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From: scott@cdp.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.women
Subject: Re: what makes you feel feminine/ma
Message-ID: <4900001@cdp>
Date: Tue, 8-Oct-85 04:11:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: cdp.4900001
Posted: Tue Oct  8 04:11:00 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 15-Oct-85 08:14:32 EDT
References: <848@homxb.UUCP>
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Nf-ID: #R:homxb.UUCP:-84800:cdp:4900001:000:1738
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!scott    Oct  8 01:11:00 1985


Actually, men can wear skirts.  There's a man here in Palo Alto that
wears skirts often (of course, it's uncommon enough that I hear he was
on some talk show).  A man friend of mine used to wear dresses while
walking around town (of course, he occasioanlly got cat-calls).  I
wear a caftan in my house, and feel no qualms about wandering outside
in it to get the paper.

An easy way for a man to try wearing a skirt or dress in public is to
do it on Halloween (it's become my standard).  And don't wear all
kinds of makeup and absurd high heels and such, just a dress or skirt
(of course, unless you're lucky enough to have something with pockets,
you'll need a pocketbook).  The first time I did this was when I worked
at HP-Labs, and it was a blast.  I got a wolf-whistle from a woman
at my bank, got "stared-up" by the sexist pigs (which made me realize
that it's really "anything in a skirt"), and explained our newly
christened super-duper experimental capability-based ECL computer to
our lab director (he was too weirded-out to acknowledge verbally or
non-verbally what I was up to, which is sort of interesting - maybe
he thought it was OK).

An interesting similarity to experiencing being "stared-up".  On a lark,
I went to my tenth high-school reunion (very conservative, rural high-school)
in my blue jeans, wearing political buttons on my "Support Lesbian Mothers"
tee-shirt.  All night long people kept staring at my chest (my tee-shirt
emblem); I kept thinking "look up here where my face is, I'm up here".
I realized the next day that this is what women experience from men
who stare at their chests.

Scott Weikart
Community Data Processing: 415-322-9069
{ihnp4,decvax,ucbvax,cbosgd,hao,purdue,duke,...}!hplabs!cdp!scott