Has the attention on transgendered individuals helped us?

Discussion of fashion elements and looks that are traditionally considered somewhat "femme" but are presented in a masculine context. This is NOT about transvestism or crossdressing.
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Couya
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Re: Has the attention on transgendered individuals helped us

Post by Couya »

I can't agree with those that say recent news in the trans etc world has helped skirt wearers at all (help? who needs help?). I find drag queens a bore and am more likely to admire the appearance of a well built man in conventional clothes. I'm not keen on trousers for myself or for women, but who cares? The majority of men and women wear trousers whatever their sexual preferences, so I can see no connection at all between clothing and sex.

Maybe lesbians took to trousers years ago before they went main stream for other women; I don't know. We didn't talk about things like that in those days, so lesbians were invisible and did not help women's fight to wear trousers. Today talk about sexuality is omnipresent, especially if it is not quite straight, and people jump to conclusions from what they can see (clothes, for example) without knowing anything about what lgbt people are really like.
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Re: Has the attention on transgendered individuals helped us

Post by Caultron »

So, if you agree that gender lines have blurred and tolerance has increased for gender and sexuality, why not for gender-associated clothing styles?
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Re: Has the attention on transgendered individuals helped us

Post by crfriend »

Caultron wrote:So, if you agree that gender lines have blurred and tolerance has increased for gender and sexuality, why not for gender-associated clothing styles?
I agree that if we take what's getting fed to us by the mass media tolerance has increased for "non-binary" gender; however, I doubt that most are entirely comfortable getting characterised so personally when it comes to matters of simple clothing styles. My point is that a style choice in clothing should not be confused with gender or sexuality; continuing that confusion will hinder the acceptance of said styles by a large number of men who still have an irrational fear of getting incorrectly stereotyped.

Recall that until very, very recently, calling somebody a homosexual was a big-time slur, and it still is in many parts of the world. Why would an otherwise perfectly "average" guy risk getting that sort of "attention" simply by swapping trousers for a skirt? The answer, of course, is that he wouldn't. That is why I'm a bit hot on the notion of completely decoupling the notions of "gender", "sexuality", and "style choice". Skirts for men will never catch on in any sort of a meaningful way if the stereotype persists that any man who puts on a skirt must be somehow else "strange" or "off-normal"; this is psychology 101 -- no "average" guy is going to invite potential trouble or ridicule (even if the fear thereof is entirely internalised) by dressing differently than all the other guys around him.

I endured years of bullying and ridicule with such slurs in my earlier years -- mainly because I was well-mannered and knew how to behave. Even my late grandfather resorted to such slurs when speaking of my long hair (which is what led to a final break with him; I'd had enough). This sort of stuff grinds on one over time and simply makes life more unpleasant than it needs to be. Why would one invite it upon himself?
Last edited by crfriend on Sat Aug 01, 2015 11:34 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: tigetened up the grammar a bit (Work in progress?)
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Caultron
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Re: Has the attention on transgendered individuals helped us

Post by Caultron »

Well, yeah, that's a dilemma that comes up a lot on this board. Nobody wants to be a cross-dresser, they just want to wear skirts.

Same with transvestite (if that's different from cross-dressing), being transgender, being gay...

I like to think I wear skirts despite they're generally classified as feminine, rather than because, but that might be just a mental crutch on my part.

But for everyone else to adopt a more live-and-let-live view of anyone who operates outside the strictest rules of gender conformity doesn't classify us in any way other than that.

Or at least, so it seems to me.
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Re: Has the attention on transgendered individuals helped us

Post by Couya »

Carl beat me too it and expressed my thoughts perfectly. All the attention focussed on non-conventional sexuality prevents people from seeing a man in a skirt as no more than a man in a skirt.
And I am not so sure that lgbt people are accepted as widely as the media would lead us to think, except, perhaps in the big cities.
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Re: Has the attention on transgendered individuals helped us

Post by Brad »

This thread has become quite an intelligent and busy exchange of ideas. The consensus seems to be that the media's recent focus on TGs hurts out cause, and I took the position that it did help our cause.

