Sex, gender roles and stereotypes

Three ideas are often blurred together in conversations about gender, and untangling them is the starting point for this page:

• Sex: whether a body is organised around producing small gametes (male) or large gametes (female). Sex is observed at birth, not assigned, and it does not change. Differences of sex development are variations within this system, not a third sex or a spectrum (see intersex and DSDs).
• Gender roles: the expectations a society attaches to each sex — who does the housework, who goes to war, who wears skirts, who is allowed to cry. These vary enormously between cultures and centuries.
• Gender stereotypes: generalisations about what males and females are like — girls like pink, boys like trucks, women are nurturing, men are stoic. Some stereotypes track real average differences; many exaggerate or invent them; all of them say nothing about any particular person.

Feminism and the gay rights movement spent much of the twentieth century arguing that roles and stereotypes should not be imposed on individuals: a girl who climbs trees is still a girl, a boy who loves ballet is still a boy. Many detransitioners describe the modern idea of an inner gender identity as quietly reversing that argument — taking the same stereotypes and reading them as clues to which sex a person "really" is. This page looks at how that happens, what the science of sex differences actually shows, the long-documented link between childhood gender non-conformity and adult homosexuality, and what detransitioned and desisted people say about stereotypes in their own lives.

How stereotypes become evidence of identity

The diagnostic criteria

The clearest example of stereotypes being treated as signs of identity is written into psychiatry itself. The DSM-5 (the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic manual) diagnosis of gender dysphoria in children requires six of eight criteria over six months, one of which must be a strong desire to be the other sex. But most of the remaining criteria describe preferences, not distress about the body (American Psychiatric Association 2013):

The manual itself uses the word "stereotypically". A child can therefore meet most of the threshold through behaviour that, a generation ago, would simply have been called being a tomboy or a "sissy". This does not mean that children who meet the criteria are not distressed — some clearly are — but it does mean that the diagnosis cannot separate a gender non-conforming child from a child who will grow up to identify as trans. As the follow-up research below shows, most such children historically did not.

Online "signs" and egg-cracking

Outside the clinic, the same logic runs in reverse through online checklists and the culture of egg cracking: liking video games, disliking dresses, preferring male friends, crying at films or enjoying cooking are offered as "signs" of a hidden trans identity. A child's ordinary preferences are reinterpreted, after the fact, as proof that they were "always" the other sex. This retrospective storytelling is also central to the born in the wrong body narrative.

Many detransitioners describe exactly this process, often triggered by someone else:

I was a tomboy and really aligned with masculinity. I didn't think twice about asking for boys haircuts, wearing boys boxer shorts or choosing men's cologne over women's. I just was that way - as a 'girl'. Then someone suggested that all the times I freaked out about having to dress up in girls clothes as a child combined with my preference for army green cargo pants and sports bras meant I was a boy inside and viola! —Luck_Unlucky, desisted female

I was literally just a tomboy, traumatized by puberty and then told there was a cure for all my problems … Seriously thought all the normal kid shit I did was somehow a sign I was a "real trans" … The idea of gender being anything but stereotypes is just harmful to pretty much everyone. —ManagementCapable758, detrans female

Why the logic is circular

The problem is philosophical as well as clinical. If someone is asked what it means to "feel like a woman" or "feel like a man", the answer almost always comes back as a list of feelings, preferences, roles or appearances — the very things that are supposed to be independent of sex. If those things are not what makes someone a man or woman, it is unclear what an inner gender identity is of. If they are, then gender identity is a sophisticated restatement of stereotypes. Many commenters on /r/detrans describe reaching this conclusion during their own detransition:

Somewhere down the line we confused male and female with masculine and feminine and we confused traditional gender rolls and stereotyped and personality traits with male and female. You are female. Full stop. —Axenus, desisted female

The same mechanism drives many non-binary identities: a person who feels neither "fully" masculine nor "fully" feminine concludes they must be neither man nor woman — which only makes sense if men and women are defined by masculinity and femininity in the first place.

What sex differences research actually shows

Rejecting stereotypes does not require pretending that the sexes are psychologically identical. The evidence points to a more interesting picture: some average differences are large and robust, most are small, and in nearly all cases male and female distributions overlap enough that an individual's traits tell you little about their sex — and nothing about which sex they "should" be.

