I'm working out my thoughts on this, so bear with me. The article that sparked this off is here:
www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/jul/29/oxford-university-dress-code-transgender-students
Basically, the university used to insist that men and women wore different formal clothes for formal occasions. I was really fed up when I found out I was expected to wear a skirt, tights, and a ribbon around my neck. I just felt it made a mockery of women (WTF is the ribbon about? Am I a cat?).
Now, I know this isn't serious in the scheme of things, but I did hate seeing all these women feeling uncomfortable, not smart, when the men wore an ordinary black suit and looked both normal, and smart. To me, it really reinforced the fact that women were visibly the exception to the norm.
Anyway: the rules recently changed and now women students can wear ordinary suits too (and men can wear skirts and stockings if they so wish, and so on). Great! But I'm not sure how I feel about the comment that this is for the benefit, not of ordinary women students who, in their normal lives, might wear a trouser suit, but of 'genderqueer' students.
I'm actually a bit fed up, and I can quite articulate why. I just feel I didn't need or want a word like 'genderqueer' to describe me wanting to wear what seem perfectly normal clothes, and to mark me out as equal to a male student.
Small issue, I know, but what do you think?