Policing Men's Clothes

[MalagaNights]

There's an interesting debate going on twitter between many of the GC feminists I follow and Sarah Phillimore and Helen Pluckrose.

It seems to hit on some of the themes we've been involved in discussing on here previously. Particularly linked to the man in a dress at Genspect.

https://x.com/SVPhillimore/status/1748983536785190951?s=20

Helen Pluckrose states somewhere that there is a a streak of authoritarianism in GC feminism. With some wanting to control what men can wear.

Sarah and Helen seem to be saying you can't legislate for this which I actually don't think anyone is arguing for. They're arguing with a straw man I think.

But what I think they're missing is the societal shift that has socially accepted men in women's clothes has allowed many men permission to have their fetish publicly celebrated.

We could turn that around with a change in social attitude. E.g many companies have now allowed men to wear the women's uniform at work. They don't have to allow this. We could return to men and women's uniforms including practical options for both.

We could openly discuss and express our discomfort about men who do this is usually sexual, instead of pretending it's just fashion. Everyone used to know this about cross dressing and that's why it was done privately.

Then we hit on the tricky issue how do we discriminate between men who are AGP and men who like exploring fashion?

Helen Pluckrose is arguing it's not usually sexual and if you are uncomfortable deal with your own feelings.

We could ensure that where men still insist on performing feminity we at least don't have to listen to why they're so brave and their 'story' to self discovery, as has been happening in work places.

I actually think the 'it's just clothes' ' let's abolish gender' stance of some feminists has led to this opportunity for men to queer the boundaries and bring their sexual fetish into every day life. I think we're discovering that some of the boundaries we had around the sexes, performed a role which we've thrown away.

I agree with Sarah that we can't legislate for this. But we never had legislation on clothing we just had socially acceptable rules which change over time with common consent.

Anyway, it's very heated over on twitter and I think we've actually reached a point of having to address this issue. How do we deal with men who get a sexual thrill from wearing women's clothes. Once we've all agreed they're men. Then what?

If feminism ever did manage to eliminate misogyny, then "everyday" men wouldn't feel embarrassed at wearing a skirt or dress, because things previously associated with women wouldn't be embarrassing. The next step would be that clothing wouldn't be associated with a particular sex - and AGPs wouldn't get a kick out of wearing them. As a PP said, the kick is in mimicking women and the "embarrassment" that comes with it, not the clothes in particular. Men with a specific women's clothes fetish are probably going to be wearing women's underwear in the first instance and how the heck would anyone be able to police against that? I

On the licencing point, if we licence women's clothes for only women, then it stands to reason that men's clothes shops would start popping up, selling men's clothes that resemble women's clothes. Where would you draw the line? Stopping "men's skirts" from being sold to men, in a "men's clothes" shop? Couldn't men then wear large culottes that look like skirts but because they're divided in the middle, they count as trousers?

I've just re-read the OP. So it's all about stopping men wear women's clothes in case AGPs are getting off on it? That is the whole context here?

Or is it about stopping women wear trousers too?

Why is anything indecent?

Because we culturally code it that way. In ways that have developed and may seem arbitrary. But also may not be. The code itself may be the point. A measure of who the group can trust or understand.

If clothes are just clothes
Bodies are just bodies
Sex is just sex

But we have boundaries about who can show what body parts in what situations.
About how much sexuality can be displayed publicly.

These are only 'indecent' relative to time and culture too.

Why is women baring their breasts in the public in the west indecent? Maybe it shouldn't be. Maybe it won't be in the future.

But right now it is, and if a woman wanted to go to work topless she'd make a lot of people uncomfortable because she'd be breaking the social code, not because her breasts are intrinsically indecent.

I think men wearing women's clothes used to feel indecent is because gendered clothing naturally develops in culture, so it's coded in, so when a man crosses this boundary it's a signal someone is transgresses the groups norms, the code is being ignored and that signals potential threat. Especially to women and children.

Men in social groups who ignore the codes and norms are particularly threatening because men are more dangerous so need stricter codes of conduct. When men start violating norms it sends a signal off to women and should trigger on men to bring other men into line with the group.

All that may sound oppressive and we want something more liberal where people can have more leeway and less group control. Great we've moved towards that. But we do still need group norms. No norms would be very dangerous, but any norms for 'decency' could be argued as arbitrarily and oppressive to someone.

No one who's ever taken a passing interest in anthropology knows in no culture are clothes just clothes, or norms just arbitrary. They are signals to the group and coded.

That is how I read it too and what struck me is that men made the exact same arguments against women wearing trousers, functional bathing suits, gym wear, and so on. They claimed only “unnatural” women would want to dress like a man and went into strange discourse about sexual fetishes and penis envy. Women would be judged as bad at first, but after repeat warnings, they would be deemed mad and put in insane asylums.

They also quoted the Bible which says it is immoral/indecent from Dueteronomy 22:5 “The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman’s garment; for all who do so are abomination unto the Lord thy God..”

Either the Bible is 100% correct or it’s 100% outdated sexist nonsense on this clothing rule. But what it can’t be is nonsense for women, but sense for men. It’s not an a la carte menu.

