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From: andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP (Jamie Andrews)
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: the politics of skirts
Message-ID: <41@ubc-cs.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 9-Oct-85 19:00:50 EDT
Article-I.D.: ubc-cs.41
Posted: Wed Oct  9 19:00:50 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 9-Oct-85 20:45:30 EDT
References: <248@ssc-vax.UUCP> <1944@reed.UUCP> <32@ubc-cs.UUCP> <848@homxb.UUCP> <37@ubc-cs.UUCP> <1246@mtgzz.UUCP>
Reply-To: andrews@ubc-cs.UUCP (Jamie Andrews)
Organization: UBC Department of Computer Science, Vancouver, B.C., Canada
Lines: 86
Summary: 


     Normally I would answer this kind of thing by email,
because I don't like personal news-wars.  However I think I
should give some of my seemingly out-of-the-ordinary ideas
on Sharon's comments.  Excuse the length.

In article <1246@mtgzz.UUCP> seb@mtgzz.UUCP (s.e.badian) writes:
>	                                      ... Why is it
>unmasculine to wear a skirt? Men don't wear skirts because
>they don't want to be confused with women? I know very few
>men who would be confused with women if they wore a skirt.
>Skirts are for women and have, traditionally been so. A man who
>wears a skirt loses power(being like a woman)....
     If I were to go out into the streets of Vancouver wearing
a skirt, I'd get abuse from *almost everyone*, *because*
I couldn't be mistaken for a woman.  This is why I don't wear
skirts, not because I would consider it a "loss of power" to
look "like a woman" -- because *I* *don't* think of women as
inferior.  I could make a start in that direction, but that's a
very lonely road to hoe.

>...I suggest you get a hold of Susan Brownmiller's book "Femininity."
>It is excellent.
     It is well-written, as usual.  I have often thought of
writing a parallel book, "Masculinity", to educate people on the 
restrictive standards of masculinity that dictate how men move,
think, and relate to others and themselves.

>	Men have been dictating what is maculine and feminine 
>throughout time....
     This is    ***PURE***    ***POLITICAL***    ***THEORY***
with little basis in fact.  You either believe it or you don't.
I don't.  If men controlled everything for their own good:
- men alone wouldn't be sent off to their deaths in war
- men would be able to express emotions other than anger
- men wouldn't be forced to compete with each other every day
  in order to survive emotionally
- millions of men would not be twisted by society's attempts to
  bash their emotions and sexuality into the forms it wants.
     An attempt to extrapolate from men's *AGREED* control of
politics and the economy is pure theory.  And if one has a nice,
all-inclusive political rhetoric, as many "patriarchy" feminists
do, one should be able to RATIONALIZE any of the above points.
But that's all it would be, rationalization.

>...Do you think women are actually dictating this fashion?
     No, not *women*, in general.  Neither are *men*, in general.
One can't be so simplistic as to pin the blame on a specific group,
especially when it's obvious that there are members of that group
(like *ME*) who don't fit some stereotyped view of them as male
chauvinist Ray Frank clones.  Yet the sociopolitical theory of
Brownmiller and others is *exactly* this simplistic.
     And anyway, if it's so easy for men to wear skirts at the
office, why isn't it equally easy for women to wear pants?  Oh,
right, because men control everything.  (excuse heavy sarcasm)

>	Men have no interest in changing the standards of femininity
>because they have nothing to lose if the standards remain the same,
>and stand to lose security and possibly power if they do change. But
>if they wanted to, they could bring about change. 
     This is the kind of negative, sexist, stereotyping, simplistic,
overgeneralized, nearsighted rhetoric that turns men off feminism.
In a liberated society:
- men would be able to experience the joys of raising children
- men would be able to confide in each other and establish real
  emotional bonds instead of competing with each other
- shy men would be under no greater obligation to ask women out
  than shy women are to ask men out today
- men wouldn't be expected to be the only ones to pursue the
  vicious lie of glory through death in battle
- men would be able to move and talk the way they wanted
- men would be able to wear whatever their little hearts desired,
  *INCLUDING* *SKIRTS*!!!!!
     Let's face it, men have a lot to gain from liberation of
themselves and women.  The reason they don't move in that direction
is that when they do, they are rejected by *most people*:  the men
expressing their rejection actively, the women more passively, as
is the norm in our society.
     Sexism is not something that men do to women, or that society
does to women; it's something that society does to itself, and as
such, men, women, and children all suffer because of it.  It's up
to us to change that, for the good of everyone.
--Jamie.
   ...ihnp4!alberta!ubc-vision!ubc-cs!andrews
"Autumn, to me the most congenial of seasons;
   the university, to me the most congenial of lives." -R.Davies