Do you think men should be allowed to wear skirts?

[ciarafoley97]

This was brought up by an article I read in the DailyMail (www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-8847579/Straight-married-father-three-reveals-hes-worn-skirts-high-heels-day-four-years.html)

Some would say the fact that people think it's ridiculous for men to wear feminine clothing but the reverse isn't true is because the patriarchy sees women as being inferior to men. Therefore in a true gender egalitarian society, clothes would have no gender.

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

No, they should be exiled to a remote Scottish Island and be made to wear a kilt and listen to bagpipes 24/7. WTF - they can wear what they like, who cares.

Cross dressing isn't speculative. It's very, very common. And it utterly relies on women. Without women, there would be nothing to fetishise. Without validation, which has to involve women, their spaces, and society's attitude towards them, it wouldn't exist.

No, the outdated notion of "cross dressing" relies on prescriptive gender norms that haven't evolved since 19th-century Sexual Inversion theory. It relies on the gendering of clothing, whereby certain clothes and other forms of personal adornment are reserved for each sex - hence why women in trousers were "cross dressers" in the not-too-distant past. It relies on prescriptive behavioural norms underpinning modes of dress, e.g., men are to be active and sexual agents and their practical and non-decorative clothing should reflect this; women are to be passive and their clothing should be decorative and sexy to attract men. It relies, in short, on a mountain of gender bullshit that radical feminists professedly want to abolish! "Cross dressing" is no more an objective phenomenon than "transgenderism".

Gay men in heels and miniskirts in a gay bar are certainly not involving women or their spaces. Indeed, it is illuminating that the only men who have a certain licence to dress this way are those not seeking women. Perhaps the ultimate reason that transgressing gender norms is so taboo is that heterosexual attraction seems to be largely reliant on them. So much for the sentiment that sex is all that matters, not gender.

God forbid a man qua a man should want to be or appear sexy, "submissive", sexually attention-seeking - whatever (again, going no further in this expression than many women). Once more I ask: can somebody please explain to me what is inherently wrong with this?

Without women, there would be nothing to fetishise.

Paradoxically, it is professedly "gender critical" feminists who are insisting that "sexy" qualities, roles and clothes remain yoked to women! In one breath, they say that women are not just sex objects and therefore a man dressing as a sex object does not make him a woman, and in the next, they define "woman" as "sex object" in order to condemn men for dressing like "women"! The doublethink is mind-boggling.

But I don't agree that without the "woman = sex object" equation, there would be nothing to fetishise. Certain clothes have an inherent sexual appeal to many people, which goes beyond cultural associations. Wearers of both sexes cite materials - leather, lace, silk - and how these feel against the body, the effects of certain items on the appearance of the body, e.g., how high heels transform legs and bums, and the revealing or emphasis of sexually attractive body parts. I have often thought that male enjoyment of lingerie is party vicarious. I bet that many men would like to wear it themselves, if it were acceptable to women.

Despite the protestations of feminist concern, I perceive that the core of this opposition is emotivist: "I don't like it.", "I don't find this attractive." Some posters could save themselves a lot of time and effort on these threads by just writing "Ew".

IMO the more we can do to break down the idea that people are obligated to do/wear/shag in a certain way on the basis of their genitals, the better.

I grew up in the 1980s, and it's honestly really scary how obsessed society has become since then with really rigid ideas about gender roles, and alongside that the belief that anyone who doesn't conform to rigid gender roles has something wrong with them, or isn't really a woman/man at all, and needs surgery and to transition to 'fix' them and make them conform.

There's a photo that went viral a few years ago comparing female children's clothing catalogues from the 1980s (little girls in blue, brown, green, yellow, red) to clothing choices for girls now (a sea of pink and sparkly unicorn crap).

There's a huge increase in teenage and even pre-teenage girls being referred to "gender clinics" because they are "non gender conforming" - in past decades, many of those girls would have grown up to be lesbians, and of course lots of them were straight but just happened to be tomboys. It breaks my heart to see children brainwashed into thinking there's something wrong with them just because of their taste in clothes, and that they need permanent and dangerous drugs or even surgery to 'fix' something that does not need fixing.

The same is true for the opposite sex, even though men are generally given much more of a pass to experiment. Not every female is "girly" and not every male is into traditionally masculine things, and that should be fine. Ideas about clothing being coded as feminine or masculine differ hugely both across history and across the globe, anyway.

I'd much rather a man be "allowed" to wear a pink skirt and not have society tell him he isn't a real man, than men/boys feel they have to identify as women and invade female spaces because they happen to like wearing pink skirts.

This screencap perfectly captures what I find so frightening with the idea that one's genitals dictate what clothes you are and are not allowed to like.

@McSilkson

Cross dressing isn't speculative. It's very, very common. And it utterly relies on women. Without women, there would be nothing to fetishise. Without validation, which has to involve women, their spaces, and society's attitude towards them, it wouldn't exist.

