How many is enough to normalise us?

General discussion of skirt and kilt-based fashion for men, and stuff that goes with skirts and kilts.
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Pdxfashionpioneer
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Re: How many is enough to normalise us?

Post by Pdxfashionpioneer »

I'm smiling ear to ear!

Thank you gentlemen!
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Social norms aren't changed by Congress or Parliament; they're changed by a sufficient number of people ignoring the existing ones and publicly practicing new ones.
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Re: How many is enough to normalise us?

Post by Grok »

denimini wrote:
lazerr wrote:
I once got "Ahh, a kilt" when I was wearing a denim mini skirt (without pleats). I think it was a sincere (but un-necessary) attempt to legitimise my attire. I responded unashamably; "No, it is just a mini skirt" which caused some awkwarness in the guy. I should have been kind and agreed that it was sort of a kilt.
I recall some advice...if you are unimpressed by the clothes you are wearing, but someone else praises it, say "thank you". That spares the other person embarrassment.

As for trying to legitimizing the mini-skirt with the "kilt" term...I wouldn't worry about the technicalities. The important thing is that the guy was showing a positive attitude.
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Re: How many is enough to normalise us?

Post by weeladdie18 »

crfriend wrote:
skirtyscot wrote:[... H]ow many skirted men will it take to make us unremarkable? "Normal" is a bit much to ask for, but it would be nice if we could get to the point where a passing stranger would think nothing of seeing one of us.
An off-the-cuff guess might be one or two per town -- especially if they're highly visible (e.g. participating in local politics or in other public-facing situations). My old town was pretty habituated to me and my skirts when I was still living there, so I suspect that'd be a "soft target". I'm known well enough in my new town, or at least in my various haunts, that it never causes a stir -- only the occasional conversation or compliment.

I really think that the "on-the-ground density" could be quite low to get the ball rolling. We're not there yet, but hopefully in a few years' time if society doesn't change around us to harden to a point where it's dangerous. We shall see, or at least some of us will. Personally, I'm hopeful, but not optimistic. There remain quite a few obstacles in the way of acceptance and uptake here, not least of which is the confusion that surrounds trans-* which straight guys will avoid like the plague.
I consider this early post as a response to the O P to be a clear assessment of the population of Men in Skirts per Town
to be a reasonable percentage ...........................One Man per town.......

As long as each Man in a Skirt is left to his own lifestyle of garment wearing , ...he will happily continue in that mode......
He will be unlikely to see another MALE RESIDENT of his town dressed in a similar style......As a Man in A Skirt....

I would like to make it clear to my friends that I am not including any other Male Garment wearers or Sexual Deviants in
Our Men in Skirts Forum....Normality Assessment....................................
as these other Classes of Male Garment Wearers may have good reason to form their own Groups.
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crfriend
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Re: How many is enough to normalise us?

Post by crfriend »

I've been thinking about this notion -- that of the absolute portion of the male population who may wear skirted garments from time to time -- and I think that Moon's assertion of 1 PPM (Part Per Million or Person Per Million) is a bit pessimistic.

If Moon's number was correct, in the USA -- a country of 350-odd million, with roughly 1/2 male -- would only yield 125 men in the entire country, and I think that's impossibly low.

Anthony countered with a value of between 10 and 100 PPM. 10 PPM is 1 in 100,000 and 100 PPM is one in 10,000. I think this is likely the correct band. The number is small enough that it's entirely possible that two guys who habitually wear skirts out of choice might not ever brush wings in meat-space but still large enough to be visible in the general population.

Personally, in my travels, I have met and interacted with four skirt-wearing guys and one chap in a kilt. Three of the skirt-wearers are (or were) all from this community: Skirtingtheissue, Bob (now Elizabeth), and AMM (since departed the Cafe, but at last count still alive and well) [1]. The guy in a kilt was the piper at my father's service who also happened to be my old secondary-school English teacher [0]. All were pre-arranged, save for the piper, but one expects a piper to wear a kilt. The fourth guy used to work for Seattle's Living Computer Museum and was very well known for his Utilikilts both on the clock and off -- and that was an interesting exchange.

I know of several others in my general vicinity -- some within a several-mile radius -- but have never seen nor met them [2]. This is also in keeping with the 10-100 PPM band.

We cannot use the number of folks in this community as any sort of proxy because of many factors, reticence, and publicity likely being the biggest factors. Guys can be astonishingly shy and reluctant to participate in a forum like this lest their cat get let out of the bag. Also, in spite of there being lots of links to this place, it's still a very niche community.

Also of note is that the 1 in 100,000 to 1 in 10,000 range, it's quite likely that many, if not most, towns may have some random guy that wears skirts from time to time. It's a numbers game. Cities, especially large ones, certainly do.

