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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Men's items as "unisex"

26 replies

ferretface · 21/10/2020 23:50

Just that really. Surprises me that this is still a thing in 2020 (well maybe it doesn't)

I did the London Marathon virtual earlier this month and everyone is receiving their t shirt and medal - cue a lot of confused women asking why they have been sent an item that is clearly labelled men's and being told in response "oh they're unisex". No, designed for an average male body is not unisex, unisex would be an item where the fit is adapted to accommodate both average male and female bodies as much as it can, not an item designed for men.

Would love to see the reaction if men were given clothing or equipment (bike saddles etc) specifically designed for women and told oh it's fine, it's unisex, we just made sure you got the larger size range.

What do people do to call this out? I guess I'll email them once they're no longer swamped by enquiries about where people's medals etc are but their comms is pretty shocking so I doubt I'll get much of a response. Maybe the kit sponsor (new balance) would be a good port of call as imagine they don't like getting caught up in complaints.

OP posts:
Antibles · 22/10/2020 01:11

It's always a one way street. Society allows women to wear stereotypically masculine clothes but men musn't wear stereotypically feminine clothes, too degrading to be associated with the penetrated type of people. Same as people will call a mixed sex group of people 'guys' but wouldn't dream of calling them 'girls' except as a jokey slur. Neutral or unisex defaults to male, hence the T shirts. I think there is discussion of this in Criado Perez's book.

Does reminds me of the wonderful Man Who Has It all twitter account twitter.com/ManWhoHasItAll . I'm sure somewhere it describes the T shirts on sale as ordinary ones or slightly more expensive ones which are specially designed to fit the tricky male body shape lol.