Language for Men's Skirts and Skirted Men

[crfriend]

But some won't let you shop until you choose a gender (or perhaps more accurately, a sex). My understanding is that most retailers would like to change this but it is built into the software at a very deep level.

If this is wired into the software, then somebody should have been sacked years ago. There's no need for such a discriminator. Even if the discriminator exists in the software (see above), then there has to be a field attached to each item (supposedly) for sale to define what I call the "marketing target" (usually sex) and that could be left empty or null and hopefully the software would behave properly and display the item to anybody. In the 21st Century, the meta-questions ought to be, "What does it matter?", and, "Do you want the sale or not?".

[phathack]

When setting up a online shopping website using the most common application like Shopify you create categories for what ever you are selling just like they have done on this forum.
They could easily not create Women and Men's categories and just out everything under one category. Like Tops, Bottoms, Underwear or however they wish to define their store.

[KeithWearsSkirts]

Gender is a social construct, there is nothing natural about it and it’s time it was binned.

This reminds me of something I read many years ago in which Julia Kristeva described what she called a double-bind regarding gender. On the one hand, restrictive and problematic gender norms are perpetuated through language. On the other hand, we depend on commonly understood language to critique gender issues and forge new identities. The idea of a "Man Box" might offer a good example of this: The man box(/coffin) refers to a set of cultural norms that association with men a set of restrictive and sometimes harmful behaviors and attributes; but nonetheless, we need gendered language to critique and transcend the man box.

Of course you are right that men and women's body shapes are highly variable, and it is certainly true that there is much overlap. I don't think I have ever worn men's pants that fit me as well as women's pants. Designers often complain that mass-marketed gender clothing gravitates toward loose, oversized clothing (Billie Eilish often sports this look). When I shop for clothing, I ignore some basic physiological gender differences at my own risk. As I mentioned on another thread, I favor dresses that cover my shoulders (even if sleeveless) because I think that they work better with broad male shoulders than do dresses that do not. Many men can rock skirts worn at the higher waist level that is typical of women but I find the pressure of the skirt uncomfortable at kidney level and wear my skirts lower. When buying off the rack, this often means wearing a skirt meant as a midi skirt as a maxi skirt. I also try to avoid tops and over-tops with prominent bust darts because of how they might fall on my flat chest (something I imagine I have in common with women with smaller cup sizes). Kristeva's double bind takes concrete form for me in one way when I see advice to women to avoid a rectangular profile in favor of an 'X' shape profile, or the idea of dressing such that the division of the top and bottom falling 1/3 of the way down the body. I learn a lot from advice aimed at women but sometimes I recognize a need to make adjustments for my male body.

I forget who said this but I remember a designer saying something interesting about the contrast between men's wear and women's wear: If you design women's wear, the best you can hope for is to carve out a small area in a very large circle. If you design men's wear, you are faced with a very small circle and the best you can hope for is to perhaps expand that circle a little. To me, this suggests that designers are eager to offer a wider variety of clothing for men but that the challenges are largely on the consumer side. I am not a marketing expert but my guess is that progress will be best served by a two-pronged approach that both (a) seeks to sell a wider variety of clothing to men as men's wear and also (b) pushes in the direction of marketing genderless clothing to men and women. I suppose that is a material manifestation of Kristeva's doublebind.

[mr seamstress]

They could easily not create Women and Men's categories and just out everything under one category. Like Tops, Bottoms, Underwear or however they wish to define their store.

I agree with you in making clothes with simple category. Have you ever notice the description of any particular item can change depending which category that is used in searching? Take a skirt for example, if you search under women category and the skirt be shown as a women only clothing, but search under unsex category that same skirt would be identified in description that can be worn by male. To many shops play this game. Same product, but the description who should wear it changes depending which category that used in searching.
Get rid of person sex in clothing would do a better job of having men be accepted in wearing dresses and skirts.