Reading these numbers honestly

• Real average differences exist. Sex differences in children's toy preferences are large and reliable (Davis & Hines 2020), and male rhesus monkeys with no human socialisation show a preference for wheeled toys over plush ones, which researchers interpret as a partly biological influence (Hassett et al., summarised by Simply Psychology). A later study testing monkeys individually did not replicate this (PMC9898904), so the primate evidence is suggestive rather than settled.
• Most differences are small. Hyde's review found that 30% of effect sizes were essentially zero and a further 48% were small (ScienceDirect overview of Hyde 2005). On most traits, knowing someone's sex barely improves a guess about them.
• How you measure matters. Del Giudice and colleagues argue that combining many traits produces a far larger overall difference than any single trait suggests (Del Giudice et al. 2012). Both camps can be right: men and women differ noticeably as groups across a profile, while individuals vary hugely on any given trait.
• Average ≠ prescription. Even a large difference such as d = 0.93 for "things vs people" interests means many women are more thing-oriented than the average man (Su et al. 2009). A girl who loves engineering is not a statistical error to be corrected, and she is certainly not a boy.

This is the crux. Gender identity frameworks often treat a person at the tail of a distribution — a very masculine girl, a very feminine boy — as being in the "wrong" category. Sex differences research supports the opposite conclusion: overlapping distributions predict that a substantial number of people of each sex will have interests and temperaments more typical of the other. Gender non-conforming people are an expected part of human variation, not a sign that something has gone wrong.

Childhood gender non-conformity and homosexuality

The most consistent finding in this entire field is not about gender identity at all. For more than fifty years, prospective and retrospective studies have found that marked childhood gender non-conformity is strongly associated with later homosexuality — especially in boys.

The follow-up studies

• Green (1987), "The Sissy Boy Syndrome": a 15-year prospective study of 66 feminine boys and a comparison group. About three-quarters of the feminine boys were homosexual or bisexual in adolescence or adulthood, compared with only one of the controls (NEJM review).
• Bailey & Zucker (1995): a quantitative review concluding that prospective studies show childhood cross-sex-typed behaviour is "strongly predictive" of adult homosexual orientation in men, while noting that girls had not been studied adequately (Bailey & Zucker 1995).
• Rieger et al. (2008) used childhood home videos rather than adult memories, to sidestep recall bias, and found that childhood gender non-conformity remained a robust correlate of adult sexual orientation (reply to Hegarty, 2009).
• Singh, Bradley & Zucker (2021): of 139 boys referred to a Toronto clinic for gender dysphoria, 87.8% desisted (no longer had gender dysphoria). Most developed a same-sex or bisexual orientation (63.6% in fantasy) (Singh et al. 2021). Early social transition was rare in this sample.
• Steensma et al. (2011, 2013): in the Dutch cohort, desisters described themselves as "a girlish boy or a boyish girl who only wished they were the other sex", whereas persisters said they were the other sex. Ages 10–13 were a turning point: puberty, changing friendships and first experiences of falling in love made dysphoria fade in desisters, and their gender-atypical interests "did not necessarily evaporate" (Steensma et al. 2011). The 2013 quantitative follow-up of 127 adolescents found the intensity of childhood dysphoria predicted persistence, and that childhood social role transition was also associated with persistence (Steensma et al. 2013).

These figures are debated. Older studies used broader diagnostic criteria, so some children counted as "desisters" may have been gender non-conforming rather than dysphoric, and today's clinic populations are very different — far more adolescent girls with no childhood history (Butler & Hutchinson 2020; Littman et al. 2024). But the core pattern is not seriously disputed: many gender non-conforming children grow up to be gay, lesbian or bisexual adults who are comfortable in their sex.

Why this matters now

If gender non-conformity in childhood is often an early expression of homosexuality, then interpreting it as a trans identity and acting on it — through social transition and later medical steps — risks redirecting a future gay or lesbian adult onto a medical pathway. The 2013 Dutch finding that social transition was associated with persistence raises the uncomfortable possibility that affirming a child's cross-sex identity may help to fix it in place. This concern sits at the heart of the overlap between stereotypes and internalised homophobia; in one survey of 100 detransitioners, 23% cited internalised homophobia or difficulty accepting being gay as a reason for transitioning (Littman 2021).

Tomboys and butch lesbians: what female detransitioners describe

A recurring theme among detransitioned and desisted women is that their transition began with being a tomboy, a masculine woman or a butch lesbian in a culture that no longer seemed to have a place for them. In an in-depth study of female detransitioners, some participants came to recognise that narrow stereotypes of womanhood had shaped their decision to transition (Lomax & Butler 2025).