[0] I spent altogether too much time yapping with the piper/ex-teacher that evening, and there was a lot of laughter to be heard coming from the veranda which likely made my rather up-tight aunts inside get their backs up a bit. I think my old man would have "gotten it".
[1] And to whom I all wish well.
[2] which is actually pretty silly.
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Jim
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Re: How many is enough to normalise us?

Post by Jim »

Jim wrote: In our village of about 1000, there are only 2 other guys (Gabe & Pete) I've seen in skirts, except for funny skits. Neither of them is as regular as I am with skirts.
I forgot. I also know two other men (Steve & Neil) who have been in the Pacific Islands who've told me they wore sarongs around the house. And then there's Matt, a former housemate, who had several kilts and an Asian-looking skirt. That makes 6 in 1000 in conservative rural small-town Illinois. Who knows how many others wear skirts around the house.
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Re: How many is enough to normalise us?

Post by john62 »

And how many guys wear skirts behind closed doors, I would think quite a few.

John
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Re: How many is enough to normalise us?

Post by denimini »

john62 wrote:And how many guys wear skirts behind closed doors, I would think quite a few.

John
That is true but certainly won't help normalise men in skirts - at least in the way that I think we are talking about. It could give an indication of the number of men that would wear skirts in public if it became normal - sort of a circuitous argument.
Anthony, a denim miniskirt wearer in Outback Australia
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Re: How many is enough to normalise us?

Post by weeladdie18 »

I had a quick look at the famous American Kilt Webb Site for Scottish Ex Patriots with regard to Burns Night Activity.

The suggestion is that there were twice as many Americans wearing their Kilts as..." part of their uniform " ....as there
are ..... "Reported Men in Skirts ".......in America as active members of this Webb Site.......

The point I am making is that there may or may not be twice as many Traditional Scottish Kilt wearing males as there are
...Men in Skirts....in the Worlds Population.......

However our own forum's reports of sightings in the wild are only relevant to our own movements
with regard to our age and lifestyle.....It is my opinion that any random poll of normality will produce a flawed result
with regard to the normality in one town or Region......
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Re: How many is enough to normalise us?

Post by skirtyscot »

Gosh, I've sparked quite a discussion here!

I think that the estimate of one in a million seems too low. That would be only two in Scotland. Kilts are an easy option here, but I've no idea if that makes skirts more likely or less likely. Too small a sample size to tell, I should think. The range 1 in 100,000 to 1 in 10,000 seems about right.

If we are 1 in 30,000, that's about 1,000 skirted men and boys in the UK, and 5,000 in the USA. But how often do we wear them? And where? I can't remember when I last went to my choir practice in trousers, but the same people see me every time, pretty much.

Not that any of that helps to answer my original question. When somebody sees me in a skirt for the first time, in most cases I am the first skirted man they have ever met.
Most guys here say the same thing. So we're clearly not normalised yet. Maybe we need to be 1 in 10,000 at any given time, so if you were out in a city or a shopping centre every day, you'd see a skirted man once every few weeks. (Assume you've better things to do than look for them, you're ignoring most passers-by as usual.) At that sort of level, the trousered masses would start to get used to the idea.
Keep on skirting,

Alastair
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Re: How many is enough to normalise us?

Post by moonshadow »

crfriend wrote:If Moon's number was correct, in the USA -- a country of 350-odd million, with roughly 1/2 male -- would only yield 125 men in the entire country, and I think that's impossibly low.
I neglected to consider that over half of the population is female. Thus my original estimate probably does have a wide margin of error.

That said, if keeping within my original parameters (non kilt, non trans) "freestyling" men, I'm willing to bump it to 2 PPM... Maybe three in certain regions.
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Re: How many is enough to normalise us?

Post by beachlion »

Why not asking the census bureau to add the question to the coming census about skirt wearing by male?

## For males only ##
Do you wear skirts or dresses? {} YES {} NO
If YES, do you wear skirts or dresses in public? {} YES {} NO
If YES, do you wear skirts or dresses {} DAILY {} A FEW TIMES A WEEK {} A FEW TIMES A MONTH

By law you are to state the truth so for the USA, we will have exact data. That may also give you an indication for the rest of the industrialized western world. ;)

In the mean time, just go out in your skirt or dress. That is how women did it with pants. From being prohibited by law in a lot of countries, now it is much more worn than skirts and dresses. It took about half a century but it shows it can be done.
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Re: How many is enough to normalise us?