TBF i have penis envy. If I'd been born with one my life would have been a LOT easier. Especially in the army (where i wore men's clothes all the time because they didn't have women's combats)

I think the OP has been quite clear that what is culturally coded male or female varies across cultures, and can change within a culture. So I can't see why you would come to that conclusion.

Basically, what exactly is seen as conventional for clothing is based on a few things. Climate, Technology and material availability. Some comes out of physiology, and possibly aesthetic principles. And quite a lot is based on arbitrary historical happenstance. Some of these change over time. The invention of pants as we know them, for example, has a lot to do with technology.

It isn't the form of the clothing itself that is "inevitable" it is that human beings will tend to code for male of female in socially conventional ways, and clothing is a big one because it tends to reflect the male and female form that we are naturally attuned to.

Or to put it another way, there have been some attempts to enforce uniformity in clothing in order to minimize perception of sex in some political regimes. They fail pretty utterly because even wearing the same thing, men and women look different, you typically need to tailor them differently even at a pretty simple level of manufacture, and men and women stymie attempts at that kind of uniformity because that is the last thing most of them want. People like sexual dimorphisim and most of the time do not want to be perceived as a sort of neutral human.

As long as cultural differences in appearance remain remain, even if they are mild, the appearance of femaleness will potentially attract certain kinds of deviance from some males.

I am not sure if "indescent" is the best word.

Breaking social codes can mean very differernt things depending on the context.

In the past, men wearing women's clothing could be in a few contexts:

Male actor playing female role in theatre, possibly but not always comedic;

Man out for a foolish lark;

Man looking to be edgy, possibly rock star type. Gender norm inversion, while not directly a sexual act, is meant to reference sexual expectations, show a desire to question norms of all kinds, and ironically often highlights the masculinity of the male due to the contrast.

Repressed homosexual, or possibly homosexual male playing with the way sexuality and material culture coding interact.

And then there is fetishistic cross-dressing.

These are all about crossing boundaries, some for fun or comedy, some to question cultural assumptions, and some for rather unsavory reasons.

Some of these are much more acceptable than others in certain public settings, and not all are about "danger". A punk concert might get a lot of the gender bending type, but the same guy working the next day as a banker, or school janitor, probably would be expected to refrain from pushing any of those boundaries.

As a man I am prepared to be ignored wading into a feminism board but as one who does indeed wear clothes traditionally considered female like skirts and dresses, but as a man not trans anything, I felt I had to comment. I have done so for years before the whole trans debate came to light the way it has largely in believing equal fashion choices. Just like women have quite rightly pushed back on clothing restrictions over the years and mostly succeeded, at least in the Western world. Also comfort like I believe many females still prefer skirt garments, are they ever made to not wear trousers nowadays? Extremely rare I imagine. I present as a man, usually in more conservative skirts eg denim/cord/tartan with plain tights as weather requires, and t-shirt dresses were a dream to wear in the hot weather last year, and don't seem to be mistaken for a women or even a transwoman. I'm still addressed as sir, I'm the gentleman waiting, and use the mens toilets if needed. Sometimes I feel like wearing trousers and do so, like females make the choice. I have to for work as its the only sensible option for both genders.

On the subject of this thread I don't think there have ever been laws on this except basic decency, same for men and women. We don't seriously want to be like Russia, Dubai etc. What has changed is societal views which are often even greater control than specific laws. I'm more confident than some years ago I won't be verbally or physically threatened, treated less favourably in shops etc., labelled a danger to women or children etc. or discussing my clothes with police. If I act like its perfectly normal then usually everyone else will. In fact the less reaction to my clothes the better. Some men I know even wear skirts to their office daily or nearly daily, unthinkable about 10 years ago. And locally a primary boy was reported as wearing the girls uniform as a boy not trans kid (same tartan pinafore some female classmates wear), comments being the predictable mix of good for him, its child abuse, this "trans nonsense" needs to stop.

There just aren't men wearing dresses in modern western culture as a fashion choice.

I'm afraid you are sadly mistaken. I can believe some haven't seen it or only seen the more fetishistic crossdressers, but we exist. And some may have escaped notice for the very reason we wish to be unnoticed, in contrast to the more insidious AGP and trans activists. There are many communities who promote this, one such being Skirtcafe who make clear distinctions between transvestitism and male fashion.

@TempestTost
”It isn't the form of the clothing itself that is "inevitable" it is that human beings will tend to code for male of female in socially conventional ways, and clothing is a big one because it tends to reflect the male and female form that we are naturally attuned to.

Or to put it another way, there have been some attempts to enforce uniformity in clothing in order to minimize perception of sex in some political regimes. They fail pretty utterly…”

There are alot of things human beings tended to do all through history and in every culture, but doesn’t mean these are good things and should be copied into the future. I agree enforcing uniformity on all humans is bad and fails. I think enforcing uniformity of clothing by sex of men and women is also bad and past its use by date. The whole purpose of it anyway was to make women easier to identify as the property of men.

