A Man in a dress- how would you feel?

[Wooopdiedoo]

I'm fairly new here and have only read through a couple of posts, but I wanted to ask a question.

How would you feel if a man you knew wanted to wear "Female" (heavy on the quotation marks) clothing?

I'm specifically talking about a male whose only intention is to wear the dress because they like the dress, nothing else — no statement, no 'changing' of pronouns or wanting to be treated or referred to in any particular way, no mockery, no discussion or intention of 'becoming' a woman (again, quote unquote, not saying it's possible).

Would you genuinely be okay with this, say if your husband/friend/ colleague wearing a dress out in public? Would you have any thoughts or feelings about it, and would these affect what you say to them or how you would act?

I'm not sure how I would respond, honestly, and I know that's probably (definitely) due to my internalisation of 'gendered' norms (by that I man sex based). I think I my knee jerk reaction might be to feel inclined that its somehow not right or looks silly, before reminding myself that its just a piece of fabric and if someone likes what they like on their body, thats kindof the end of it.

On the other hand, I definitely wouldn't have the same reaction to seeing women in any clothing, and my response would always be neutral to positive.

I recently stayed in a hotel somewhere quite remote and conservative. The young man running it was wearing high heeled boots to serve customers breakfast and clean the rooms. I thought to myself that no woman would be allowed to wear such impractical ridiculous clothing .

Cut to the twerp who turned up in a white linen mini-skirt at a muddy barbecue because he thought that was what a woman would be wearing. Of the twelve women present, none was in a skirt...

It's quite far outwith the experience or imagination of most women.

Men's sexuality can be very odd, and very extreme.

I think you’ve actually provided an excellent historical analogy in support of my entire argument. Women fought for the freedom to wear trousers without having their femininity, womanhood or motives called into question. They rightly challenged the idea that wearing traditionally masculine clothing made them less of a woman.

So why shouldn’t exactly the same principle apply to men? Why should a man wearing a dress have his masculinity, identity, sexuality or psychological motivations questioned simply because he enjoys traditionally feminine clothing? And there’s something else missing from your comparison. Women didn’t overcome those restrictions solely by putting on trousers and enduring prejudice. Society also had to change its attitudes.

The people who disapproved, ridiculed or sought to restrict women’s clothing choices were part of the problem that needed addressing. The same principle applies here. Men wearing dresses openly can certainly help normalise them. But people who insist that men shouldn’t wear them, or who regard them with automatic suspicion, are also helping to maintain the very prejudice that needs to change. They are part of the problem.

That’s particularly relevant to a thread in which some women say they would reject their own husbands for wearing dresses.
Of course nobody is obliged to find a particular style attractive or remain in a relationship. But that doesn’t place personal attitudes beyond examination.

The historical lesson isn’t simply that people facing prejudice must endure it until society catches up. It’s that the prejudice itself deserves to be challenged. Women were right to insist that trousers didn’t make them less feminine or less of a woman. Men deserve the same recognition that dresses don’t make them less masculine or less of a man. Equality means applying that principle in both directions.

What I find striking about this entire discussion is how much justification seems to be demanded of a man who simply wants to wear a dress. Rather than accepting that he might enjoy the design, fabric or feeling of wearing something beautiful, we’ve had speculation about sexual motives, psychological disorders, gender identity and inappropriate behaviour. And when those assumptions are questioned, the act of questioning them is itself described as a red flag!

I fully recognise that women experience prejudice, harassment and unfair judgements about their clothing. None of that should be minimised. But those experiences don’t establish that a man wearing feminine clothing has questionable motives. There’s also a curious contradiction here. We rightly celebrate women who challenged restrictive clothing conventions and insisted that wearing trousers did not diminish their femininity or womanhood. Yet some seem reluctant to extend exactly the same equivalent freedom to men. Equality surely requires us to examine our own assumptions, including those we feel strongly attached to.

Nobody is being asked to wear a dress, find a man in one attractive, or disregard inappropriate behaviour. The question is very simple: why is it so difficult to accept that a man might see a dress and simply want to wear it, without having to justify his identity, psychology or motives?

Blinking heck @KhakiCritic , give ChatGPT a rest and talk like a normal person.

The difference is that women wearing trousers did not present any particular threat to men, whereas some men wearing dresses have been shown to do actual physical harm to women. This makes women more inclined to wonder whether this particular man who chooses to wear attire he associates with women is going to be like the one who sexually assaulted children in supermarket ladies' lavatories, or the one who bit a woman's ear off and tried to put out another's eye, or the one who raped two women and wounded one of his neighbours with a knife, or the one who was imprisoned for head-butting a barman for being too slow serving him, or the one jailed for domestic abuse, or the one who kidnapped and intentionally strangled a woman, or the one who drove his van into a woman just before his attempt to kidnap her failed, or the one who went on a rampage during which he committed arson and trashed shops, or the one who threatened arson and demanded a six-figure sum not to do it, or....

You get the picture?