There's an annoying double standard at work here. When a man wears a skirt, people question his motive. Why is he wearing a skirt? We don't ask women that question. Sometimes the easiest answer is the best answer. I lost a bet. It's too hot to wear pants, I'm conducting a sociological experiment. Etc. All because it's harder to say "I'm a man who wants to wear a skirt".

For that matter, why do we wear skirts? It is in our DNA? Are we hormonally challenged? Scientists have never figured it out. Maybe the real answer is the most obvious- we like to wear skirts because we do. Why do some people like to watch baseball? Why do some people want to travel? Nobody worries about those answers.

I still contend that we can tag along with TGs and win our battle for acceptance but I seem to be alone.

Maybe I'm overthinking the issue. We're normal average men and society just hasn't caught up with us yet.
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Re: Has the attention on transgendered individuals helped us

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Brad wrote:...I still contend that we can tag along with TGs and win our battle for acceptance but I seem to be alone.
I was going to stop posting to this thread but no, there's also me.
Brad wrote:Maybe I'm overthinking the issue. We're normal average men and society just hasn't caught up with us yet.
I think a lot of this is cognitive dissonance between wanting to wear skirts but not wanting to be a cross-dresser or transvestite.

As if only doing it only from the waist down makes a 100% difference.

And as I've remarked many times before, wearing skirts despite the fact that women wear them, as opposed to because women wear them, also makes a difference. But I'm not sure it's 100%.
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Re: Has the attention on transgendered individuals helped us

Post by dillon »

Brad wrote:This thread has become quite an intelligent and busy exchange of ideas. The consensus seems to be that the media's recent focus on TGs hurts out cause, and I took the position that it did help our cause.

There's an annoying double standard at work here. When a man wears a skirt, people question his motive. Why is he wearing a skirt? We don't ask women that question. Sometimes the easiest answer is the best answer. I lost a bet. It's too hot to wear pants, I'm conducting a sociological experiment. Etc. All because it's harder to say "I'm a man who wants to wear a skirt".

For that matter, why do we wear skirts? It is in our DNA? Are we hormonally challenged? Scientists have never figured it out. Maybe the real answer is the most obvious- we like to wear skirts because we do. Why do some people like to watch baseball? Why do some people want to travel? Nobody worries about those answers.

I still contend that we can tag along with TGs and win our battle for acceptance but I seem to be alone.

Maybe I'm overthinking the issue. We're normal average men and society just hasn't caught up with us yet.
Brad,
As a social matter, I consider the Caitlin Jenner story a positive event, not so much for us, but for society at large. It is a touching story and took courage for her to be so public with it, although it seems to be fairly profitable for her as well. Not that she doesn't have the right to earn what she can. After all, when you're a celebrity, something life changing will be news, so someone will make money from it. It may as well be Caitlin that profits. After all, it is her story.

The reason I contend that the event neither helps or hurts us is because of the over-simplified way the mainstream media reports that story at the expense of the reality about gender identity. Most of us identify as heterosexual males, but we defy the compartmentalized approach that America's lazy media has taken toward the matter. To look at the coverage, sans the broader knowledge of gender issues that most of us have gained along our paths of self-discovery, one would conclude that gender is binary, i.e., that one is either a trouser-wearing he-man, or a man who wants to be a woman. We know this is a gross misrepresentation of gender. Gender is not binary. It has a spectrum as diverse as the rainbow. I fall in that rainbow somewhere on the male side of green. It doesn't help me to be so narrowly defined and classified. I'm a unique individual with my own tastes, views, and desires, and the coverage thus far has not even suggested that my type of gender-melding even exists.

So, while Caitlin Jenner has certainly helped improve awareness and acceptance for the decisively transgendered, the coverage has been entirely focused on the decisively transgendered and oblivious to those who fall elsewhere in the spectrum. So that's why I contend that for most of us, the coverage is a wash. It didn't hurt us or help us. As for "tagging along with TGs", I have always argued that we need to stand with our LGBTQ comrades in their battles against discrimination and for social acceptance. In the social and political realm, I think it is true that a high tide lifts all boats. But regardless of whether it helps people accept or understand my uniqueness, I support their cause because it is the right, just, ethical and moral thing to do. And when one takes a rainbow point of view, their cause is also my own.
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Re: Has the attention on transgendered individuals helped us

Post by skirtyscot »

Agreed, we may not like being put in a notional box along with Caitlyn J. But you have no contact with the vast majority of people who see you skirted, so you have no idea what box, if any, they put you in. Neither have you any idea what passersby thought of you before Caitlyn et al hit the headlines.

