Sissies and Tomboys : Gender Nonconformity and Homosexual Childhood

What is the difference between a child being called a sissy in the school playground and being labelled with a disorder in a psychiatric hospital?

Combining theory and personal narrative, this volume examines the meaning of the "normal" that pervades the literature on GID (gender-identity disorder of childhood) and investigates the theoretical underpinnings of the diagnosis.

It considers how the stigma of illness influences a child's development and what homosexual childhood, freed from the constraints of conventionally acceptable gender expression, might look like.