Fashion and Gender

[Satinjoy]

First, if anyone is upset by my comments on Ativan's pic and saying something causing it to be pulled, I am truly sorry.  I have a tendency to be very transparent and what I feel comes right out in the forum, and that pic is quite flattering to h'er. I hope I am so fortunate.

On topic, maybe I am too old.  My wife gave me a beautiful male printed shirt for fathers day, andro for my rigid upbringing, and i wore it to work today.  A big step for me, even though I have the nails and had the hair a while.  Pushed my  comfort zone, and significant to me that she would pick out a shirt like that, knowing that i would love it.  This is astounding to me.

But to the point of the article and not to focus on me, for my generation, maybe a little too late.  For the youth they seem to have more freedom, but for the older ones, I would have a hard time with it.  Yet I think there are other choices i too could make, if my work environment were less hostile.  I still cover up.  It takes a lot of guts to present fully genderqueer, and to present andro too.  I take small steps... i would love high boots, other expressive elements, and true freedom.  My mind can be a cage, it takes great effort to step out of it.  Right now, I settle for being who I am comfortably, which means the nails stay, and I wont wear binders, i refuse to, I wear underwire and a sweater vest over the shirt.  But if they see my A+'s, so be it.

But shaking off the rigid old stereotypical, thats hard.

Now here is something, if our clothes were gender neutral from scratch, what happens to the excitement of flipping binary presentations?  I admit to a certain level of fetishistic naughty pleasure in being trans, and I like looking pretty while fully transitioned.  How much of that polarity adds to the drama of breaking the rules and drifting from societal norms?

Yet I cannot imagine going out in a skirt without a full transitional presentation to go with it.  There seems to be a line where it is all or nothing, or more accurately all or muted GQ, subtle GQ.

I wonder...

And with all due respect I cannot handle hairy legs under a skirt- for me.  And on this much estrogen, I have an odd response to seeing them on others wearing shorts...one that I finally came to grips with in deep therapy, the denial was thick around that.

Taboos... another topic...

[awilliams1701]

Right now I still have to get close enough to the mirror that I can't see my legs. If I do that I get enough to accept seeing me as a girl. I would love to use the hair removal cream on my legs, but I'm hesitant to do it in the middle of short season. I'll do it come winter time. Hopefully when it gets back to short season again i'll be ready to be Ashley fulltime.

[ativan]

'First, if anyone is upset by my comments on Ativan's pic and saying something causing it to be pulled, I am truly sorry.'

You did no harm at all. I pulled it for the reasons I gave.
But you just might have sweet talked me into putting it back up for awhile. 
Ativan

[Kaelin]

From a purely practical standpoint, clothes have generally always been for people -- the issue is that social norms dictate that people wear certain clothes.  The thrust from the article is that we've hit a tipping point of sorts in terms of culture, but society doesn't just flip a switch one day to change things, particularly not with gender norms.  To some extent there has been progress leading up to this moment, but it's not even.  In some places, one's clothing selection hasn't been a big deal for years (sometimes decades), and in others it promises to still promises to matter for years (even decades) to come.  I don't think progress of identity and expression acceptance is happening as quickly as with sexual orientation, where acceptance has increased by about 25% over a decade.

That said, the more we can get out there as we are (which is hopefully for good for our own sanity), the more people should get over themselves and whatever norms they're conditioned to think with.  If skirts are only for people who meet some crazy standard of beauty (with men being shooed away on the grounds men can't meet the standard, with women frequently being shamed for not dolling themselves or dieting enough, and with anyone of standard thus being regarded as an object of sexual desire), there's a very toxic culture we're looking at that has to be cleaned up.  We must fight it.

[ativan]

I think the fight can be won by doing just that, getting out there.
If it pushes those toxic notions of gender down a few notches, we will find acceptance through understanding.
The future belongs to the younger generations, it's theirs, they own it.
It has always belonged to the younger generations, it belonged to mine when I was young.
But we can all help to see to it that they have a better one than we were given.
It's up to them to really define it in the ways that they see fit.
Fashion dictates so much of acceptance and not.
It's our first tell, the first expression that defines us as people.
From there, it's a continuing way to define ourselves without having to explain.
To be able to do that as the person without the need to be defined by our gender would be monumental.

It's these hints of taking the priority that gender has, and moving it down to a place below what equality truly is, that is up to them.
To be able to define our priorities as people long before gender is an issue.
Ativan