skirtcafe.org

Am I the only one that dislikes terms like Murse or Mantyhose.
An item does not change its name just because of the gender of the persone wearing or carrying it. Just because I, a man, am wearing an A-Line skirt that does not make it a Kilt. I for one am a man that likes to wear skirts and at times I carry a purse, where else will I put all the crap I need to cary in every day life, my skirt has no pockets.
I am not a "Cross dresser", I dont in any way resemble a women, and dont want to. I am simply a man enjoying the freedom of wearing a skirt and want to be accepted as just that.

A comfortably dressed man.

I also feel the same and often get frustrated by it. It’s as if these fashion reporters etc are trying to rewrite history and suggest that these items are originally women’s items, when in fact it was the women that stole them from men as they were originally men’s clothing and accessories. Moreover, I believe the term crossdresser only refers to one that attempts to identify as the opposite gender, to take on that persona and “pass”. If a guy is simply wearing a skirt as a man I don’t see that as being any more crossdressing than a woman wearing pants. In saying this, is the line between crossdresing and a man in a skirt sometime blurry and hard to define, well, maybe sometimes if not done right, but often only to the ignorant of society.

Murse? That's one I haven't heard before. Does it mean a male nurse?

If someone mistook my skirt for a kilt, it wouldn't bother me in the slightest. More likely to get approval!

It's just a rose by any other name. With the exception of marketing departments with nothing better to do, who cares what it's called?

Have fun,


Ian.

I hereby introduce the word Mirt replacing Mens Skirt.

Jan.

janrok wrote:I hereby introduce the word Mirt replacing Mens Skirt.

Jan.

No! No! A thousand times no!

Murse? That's one I haven't heard before. Does it mean a male nurse?

A Murse was a purse for men. I didn't see men adopting that style of bag as an everyday carry item. Its design was far from practical from a mans point of view...

Those words are VERY POOR and should be avoided. Why not just say pantyhose and purse? If 'pantyhose' offends you, just say 'tights' (at least in American English).

And there are other truly terrible word inventions... manscara, guyliner, manlashes, brosiery, guylons... see this article for these awful nouns:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/opini ... yhose.html

And don't get me started on "Man Cave".

skirtingtheissue wrote:Those words are VERY POOR and should be avoided. Why not just say pantyhose and purse? If 'pantyhose' offends you, just say 'tights' (at least in American English).

This writer concurs with the above assertion fully. Not only do the "new words" set the originals apart, they also derogate them by virtue of making the "new" form superior.

Note that in general use, I use the terms "tights" and "bags", both of which are general-purpose and gender non-aligned. We have words in the language for these items -- like "skirt" -- which have no gender overload. Let's use them.

And don't get me started on "Man Cave".

OK, I won't, other than to say I don't much like the term either save for when I am poking fun.

Purse is an old English (British) term that refers to a pouch that MEN used to carry their money in (before we had pockets and such). Once we did get pockets and men started carrying their money in them (along with everything else), they stopped using the purses as a separate item. Then purses were stolen by the ladies as they didn't have pockets in their skirts to keep all of their items in. Although I know guys who still carry a separate pouch-type of purse for money instead of a wallet or just in their pockets because it's more convenient. I personally dispise having to carry all of the things that I do in my pockets so I do use a "purse", although I've chosen one that's more of a backpack style and not quite a girly as you might expect a woman to carry.

As for pantyhose, men use hosiery too, although we tend to call them sockets. The reason they're called "pantyhose" in the first place is because they're long hosiery that's attached to a panty to make a single unit. If they attached a pair of long sockets to a pair of BVD briefs then it would basically be the same as pantyhose, just thicker (although I wouldn't want to wear it). You could probably even attach the top of that to the bottom of a t-shirt. And what would you even call something like that? Long underwear? That would just be crazy.

And for the man cave, I want one. I usually just go out to the garage, put Glenn Beck on the radio, bust out some tools, and get to work.

Purse is an old English (British) term that refers to a pouch that MEN used to carry their money in (before we had pockets and such)

In British English, the noun "purse" still refers to a woman's pouch for holding cash - similar to a man's wallet except a bit larger and with a section for coins. What Americans call a "purse", we Brits call a "handbag".

On the more general point of the thread, I don't think we should try to force a change of name for things like "skirt" and "tights". Women wear "pants" and "trousers" just as men do, so we should use the same terms for what are identical or extremely similar garments.

