Boys should be able to wear tutus and tiaras - Archbishop of

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greenboots
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Boys should be able to wear tutus and tiaras - Archbishop of

Post by greenboots »

In response to the BBC News item about the Church of England’s new anti-bullying policy

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-41964542

Which particularly mentioned transgender bullying over dressing up, I posted the following piece on my blog. I’d be interested in your comments.
Two recent, apparently unrelated, news stories have troubled me for similar reasons. The first concerns the Church of England's new guidance on tackling bullying in its schools. The Archbishop of Canterbury writes that everyone should be free to explore their identity without being labelled or bullied, including allowing boys to wear tutus and tiaras to wear superhero costumes.


This all sounds very laudable: let's not label anyone simply by their appearance. However, the context
of the report (countering a reported rise in transgender bullying) risks automatically labelling any boy to exercises his new found freedom as "transgender" when he may simply want to see how the other half live. And by implicitly labelling such boys, they are more likely to be exposed to the very form of bullying the measure is designed to defeat. (Ironically, no one has mentioned the more obvious and statistically more common label of "transvestite")


The observant among you will have noticed I keep referring to "boys"; should we not also be concerned about the welfare of transgender girls? Indeed we should. But when so much of modern high street fashion is based on historically male clothing, who will comment on a girl wearing boys' clothes?


The second problem with labels is that by definition they define people. If a boy takes the Archbishop's advice and tries on a tutu, he may be labelled "transgender", and thereafter consider himself as such. He may then fell under pressure to conform to other transgender behaviours.

If this seems a little far-fetched, read the story of deaf singer Mandy Harvey, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/disability-41850498who has received death threats from some deaf people for "promoting oralism" - the idea that deaf people should lip-read rather than use sign language. These people do not see the irony of this accusation when Harvey’s band members are learning American Sign Language to better communicate with her.

Nor do they recognise that she is demonstrating an amazing capability to "hear" music through touch that many fully hearing people cannot accomplish.
We certainly do need to fight the tendency to bully those who are different, whether because of their gender expression, disability or unusual dress sense. But if we do this by assigning them to a labelled community, we are in danger of reinforcing the very bullying we seek to oppose.
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Re: Boys should be able to wear tutus and tiaras - Archbisho

Post by Grok »

I agree that we should be careful about labeling people. As for boys and clothing, are they transgender, or trying things just to try things, or do they just like wearing skirts?
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Re: Boys should be able to wear tutus and tiaras - Archbisho

Post by Fred in Skirts »

Labels are killers!! If we put labels on people we are in essence killing them. Maybe not in the physical sense but both morally and socially. I do not like labels and try my best not to use them. I believe we all should try not to use them.
"It is better to be hated for what you are than be loved for what you are not" Andre Gide: 1869 - 1951
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Re: Boys should be able to wear tutus and tiaras - Archbisho

Post by pelmut »

greenboots wrote:...
The second problem with labels is that by definition they define people.
That's not quite where the problems come from - the problems arise when people have been labelled by others and are then forced to comply with the stereotypes for those labels.
There is no such thing as a normal person, only someone you don't know very well yet.
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Re: Boys should be able to wear tutus and tiaras - Archbisho

Post by Stu »

We need to distinguish between items worn for play, like tiaras and tutus, and genuine clothing options, like a simple skirt or dress.

I don't think the dressing up is an issue that is especially relevant to us. For me, I would invite a more findamental question, like why does a child have to be female in order to be allowed to wear a perfectly simple garment like this:

Image
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Re: Boys should be able to wear tutus and tiaras - Archbisho

Post by Fred in Skirts »

Stu wrote:We need to distinguish between items worn for play, like tiaras and tutus, and genuine clothing options, like a simple skirt or dress.

