Although ref femmejean’s recent spate of postings it seems the issue is still very much alive.
IMO this much quoted post from 12+ years ago pretty well nailed it.
I am one of the referenced people.
I used “sissy” for a long time, it was a good word, even despite the negative-connotation baggage.
I don’t use it much any more because it is increasingly used in a specific narrow sense to mean males who get a sexual thrill out of being “feminized”, i.e., forced (or at least “forced” within the context of having a safe word and within the constraints of a defined “scene”) to dress in frilly underpants and dresses and skirts and high heels and stuff. It’s a humiliation-based kink. See in particular “sissy maid”.
(not my kink)
With the greater social awareness of transgender people these days, I just say I’m a “male girl”.
It’s actually closer to how I perceived myself when I first came out.
Given that Wikipedia considers David Bowie to have been a dandy, I’d say that fits.
Wait… what? When did this happen?
What, you don’t have a pink toolbox full of pink tools?! (I thought that was the stupidest thing I ever saw until I saw pink guns…)
Yeah. The spouse and I were at a gun shop one time when I overheard him tell the guy behind the counter “Don’t show her anything pink, it will piss her off. Black is fine. Even better if you have purple.” On the flip side, there are women who wouldn’t buy a guy unless it was pink. :rolleyes:
The implication is that girls can use tools, but they have to be those tools, the special girl tools, not the boys’ tools. Yes, in many cases the only difference is the color, but not in all cases. Sometimes the pink tools are the same as the men’s, but with a smaller grip, which is in fact a useful feature sometimes, but by making them pink and marketing them strictly towards women it leaves the smaller-sized men out in the cold.
From what I’ve seen at work, Carhartt gets it - when they have “women’s” outdoor clothing it’s identical to what the men have, except for the size. The packaging might have some pink touches (though usually not, usually it just has “women” printed on it) but the product is the same materials as the men’s.
There’s a time and place for segregating choices by gender, but “pinkwashing” just for the sake of “appealing to women” disgusts me.
We already have a word, it’s “bitch boy”.
Damn zombies.
Well, we need a opposite term. The female equivalent of “tom” in cats is “queen” (yes, that’s true–I’d never known that either) and the opposite of boy is girl. So I guess the term would be “queengirl?”
Okay, maybe not.
Just “queen” works.
In Japanese, you have “Bishōnen”, which translates as “Beautiful Boy”.
The easiest way to describe it would be to have the listener think of a popular boy band.
I’m baffled by how come people still make gender roles and expression essential to gender identity. There’s no need for that. Gender roles and expression are social signifiers. Gender identity means who you are to yourself (at least) and usually to the world also. We’re habituated to classifying social signifiers as gender-determined and tying them to gender identity, and this in an inequitable world where girls are routinely devalued, with the consequence that certain gender roles & expression determine a person’s worth.
Just as sexual orientation varies independently from gender identity, so ought gender roles & expression be decoupled from gender identity and judgments of a persons worth. I think that’s going to be the only way to “answer” the OP question. I put “answer” in quotes because the OP asks for a verbal solution when none exists. As several above have remarked, this problem lies in social constructions that determine gender rather than in language, which is another set of signfiers. The problem and its solution lie in what we’re signifying.
I’m not one of the radical gender revolutionaries who argue that gender must be altogether eradicated. I don’t think that will ever happen. Gender is a human constant that will always manifest in some form or other. I think we shall have to learn how to do it without disadvantaging some while privileging others. Once society learns to treat everyone equitably, I’m confident the language will sort itself out.
This is where someone exclaims “Vive la différence!”
As a woman who is helped by tools with a smaller grip, I’m happy to report that places like Harbor Freight and Home Depot sell stubby handled tools in black and gray (and sometimes red or yellow), so those guys with a smaller grip and we women who hate pink have other options.
Now if only they’d offer 25 pound sledgehammers in pink for the big men who just really like pink things.
Given that that’s the natural coloration of most of us Caucasian guys, that doesn’t reduce their selection drastically. 
I can live with ‘fop’ or ‘overnice.’
You blew right past “zeldagirl” which sounds* awesome.* Dang, I need some feminine purſuits so I can be a zeldagirl.
Tombies
nm