A matter of evolution

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mishawakaskirt
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Re: A matter of evolution

Post by mishawakaskirt »

crfriend wrote:On reflection...
Moonshadow wrote:She told me to have a blessed day and went on her way.
Do you suppose you may have brushed wings with another Wiccan? That's not a typical Christian line.
I have heard a Christian or two in Kentucky use that phrase before to "have a blessed day"
Let me just say, you have not met nor know every Christian. Yes there are a lot starchy biased snobs like the pharisees that wouldn't touch a sinner with a 20 foot pole. Also the term Christian gets used fairly loosely, not all Christians are Christian.
Then there are some that love blindly, without demeaning and shaming others like us. Once a very wise follower of Jesus told me "love the sinner hate the sin". They are rare, if you ever meet one, you have found a special, true friend, with unboundless love. I am blessed to know a few here. Don't put Christians all in one boat, they are not all the same.

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crfriend
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Re: A matter of evolution

Post by crfriend »

mishawakaskirt wrote:I have heard a Christian or two in Kentucky use that phrase before to "have a blessed day"
Hmm. I stand corrected.
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Re: A matter of evolution

Post by crfriend »

moonshadow wrote:Regardless of her spiritual affiliations, she was a friendly soul, and it's always nice bumping into those in the real world... :)
Cherish those. They're very rare.
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skirted_in_SF
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Re: A matter of evolution

Post by skirted_in_SF »

crfriend wrote:On reflection...
Moonshadow wrote:She told me to have a blessed day and went on her way.
Do you suppose you may have brushed wings with another Wiccan? That's not a typical Christian line.
I used to receive that goodby from an older Aftican-American woman who was the manager of an Oroweat bread outlet store where I shopped for years. She was a lovely lady and I miss her since thee store closed about five years ago.
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Re: A matter of evolution

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I hear that all the time. Not sure why you find it unusual.
As a matter of fact, the sun DOES shine out of my ...
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Re: A matter of evolution

Post by Pdxfashionpioneer »

Carl, there are lots of friendly souls rattling around the Pacific North West.

There are also lots of companies that have different standards for men and women in their dress codes. That's why I suggested we embrace the umbrella term that was offered to us so we could get those standards changed from being a roadblock to wearing skirts to work to being an opportunity. Obtaining workplace fashion freedom will in turn open things up for EVERYBODY to express their individuality and of course demonstrate that variations from the gender binary are more common than most people realize ... and in due course create a virtuous cycle.

As to encouraging Joe Six-pack to wear skirts, I personally don't care if he does or doesn't start wearing skirts just so long as those of us who would like to are allowed to. But my experience with blue collar folks (I put myself through college by being one) is that once they see that a style is at least marginally socially acceptable and they feel like trying it, they will. By and large, they're intelligent, independent, strong-willed individuals and individualists. We don't have to avoid labels on their behalf because most of them don't give a damn about labels, just don't try to stick a derogatory one on any of them; they use their muscles all day long.

As to your original question, "Why haven't skirts for men caught on?" it's VERY simple and has been said in this forum a number of times. Men have been clinging to the last vestiges of their social superiority like a drowning man does to the smallest scrap of wood. Throughout the civilized era, clothes have been an indicator of social status. The history of Western fashions is one of men retreating one then another fashion because women adopted them. The French word for dress is "robe" because they were originally worn by high status men. Then the ladies started to rock them.

High heeled shoes didn't reach Western Europe until European nobles saw them on Persian cavalrymen in the 1400's. The European nobles introduced them to their courts and they were very popular with the men for a number of reasons until again the ladies took them over. Even with all of the practical reasons in their favor -- they kept you in the stirrups better, they made you taller and therefore more powerful looking, they kept you out of the mud and the muck that was everywhere -- the men abandoned them so they wouldn't look like they were dressing like women. In the 19th century every state in the US had statutes making it illegal for women to wear pants in public. Once men had abandoned everything else because they had been taken over by the women, the men in power weren't taking any chances!

With a better memory and a little more research I could give you dates on when men started and stopped wearing nearly every piece of clothing women wear. With bras being the only exception that I know of, every single thing that a modern woman wears, started out as men's wear. Okay, you have to recognize Elizabethan tights as the predecessor of pantyhose, but that's not even a stretch, the British refer to "pantyhose" as "tights."

So why might the pendulum swing back the other way? And men start wearing skirts again? 1) Woman are achieving increasing amounts of social equality; including winning the popular vote for the US Presidency. 2) Variances in gender identity, expression and sexual orientation from the gender binary is getting increasing acceptance. The final push may well be in a lesson we can learn from fashion history.

As I believe I have related before, circa 1969-70 the pantsuit was the fashion rage. Middle-class American women went crazy for them. Fearing that frenzy would infect the dignity of corporate America's offices, the President of IBM circulated a memo that basically said, 'Don't let those French designers fool you. Nothing's changed in office decorum. Our dress code stands as written; women wear only skirts and dresses and only men wear pants, as part of their suits.'

As fate would have it his private secretary saw the issue quite differently. She organized nearly every woman at the Poughkeepsie HQ to get the right to wear pants. They all showed up one fine day in their very smart pantsuits, assembled in the parking lot, marched through all of the buildings in the campus so no one missed the point that today was the first day of a whole new era. Within an hour she was called into her boss's office to be met by THE boss and a couple of top lieutenants. After the requisite amount of back and forth, the C-suite bowed to the inevitability of women wearing pants in the office but got the ladies to concede that 'Yes! They still needed a dress code so yes, they'd work together, management and ladies, to write it.' The rest, as the cliché goes, is history. I know that was the way it happened because one of the women who worked there at the time told me about it the Summer after.