Women are inclined to suspect men wearing women's clothing of potentially being dangerous nutters, and not knowing them, cannot know that this particular one is lovely to puppies and spends his spare time picking up litter and devotedly looking after his granny and her cat. This applies as much to a man in a dress as it does to any man; any one of them may be thoroughly reprehensible and even dangerous, and no man is going to get a free pass because of what he is wearing. A smart city suit can cover a domestic abuser or a rapist just as much as paint-stained old overalls can, after all, so a Dior dress equally might.

Hey, I write difficult sentences too, but I promise you they are all my own work.

why is it so difficult to accept that a man might see a dress and simply want to wear it, without having to justify his identity, psychology or motives?

Your argument assumes that men and women experience the world in the same way, i.e. that both 'sides' come from equal starting points. This false a priori assumption undermines your whole position.

@ArabellaScott answered this at 14.27
A woman who is confronted by a man in women's clothing cannot tell whether he is doing it because he is sexually excited by it, or because he is a fervent adherent to Judith Butler's early 1990s academic theories, or for any other reason.
But there is a solid chance that he is motivated by a fetish.
We don't make the same assumptions about women because women do not commit 99% of sex crimes. And fetishes and paraphilias are overwhelmingly a male phenomenon. And men commit 80% of violent crime, are larger and stronger than women, and present a risk, as a sex class, to women, as a sex class.
Women risk assess men, out of necessity. Men present a risk to women.

Let me repeat that: women risk assess men. We do it all the time, automatically.

So, women find it difficult to accept men in dresses because they might be dangerous at worst, or creepy at least.

I think it is probably hard for any man to understand that from a woman's point of view, any man who wants to renounce his male privilege and embrace being a second-class citizen must be a bit mad to start with, and may have got more so during his attempts to be accepted as something he is not. He is therefore unpredictable and potentially dangerous.

Women, after all, know exactly how far everything is weighted against them; wanting to be in that position when you are not compelled into it definitely seems perverse from a female standpoint.

I'd find it refreshing that a man can just admit they want to wear a dress & not imply that makes them a woman.

You’ve moved on a bit, from “I don't give a shit what anyone else wears tbh”.
So we agree now, some clothes are worn for aggressive reasons. The KKK hood to intimidate. And in many cases, as we know from court reports, women’s clothing in order for men to trespass in women’s spaces.

In the eighties I was tolerant of this particular idiosyncrasy in the matter of male attire. Now, since the nastiness of too many transvestites, drag queens and so on making thoroughly offensive demands of and attacks on women, I am less tolerant.

This is often so: ask someone nicely for something and she may well give it to you, but demand it with menaces and she is less inclined to do so.

There is also a difference between what is asked of her by someone she knows, and what is demanded of her by a bunch of threatening strangers.

You do realise that you contradicted your own argument? You started off by suggesting that men wearing dresses warrant particular suspicion because some have committed serious crimes. At the end, you acknowledge that a dangerous man might wear a suit, overalls or a Dior dress. And that’s the point I’ve been making all along. Clothing is NOT a reliable indicator of someone’s character or intentions.

My argument was and is that men may be dangerous to women no matter what they are wearing: a suit, a paint-stained overall or a Dior dress, it makes no difference. It would be exceedingly stupid for a woman to think for a moment that a man in a dress is somehow less likely to be a threat than any other man.

I did not suggest, in that post, that men wearing a dress warrant greater suspicion. I thought that was clear from my penultimate sentence, which you've skipped over to get to the the last one.

I subsequently realised, though, that since transvestism is very often an attempt by a man to lower his status, women might reasonably think that a man doing it is perhaps muddled in his thinking and he therefore might be more of an object of suspicion, and said so.

Where exactly does my argument day that men and women experience the world identically? I have never once implied that and I never would. What you’ve done here is conflated two very different questions. The first is whether women have legitimate reasons to be cautious around unfamiliar men. The second is whether a man wearing a dress gives you additional reason to suspect sexual motives, inappropriate behaviour or dangerous intentions. The first does not establish the second!

Statistics about male violence cannot tell us what proportion of men who wear dresses do so for sexual reasons, much less whether those men present any greater risk than men wearing conventional masculine clothing. You say there is a “solid chance” that a man wearing a dress is motivated by a fetish. What evidence establishes that probability? What is it? 5%, 10, 30 etc?

I am not asking women to stop assessing risks, disregard their experiences or trust strangers unconditionally. What I’m asking is why a harmless clothing preference should itself be treated as evidence of questionable motives. Because equal treatment doesn’t require men and women to have identical experiences. What it requires us is to apply fair principles when judging individuals.

KhakiCritic, I think the answer to your second question is that too many thoroughly nasty customers have spoiled it for the perfectly nice blokes who happen to like silk, satin, velvet or whatever else as garb. The association women have with men wearing women's clothing is negative because of the behaviour of too many men who do so, and innocents will unfortunately get tarred with the same brush. This is very unfair, but I'm afraid it is simply human nature to be wary of something that has been so very negative.

