Stu wrote:To be honest, I don't buy into the currently fashionable ideas on "gender fluid". While there are some individuals who are a bit ambivalent with regard to their gender, the vast majority of us are squarely in the camp of being either male or female.
So why would boys wear skirts? Well, the answer is that all but a very small number absolutely will not do so while ever they retain their association with femininity. If, however, we can undermine that association, then skirts will become as normal a garment for even the most masculine of males as trousers/pants are natural for feminine women.
I think we will see the most advancement in achievements if we steer well away from anything that remotely smacks of gender fluidity and crossdressing, and instead focus on skirts being no less masculine than a pair of jeans.
Stu
Your comments pertain to stuff that I think about a lot. On the one hand, I absolutely agree that there is a big difference between thinking of a man wearing a skirt as being gender fluid, or, as it is sometimes put, getting in touch with his feminine side, and thinking of a man wearing a skirt as standing in opposition to the idea that a skirt is feminine. The first point of view says that a man wearing a skirt is saying something about himself, his gender. The other point of view says that the action says not much about the man, but people's reactions to it say a lot about them and their ideas about gender.
The topic of whether men (and boys) can wear skirts is happening in a context in which many questions about gender are being raised. Are women really more empathetic than men and, if so, is it in our genes or just a result of how they are socialized? That's just one of many examples. In this regard, there are many activists and thinkers who have come down hard against the idea that gender is binary, and that the gender binary is the source of our societal problems around these issues. One sees it, for example, in the latest book by Jo Paoletti. On the other hand, in that same book, she muses on the possibility of a time in the future when a man can wear a skirt simply so he can feel the breeze on his legs. One wants to ask, which is it, is he challenging the idea that people are either entirely male or entirely female, or is he challenging the idea that wearing a skirt (and perhaps other clothing) has anything to do with one's gender (or at least, his own gender). I think in some ways the second of these ideas is more radical. The first idea only makes sense if skirts are feminine. If they are not, then a man wearing them is not acting in a feminine way. The attack on the gender binary essentially accepts the gender stereotypes of society (e.g., skirts are for women) he may think he is) so it can claim that people need not stay in one or the other of these rigid boxes. The second idea attacks those stereotypes.
While I believe that these are two very different ideas, they can get muddled. I think that talk of gender fluidity and one's feminine side may often just be a way for young people to claim that anyone can have qualities and do things traditionally associated with females or males only. Such talk may not really mean that you have to be other than a man to wear a skirt, only that one need not fit into the stereotypes of society, where now the stereotypes come to be seen as disconnected from anything having to do with the essential nature of a man or a woman. So it ends up becoming a rejection of the stereotypes really of their elders. Especially if young people see it the latter way, it could really take off. Young people often like nothing better than to repudiate the ideas and ways of their elders. That seems especially true of the younger generations rising up today.
My point is that the talk of gender fluidity by the younger generation may sound like it is quite different than attacking the idea that a skirt is feminine, it might not have that sense for them. They may see it as one and the same thing. In this respect, it might be interesting to contemplate the fact that I found this article as a link from a page that says that clothing has no gender, and the page was created in defense of a young gay man who wanted to wear what is considered a feminine piece of jewelry.
I do how ever not wear a cape and my canines are now dogs only as the painful yanker has taken them. 
