Gender in Life and Fiction

Today's New York Times has an op-ed piece entitled "My Daughter Is Not Transgender. She’s a Tomboy." It's by Lisa Selin Davis,  author of a young adult novel called “Lost Stars,” and in the Times article, she describes how her seven-year-old daughter is constantly asked whether she wants to be identified as a boy because of the way she dresses and because of her shaggy, short hair.

This, of course, reflects America's current hypersensitivity about gender issues: the idea that gender is something one can choose, as opposed to something one is born with, and the idea that it is a violation of a person's civil rights if such choices -- perhaps not always obvious -- are not respected.





This article jumped out at me because I just finished reading The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, by Carson McCullers, which was published in 1940.  The heroine, a young girl named Mick, is distinctly a tomboy when readers first encounter her.

Here's how one of the book's other chief characters sees her, on page 22 of the "Mariner" paperback edition:

"He thought of her hoarse, boyish voice and her habit of hitching up her khaki shorts and swaggering like a cowboy in the picture show." She was then about 12 years old and was also wearing a blue shirt and tennis shoes.

Despite her early appearance and behavior, at no point in the book is there any suggestion that Mick is other than a girl, and she soon transitions into skirts and dresses.

Well, the book was written over 70 years ago and obviously, things have changed.

Or have they?

The following is from page 132 of the same book:

He [Biff Brannon, owner of a popular café] laid his finger on the side of his nose and cocked his head to one side. Mick had grown so much in the past year that soon she would be taller than he was. She was dressed in the red sweater and blue pleated skirt she had worn every day since school started. Now the pleats had come out and the hem dragged loose around her sharp, jutting knees. She was at the age when she looked as much like an overgrown boy as a girl. And on that subject, why was it that the smartest people mostly missed that point?  By nature all people are of both sexes. [my emphasis] So that marriage and the bed is not all by any means. The proof? Real youth and old age. Because often old men's voices grow high and they take on a mincing walk. And old women sometimes grow fat and their voices get rough and deep and they grow little dark moustaches. And he proved it himself -- the part of him that almost wished he was a mother and that Mick and Baby were his kids. Abruptly Biff turned from the cash register.

Biff's thoughts were probably at least in part a reflection of McCullers' own sense of identity.