"Tomboy erasure"

Older women in the community often contrast their own childhoods, where being a tomboy was unremarkable, with the present:

Tomboy erasure is definitely a thing, and anyone skirting gender norms have a line of nutcases all too ready to push their personal views onto them. We've basically walked backwards to the 50's. During my childhood there was a push to break down gender norms, now we've gone back to a very rigid definition of masculine and feminine. Go outside of it, and boom, you're trans. —Bottled_Penguin, desisted female

Others describe the message coming from friends, therapists or the trans community itself:

In my case friend suggested I was trans bc I was a tomboy aaand I had my reasons too so I believed him. I am so glad I could return to my assigned gender and be ok with my tomboy self after all that. —Project-Worldly, detrans female

Butch lesbians

For lesbians, the overlap of gender non-conformity, same-sex attraction and the shrinking visibility of butch women can make transition seem like the only available identity. One woman described her first real contact with masculine women being trans men, who "made me feel accepted but also like that was my only real option" (hello27club). Reclaiming a butch identity is a common part of recovery:

One thing I learned that helped me was realizing childhood sex dysphoria is pretty common in gay children. Thinking back to how I was as a child only reinforced my then current state of mind of "I am trans and always have been." I wasn't, I was masculine and always have been. I don't "feel" like a woman, I just am one. —mayor_oboe, desisted female

Several women also describe pressure to play "the man" in lesbian relationships — a heteronormative template laid over same-sex love — and finding relief in being a woman who loves women on her own terms. For more on how sexism and discomfort with womanhood feed into this, see internalised misogyny.

Not every tomboy is a lesbian

The research link between gender non-conformity and homosexuality is a statistical tendency, not a rule. Some masculine women are straight, and they can feel they have no category at all:

I've never really felt like there was much of a category for people like me, who have fairly strong preferences for all things societally coded as "masculine"...but have only ever been attracted to men. —quendergestion, desisted female

Feminine boys and gay men: what male detransitioners describe

Men face a different version of the same problem. Several commenters point out that society has historically tolerated masculine girls far more than feminine boys, so a feminine boy may face harsher bullying and fewer role models. Transition can then appear to offer social permission to be soft, emotional or interested in "girly" things — permission that, in principle, should be available to men without changing sex.

I thought I was trans because I was a feminine gay man, and being a straight woman would be a more desirable existence than being a feminine gay man. To a degree, I still think this, but I now realize that I was running away from something and not truly gender dysphoric. —Mountain-Bug-4865, desisted male

The same commenter describes a "rigid, conservative upbringing" that led him to believe "my love for men and my feminine attributes meant that I'd be better off as a trans woman" (Mountain-Bug-4865). This is the old homophobic logic — a man who loves men must really be a woman — reappearing in progressive language. Other men describe a long road to the same acceptance:

Being effeminate and gay (without even realising it) added more to that feeling … I remember when I was very young I had a dream that i woke up as a girl … It took me being till 26 years of age when I happily accepted my reality as a gay man. —raginghomo987, desisted male

Not all feminine men are gay, and some describe the mismatch between their temperament and dating expectations as a pressure toward transition:

I'm a very feminine man and I'm attracted to masculinity, which has caused me to want to transition many times so that I could be more "accepted". If this world was a place where super feminine boys like me could just marry super masculine girls and people wouldn't be weird about it, then I never would've had any of those issues. —SuperIsaiah, desisted male

Others describe the opposite pressure: feeling unable to live up to an aggressive ideal of manhood, with one detrans male noting that "toxic masculinity made me feel like I didn't fit in to masculine society" (redanceslippers). Shame about maleness itself is explored further in internalised misandry. Male paths into transition are diverse, and stereotypes are only one strand; others are covered in the Blanchard typology pages.

The socialisation debate

Socialisation refers to the way children learn what their society expects of their sex — through parents, schools, peers and media. Whether, and how much, trans-identified people were socialised as their sex is one of the most heated questions in gender debates.

Many detransitioners argue that socialisation follows how a child is perceived and treated, which follows sex, and that it leaves lasting marks regardless of later identity:

The social upbringing we have as female vs males can never really be erased, I think. Trans women were not raised with the same limitations/expectations as females are, just like Trans men will never fully be socially the same as cis men because we can't ever go back to birth and be raised differently. —throwawayeffoff, detrans female

A common counter-claim in trans communities is that a child who identifies as the other sex absorbs the messages aimed at that sex instead. Detransitioners who once held this view often reject it afterwards, but the honest position is that the evidence is thin either way: socialisation is hard to measure, and children of both sexes receive messages about both sexes. What is better established is that socialisation is asymmetric. One desisted commenter put it this way:

men are not allowed to be feminine by society the same way women are allowed to be masculine. there is a huge part of life that opens up for them when they transition or ID as trans that they didn't let themselves access before. they conflate this as a sign that they're truly trans deep down, when in reality, it's just a man getting to not feel shame at liking fuzzy pink things and fairy lights. —portaux, desisted

Female detransitioners frequently describe the reverse experience: their discomfort was with the treatment that came with being female — sexualisation, restriction, being expected to be quiet and accommodating — and they mistook resentment of that treatment for discomfort with their own body. One detrans female wrote that she "lumped in my female body with this resentment, because I identified it as the supposed cause for this treatment", concluding that "Femininity does not equal femaleness" (Soggy_Agency_7062).

