Are there any studies of "masculine women" and tomboys in pre-industrial society?

I live in a city with lots of happy tomboys -- for example, there are lots of happy butch lesbians here. Growing up, my sister was one of them, very gender subversive.

Is there any information on the position of such women when they were born into tribal or pre-industrial societies? When hunter-gatherer societies were heavily gendered in terms of tribal roles, was there a similar highly gender transgressive 10% of the population, and if so, is there any recollection of them? For example, I'm wondering in societies like those Jared Diamond studied in Papua New Guinea, did gender outlaws exist with any regularity?

For example, in societies where the men hunted, did any of them have a "1 in 10" or "1 in 20" women hunters?

I have heard the anecdotal stuff about "two-spirit people" as an explanation for the sporadic acceptance of gay/trans people in Native tribes, but I am looking for something much more concrete from an actual study where numbers were looked at.

Posted Dec 2, 2015, 11:37 PM UTC

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