SO glad you reposted!
Oh boy... I can give you the results from countless studies from around the world:
Girly girls are born. These are the girls who when given firetrucks, balls, etc instead of playing with them as they are "intended" to play with INSTEAD there's the mommy firetruck, daddy firetruck, baby firetruck. They must be washed and dressed up and have complex relationships with each other... balls are dressed up in baby gowns made out of pillow sheets, or given wigs of grass, blocks make enclosures / houses/ and other 2 dimensional spiral type shapes, etc.
Tom-boys are born. Their barbies climb trees, blow things up, get stripped of their clothes and never redressed (or are redressed as mummies, vampires, sports stars, racecar drivers). Toy makeup gets used to make graffitti on walls, dresses come home torn and dirty as do PANTIES because they're rough and tumble playing in the dirt, sliding on the grass, hanging upside down on the monkey bars -and getting reprimanded for it-, throwing fits about wearing clothes they get in trouble for playing in (see above), when given another child and a stack of dolls end up playing catch with the dolls, or wrestling with the other child the dolls left behind. Given blocks to play with, tomboys tend to build straight UP or "out" in either case going for distance rather then "enclosure".
That NEITHER being a girly girl nor a tomboy is indicative of sexual orientation. Each are *equally* likely to be straight, bi, or gay.
That MOST girls are neither tomboys NOR girly girls. Most fall somewhere in between closer to one side of the spectrum than the other. There is NOTHING that the parent of a girly girl nor a tomboy can do to alter their child's natural inclination. Many parents try. In *most* cases, parents who tried very firmly to "force" their girly girl to be a tomboy, or tomboy to be a girly girl fought the battle for the child's ENTIRE LIFE. However, there is a lot of "middle ground". Girly girls who would shriek and cry and refuse to get out on the pitch/field in full blown tantrum over the idea of sweating or getting dirty WILL however quite joyfully take up very very physically active ballet or cheerleading. Tomboys who cut off doll's heads and ruined every dress that ever came their way WILL however be fantastic babysitters (esp active toddlers of either sex and rambunctious boys or multiples that drive everyone else nuts) often revel in spa days (particularly ones with massage and hot soaks), sewing their own clothes (sporty or rockerish clothes). ((ODDLY enough, just anecdotally, I know more tomboys who have a THING for lingerie... go figure. Girly and lacy and feminine... but only where no one will see it!!!))
The same, somewhat inverse, is true for boys. Some are rough and tumble "classic" boys (just like tomboys have "classic" boy behaviors), some are much more generative. And ditto for boys NEITHER is indicative of sexual orientation later on. (It's also indicative of our society that we don't really have a "word" for the percentage of boys who do things more typically feminine that *aren't* either sexually related or derogatory.) And ditto... most boys fall neither into the middle ground closer to one side or the other.
There've been tons of studies of early childhood behavior (the block thing is one of the coolest "unexpected" results, girls tend to build enclosures, boys tend to build up or out in both cases going for distance - like bridges), from EU studies done over generations with hundreds of thousands of subjects, to US studies that have only a few hundred subjects and are uber specific (like children never exposed to TV and only give the opposite sex's (can I put quotes around that possessive 's?) toys to see how they're played with, to kids leading normal lives given the opposite sex"'s" toys to play with.
