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Here is a more interesting take on it than most of the reporting.

http://www.newstatesman.com/2017/06/che ... onger-news

A good article. The author gets it.

Yes - it's a pity she spoiled what would have been a good article by relating it back to "poor girls", when she said: "I do start to wonder whether this is a protest that still depends on the idea that girls less important and more trivial than boys."

Nobody ever says any such thing. There is no such idea in existence. If anything, we are living today in an era of the "disposable male" http://www.thedisposablemale.com

If she understood some basic anthropology, she would know that for hundreds of thousands of years boys have been discouraged from any behaviour that is feminine for a number of really sound evolutionary reasons. Boys were largely raised by females, but they must not copy females because they would one day have to defend the community, tribe, family etc, and so they must move away from the feminine and vulnerable and be strong and display masculine virtues because these are the qualities that make males valuable.

This issue is perfectly simple and should not be exploited by feminists to advance their own narrative. A skirt is a very basic garment and one that has been worn by humanity since the dawn of clothing. It is fundamentally wrong that this garment, and other garments of a similar design, have been appropriated for teh exclusive use of the female sex, and males have a right to reclaim them. This is a sartorial issue only - it has absolutely nothing to do with gender roles.

Stu

Gordon wrote:A good article. The author gets it.

Exactly. You've summed it up in 7 words. Link to go on my website.

What a great story. Somebody write somewhere about feminism or something. I vote for equality between the sexes. My wife can earn double in salary than I do. But I keep wearing skirts. That will be a perfect future. Oh that isn't equality... I don't mind.

Unfortunately, she had to use words like "feminine" and "dress like girls" in her story.

She says "If we genuinely accept that there is nothing shameful, unnatural or undesirable about male people wanting to dress in a feminine manner" but it's only feminine if females do it. If males do it, it is masculine, or should be.

As for the 'defense of the realm' thing...no longer applicable. A woman can pull a trigger as well as, if not better than, a man.

Still we say skirts or dresses belongs to female, than we will say you dress as a female. So what. It's difficult for us, because we think it has to be unisex clothes. And until it is news when men or boys were skirts, then people also think skirts belongs to women. The only thing I hope to see is that people accept us as we are. And not as someone, who is a different person. When I can bring my daughter to school in a skirt, I think the situation really changed to a better situation. So my life wisdom is always: Accept eachother who they are. And for yourself: Be who you are. Is that a song of The Kooks?!

Darryl wrote:...A woman can pull a trigger as well as, if not better than, a man.

My mother became a crack shot with a rifle during WWII and my paternal grandmother would have probably died trying to dismember an enemy soldier with a kitchen knife if there had been an invasion - she was ferocious!

I read this: ... and I must think about a woman who saw me in a skirt. She first said: "You're a real one.", thinking for me it's not a joke. She knew it immediately. She was jealous at me and she said to me: "Why can a boy like you, just wearing a skirt, and I as a woman can't do that, because I don't like my legs?" I was sorry to her. And I say: "You have to wear what you want to wear. Don't mind what other people think."

That you're a real one is for many people important. They don't like who shows: Look who I am! Look what I dare! People who are screaming for attention...

Well, yes, these protests do aim to succeed by presenting an unthinkable alternative.

Except that boys wearing skirts, even as a protest, are apparently less unthinkable than in the past. And that is progress of a sort.

It would be interesting if in one of these incidents the headmaster/principal/school board decided not to give in. Would the boys continue wearing skirts for weeks or months? Would the shock value wear off and the look start seeming normal? Would at least a few of the boys decide they actually liked it?

Probably not but it's interesting to speculate.

Caultron wrote:Would at least a few of the boys decide they actually liked it?

In the Guardian article on this event, it was said that some of the boys did decide just that and had decided to keep wearing it. I hope they actually do. Maybe it could become a trend.

I think that their generation are the ones who could make it happen. Sometimes I think it is likely. The writer of this article made it sound like the protest succeeded because it was taken as so outrageous, so shocking, that boys would wear skirts. But I think that is not quite right. The shock value brought the press's attention. But I think the protest got its power more from the disparity between what girls could wear versus what boys could wear. That sense of a disparity can spill over (and in some quarters has been spilling over) to the fact that girls can wear pants but boys cannot wear skirts, or not without societal disapproval. I think that everything that helps point out the disparity between the freedom of females to wear what they want versus the constraints on males moves us closer to the day when a male wearing a skirt is not unusual. Now if only the press will go back and report on boys continuing to wear skirts just because they like them.

I thought I recognised the writer. It seems "Glosswitch" is a regular contributer to "The New Statesman"; I posted this a while back, which resulted in mixed views.

I think she does "get it", mostly.

Caultron wrote: Would at least a few of the boys decide they actually liked it?

Perhaps, if a boy happened to be a latent Skirtonian.

Don't forget that peer pressure is quite heavy in that age bracket. That goes for the presure to put a skirt on in protest but also for going back to "normal" when the reason is gone.
But with the experience, nobody knows what will happen later in life when the brain and the spirit mature.

The article was to my opinion one of the better in the recent past. It had a practical approach and the boy will grow up with less mental ballast than most of his buddies.

Several of the boys found the skirt "quite refreshing" . Some of the schools have made the skirt a part of the Male uniform. The times, they are a changin'.

Cheers,
Steve