No, the outdated notion of "cross dressing" relies on prescriptive gender norms that haven't evolved since 19th-century Sexual Inversion theory. It relies on the gendering of clothing, whereby certain clothes and other forms of personal adornment are reserved for each sex - hence why women in trousers were "cross dressers" in the not-too-distant past. It relies on prescriptive behavioural norms underpinning modes of dress, e.g., men are to be active and sexual agents and their practical and non-decorative clothing should reflect this; women are to be passive and their clothing should be decorative and sexy to attract men. It relies, in short, on a mountain of gender bullshit that radical feminists professedly want to abolish! "Cross dressing" is no more an objective phenomenon than "transgenderism".

Gay men in heels and miniskirts in a gay bar are certainly not involving women or their spaces. Indeed, it is illuminating that the only men who have a certain licence to dress this way are those not seeking women. Perhaps the ultimate reason that transgressing gender norms is so taboo is that heterosexual attraction seems to be largely reliant on them. So much for the sentiment that sex is all that matters, not gender.

God forbid a man qua a man should want to be or appear sexy, "submissive", sexually attention-seeking - whatever (again, going no further in this expression than many women). Once more I ask: can somebody please explain to me what is inherently wrong with this?

Without women, there would be nothing to fetishise.

Paradoxically, it is professedly "gender critical" feminists who are insisting that "sexy" qualities, roles and clothes remain yoked to women! In one breath, they say that women are not just sex objects and therefore a man dressing as a sex object does not make him a woman, and in the next, they define "woman" as "sex object" in order to condemn men for dressing like "women"! The doublethink is mind-boggling.

But I don't agree that without the "woman = sex object" equation, there would be nothing to fetishise. Certain clothes have an inherent sexual appeal to many people, which goes beyond cultural associations. Wearers of both sexes cite materials - leather, lace, silk - and how these feel against the body, the effects of certain items on the appearance of the body, e.g., how high heels transform legs and bums, and the revealing or emphasis of sexually attractive body parts. I have often thought that male enjoyment of lingerie is party vicarious. I bet that many men would like to wear it themselves, if it were acceptable to women.

Despite the protestations of feminist concern, I perceive that the core of this opposition is emotivist: "I don't like it.", "I don't find this attractive." Some posters could save themselves a lot of time and effort on these threads by just writing "Ew".

I'm afraid I gave up reading this halfway through.

If a man is becoming sexually aroused by dressing 'as a woman', it's not harmless, it does involve women, and it is sexist.

Wearing clothes of the opposite sex is not a problem, unless it is fetishising personal sexist stereotypes of what it means. As this requires validation, through propagating those stereotypes.

Women don't tend to fetishise clothing of the opposite sex.

McSilkson Google sissyfication bro

Datun

As you uphold the idea of clothing belonging to one sex or the other - the boy box and the girl box - we are clearly not going to see eye to eye.

What does "clothing of the opposite sex" even mean in relation to women in the West these days? We can and do wear pretty much every type of clothing with minimal social consequences.

Why would women fetishise trousers, for instance, when trousers are neither forbidden us nor particularly "sexy"? Women don't exactly lack for gender-normative ways to express ourselves sexually through clothes; all the "sexy" clothes already "belong" to us.

Why would women fetishise trousers, for instance, when trousers are neither forbidden us nor particularly "sexy"?

They don't.

The fetishisation of women's clothing, and the objectification of women, is a male issue.

Certain men fetishise women's clothing and their perceived status, because it is 'punching down'. It doesn't work in reverse.

The humiliation fetish, submission aspect, and self-imposed degradation is part of the arousal.

For an abundance of reference, see #girlslikeus, female embodiment fantasy, cross dreamers, cross dressers, #transgirls, etc.

Or, alternatively, the 4000 odd posts on this site is connected to transwidows, or any transwidows site.

The fetishisation of women's clothing, and the objectification of women, is a male issue.

I don't entirely agree. I think it is a socio-cultural issue. Plenty of women self-objectify themselves and are aroused by their own submission and degradation. You can hardly move for evidence of this across the internet, from sites such as Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, etc., and, indeed, this one. There have been loads of disturbing threads on here in which women proclaim their love of being strangled, sexual submission, etc.

It is an unfortunate and uncomfortable truth for a feminist to swallow.

I know that some men get off on what you describe; I am quite familiar with that subculture. However, I think that what they really get off on is submission, degradation and humiliation per se. It's just that those things are gendered in society and "woman" is a convenient persona in which to experience them. They might just as well be a "gimp" or a "slave" or whatever.

However, the existence of men like that doesn't make it reasonable to assume that any man in a miniskirt or heels has a "sissy" complex, any more than it would be reasonable for me to assume that a female student in fishnet tights and choker, sitting across from me on the bus, was into "choking" (despite the increasing popularity of that). It would be none of my business, either way. And that's called judging a book by its cover.

