I know a man (cis and straight, he never had any doubts about his gender and orientation) that owns several skirts. He often wears them around the house - because it's comfy and stylish, not because of some weird fetish. The skirts were sewn to his measure from a fabric he chose.
He now plans to start wearing them outside the house, i.e in public. Is it a good thing from a feminist point of view in your opinion?
As others have said, there is no “cis”. Using that implies “trans” is real.
I used to be all for it. Now? I would look with extreme mistrust at any man doing it, whether he claimed to be a woman or not, because the odds are he’s doing it for a fetish, not just because it’s comfortable/he likes the look/any other innocuous reason.
Same. The concept is good and I am favourable in theory, but lately it seems like no man actually wears skirts just because that piece of clothing is something they like in the same way I might like a hat or a couple of gloves, they all have further motives, that can go from gender identity, to be praised for their "braveness" in being GNC, to fetish. And if it' s a fetish, I don' t want to participate.
Exactly. Man in a kilt - fine. Love Scots kilts. Man in a dress (especially since dresses are not made to fit men) no, forget it, it sets off alarm bells. It’s all very well to say clothing isn’t gendered. That’s the ideal, it shouldn’t be, but in our society (and probably most if not all societies through history) it does carry messages about your sex and about sex roles, like it or not - and when men wear women’s clothing it usually says something very nasty about their sexual fantasies, and definitely about their attitude to women.
Edit for typo.
Maybe I should ask him again about his motivation in going public with this.
Initially he justified it because there is no AC in the house, and a skirt is the most comfortable option in summer.
I don' t know your friend, maybe he really only does it because it' s more comfortable, I am sure some men like that actually exist.
I am just making a generic statement: I would be suspicious if I met a guy in a skirt tomorrow, but maybe he could have decent reasons for doing it. I would just be very careful.
My grandpa said he wishes he could wear skirts in the summer lol so your friend isn't the only straight dude on earth who feels that way 😆
More comfortable than shorts? I have worn very lightweight long skirts in summer for decades and one thing they are not, is cooler for sitting around at home. (I wear them to go outside, because I burn easily.)
We can, but I’m not willing to use the “trans” cult’s nonsense term. As I said, it implies “trans” is real.
A skirt is just a tube of fabric. If he's just wearing a tube of fabric that offers plenty of coverage like a kilt I'm fine with that. If it's an obvious fetish like a mini skirt with heels and shaved legs I'm not a fan.
It's very covering, about ankle length. No heels, no makeup, no shaved anything.
You mean like the wrap skirts men wear in southeast Asia?
Other- conflicted.
We've seen multiple men and boys (some trans identifying but surely not all) wearing skirts in public and using that newfound freedom to sexually harass or rape women. Like the Loudoun rapist or the TIM who filmed himself masturbating in the women's room in a skirt. It is so much easier to flash your penis at someone if you're wearing a skirt with no underwear, just lift the skirt a couple seconds and drop the skirt and nobody else would know about it if they weren't looking in his direction those few seconds. Much faster and easier to cover up his crime than if he was wearing pants. So I would probably look askance at a man wearing a skirt in public, the same if I saw a man in a trench coat who didn't appear to be wearing pants underneath it.
The very fact that wearing women's clothes is a fetish is just....no. I don't want men wearing skirts in public if it's sexually appealing or exciting to them.
Sure women wear pants, but the act of wearing pants doesn't turn any of us on now does it?
So maybe it's not "fair," and this opinion isn't coming from a "feminist" perspective, just an average woman and her 2 cents. Of course wearing a skirt doesn't diminish your manhood but there are other reasons for side-eyeing men in skirts. Maybe if men behaved better it would be easier to decouple men wearing skirts from sexual deviants.
In Burma men typically wear what we would consider a really long skirt (longyi) and it would be cool if Western men could wear something like that and behave. But in their culture it's normal for men to wear longyi so the act of wearing a skirt wouldn't excite them. The very act of breaking taboos is part of what makes it sexually exciting, I think.
thought of something else i want to say:
So how do we get from a world where the act of wearing a skirt turns fetishists on to our ideal world where men and women can wear whatever appropriate clothing they want without it being a statement or sexual act? I have no idea and I leave that up to the big thinkers.
Yes. If more dudes were comfortable with their maleness while running around in skirts perhaps we'd see some fractures within the gender-crazed community. The more GNC men who don't claim to be women exist, the more backlash these fanatics will face when they say "oh I've always loved pink and sparkles, therefore I must be a catgirl".
I'm indifferent to people wearing whatever they want. Let people do stuff! As long as they aren't forcing anyone to participate in gross kinks or mental Olympics I'm cool with it 😎
Fashion has been trying to do skirts for men for at least 40 years at different times. Many cultures have "skirts" and "dresses" as standard wear for men. Only in western fashion are pants traditionally exclusively male and if you go back far enough they didn't wear pants then either. A skirt isn't a gender nor a sex.
Wear whatever the hell you want to wear in public so long as it's appropriate for kids to see you in.
Unlike tras I don't police what other people can and can't do based off "gender"
Hey, jsyk since you asked:
Is it a good thing from a feminist point of view in your opinion?
You may have better luck asking in /o/gendercritical instead; this is a circle for women to talk about anything that matters to us, rather than a circle explicitly for feminist analysis, so it may not be the best place to find an audience that wants to give that analysis.
Edit: oh, just noticed sidebar also requests using the feminist circles for feminist topics, so yeah op I think you should repost there.
Oh sorry, I hesitated and picked the wrong one.
Edit: I'm still new to this interface and I couldn't find how to repost it to a different circle. I'll try again using a computer.
I don't care if a man wears a skirt. It is neither bad nor good.