Boy will always be a boy.

[melsav]

http://lm.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A% ... HRIoSq&s=1
Don't know how old this or if you have seen it before

[Uncle Al]

Link doesn't work

Uncle Al

[crfriend]

Try this one: http://www.blogher.com/my-son-wants-buy-dress.

[Tor]

Thanks for the link, Carl. Good article. As these children grow up I imagine a portion of them will go on to aid and abet us by their presence in the world as adults, should we still need that. In addition, children growing up around them and getting to know them will think nothing of us wearing skirts, just as their friend wore skirts and dresses and such. Much the same for the adults in their lives, of course.

[crfriend]

Thanks for the link, Carl. Good article.

Thank Melsav for that one. All I did was to demangle a badly-formed URL.

As these children grow up I imagine a portion of them will go on to aid and abet us by their presence in the world as adults, should we still need that. In addition, children growing up around them and getting to know them will think nothing of us wearing skirts, just as their friend wore skirts and dresses and such. Much the same for the adults in their lives, of course.

Indeed, and this is the path that I hope that things will follow. It will, however, likely take quite a while.

There the folks who I call the "pioneers" who first worked up the guts to sally forth into the world with "both legs shoved down one pipe", and some of them are still here with us now but who are quiet; others have passed into the great beyond. We stand upon their shoulders and, in turn, make it easier for the next wave to embrace the notion just as the pioneers made it easier for us. I suppose in "modern lingo" we'd be considered "early adopters". If all falls into place, then the situation should cascade and eventually the notion of a guy in a skirt will be no more remarkable than somebody carrying an iPhone or a woman wearing trousers.

It is with great gratitude that I salute the pioneers, for without them I, as an "early adopter" would likely never have considered the notion. The cascade effect is important, and what started with a tiny handful of outright and sometimes visionary renegades has grown to where there are numbers involved. True, the numbers are still tiny when one looks at the larger portion of the population, but it's there -- and with any luck it'll grow. The only way to make it grow, however, is to get out there and show folks that not only is it possible, it's practical, comfortable, and it can look good!

To crib a line from RMA, "Skirt on!"

[dillon]

As much as I admire the courage of transgendered people who take all needed measures to live as the gender they identify as being, and especially the families that support them, I am not sure their inclinations equate to our own reasons for choosing the attire we like. The transgendered M2F wants to wear dresses and skirts because she sees the clothing as being the garb of the female sex, the gender she has chosen by her natural compulsion.

Most of the correspondents to this site choose our attire not to capture a classical or stereotypical gender identity, but for a myriad of other reasons. Speaking for myself, I choose skirts not to conform to a gender identity I do not physically possess, but rather to challenge the expectation of conforming wholly to the stereotypical trappings of the gender I do possess, and don't seek to change. I sense that many others here may feel the same way. We are the wrenches in the gears of a gender-defining machine, the sand in the vaseline that lubricates unquestioning compliance to "norms" we had no say-so in establishing. And the fact that it makes us stand apart, supremely confident in who we are as ourselves, is the icing on the cake.

[melsav]

Thanks Crfriend for demangling the url. Don't know why it did not work for Uncleal I have just tried it again and it works on my tablet fine. The article that your url go,s is not the same article as mine but the names are the same and same story is got across

[crfriend]

Thanks Crfriend for demangling the url. [...] The article that your url go,s is not the same article as mine but the names are the same and same story is got across

Oops. It turns out that there were two URLs in that Facebook-redirection link. One was the one that I put up earlier and this is the other one: http://pretendyouregoodatit.com/2014/01/24/a-boy-in-a-dress/. The structure of the redirection link was a strange one that seems to be using Unicode instead of plain ASCII, and it looks like it had part of Melsav's browsing history in it.

Generally speaking, stuff that redirects through Facebook won't work for non-Facebook subscribers (like myself). More generally, redirections of any sort are prone to causing problems, so if a link is to be posted try to get the canonical end-point and post that.

[pleated]

Try this one: http://www.blogher.com/my-son-wants-buy-dress.

In the early part of that article there is a link to the other article.
(edit- Carl has just linked directly to the original)

[Tor]

Thank Melsav for that one. All I did was to demangle a badly-formed URL.

True, I should have. Allow me to belatedly extend my thanks to melsav for the original link. Had you (or someone else) not unmangled the link I would probably have assumed it to be facebook and ignored it.

...If all falls into place, then the situation should cascade and eventually the notion of a guy in a skirt will be no more remarkable than somebody carrying an iPhone or a woman wearing trousers.

It is with great gratitude that I salute the pioneers, for without them I, as an "early adopter" would likely never have considered the notion. The cascade effect is important, and what started with a tiny handful of outright and sometimes visionary renegades has grown to where there are numbers involved. True, the numbers are still tiny when one looks at the larger portion of the population, but it's there -- and with any luck it'll grow. The only way to make it grow, however, is to get out there and show folks that not only is it possible, it's practical, comfortable, and it can look good!

I could well be wrong, but from my reading I have a sneaking suspicion that at some point the male skirt adoption rate may go practically vertical, leaving most, and possibly even us, blinking and shaking heads at the change, or at least the rapidity thereof.

Though I have not looked in detail to try and uncover numbers, my impression is that young boys who choose skirts and dresses (usually along with much from the "other side of the aisle") is somewhat more recent than the transgender awareness. Naturally this is more useful to us than the latter.

dillon, I believe the transgender reasons are rather different from our own - though I would hope the M2F folk wearing skirts and dresses find them comfortable and are comfortable in them. I suspect, in some ways at least, they and the crossdressers are rather closer to each other than either are to us. Most of us here are probably only wrenches in certain portions of that gender defining machine, some affecting more gears than others. I do like the turn of phrase.

[Grok]

I noticed that the author/father took comfort from the presence of the other family. That would make the author's family an Early Adopter family, following a "pioneer" family.

[Jim2]

I recently ran into this blog http://raisingmyrainbow.com/ which is more of the same kind of thing talked about here. It apparently was the first or one of the first of its kind. I find it significant that the boy is not necessarily transgender. In the latest post, he describes himself as a "boy who likes girl stuff". I've been reading the blog from the beginning and noticed at one point that she attacked narrow-minded people who were against anyone who bends gender stereotypes and she included those against men wearing skirts. I think the popularity of her blog shows how much things are changing, a change that I think will be good for us, too.

[STEVIE]

I've lived through this whole question, and it's not about being "transgendered".
From a very early age I simply wanted to wear a skirt, other "bits", more or less.
There was a given, wear a skirt, then you were a girl, I tried and failed.
I discovered, much too late that wearing a skirt and being masculine is not mutually exclusive.
Much kudos to these parents who truly back their kids in their choices. I wish I'd had that so many years ago.
Steve.

[dillon]

Jim, what a great story. Thanks for sharing it.

It's great that the little boy seemed to have teachers and classmates who accepted him. That will make a positive difference in not just his self esteem, but his academic performance as well, I would wager.

It is possible, perhaps even likely, that at some point he may encounter some negativity from other kids. At that age, children are like sponges. They absorb and internalize the attitudes of the foremost authority figures in their lives, namely their parents. So parents who react negatively to having a possibly transgendered child in the classroom with their own child, pass that attitude on perhaps unintentionally to their child. Eventually that socialization could be revealed in words or actions as the kids interact. Let's hope the boy has a gentle and safe school year.

[Sinned]

It does help if his transition between grades and, most importantly schools, includes peers that he has been with in his previous grade/school. That way he does have support from people who know him and his tastes. If they can navigate the teenage years without too much damage then the rest of their lives should be ok.