I don't think the dressing up is an issue that is especially relevant to us. For me, I would invite a more findamental question, like why does a child have to be female in order to be allowed to wear a perfectly simple garment like this:

Image
If my child (boy or girl) wanted to wear that dress and top I would buy it for them in a flash. I believe we should all be able to wear what we want when and where we want. I believe that gender labels should be removed from all clothing. Clothes are not alive, they have no gender and should not have labels attached saying they are for male or female only.
"It is better to be hated for what you are than be loved for what you are not" Andre Gide: 1869 - 1951
Always be yourself because the people that matter don’t mind and the ones that mind don’t matter.
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Re: Boys should be able to wear tutus and tiaras - Archbisho

Post by Caultron »

Stu wrote:..why does a child have to be female in order to be allowed to wear a perfectly simple garment like this...
Obviously, they shouldn't, and it seems more and more dress codes are being revised accordingly. In fact, it seems to be a trendy thing to do, even if a school has no boys who actually want to wear skirts.

(Unless, of course, cases of easing dress codes are less common that sensational press coverage makes them appear.)

I certainly see more stories about dress codes being revised than I do about boys actually taking advantage of them. That could be to respect the privacy of the children, or it could be from the number of boys wearing skirts or dresses to school being really small.

I've seen estimates that 0.5-1% of all school-age children have non-binary preferences of one type or another, but if that were true, almost every school would have a few boys wearing skirts, and that just doesn't seem to be the case. Nor do I ever see boys wearing skirts away from school.

Or perhaps there are more who want to but fears or parents prevent them.
Courage, conviction, nerve, verve, dash, panache, guts, nuts, balls, gall, élan, stones, whatever. Get some and get skirted.

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Re: Boys should be able to wear tutus and tiaras - Archbisho

Post by greenboots »

Stu wrote:We need to distinguish between items worn for play, like tiaras and tutus, and genuine clothing options, like a simple skirt or dress.
Stu, I would agree with you. However, the Archbishop makes the connection between dressing up and transgender. Hence the reason for my article - unnecessary labels attached to innocent play.
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Re: Boys should be able to wear tutus and tiaras - Archbisho

Post by Grok »

Caultron wrote: Or perhaps there are more who want to but fears or parents prevent them.
Most likely. There are probably a few boys, who, as some members were, interested, but don't really believe that they have permission to try skirts.
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Re: Boys should be able to wear tutus and tiaras - Archbisho

Post by Stu »

Some interesting responses, so let me pose a question in relation to the garment I showed above. Put yourselves in the place of yourself as a 10-year-old boy. Your parents have come home from shopping and they saw that dress and bought it for you. Would you wear it? Or would you have been horrified?

If my parents had bought it for me, I would have thought they had taken leave of their sense and I wouldn't have been seen dead in it. It is only with age and a bit of opening up of the mind that I see my reaction would have been constrained by cultural norms and my own strong desire to fit into them. Children seek to be accepted as much as they seek to rebel, and they rarely set themselves against such norms. It would take a very brave lad to look at that dress and say "Yeah! I'll wear that!", and then confidently go out in it.
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Re: Boys should be able to wear tutus and tiaras - Archbisho

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Stu wrote:Some interesting responses, so let me pose a question in relation to the garment I showed above. Put yourselves in the place of yourself as a 10-year-old boy. Your parents have come home from shopping and they saw that dress and bought it for you. Would you wear it? Or would you have been horrified?...
I suppose that would depend on whether I'd already told them, "I want to try wearing a skirt," or asked, "Why do only girls get to wear skirts?"

I wonder what would happen if a school that's just liberalized it's dress code went a bit further and designated every Tuesday as "Skirts Day" when everyone (including boys) had to wear a skirt, and Thursday as "Trousers Day" when everyone had to wear trousers. Parents with rakes, shovels, and instruments of destruction, I suppose, followed by lawsuits, but still an interesting concept.

At high schools students sometimes organize an Opposite Day when everyone does something opposite from their normal behavior. The results are usually all over the map but it's not unusual for boys to show up in skirts or dresses. It's just a gag, though; I highly doubt any of them would keep it up past the one day.
Courage, conviction, nerve, verve, dash, panache, guts, nuts, balls, gall, élan, stones, whatever. Get some and get skirted.

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Re: Boys should be able to wear tutus and tiaras - Archbisho

Post by skirtyscot »

I'd have been secretly delighted but I doubt I would have worn it in public or even in front of my siblings. But that's because I would have expected to be slagged off mercilessly and for ever. If I thought that everyone would have said "fine, if you want to", I would have worn it happily. But children and the seventies weren't like that.
Keep on skirting,

Alastair
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