Carl said,
Blast it, this damned hill gets steeper and steeper every time I look at it, and I'm looking down-slope for the most part.
Hello Carl,
As a seasoned sailor you know full well that one can’t sail directly into a headwind and expect to make headway and get to one’s destination.
Oh sure, a favorable tide might prevail over head on breeze. But we all know that tides turn with metronomic regularity and with the same force in one direction as the other.
Similarly, a current might carry you toward the shore. But before making landfall, currents inevitably veer off and in due course are dissipated by the first clime opposite from their origin.
No sir, one of the first lessons a sailor learns is that when you encounter a headwind, you ease your helm until you start making headway and learn how to tack. A mature mariner, such as yourself, learn how to find that magical point where the force of the wind is matched by the resistance of the implacable sea against your shapely hull so that you make the best speed and make the most of the aerodynamic effect of the wind and air playing around the structure of your sails.
Is it entirely lost on you that our beautiful and bountiful Mother Nature was trying to teach you a life lesson that is as true in the realm of the natural world as it is in the realm of human nature?
Oh, I know that as a child you were bullied and called names; who among us here in the Skirt Café weren’t? Isn’t it about time that you stop surrendering your personal power to those little a$$holes and stop trying to prove something to those less-thans?
I don’t like being called names any more than anyone else. Nor do I feel there is any label that captures the totality of my personhood. In fact, I feel only the most shallow or the least self-aware feel otherwise. But I recognize that for their convenience, most people, from time to time, feel the need to apply labels to the people they are interacting with. Just so long as the label someone puts on me comes reasonably close to my self-identification of the personal characteristic they feel they need to label, I’m satisfied. What’s so hard about that?
Just as there’s an obvious advantage to easing a sailboat’s helm in the face of a countervailing wind, I feel there’s some very real advantages to us making our peace with the labels currently used to describe men who wear skirts. In the first place, it gets us beyond discussing what we’re wearing and back to the matter at hand. At that point they can decide for themselves how masculine and manly they feel we are as individuals.
If I’m mistaken for something I’m not, I will only correct the person misidentifying me if I feel I’ll interact with them or anyone in earshot again. Trust me, since I let my hair grow out, I’ve been mistaken for a woman too many times to count. I’m also quite sure I’ve been mistaken for a woman in transition to her true identity. I’ve probably even been mistaken for a homosexual; although I have only once been asked if that was case.
This approach makes the everyday interactions of life go a whole lot more smoothly.
On a larger plane, by going with the flow of being categorized as “gender non-conforming” of “gender fluid,” we can more easily ally ourselves with the Queer* Community who have done us a lot of good. It was they who have lobbied for and gotten enacted into law the protections for gender expression (such as men wearing skirts and dresses in public, to work, etc.) in dozens of jurisdictions here in the US and as I understand it, the whole of the United Kingdom.
Beyond the sheer gratitude factor is the fact that in the legal realm there is plenty more work to be done. In numbers, there is strength.
As we’re seeing in the legal right to abortions, a determined enough group of people can pull the levers of government sufficiently hard to reverse legal rights. So, it is in our best interests going forward to do what we can to advance the legal right to be and social acceptance of being different.
Make no mistake, the politicians who are promoting the Culture War are doing so for entirely selfish and cynical reasons. Their sole purpose is the pursuit of power. And no matter how hard we bellow, pout and stamp our feet, they make no meaningful distinction between those of us who are heterosexual males and the other folks who unabashedly identify as members of the Queer community. It’s an age-old truism that, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
Carl, you know much better than I, how exhilarating those moments are when you find just the right angle to produce the perfect tack and get all of the forces of nature working on your behalf. That those moments are even more pleasurable than those being stuck in irons are frustrating.
It works the same way in human affairs. So, I strongly suggest you ease your helm by accepting the descriptors in common currency and rest assured that sooner than any of us think, the current culture wars around gender will be won by the forces of reason. With that gender will stop being of any concern to anyone at any time. Except, of course, when they’re considering sexual partners … and even there I expect we’ll see lots more open-mindedness than currently.
The last time I brought up this question of nomenclature, Carl said he was offended by what I said. Carl, I’m sorry you feel offended, but I honestly see no objective reason for it. I simply stated that under current definitions you and I and every other participant in the Skirt Café who goes out in public in a skirt does so against the current norms for men in our society. So, I was simply stating facts.
Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t thank you personally and on the behalf of the rest of us who visit the Skirt Café for keeping it going for as long as you have. Finding it seven years ago was very consequential to my unveiling my authentic self. I have no idea how I could have done that without the Skirt Café. Coming out as a gender-fluid, heterosexual male not only opened me up to the clothing options I have wanted my whole life, but also opened me up to a better and deeper understanding of myself. It also set me free of many other unnecessary and therefore unhealthy constraints I had put on myself.
*Anymore, “Queer” does not mean “homosexual,” it’s a catchall for all of us who don’t fit the strictures of the Gender Binary in regards to whom we love or how we see or present ourselves.
And no, I most certainly NOT trying to put you or anyone else into a "pink box;" I'm trying to get those on this forum who haven't seen it already that "Denial isn't just a river in Egypt."