What I’m asking is why a harmless clothing preference should itself be treated as evidence of questionable motives

Because some men disguise themselves as women in order to trespass in women’s spaces. Whether they want to intimidate women, or attack women, or just enjoy listening to them urinating, it’s for the men’s pleasure at the expense of women.

So it’s not always a harmless preference.

I think you’ve just identified something fundamental to this discussion. You say that men wearing feminine clothing is “very often an attempt by a man to lower his status”. Why should wearing feminine clothing lower a man’s status in the first place? It assumes a hierarchy in which masculinity confers status and femininity diminishes it. And that’s exactly a problem in society that needs addressing because it is asserting that men are superior to women. It’s nonsense and it’s wrong.

Even if society sometimes treats feminine men as lower status, that doesn’t mean a man who chooses to wear a dress is trying to lower his status. What your doing here is attributing a motive to him based on the very social convention I’m questioning. Why couldn’t he simply admire the dress and enjoy wearing it?

You then go on to suggest that this supposed desire to lower his status indicates that he may be “muddled in his thinking” and therefore more suspicious. I disagree because that conclusion rests entirely on the original assumption that femininity is something a man would only embrace for some unusual psychological reason. Why? Men are allowed to want to experience beautiful things, including clothing. It’s not something that is peculiar to women. It’s human.

Women fought for a long time to establish that wearing trousers didn’t diminish their femininity or womanhood. Men are equally free to enjoy traditionally feminine clothing without being regarded as diminished, confused or psychologically suspect. Because it not, why?

I agree that’s a problem, but it is not the same thing as a man who wears a dress as a man and makes no attempt to impersonate a woman.

whether a man wearing a dress gives you additional reason to suspect sexual motives
What I’m asking is why a harmless clothing preference should itself be treated as evidence of questionable motives.

Because he is transgressing a taboo.
When women 'risk assess' a man they don't know, it is not about statistics and facts and reasoning and logic. It is a basic instinct. Any man who is 'being odd', 'behaving strangely' or transgressing social norms is suspect, even if he is completely harmless.

If men want to wear dresses, it will take many decades, and vast thousands of men doing this in a completely routine way, very regularly, in a non-sexualised way (i.e. not leather minis with fishnets etc.), with no adverse results, for women to even start to feel comfortable about it.
Plus the dresses need to be made to fit the male body, so off-the-peg women's dresses won't be acceptable.

Any man who is 'being odd', 'behaving strangely' or transgressing social norms is suspect

Exactly. Because we don’t usually have the luxury of unlimited time to find out more, observe his behaviour, maybe see how he interacts with other women. We have to trust our immediate self-preservation instincts. And if he’s wearing clothes associated with sex fetishism, most of us will have learnt to keep a safe distance.

I think given what you’ve said, you’ve actually identified one of the key parts of the entire issue. You say that a man wearing a dress is transgressing a taboo, and that transgressing a social norm makes him instinctively suspicious. But isn’t that precisely how prejudice perpetuates itself?

Society discourages men from wearing feminine clothing, so it remains unusual. Because it’s unusual, people regard it with suspicion and that suspicion then discourages more men from wearing it.

People can have instinctive reactions to unfamiliar things and that’s to be expected to an extent. But in explaining those reactions it doesn’t make the assumptions that sit behind them fair or accurate.

I’m also struck by the “conditions” you’re placing on acceptance. Why should a man have to restrict himself to particular styles? Women can wear leather skirts, fishnets, satin or lace without those garments automatically establishing their motives. Why should men be judged differently? And why shouldn’t a man wear an off-the-peg dress if it fits him and he likes it?

Clothing fit is an engineering question and linked to a body shape and men and women can actually have similar shapes. Change also requires people to question the assumptions that make an ordinary clothing preference seem suspicious in the first place.

Women who challenged clothing conventions didn’t win acceptance by waiting until everyone was comfortable. They challenged the conventions themselves and the right to make a harmless choice should not be dictated by everyone else’s comfort.

Something important seems to have been lost in this discussion. The original question concerned a woman with a man she knows well such as her husband who decides he wants to wear dresses. We are talking about someone she knows intimately, whose character, behaviour and treatment of her she has experienced over many years.

And somehow the thread has increasingly shifted towards whether an unfamiliar man wearing a dress might be sexually motivated, creepy or dangerous. Those are very different situations. I fully understand that women may exercise caution around unfamiliar men, but it does not explain a woman rejecting a husband she knows to be loving, respectful and trustworthy simply because she discovers he enjoys wearing feminine clothing?

If his behaviour, character and identity haven’t changed, why should enjoying a dress suddenly call his masculinity, motives or worth as a partner into question? Surely that brings us back to the actual issue: the expectations society places on men, and the difficulty some people have accepting femininity in a man who is known extremely well.

When women wear trousers they and we know they're just women wearing trousers.

I love a man in a kilt and I thought David Beckham looked good in a sarong. For me they're not an issue because they're men who know they're men (as long as they keep out the women's SSS!)

The issue is when men put on a skirt and then demand that we all accept them as women in all respects.