That's why I said that while corporations were writing policies to accommodate the Transgendered, we should embrace the label so we could get a seat at that planning table and get our interests written into the policies. But Carl, you and several of the other old hands are so against labels, especially that one, I didn't get back much enthusiasm for the idea.

Right now I'm not a permanent employee of any organization so for yours truly it's all rather moot. But I think that's the way we can tip this over the edge. Once men wearing skirts to work is an accepted practice throughout corporate America -- once one company adopts that practice the rest will fall like dominos -- the rest of our society will fall right in line as well.
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Re: A matter of evolution

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Pdxfashionpioneer wrote:As to encouraging Joe Six-pack to wear skirts, I personally don't care if he does or doesn't start wearing skirts just so long as those of us who would like to are allowed to. But my experience with blue collar folks (I put myself through college by being one) is that once they see that a style is at least marginally socially acceptable and they feel like trying it, they will. By and large, they're intelligent, independent, strong-willed individuals and individualists. We don't have to avoid labels on their behalf because most of them don't give a damn about labels, just don't try to stick a derogatory one on any of them; they use their muscles all day long.
Indeed, but slapping a sexually-charged label on them tends to make their minds go wonky because Americans, for some unknown reason, are fixated by the topic (perhaps because it's so taboo in Puritanical doctrine?). By applying entirely-likely inappropriate sexual/gender labels to them is to be shooting ourselves in the feet in trying to get the notion of skirts accepted on guys. We need to stop confusing style choices with sex/gender matters. If we don't it's simply not going to happen, because nobody else will think about it especially given the amount of ink that's being spilt at the moment about trans-*. It's a matter of practicality, respect, and politeness.
As to your original question, "Why haven't skirts for men caught on?" it's VERY simple and has been said in this forum a number of times. Men have been clinging to the last vestiges of their social superiority like a drowning man does to the smallest scrap of wood.
That last scrap of wood has already rotted away. Women have won; men are now the subjugate sex. We may as well get over it. However, that does not mean we should abandon who we are as (hopefully) rational, caring human beings. We've got to have standards or we will become as bad as those who dominate.
[... C]orporations were writing policies to accommodate the Transgendered, we should embrace the label so we could get a seat at that planning table and get our interests written into the policies. But Carl, you and several of the other old hands are so against labels, especially that one, I didn't get back much enthusiasm for the idea.
(Emphasis mine.) No. You miss the point.

The reason I am against the trans-* labelling system is that it is entirely inaccurate for the majority of the population. It is offensive -- needlessly -- and therefore inappropriate. You may be trans-* -- and that's absolutely fine -- most folks aren't. Sometimes I wonder if it's really the majority that needs legal protection.

Honestly, I have no issue whatsoever with trans-* folks. I really don't. However, I'm not trans-* and do not like being shoved into that box by somebody who neither knows nor understands me. I was done with that nonsense by the time I escaped the school-yard and the ignorant bullies therein.
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Re: A matter of evolution

Post by Ralph »

crfriend wrote:The reason I am against the trans-* labelling system is that it is entirely inaccurate for the majority of the population.
Quite so. Although even if there were accurate, descriptive labels for each lifestyle preference that were consistently used across the spectrum in all societies and cultures and languages, "the majority of the population" would continue lumping everyone the slightest bit different in any way as a pervert. Crossdresser, hetero man presenting as male but wearing a skirt, gay, pedophile, trans-this-that-and-the-other... sometimes it seems as if most of the population considers them all the same.
crfriend wrote:Honestly, I have no issue whatsoever with trans-* folks. I really don't. However, I'm not trans-* and do not like being shoved into that box by somebody who neither knows nor understands me. I was done with that nonsense by the time I escaped the school-yard and the ignorant bullies therein.
I have more than once gotten into discussions with folks in the trans-* and gay community who accuse me of selling out, or denying my true self, or tarnishing their good image by making a mockery of crossdressing because I don't take it "seriously" enough to present as female.

A pox on all of 'em. (specifically those who have such narrow, hostile views -- obviously not inclusive of those who just want to live and let live).
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Re: A matter of evolution

Post by Pdxfashionpioneer »

Carl, read the latest issue of National Geographic.

Ralph, I'm astonished at the reception you've received. Is that recent? I know 20 years crossdressers were pretty dogmatic, the folks I've met recently who don't accept the gender binary are a whole lot more open-minded than that.

Apparently, at last count we've gotten to 50 different labels to try to parse each and every one of the variations. Good grief! Talk about divide and conquer! What I liked about transgender being applied as an umbrella term for everyone who expressed themselves in a manner other than the gender binary fashion, gay, lesbian or bi- was the simplicity and economy of it and the opportunity to create a critical mass of folks who could topple the barriers. However, the transsexuals are monopolizing the term transgendered and Carl doesn't like it so I guess there's no more to be said for the matter. Damned if I know how we'll build the coalition we need to break down the societal barriers block our fashion freedom, especially on the job, but maybe those of you who object to my terminology can come up with something.
David, the PDX Fashion Pioneer

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