I was also a tomboy up to my early teens and this happened to me several times.
The truly crazy thing is that I wasn't even that gender non-conforming in clothing presentation when I was younger (I'm still not)
I wore dresses/skirts, wore heels, have long hair, wore make-up, got my nails done etc and I still got othered. Admittedly I was a goth as a teenager/young adult, but I even as a little girl wearing pink flowery dresses I would get NLOGed*
I often wonder what the true cause of it was - I would speak up for myself and didn't put up with bullshit or shenanigans so I got this reputation of being "difficult".
For instance, boys in my grade pulling my hair or kicking sand in my face? I'd beat the absolute fuck out of them.
Same thing as a teenager - if a guy tried to mess with me by throwing stuff or being a general turd, he was getting a beating.
This strategy worked out great because you only had to beat a dude up once and the others would mainly leave you alone
Maybe it could have been some form of reflexive homophobia where people thought I was going to become gay?
For having the audacity to not be a pushover, I must be punished because everyone knows that only lesbians can stand up for themselves
*Note: it was always by people outside my immediate family.
My parents were awesome and let me be myself.
I hate those 'girls are way meaner' posts because I have never heard of a girl making up rumours about what you supposedly did together, or humiliating you sexually in public, when previously you'd been actual friends. Especially if they found a way to work private information about you into it while mocking you. Girls can be 'mean' but even if they insult your appearance or call you a slut it is not going to be the same with how inventive a guy can get in sexually degrading you.
Oh my God! So they fucking all read from that same playbook. I had the same things happen to me and it was horrible.
Unbeknownst to me one male friend of mine had turned on me to impress "the boys" and, to reclaim his masculinity, plotted with them to put me in a vulnerable position at a house party.
Thank fuck that I had a solid group of female friends that stuck to our rule about not letting anyone go off alone.
I am wondering if we have an above-average number of tomboys or former tomboys in this thread now though. There's you, me, android raptor...

It could be the nature of the website itself and this thread?
Birds of a feather etc.