There's a good chance that for the next stranger who sees you in a skirt, you are a complete novelty. They have literally never seen a man wearing a skirt as if it were ordinary attire. Humans try to categorise new things, to try to understand them and simplify a complex world. Maybe you go in the TG box, maybe not. Before it, you would most likely have gone in the box marked wierdo or poofter. The advance for us is that people get exposed to, and more accepting of, the various classes of departure from the norm.

Maybe one day there will be a box for men in a skirt. That will come from media exposure and from us stepping out. The ultimate aim is for that box, like the "woman in trousers" box, to disappear completely because it is so commonplace. I live in hope that we will get there one day.
Keep on skirting,

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Re: Has the attention on transgendered individuals helped us

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dillon wrote:...As for "tagging along with TGs", I have always argued that we need to stand with our LGBTQ comrades in their battles against discrimination and for social acceptance. In the social and political realm, I think it is true that a high tide lifts all boats...
Exactly.
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Re: Has the attention on transgendered individuals helped us

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Brad wrote:This thread has become quite an intelligent and busy exchange of ideas. The consensus seems to be that the media's recent focus on TGs hurts out cause, and I took the position that it did help our cause.
I don't see a consensus here on the matter, but I am impressed with the overall quality of the dialogue, even if there is some disagreement. Civil discussion of such concepts is one of things I sincerely hoped for when I took on the role of Barista, and one that I've tried to foster over the years.

Instead of consensus, I still see a division -- and that's fine so long as we remain civil to one another and take those viewpoints into consideration. Introspection, recall, is seldom hurtful; when in doubt, question one's own thinking in addition to questioning others'.

Brad mentions the notion of the "double standard", and that's clearly in play here, and that's likely down to the fact that men who dress in what is (locally) considered "feminine" attire are lessening their social standing. It's rubbish, of course, but it persists -- and it persists most perniciously on the part of wives/girlfriends/significant others, for those parties are unaware that they are succumbing to the feminine-as-inferior stereotype themselves; rightfully, they should feel ashamed, but without introspection -- which can be hard -- they never will, nor, even, can.

I do not particularly mind if seeing a guy in a skirt remains an unusual event; that'll help keep the edge keen. If the every-man decides to take up the notion I rather suspect it'd quickly get boring, or worse, dumbed down to the point of where trousers on guys are today -- a de-facto uniform along with t-shirts. I'd rather see it remain somewhat unusual as that'll grant some level of status to the act and give those with the confidence to pull the look off greater latitude than a uniform would permit.
Maybe I'm overthinking the issue. We're normal average men and society just hasn't caught up with us yet.
"Over-thinking" can be a bit of a problem, and I find the best solution to that is avail myself of the "80/20 rule" which says, to paraphrase, "If it fits 80% of the situations then the other 20% is probably not worth worrying about." That rule obviously is nowhere near good enough for matters of personal safety (being, say, the act of driving a car or knowing which neighbourhoods to avoid) but tends to be "good enough" for most other things, especially as a stopping-point to avoid getting into "analysis paralysis".
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Re: Has the attention on transgendered individuals helped us

Post by Brad »

crfriend wrote:I do not particularly mind if seeing a guy in a skirt remains an unusual event; that'll help keep the edge keen. If the every-man decides to take up the notion I rather suspect it'd quickly get boring, or worse, dumbed down to the point of where trousers on guys are today -- a de-facto uniform along with t-shirts. I'd rather see it remain somewhat unusual as that'll grant some level of status to the act and give those with the confidence to pull the look off greater latitude than a uniform would permit.
I totally agree with Carl. Maybe this subject needs a separate thread. It makes me question my true motive for wanting to wear skirts. Am I really a skirt aficionado, or am I wearing skirts to both to get attention and to violate societal norms because of a disdain for the status-quo? And if men truly took over skirt wearing, it would be drab and boring both in action and presentation.
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Re: Has the attention on transgendered individuals helped us

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Brad wrote:It makes me question my true motive for wanting to wear skirts. Am I really a skirt aficionado, or am I wearing skirts to both to get attention and to violate societal norms because of a disdain for the status-quo?
It might be one of those; it might be all of them; and it might be none of them. Only the individual can know for sure.