One further point - don't ever let anyone tell you that a kilt is not a skirt, as a Scottish chap tried to tell me last week.A kilt is, without question, a type of skirt.

Stu

Stu wrote:On the more general point of the thread, I don't think we should try to force a change of name for things like "skirt" and "tights". Women wear "pants" and "trousers" just as men do, so we should use the same terms for what are identical or extremely similar garments.

I completely concur. Trying to come up with "cute" differentiations demeans the original term and only points up our own (male) insecurity.

One further point - don't ever let anyone tell you that a kilt is not a skirt, as a Scottish chap tried to tell me last week.A kilt is, without question, a type of skirt.

On this point, however, I vehemently disagree. Certainly from an absolutist point of view the kilt is a skirt, but the kilt, in its traditional form, has a "brand recognition" second to none and should be respected. Failure to respect that "brand", I feel, is, at best, disrespectful to the men who wear the garments and, at worst, insulting and ignorant. As a bloke who wears skirts, I strive very diligently to be seen as neither insulting nor disrespectful and would hope that other guys in skirts would do the same, for not being seen as respectable and genteel we do ourselves and our brethren no service whatsoever.

Carl wrote:On this point, however, I vehemently disagree. Certainly from an absolutist point of view the kilt is a skirt, but the kilt, in its traditional form, has a "brand recognition" second to none and should be respected. Failure to respect that "brand", I feel, is, at best, disrespectful to the men who wear the garments and, at worst, insulting and ignorant. As a bloke who wears skirts, I strive very diligently to be seen as neither insulting nor disrespectful and would hope that other guys in skirts would do the same, for not being seen as respectable and genteel we do ourselves and our brethren no service whatsoever.

I'm inclined to agree. Perhaps I haven't the experience wearing skirts to venture much of an opinion, but I would see nothing wrong with using the point in the context of a complaint about a skirt that isn't a kilt. Probably best to keep it a minor point or only use it to deal with continued discussion, though.

Tor

The word "skirt" is about 6,000 yrs old. I doubt supplanting it with "mirt" anytime soon is a lost cause. Good luck anyway.

crfriend wrote:On this point, however, I vehemently disagree. Certainly from an absolutist point of view the kilt is a skirt, but the kilt, in its traditional form, has a "brand recognition" second to none and should be respected. Failure to respect that "brand", I feel, is, at best, disrespectful to the men who wear the garments and, at worst, insulting and ignorant. As a bloke who wears skirts, I strive very diligently to be seen as neither insulting nor disrespectful and would hope that other guys in skirts would do the same, for not being seen as respectable and genteel we do ourselves and our brethren no service whatsoever.

Look again at what I said, i.e.: "don't ever let anyone tell you that a kilt is not a skirt". I didn't say we should go around telling Scotsmen that they wear skirts - I simply urge readers not to accept the proposition that a kilt is not a skirt. Linguistically speaking, and this is a linguistic point, it is beyond question that a kilt is a skirt. The word "skirt" is a superordinate with a series of co-hyponyms, one of which is "kilt". The term "skirt" has undergone backformation to create a verb and that has confirmed its status in the lexical hierarchy. That's why the term "skirt" is now used to denote parts of cars, hovercraft, beds and so on and, sartorially speaking, it is the superordinate to describe any garment that "skirts".

The issue of "respect" is important, but it is entirely discrete from the matter of the accuracy of the term "skirt" to denote a kilt. Just as it is perfectly correct semantically to call a person with a severe disability a "cripple", we refrain from doing so in normal speech because this word now causes hurt and offence. In the same way, because the kilt is a very specific garment and a source of national and masculine pride among Scotsmen in particular, and because wearers have suffered jibes in the past where the term "skirt" has been used in a mocking way, to refer to a kilt a "skirt" in normal conversation would indeed be disrespectful. However, the Scot I mentioned in my last post volunteered to me that a kilt is not a skirt (I had not said it was up to that point). The context of the conversation was appropriate for me to correct him. In short, I will not tell a Scotsman who is wearing a kilt that he is wearing a skirt - but by the same token I will not be told that a kilt is not a type of skirt because it is beyond dispute that is exactly what it is. This very board is called "skirtcafe" and much of our discussion centres around kilts.

Remember, too, that when some people balk at the use of the term "skirt" for "kilt", they are reinforcing the notion that men can't ever wear skirts - a notion we all reject, surely? You wear skirts and that notion implies that there is something wrong with what you are doing. Isn't that disrespectful?

Stu