Philosophical background: essentialism and constructionism

Arguments about stereotypes draw on two broad philosophical traditions:

• Essentialism holds that there is something fixed and inherent that makes a person what they are. Traditional gender essentialism said women are by nature nurturing and men by nature aggressive, so departures from those roles were unnatural.
• Social constructionism holds that many categories and expectations are produced by culture and could be otherwise. Applied to gender roles, it says femininity and masculinity are largely learned and changeable.

Simone de Beauvoir's line from The Second Sex (1949), that one is not born but becomes a woman, is the classic constructionist statement: the female body is given, but the social meaning of "woman" — the role — is imposed. Judith Butler's Gender Trouble (1990) went further, arguing that gender is performative: it is not the expression of an inner essence but is created through repeated acts that conform to social norms, which "gives gender its illusion of stability" (Perlego study guide; Butler 1990, Routledge). Butler also questioned whether the sex/gender distinction could be cleanly drawn at all.

Both traditions are used by opposing sides. Gender-critical feminists (who hold that sex, not gender identity, defines who is a woman) take de Beauvoir's view to argue that roles are social and the body is not, so rejecting a role should never require changing the body. Queer theorists take Butler's view to argue that categories are fluid and identities can be multiplied. Popular gender identity belief, however, often ends up as a curious hybrid: it treats gender as socially constructed when criticising traditional roles, yet treats each person's gender identity as an innate essence that can be "discovered" — and frequently identifies that essence using the very roles it calls constructed. Many detransitioners describe the moment of noticing this contradiction as a turning point:

We are born into a sexed body which we apply gender roles to which aren't hard and fast rules … If you're a man applying makeup, that's masculine because you're a man doing it. If you're a woman who wants to go to the gun range, that's feminine because a woman is doing it. —wispo-wills, detrans female

Trans perspectives

Many trans-identified people agree that stereotypes do not define gender, and say so frequently to each other. On r/ftm and r/MtF, common advice is that interests and presentation are separate from identity:

Your likes and dislikes in life aren't hormone based most of the time!! Please don't force stereotypes on yourself, like boys can't like make up, or Taylor Swift. It's just a like/interest, that's okay. It's not gendered. —Neat-Bill-9229, trans man (FTM)

interests can affect gender expression, how you dress, what hobbies you pursue, etc. But it's really irrelevant to gender identity. —Savings-Duty-756, trans woman (MTF)

Some trans men also describe having identified as tomboys or lesbians first, then concluding that this did not capture their experience — for example, one trans man who identified as a lesbian for years described not being "happy being treated as a masculine woman either" (arrownys, trans man (FTM)). From this perspective, being trans is about an internal sense of self or body discomfort, not about stereotypes.

This position deserves to be taken seriously, and it is worth noting where it leads. If identity is not about stereotypes, then a tomboy, a butch lesbian or a feminine gay man has no reason to suspect they are trans because of their interests — which is exactly what detransitioners wish they had been told. The remaining question is what the internal sense of being the other sex consists of, if not roles, appearance or sexed bodies. Some trans commenters answer that no further justification is needed: "if you think you're a man you're a man" (0-P-A-L, trans man (FTM)). For detransitioners, that answer is the problem: a belief with no external reference point cannot be tested before irreversible medical steps are taken. Trans people who are content with their lives are not the subject of this critique; the concern is for young people encouraged to read ordinary non-conformity as a medical identity.

Two answers to not fitting a stereotype

When someone does not match the stereotypes for their sex, there are broadly two ways to make sense of it. Each has its own sub-page in this section.

• A new label. Non-binary identities answer the mismatch by placing the person outside the categories of man and woman. As argued above, this only works if "man" and "woman" are defined by masculinity and femininity, so the label quietly keeps the stereotypes in place and moves the person out from under them. That page covers the history of the labels, prevalence trends, medical transition of non-binary people, and what former non-binary detransitioners and desisters describe.
• No label at all. Gender non-conformity without labels answers it by changing the stereotype rather than the person: a masculine woman is still a woman, a feminine man is still a man, and neither needs a medical or identity category to live as they are. This is the resolution that many of the detransitioned and desisted people quoted on this page describe arriving at, and the rest of this page looks at what it looks like in practice.