Post by crfriend »

moonshadow wrote:That said, if keeping within my original parameters (non kilt, non trans) "freestyling" men, I'm willing to bump it to 2 PPM... Maybe three in certain regions.
I think it has to be higher than that -- if for no other reason she sheer volumes involved when one starts speaking in terms of millions. 1 PPM is a virtually undetectable number in a population; it's so far below the noise floor of the sampling system that to reliably pick it up and enumerate it is extraordinarily difficult. 1 in 100,000 is discernible to the human eye, and 1 in 10,000 is definitely visible is one is paying attention -- and looking in the right place. Confounding the situation is that most guys who wear skirts don't do so every day, so you might spot one on a day when he's wearing trousers. So timing is important here as well.

Generally speaking, I'm not out trying to spot guys wearing non-trousered rigs; I'm going about my life. Thus, it's possible -- nay, probable -- that I've missed a few in my travels. My normal level of attention to the space around me has to do with threat-avoidance not skirt-spotting, and I have a natural predilection for looking at women not men. When in motion, my eyesight is trained for navigation first and foremost (lest I blunder into things), threat-spotting second, aesthetics third, then everything else. When stationary, the priority order is different, but I don't frequent places that'd necessarily be conducive to blokes wearing anything other than the normal uniform.

What I do know is that there is a strong level of support from women for guys who dare to step outside the sartorial coffin forced on men -- so long as it's not their man. I garner lots of nice compliments on my attire, and have been for years, sometimes from some distance.

Finally, the only visible ones are going to be the ones who step outside the confines of home -- we cannot quantify those who never show themselves in public. I'm willing to bet that if we could quantify that number we might be looking at numbers as high as potentially 1 in 1,000. However, the threshold at the front door probably evokes images of the Himalayas to the chap who may wear skirts at home, and so he never ventures outside where he might be seen. That's the tragedy, because the outside world isn't as hostile as it might be thought.
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Re: How many is enough to normalise us?

Post by bridkid »

The biggest leap forward would be if we got people to see past the gender thing. I think that is the real barrier. Too many people view a man in a skirt as a guy with gender issues - but then you all knew that - we just need society to know that a man in a skirt is just a man in a skirt.[/quote]

This. 100%. When people ask me why I'm wearing a skirt, my reply is becausr it's comfortable. I sometimes add, if I was trying to emulate women, I'm not doing a good job am I? (grade 2 haircut etc..) That's why I don't shave my legs or wear tights, I just want to be seen as an ordinary bloke in a skirt.
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Re: How many is enough to normalise us?

Post by weeladdie18 »

lazerr wrote:While I have Scottish and Irish in my blood, I don't see how that has anything to do with what I wear. I have no knowledge of any historic precedents that would mean I would wear a kilt, to the contrary, I've not seen, or heard of anyone in my family wearing a kilt. I do actually like the look of many kilts, but, since I have no knowledge I don't even try to participate in the heritage look. I also have no drive to do it, any more than wearing the fashions of my grandfather (or grandmother).
This is an interesting post as a yard stick....many UK and American residents have a mix of Scottish, Welsh, Irish ,Cornish
Scandanavian and Breton blood in their veins....Some do trace their roots to discover the migration of their Ancestors between
these countries or regions....others do not...Some proudly wear The Male Kilt in the Tartan one of their old Families....

Some are reminded by Scottish Historians that their Ancestors were certainly members of a particular Scottish Clan but
it was unlikely that their ancestors had worn their Clan Tartan at the time they migrated to the New World.....

It is worth noting that some males choose to wear the Traditional Scottish Kilt with pride and others do not.

I find it unfortunate that at least 3 members of this website are sufficiently ill bred to make offensive comments
against those of us who choose to wear Their Traditional Scottish Kilt With Pride.
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Re: How many is enough to normalise us?

Post by denimini »

beachlion wrote:Why not asking the census bureau to add the question to the coming census about skirt wearing by male?

## For males only ##
Do you wear skirts or dresses? {} YES {} NO
If YES, do you wear skirts or dresses in public? {} YES {} NO
If YES, do you wear skirts or dresses {} DAILY {} A FEW TIMES A WEEK {} A FEW TIMES A MONTH

By law you are to state the truth so for the USA, we will have exact data. That may also give you an indication for the rest of the industrialized western world. ;)
Probably be interesting if it was for everyone - can separate them later as there is a male, female or other question. It would show the decline in skirt wearing by women.
beachlion wrote: In the mean time, just go out in your skirt or dress. That is how women did it with pants. From being prohibited by law in a lot of countries, now it is much more worn than skirts and dresses. It took about half a century but it shows it can be done.
That certainly is how women got to have that choice and perhaps men will eventually be wearing skirts more than pants. It would make sense as skirts are of more benefit for the male anatomy.
Anthony, a denim miniskirt wearer in Outback Australia
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