No one is saying do it in the future because it was done in the past. THey are saying the reason it is ubiquitous is tied into human nature, and so will not be extinguished except through significant authoritarianism, and probably not even then.

Your statement that the reason for female dress to be different through time is to show women are property is pretty speculative.

How is it tied to human nature when every generation humans rebel against it and therefore social controls are needed to preserve the status quo of clothing by sex? It takes significant authoritarianism to enforce any clothing rules at all.

It’s a deduction not a speculation. Every society has clothing codes for the elite versus the oppressed all nuanced by class, caste, sex and ethnicity.

Bloke who wears skirts but has a beard here.
I saw earlier a comment:
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"Safety - Maybe there is a benefit into being able to distinguish someone's sex whilst they are still far away from you. Maybe women can keep themselves safe if they can establish the sex of someone from afar without them getting too close before realising they are a man. Maybe Children benefit from clearly distinguishing a male or a female based on their attire. Especially so for small children who see clothes more than other features, to them a man wearing women's clothes might actually be a woman. Maybe this keeps them safe. The same could be said for people who have bad sight, especially women with bad sight, in countries where they can't access glasses. Maybe having clear outfits helps them to see who is male and female."
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and can't get it out of my head. I'm just curious as to how, these days, you believe it's possible to "distinguish someone's sex whilst they are still far away from you"? Before the 1960's that would have largely worked with the skirt/trouser divide but now? How do you distinguish the sex of a bunch of people wearing jeans and a t-shirt from a distance? Given the proportion of women who wear what used to be considered as "men's clothes" I would suggest that women themselves have made this vanishingly difficult?

You can tell what sex someone is when they move.

Or even when they stand.

Or talk.

But definitely walk.

Why is that? Do men stride aggressively while women sashay delicately?

God no, @SummerFeverVenice

There’s a cool graphic somewhere with it all marked out.

Basically women have wider hips so their leg swing is different. Their elbows angle the forearm slightly outward, so The wrists are further away from the thigh- that classic outward handbag swing is an exaggeration of it. There are loads of others. None of them I’d be able to pick out and be specific about but all together it’s wry distinctive. I can almost always pick out make from female at a distance, as long as they are moving.

A young adult friend of DS had a distinctive lope as he walked. After a name change and now wearing dresses, I’m wondering why happened to that lope. It will depend massively on the shoes. You can’t easily lope in women’s shoes.

It will depend massively on the shoes. You can’t easily lope in women’s shoes.

Depends what you mean by “women’s shoes” I suppose.

Indeed. But I doubt the young man in question changed his name to Lilly to carry on wearing trainers

The youth have a different attitude to trans though don't they? They say it's not how you dress that makes you a woman but your inner womanly feelings. They've basically noticed that most women live in trainers and comfortable shoes 99% of the time and think they also need to do that so it makes them more authentically women. The "trans" youth I know just looks exactly like a strapping 6 foot male. The only nod to femininity is his long pink hair and his new name.

As I said, it depends on the shoes. Stereotypical women’s shoes are not easy to lope in. Trainers and other unisex styles will be fine, if that’s what he wears. He definitely wears dresses now.
He’s involved in an upcoming event so I’ll see pictures soon and satisfy my curiosity. I only thought about him because of a PPs surprise that men and women are easily distinguished at distance despite their dress. It reminded me that I’d recognise that lad from behind, at a distance as I drove down the road. Unmistakable. I’m wondering what difference his clothes will have made.

In contrast, I live the visible authoritarianism in GI…

I would not be at risk of losing my job to say TWAW, but I would if I were to say sex is immutable and I don’t believe in pronouns. I have been pulled up for using he/she generally but wouldn’t if I only said they.

I agree one can often tell, and also agree it doesn’t always work because biologically our sexual dimorphism has overlap between the sexes so we have androgynous people.

I don’t think I’d agree- there is overlap in terms of size- muscular, tall women, slightly built men- but there are enough markers for a forensic anthropologist to know whether the skeleton is male or female. It’s an unusual individual who is genuinely androgynous after puberty. Presenting androgynously perhaps, actually being androgynous because of overlap in a sexually dimorphic species, I’m not convinced.

Obviously there’s the whole ‘you don’t know when you get it wrong’ thing- but I’d be surprised.

Enough markers for forensic anthropologists to determine sex with average 90% accuracy in medieval to post medieval remains. The accuracy rate gets worse, the further away you get from modern times.

There is androgyny in adult skeletal remains, there was always categories of male, probable male, indeterminate, probable female, and female when doing macro-analysis of adults prior to the advent of DNA testing.

The ~90% accuracy is still a 1 in 10 error rate, and with leisure to study bones.

You can’t see or study the bones of someone walking a distance away. Musculature and learned movements can obscure bone structure.

As bones deteriorate then features will inevitably be lost or obscured.
Is that ten percent purely in intact undamaged remains? If it includes partial or damaged remains then ten percent is a pretty low level of uncertainty.

Anyway, that’s a bit of a detour from the main topic, based on whether there’s a social advantage in clothes making identification at a distance easier.