Living outside stereotypes without a label

Across these accounts, the most common resolution is not a new identity but the discovery that no identity was required. Women describe being masculine, butch, muscular or "one of the guys" while being entirely female; men describe being soft, artistic, emotional or flamboyant while being entirely male.

By openly being both a woman (who doesn't identify as anything else) and masculine, you are showing the world that there is more than one way to be a woman … I want to someday live in a world where all women can be as masculine as they like without being told they are secretly men or would be better suited as a man. —detrans-throwaway7, detrans female

You can still be a feminine male if you want to. It's okay to enjoy femininity and identify with women instead of as them. —eyesclouds, desisted male

Practical themes that come up again and again:

• Separating sex from style. Clothes, hair, hobbies and careers can be whatever a person wants; none of them change or reveal sex.
• Finding real-world examples. Butch lesbian communities, gay men's communities and older gender non-conforming adults often provide the role models that online spaces did not.
• Questioning the source of the discomfort. Many describe their distress as being about how they were treated, about sexuality, about trauma or about puberty, rather than about their sex itself — see healing and recovery and gender exploratory therapy.
• Giving it time. Several commenters describe accepting themselves only in their mid-20s or later, which is consistent with the desistance literature on how much identity changes through adolescence and early adulthood.

For more personal accounts, browse the video archive, the study archive, and the support directory of gender-exploratory therapists and detransition support groups.

References

• American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5): Gender Dysphoria in Children (302.6). source; see also Psychiatric News (2013), New Gender Dysphoria Criteria Replace GID, source.
• Littman, L., O'Malley, S., Kerschner, H. & Bailey, J. M. (2024). Detransition and Desistance Among Previously Trans-Identified Young Adults. study page, source.
• Bailey, J. M. & Zucker, K. J. (1995). Childhood Sex-Typed Behavior and Sexual Orientation: A Conceptual Analysis and Quantitative Review. Developmental Psychology 31(1), 43–55. source.
• Butler, C. & Hutchinson, A. (2020). The pressing need for research and services for gender desisters/detransitioners. study page, source.
• Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. Routledge. publisher, study guide.
• Davis, J. T. M. & Hines, M. (2020). How Large Are Gender Differences in Toy Preferences? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Toy Preference Research. Archives of Sexual Behavior 49, 373–394. source.
• Del Giudice, M., Booth, T. & Irwing, P. (2012). The Distance Between Mars and Venus: Measuring Global Sex Differences in Personality. PLoS ONE 7(1). source.
• Green, R. (1987). The "Sissy Boy Syndrome" and the Development of Homosexuality. Yale University Press. NEJM review.
• Hassett et al. Sex differences in rhesus monkey toy preferences. summary; see also Monkeys do not show sex differences in toy preferences through their individual choices, source.
• Hyde, J. S. (2005). The Gender Similarities Hypothesis. American Psychologist. overview.
• Littman, L. (2021). Individuals Treated for Gender Dysphoria with Medical and/or Surgical Transition Who Subsequently Detransitioned: A Survey of 100 Detransitioners. study page, source.
• Lomax, J. & Butler, C. (2025). Narratives of Adults Registered Female at Birth Who Started a Medical Transition and Later Detransitioned. study page, source.
• Rieger, G., Linsenmeier, J. A. W., Gygax, L. & Bailey, J. M. (2008). Sexual orientation and childhood gender nonconformity: Evidence from home videos. Developmental Psychology 44, 46–58; and Rieger, Linsenmeier & Bailey (2009), Childhood Gender Nonconformity Remains a Robust and Neutral Correlate of Sexual Orientation. source.
• Singh, D., Bradley, S. J. & Zucker, K. J. (2021). A Follow-Up Study of Boys With Gender Identity Disorder. study page, source.
• Steensma, T. D., Biemond, R., de Boer, F. & Cohen-Kettenis, P. T. (2011). Desisting and persisting gender dysphoria after childhood: A qualitative follow-up study. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry 16, 499–516. source.
• Steensma, T. D., McGuire, J. K., Kreukels, B. P. C., Beekman, A. J. & Cohen-Kettenis, P. T. (2013). Factors Associated With Desistence and Persistence of Childhood Gender Dysphoria: A Quantitative Follow-Up Study. JAACAP 52(6), 582–590. source.
• Su, R., Rounds, J. & Armstrong, P. I. (2009). Men and Things, Women and People: A Meta-Analysis of Sex Differences in Interests. Psychological Bulletin 135(6), 859–884. source.