I can only speak for myself (obviously), but here are my prime drivers:

1) Expressivity -- Skirts allow me more freedom to express how I'm feeling internally via external signals. This does not mean that I wear my heart on my sleeve; it's more of an indicator of my level of outward confidence on any given day. Note that the area and volume of fabric in a billowy skirt is vastly larger than any pair of men's trousers going, so that works in the wearer's favour.
2) Comfort -- Pure and simple, skirts are more comfortable than trousers, at least the sorts of trousers that are commonly available in the usual fabrics.
3) Edginess -- There, I've gone and said it; one of the reasons I wear skirts is because it's unusual and -- hopefully -- a bit avant garde.
4) I like skirts -- That pretty much says it all, and packages it up in a nutshell. It's the ultimate come-back save for, "Why not!"
And if men truly took over skirt wearing, it would be drab and boring both in action and presentation.
That is something that I do worry about, mainly because most guys haven't got enough fashion sense to fight their way out of a wet paper bag. Some do, but the teeming herd really doesn't. If one is going to be "different" one needs to work at it a little bit.
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Re: Has the attention on transgendered individuals helped us

Post by TheSkirtedMan »

Brad wrote:It seems that the focus as of late on transgendered individuals, particularly Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner, has helped our cause by allowing mainstream society to expect to see, and be more accepting of, unconventional men. Of course most skirt wearing men are not transgendered, but this most recent phenomenon may help increase our acceptance.
Very interesting thread. I do believe that society is generally, not completely, more tolerant, to unconventional appearances, especially compared to 10, 20 and 30 years ago. I do believe the campaigns by the LGBT community have helped widen the vision of many others in many aspects of life. However, I do firmly believe that society still operates, always has and always will by labels. It can only cope by assigning life varying differences into specific boxes. When society hears about or reads about for example Caitlyn Jenner and the word transgender is used or even other examples where LGBT is used then that is all society will visualise. With the likes of Caitlyn Jenner who openly acknowledges as transgender, a man who wants to be a woman, attaching men in skirts like the many on this forum will automatically be assigned as transgender and all the negatives they then want to assign even if the negatives do not exist. I have no disrespect at all to LGBT or transgender but the likes of us on this forum do not fit under that society label.

The likes of the men on this forum who are openly heterosexual men who prefer a full and open freedom of choice in clothing need to utilise the air of tolerance towards unconventional but must concentrate as a specific group of men in skirts and contrast and compare to women in trousers and other male style clothing. You do not see these women tagging on to the LGBT community or even referring themselves as transgender. It is this group, or label that are the nearest to the likes of men like us on this forum. Our label that we need to get society to assign to us is exactly the same as theirs. So yes, embrace the apparent openness of societies tolerance to unconventional, yes the LGBT and transgender have contributed to this, but our label is not the same as theirs. It is the same as women in trousers.
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Re: Has the attention on transgendered individuals helped us

Post by SkirtRevolution »

While I agree that the transgender awareness doesn't promote the idea of maculinity in skirts and dresses like we are hoping to promote. I do however believe that in the long run, it will help our cause.

Alone with the idea of trangenderism, comes other concepts like "genderfluid" "gender nonconforming" and "gender varient". All terms which means the same or similiar thing, that some people feel and express themselves as both masculine and feminine (or neither). As a result many men are now wearing skirts, dresses and other feminine attire, while presenting male at the same time. Claiming the "genderfluid" label has given men the confidence to embrace things once considered feminine. It has also, started to gain a lot of awareness in society, where society is starting to accept this idea the men can do things once considered feminine and that genderfluidity is more normal and wide spread than what we once thought.

While this doesnt promote the masculinity of skirts, it does promoted men wearing skirts and helps skirts become trendy and mainstream in men fashion as society turns it back on the traditional gender binary.

At the end of the day, it makes it easier for us to wear skirts and dresses (in our own masculine style) without any objection, whether that be while going for a nice day shopping, or going to work.
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