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.