tonka truck outside its usual domain. Taking up the subjectivity of the tomboy, the child in the following vignette demonstrates the fluidity of gender, showing that masculinity and femininity is not fixed, but is a performance taken up by girls and boys, and women and men. Narrative 3 She jumped out of bed and ran into the lounge room, where the tall brightly decorated pine tree had given birth to hundreds of presents. She quickly ran to each room waking up family members instructing them to see what Santa had put under the Christmas tree. Pouring through the presents, she could see a large colourfully wrapped box at the back of the tree. Her name was on it. Ripping off the wrapping, and opening the box, she saw a big shiny yellow station wagon car. It had red doors that could open and shut, big black tyres, and a steering wheel that turned. The back seat could fold down to make more room. She felt her cheeks flush with apprehension and uncertainty about what the others would think about her present. For a moment she thought that perhaps she’d opened the wrong present and that it really belonged to her brother. She cautiously checked the tag on the ripped paper for her name—and it was hers. This vignette highlights the way in which the child takes on a position of selfsurveillance in terms of crossing over gender boundaries. Despite the child’s excitement at receiving the car, she becomes particularly self-conscious when she is aware that other family members might consider it to be an inappropriate present for a girl. As in narrative one, the child recognises that crossing gendered boundaries in this way is potentially problematic and fears the consequences of doing her gender incorrectly. As pointed out previously, individual subjects strive to have their gendered performances considered authentic or real through the judgments of others. In this context, the child is weary that others might be disapproving about the way that she does her gender, but is reassured to some extent when she reaffirms that the present is actually hers and carries with it a sense of authenticity based on the fact International Journal of Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood Vol 5, No 2, 2007 26 that it is given by another. The vignette also reflects the relationship between gender and desire in that girls are suppose to desire feminine objects such as dolls, a jewelry box or the like. The girl child who desires objects associated with boys, not only reveals the performativity of gender, but also the precarious relationship between gender and desire. As Butler points out the desire associated with masculinity and femininity is institutionalized through heterosexual norms that teach boys and girls, and men and women how and what to desire in order to be appropriate gendered subjects. Butler comments, ‘Although being a certain gender does not imply that one will desire a certain way, there is nevertheless a desire that is constitutive of gender itself and, as a result, no quick or easy way to separate the life of gender from the life of desire’ (2004 p. 1-2). The child who dares to express her desire differently and act on it risks being seen as naughty and bad because she transgresses gender norms. In seeking out the name-tag a second time to reassure herself that the car was indeed hers, the child is also seeking reassurance and authentication for her desire. Sissy Girls and Tomboys It is difficult to capture a single moment in the life of a girl child who desires to take up femininity in order to get her gender right. Most of these stories are invisibilised so that the workings of gender appear natural because of their normative dimension. Stories about excessive femininity have most frequently been told using the male drag performer whose body and performance can make apparent the performativity of gender by disrupting the ways in which femininity and masculinity can be read across male and female bodies (Butler, 1990, 1993, 2004; Halberstam, 1998, Robinson & Davies, forthcoming). This excess may be read through the body of the male child who displays effeminacy. As McInnes argues a sissy boy becomes a sissy boy ‘through processes of recognition and witness, processes that rely not only on social structures and discourses of gender but are (and must be, if they are to be effective) produced through complex social processes of what boys do, what other people say about them and do in response to them, and how others bare witness to these sayings and doings’ (2008, p. 97). McInness highlights the importance of recognizing the gender performance of the Other as a deviation from the norm, and acknowledges the impact of the ways in which one might choose to respond to children who take up gender differently. Taking up McInnes’s theorizing of the sissy boy, Davies points out that her “becoming girl” involved a lot of hard work and that as a conscientious child, she had worked at this process overtime, which meant that she was deemed a sissy by others—‘a kind of being, it seems, that no one really wants to see in little boys or girls (2008, p.117). Davies shows that being a sissy is not just the domain of effeminate boys, but that it modifies and amplifies the category of girl, and that this process can also attract unwanted slurs and attention from other children and even adults. Unlike many tomboys who learn resilience, who experience certain freedoms and independence which often leads to increased mobility, sissy girls are often less resilient to the taunts of other children, and their more reserved behaviour, or sensitive demeanor, is not generally encouraged by peers and adults. In this way, sissy girls can be seen to be doing femininity to excess in ways International Journal of Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood Vol 5, No 2, 2007 27 that make gender visible as performative. Like sissy boys, sissy girls are victimized for taking up femininity in ways that challenge normative gender. That is, the sissy girl represents characteristics of gender that can be viewed as extremities of femininity, which are often not viewed positively. The concept of sissy girl can be read as queer in that it is attached to the female body, rather than in the traditional way that it has been considered in relation to the male body; in both contexts it is seen as derogatory. Diane Reay in her study of primary school children in Britain points out that being a tomboy seems to guarantee male friendships and male respect. Reay also (2001, p.162) argues that ‘implicit in the concept ‘tomboy’ is a devaluing of the traditional notions of femininity, a railing against the perceived limitations of being female’. She points out that there is a suggestion of shame and fear of femininity that is reflected in those who take-up tomboyism. This can be linked to the concept of being a sissy, which potentially carries with it a sense of shame. In his theory of affect, Silvan Tomkins places shame-interest at either end of a continuum of affective possibility, suggesting that shame operates ‘only after interest or enjoyment has been activated, and inhibits one or the other, or both’ (Sedgwick and Frank 1995, p.5). The shame experienced by the sissy child can be productive in relation to instigating ethical relations in the school environment as argued by McInnes (2004, 2008; McInnes & Davies, forthcoming) but the embodiment of being ashamed as a result of being perceived to be a sissy by others, also has an impact on the child’s resilience in the playground and elsewhere. Unlike an interest in adventure, or freedom and independence associated with the tomboy, shame as experienced by the sissy girl is characterized by the ‘lowering of the head and eyes’ so as to reduce further exploration or self-exposure (1995, p.5). Shame does not involve complete withdrawal of interest (which might be closer to disgust), but as McInnes argues about the shaming of ‘sissy’ boys, gender related shaming ‘operates to support a fictional autonomy, coherence and competence on the part of boys’ (2004, 2008). In addition, we would argue that this fictional autonomy, coherence and competence is not only associated with boys, but is also linked to some girls who taunt other girls perceived to do their gender inappropriately, such as the sissy girl, who often lacks the resilience of her tomboy counterpart. Conclusion In this article we have argued that understanding childhood as a queer time and space provides a framework through which to read the child’s gendered performances as fluid and contradictory. This process demonstrates the precarious and shifting nature of gendered identity and how the child can take up both masculinity and femininity at various points in time. As argued, masculinity and femininity are not fixed belongings of material bodies. Through our understanding of childhood as a queer space and time we have explored some ways in which the child produces counterpublics or counter discourses, allowing for new possibilities of taking up gendered subjectivities differently. This framework also provides a means through which to understand how the child’s agency around gender performances can result in a confidence that extends into other realms of the child’s life. There has been less panic focused on how young girls take-up performances of masculinity than International Journal of Equity and Innovation in Early Childhood Vol 5, No 2, 2007 28 in comparison to young boys’ performances of femininity. However, this changes over time as the girl child moves into adolescence, where her performance of gender becomes more highly regulated. We have also explored the characteristics often associated with tomboys and sissy girls. 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