I chased lizards and had a pet horned toad. I climbed trees and played kick ball.
It never occurred to me that I either had to be feminine or something else.
Parents are more concerned about effeminate boys that girls with masculine traits, as discussed in an NYT article
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/12/magazine/whats-so-bad-about-a-boy-who-wants-to-wear-a-dress.htmlWhat’s So Bad About a Boy Who Wants to Wear a Dress?
By RUTH PADAWER
August 8, 201
...
Relatively little research on gender-nonconforming children has been conducted, making it impossible to know how many children step outside gender bounds — or even where those bounds begin. Studies estimate that 2 percent to 7 percent of boys under age 12 regularly display “cross-gender” behaviors, though very few wish to actually be a girl. What this foretells about their future is hard to know. By age 10, most pink boys drop much of their unconventional appearance and activities, either because they outgrow the desire or subsume it. The studies on what happens in adulthood to boys who strayed from gender norms all have methodological limitations, but they suggest that although plenty of gay men don’t start out as pink boys, 60 to 80 percent of pink boys do eventually become gay men. The rest grow up to either become heterosexual men or become women by taking hormones and maybe having surgery. Gender-nonconforming behavior of girls, however, is rarely studied, in part because departures from traditional femininity are so pervasive and accepted. The studies that do exist indicate that tomboys are somewhat more likely than gender-typical girls to become bisexual, lesbian or male-identified, but most become heterosexual women.
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I would not go along with my boys being too "girly".