Plenty of women self-objectify themselves and are aroused by their own submission and degradation

Do you view women as submissive McSilkson?

It's just that those things are gendered in society and "woman" is a convenient persona in which to experience them. They might just as well be a "gimp" or a "slave" or whatever.

So you see the gendered female role as equivalent to that of a slave, or indeed a gimp?

@HecatesCats

Plenty of women self-objectify themselves and are aroused by their own submission and degradation

Do you view women as submissive McSilkson?

It's just that those things are gendered in society and "woman" is a convenient persona in which to experience them. They might just as well be a "gimp" or a "slave" or whatever.

So you see the gendered female role as equivalent to that of a slave, or indeed a gimp?

Not inherently, no. I am certainly not. However, I must say that I find the prevalence of such desires in other women very troubling... Nature? Nurture? Both? It's far beyond my ability to attempt to answer that...

No, but I think that such men (perhaps many men; perhaps many people) see it that way.

@McSilkson

The fetishisation of women's clothing, and the objectification of women, is a male issue.

I don't entirely agree. I think it is a socio-cultural issue. Plenty of women self-objectify themselves and are aroused by their own submission and degradation. You can hardly move for evidence of this across the internet, from sites such as Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, etc., and, indeed, this one. There have been loads of disturbing threads on here in which women proclaim their love of being strangled, sexual submission, etc.

It is an unfortunate and uncomfortable truth for a feminist to swallow.

I know that some men get off on what you describe; I am quite familiar with that subculture. However, I think that what they really get off on is submission, degradation and humiliation per se. It's just that those things are gendered in society and "woman" is a convenient persona in which to experience them. They might just as well be a "gimp" or a "slave" or whatever.

However, the existence of men like that doesn't make it reasonable to assume that any man in a miniskirt or heels has a "sissy" complex, any more than it would be reasonable for me to assume that a female student in fishnet tights and choker, sitting across from me on the bus, was into "choking" (despite the increasing popularity of that). It would be none of my business, either way. And that's called judging a book by its cover.

Haha! Do you want some calamine for all that straw, you must be quite itchy.

We're not talking about women who are into BDSM. We're talking about men who fetishise the perceived subordinate nature of women by wearing their clothes, thereby perpetuating damaging stereotypes.

You won't find women masturbating to the idea of being humiliated by wearing blokes' clothes.

I'd also like to draw your attention to this website. Please don't imagine that strangulation and choking during sex is mainstream, and doesn't have very negative outcomes.

wecantconsenttothis.uk/

However, I must say that I find the prevalence of such desires in other women very troubling...

Since the prevalence of it is such a recent phenomenon, in my many years of experience as a woman, do you think that might have something to do with the increasing availability of violent porn that subjugates women.

videos on Pornhub – as on other free to view sites – show extremely hardcore and violent pornography.
Campaigners say that this fact, coupled with the high prevalence of videos promoting sex with young teenagers – “teen” is one of the most popular categories on the site – means there is an urgent need to know for certain that videos are made consensually.

www.theguardian.com/global-development/2020/mar/09/worlds-biggest-porn-site-under-fire-over-videos-pornhub

Pornhub features women being brutally abused

metro.co.uk/2020/02/25/pornhub-women-brutally-abused-shut-12293100/

Why would women fetishise trousers, for instance, when trousers are neither forbidden us nor particularly "sexy"?

They don't

On another thread a poster was trying to convince us there were large numbers of gender-non-conforming women who would be seriously prejudiced by the strict enforcement of single sex toilets. Most posters, including me, weren't convinced by this.

But after having Googled "butches in suits" "women in suits" I'm now less sure that poster was entirely wrong. There also seemed to at least a possibility of fetishisation in the more extreme looks.

I don't doubt there are outliers, Dido. In the same way that there are some young women who have convinced themselves, and want to convince others, that they are in fact homosexual men. And get rather narked when young gay men aren't interested. There are certainly a lot of very confused young women around at the moment.

But I don't see women plastered across social media in pornographic poses masturbating to the thought of wearing 'men's clothes'.

The degradation and demeaning of women in pornography fuels men's humiliation fetishes, when they can imagine themselves as those women.

It's prevalent, it's everywhere, it's insidious, and it's dangerous for women.

All people should wear whatever they want, provided basic standards of decency are met. I don't want to see anyones' nipples or genitalia.

How has this post gone from a simple question about men wearing skirts to a discussion about sexual fetishes?
Crossdressing is not simply a fetish although in some cases it obviously is.
Some people show this trait at a very young age so it cant simply be assumed to be a fetish.
Anyway simply wearing a skirt surely doesnt mean a man is a crossdreeser any more than the fact that I am wearing trousers today makes me one !