Do you think men should be allowed to wear skirts?

Should it be considered socially acceptable for them to wear female-coded highly sexualised garments in public, non-sexualised contexts? Debatable.

This is where I think men expanding the boundaries of acceptable male clothing is important. If men wear skirts in normal ways then I think any fetish aspect gets removed.

And anyone wearing sexualised clothing in an inappropriate context would stand out.

Any man who is doing something that gives them a boner in public whilst claiming it doesn't- well the rest of the sentence might get me deleted.

No, I'm saying they may have had different motivations.

I'm also saying one chose garments that signal "female" and the other preferred those which signal "female+sexy".

Whether a particular style of skirt is generally considered appropriate for men is dependent on what baggage the local culture attaches to that style. From your tone I'm getting that you think this is a heinous thing for me to say. It's not. It's just a fact of human psychology: we attach meaning to inanimate objects.

OP asked "should men be allowed to wear skirts?" Should they be allowed to wear a neutral unbifurcated leg covering? Of course, yes. Should it be considered socially acceptable for them to wear female-coded highly sexualised garments in public, non-sexualised contexts? Debatable.

What about dating prospects? Would you date a man who wore skirts/high heels?

Yes, if I found them attractive. I wish more men did experiment with clothing etc. I am aware that fashion is superficial and unnecessary but it is something I enjoy in the same way I enjoy chocolate!

As long as they didn't try to gaslight me that their choice of clothing meant they were somehow exempt from respecting women's boundaries.

They are allowed to wear them!

As long as there's some robust underwear going on underneath to avoid indecency why would anyone care?!

TyroTerf what you are saying is whether or not a man wearing a skirt which is not in the kilt/sarong variety is acceptable does indeed depend on the analysis of armchair psychologists.

You've decided Kurt Cobain was acceptable and Brian Molko probably wasn't.

I quite like to see a man in a skirt. Have dated one or two of them in the past (and I'm not particularly edgy or countercultural).

I had a completely hetero boy at school turn up to my lesson in a red leather mini skirt. He was tall and slim and looked great in it. He was a real tough nut too. I'd like to have seen the result of any kid mocking him.

Not at all, Dido - I'm saying the man who chooses to wear a skirt in our culture is signalling something whether he consciously intends to or not.

He may simply wish to fuck with others' expectations and do his bit to degender skirts. Kurt Cobain was an excellent example of this, with his dresses that were female-coded but did not carry connotations of sexiness.

He may also be choosing to use his sartorial choices to signal submissive-degraded-sexy, which in our culture is associated with the female. I have a horrible feeling this may be what Brian Molko was doing, and have no intention of destroying my teenage dreams by trying to verify this.

The garment may be objectively neutral, but it is loaded with cultural meanings.

Of course they're allowed. Freedom to choose what to wear should apply to everyone. Doesn't give a free pass to joining a female netball team though.

I do think more men should wear skirts normally, so that some of the fetish power is removed.

You seem to be saying that unless the garment falls into a category which is in the neutral category that a man wearing it will immediately suspect in some ways. Your argument contradicts "men can wear anything" as what you are actually saying is men can wear a skirt as long as it is the type of skirt which the local culture deems acceptable for a man.

Crossposted with Noway there - just to clarify, a child DS hasn't absorbed the full range of meaning number two. For a little boy, a skirt is just a skirt. It's the reactions of his peers that teach him the second meaning.

Tinsel It's two different meanings of skirt, isn't it?

There's the neutral, single-fabric-leg-tube meaning, under which kilts and sarongs and so on are skirts.

And there's the local culture-specific sex-signifier meaning, under which skirt=woman=sex.

You can see that second meaning when the Scots are denying that kilts are skirts, because they're not invested with the woman/sex connotation.

And you and I know all too well that, in our culture, a man who has absorbed the second meaning and wears something that very much fits within that category is telling you something about himself - that there is some aspect of that second meaning which he desires to have applied to himself.

Yes everyone should be free to wear whatever they want, as long as its decent of course.
My own DS loves to wear skirts but society says he shouldn't. If he ever left the house wearing one I sadly feel the reactions would mostly be negative, not so much from females but certainly from other boys and men.

I would think cross-dresser and autogynephilia. Has a fetish and gets aroused easily. Should keep his deviancy in the home and not in public where there are children.

Allowed yes. As a man, would I personally wear one, no.

This individual is very clearly AGP.

It's difficult to describe how it feels as a trans widow, having been gaslit along similar lines to have women queuing up to be gaslit by saying that this man is just wearing what he wants and they're just clothes.

I wonder what his wife and children really think?

On the other hand, My last partner (not the trans one) was a fan of wearing (men's) sarongs around the house because he found them comfortable. They were "skirts" that weren't remotely girly. There's nothing wrong with that because it doesn't fetishise womanhood.

If you go folk dancing in England you will see men wearing skirts when they want to. It's no big deal and sometimes they look stylish (unusual for any folk dancer really). I'm thinking of the young man from Sheffield area wearing a fitted short grey jacket and matching swishy chiffon skirt.

Sometimes when I read these discussions I feel like no-one else sees men wearing skirts in a normal way.

Lots of you have already said it - there are many kinds of skirts men already wear. It's not a big deal.
DH wears a sarong on holiday, kilts have been around forever. Last seen in the wild by me in Sweden of all places. Guy camping had this brilliant utility kilt.
Men wearing fetished clothing in public, I'm less keen to see or be an unconsenting part of.

I live in Scotland. Kilts are really not anything to make a song and dance about. Men wear them all the time; nobody cares. And of course many men wear Salwar kameez, too. Never seen anyone raise an eyebrow at that, either.

Same with wearing women's underwear - if there was a demand for scratchy lacy skimpy pants for men then they would be designed with the male shape in mind. But there isn't because men don't want lace - they want women's underwear which they are not 'supposed' to wear.

If men could wear heels and feminine skirts (as opposed to kilts or other similar traditional male clothing) without anyone turning a hair then do you think they would actually want to? Men don't wear heels because they look good on them or because they are comfortable. They wear them in order to transgress a boundary.