skirtcafe.org

Schools should adopt “gender neutral” uniform policies to avoid discrimination against LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) pupils, Britain’s boarding schools were told.

Elly Barnes, chief executive officer of Educate and Celebrate - which campaigns against discrimination in schools, said: “If it’s all right for a girl to wear trousers, why should a boy not be allowed to wear a skirt. We should be giving them the option.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/educa ... 29946.html

It sounds like a boy needs to fall under the LGBT umbrella to wear a skirt. What if he is straight and just finds skirts more comfortable or attractive? Geesh, I need to go spend a week in the woods. The stupidity of humanity is wearing me down.

Taj wrote:It sounds like a boy needs to fall under the LGBT umbrella to wear a skirt. What if he is straight and just finds skirts more comfortable or attractive? Geesh, I need to go spend a week in the woods. The stupidity of humanity is wearing me down.

I don't think a week would be enough. Besides, the merry-go-round doesn't stop and you can't get off.

I agree that a boy should not have to fall under the LBGT umbrella to wear a skirt.

That a boy has to be regarded as transgender in order to wear a skirt - Ugh! The ugly head of double standards comes up. The attitude that it's OK for a woman wear masculine clothing but it's perverted for a man to wear feminine clothing implies that being feminine is considered inferior to being masculine. This attitude is a real slam on the fairer gender.

John

Elly Barnes, chief executive officer of Educate and Celebrate - which campaigns against discrimination in schools, said: “If it’s all right for a girl to wear trousers, why should a boy not be allowed to wear a skirt. We should be giving them the option.”

That statement is OK - just a pity it is mixed up with another separate issue.

Taj wrote:It sounds like a boy needs to fall under the LGBT umbrella to wear a skirt.

I see nothing in the article that says that. It looks like a report on a conference at which the speaker was talking about LGBT prejudice and bullying and how it could be reduced through education. One example cited was the wearing of skirts by boys. Being a forum for guys who like to wear skirts we tend to focus on that, but it was not the purpose of the presentation.

The article contains nothing to get your tights in a tangle about.

Have fun,


Ian.

In a recent development, the school my kids go to has just changed its uniform rules to remove the words "girls" and "boys". The new rules simply state a list of items that are counted as uniform, and all pupils can pick whatever they wish from this list.

Of course, me being on the governing body for the school might have had something to do with this...

Although important for transgender pupils, everyone can benefit and you do not have to be transgender in order to wear a skirt or trousers as your preference dictates.

Paul

Paul,
You could have made skirts for boys mandatory......

Jan

janrok wrote:You could have made skirts for boys mandatory......

That would have been entirely as bad as prohibiting trousers on the girls.

The upshot of this, since it's a uniform issue, is that the colour scheme must match the uniform requirements and that the overall look be smart (no "droopy-drawers", for instance), not distracting (no halter-tops or belt-length skirts on the girls, to pick a couple), and semi-professional (no flip-flop sandals, for example). Other than those basics -- which should be fairly well ingrained by the time that the children are ready for school -- throw the door wide and see what happens.

What will the upshot be? Time will tell, but given the natural level of conformity by youngsters and what the local demographic is, I'd bet that everybody migrates to trousers save for a few girls who prefer skirts for some reason. If short trousers are ruled out (capri-length trousers should be ruled out on general principle (beachwear; see "flip-flop" sandals)) one might see some of the more daring boys opting for skirts in the hotter weather, but we'll have to wait to see.

My principal motivator was that my son is gender nonconforming and had long expressed his wish to go to school in a dress, which he can now do. Oddly enough, the girls have always had the option to wear trousers (about half do). We are pleased with the result and are working with the school to make our son's debut as smooth as possible. It's all looking positive.

ethelthefrog wrote:My principal motivator was that my son is gender nonconforming and had long expressed his wish to go to school in a dress, which he can now do.

BRAVO! If you don't like the system, by golly go ahead and change it. Well played, sir!

Oddly enough, the girls have always had the option to wear trousers (about half do). We are pleased with the result and are working with the school to make our son's debut as smooth as possible. It's all looking positive.

I'd not call it "odd" at all, rather, "merely conforming to modern practise".

Good luck with his introduction.

Well done Paul! I hope it goes well for your son.

Please give us occasional reports on the number of boys, genders conforming or not, who wear skirts. I predict occasional flurries of skirted boys as summer approaches but little uptake apart from that. Would be delighted to be proved wrong as boys turn up in their skirts and 100 deniers in February!

Carl, you might be surprised at the number of girls who choose to wear skirts. At my children's school, at the annual prizegiving most of the girls wear skirts. Of course they are virtually all fanny pelmets, but skirts none the less. Last year one true nonconformist girl wore an ankle length skirt.

Paul, did you become a governor purely to get the uniform changed?

And when you first proposed the change, what reaction or resistance did you get?

skirtyscot wrote:Paul, did you become a governor purely to get the uniform changed?

And when you first proposed the change, what reaction or resistance did you get?

The answer to the first question is a simple "yes", but it turned out to be quite a long story.

The headteacher was strongly opposed to the idea of boys in skirts and she was not inclined to change the rules at all. That's when I decided to get onto the governing body, wherein I jumped on the "equality" remit and started making noise. I challenged the head on several occasions over two years, making exactly no progress each time. At the end of the 2013/4 academic year, that head retired and we had a term with no head, the new head started in January of this year. In my first conversation with her about the uniform rules, she told me that changing the uniform was not in her top twenty priorities. Disheartened, we pressed on with the training course I had organised to cover equalities (making explicit mention of boys who wear dresses). At the end of this meeting, the chair of governors said that she had been discussing the uniform rules with the head and, between them, they had decided to make the change, but it had to be approved by the whole governing body.

Needless to say, I was something of a nervous wreck at that meeting, but we ended up approving the change, unanimously, in under 30 seconds and then spent several minutes discussing how hard it was to find the uniform rules on the school's website. It was a total non-event, and I was delighted.

This week, my wife and I have had a discussion with the head, with our son's class teacher and with an equalities specialist from the local council to talk about how to make our son's debut as smooth and as safe as possible. Without being asked, the head told us that she would be changing the order of the PSHE (personal, social and health education) curriculum to ensure that everyone in the school gets lessons on how some people dress differently, and how that's fine, between now and the start of the summer holiday.

It's all looking up.

I don't expect any other of the boys to come to school in skirts or dresses, but current guidance for schools is to expect that 1% of the school's population is gender nonconforming or transgender, so in a school of 300, there may be some who are flying under the radar at present.

In case anyone was wondering, it's a Catholic city primary school and my 8-year-old son has been wearing skirts for longer than I have.

ethelthefrog wrote:My principal motivator was that my son is gender nonconforming and had long expressed his wish to go to school in a dress, which he can now do. Oddly enough, the girls have always had the option to wear trousers (about half do). We are pleased with the result and are working with the school to make our son's debut as smooth as possible. It's all looking positive.

Proud of you for your diligence on behalf of your son and other "gender non-conforming" youth. That term, "gender non-conforming" is concise, but has implications that beg us to ask if it is as precise as it should be? The term itself seems to promote a gender stereotype, though we know it is not intended to do so. Who decides what is the conformation for a gender? Or is it just the prevalent trend we see daily? I can't construct another concise way of expressing that it is really "gender-tradition nonconforming", since who has either moral or empirical authority to say what is or is not correct for either a genetic male or female to feel about themselves? Somewhere we have to distinguish the difference between genital/chromosomal-based sex and emotional/intellectual gender. Or maybe these are just the ramblings of a man on his third cup of coffee...