I want men to try and imagine going about your day–working, running, hiking, whatever–and not being allowed to wear pants under threats of violence or total social and economic exclusion.
That’s the kind of irrationally violent and controlling behaviour women have been up against.
Also for anyone who thinks it’s easy for women to be gender non conforming because we can wear pants.
The only reason we can is because we fought tooth and nail for the right to! Any rights we take for granted today we’re the result of a prolonged, bitter battle fought by our predecessors for every inch of territory gained. Never forget that.
Title IX (1972) declared that girls could not be required to wear skirts to school.
Women who were United States senators were not allowed to wear trousers on the Senate floor until 1993, after senators Barbara Mikulski and Carol Moseley Braun wore them in protest, which encouraged female staff members to do likewise.
This was never given to us. Women have had to fight just to be able to wear pants. Women who are still alive remember having to wear skirts to school, even in the dead of winter, when it was so cold that just having a layer of tights between them and the elements was downright dangerous. Women who remember not even being allowed to wear pants under their skirts, for no other reason than they were female.
So don’t talk about women wearing pants being gender nonconforming like it’s easy. It’s only less difficult now because your foremothers refused to comply.
My mother spent her entire school career up until high school having to wear skirts, no matter how horrible the New England winters got, because she was forbidden to do otherwise. There were times when the weather was bad where my grandmother kept her home rather than make her walk to and from the bus in a skirt.
They rebroadcast a few old interviews with Mary Tyler Moore, and in them she addressed the pants issue. There was a strict limit on what kind of pants she could wear (hence, always Capri pants, nothing masculine), and to use her words, how much cupping the pants could show. A censor would look at every outfit when she came out on stage, and if the pants cupped her buttocks too much, defining them rather than hiding them, then she had to get another pair.
A prime example of how gender is socially enforced.
I remember a prolonged battle at primary school, with petitions and numerous near riotous PTA meetings before girls were allowed to wear trousers. In the late 1990s/early 2000s. In Scotland. A country which now (rightly, for the most part) prides itself on its progressiveness. Please don’t ever take these things for granted, and don’t assume that it’s only far flung places that you have nothing in common with that took so long to catch up. We’re all still fighting, little by little, for every apparently trivial victory that mounts up until we can reach the non-trivial ones. And we can’t afford to stop.
At my private Catholic high school, girls were only given the green light to wear pants the year before I began attending.
In 1992.
Yeah, 1991, forced to wear dresses in school. Got detention once because after school was over while waiting for my ride outside I took off the dress that was over my button down shirt and normal-kids-shorts-length shorts because it was Louisiana degrees outside and I was 7.
Teachers were forced to wear skirts for years. And heels. My mother’s feet are still high heel shaped when she takes off her shoes. She had to wear a skirt till I was well into junior high.
cards against humanity not only buying part of the U.S border to stop trump from building the wall between the U.S and Mexico but also hiring a law firm specializing in eminent domain with the intent of making it harder and more expensive for the government to build the wall has got to be the boldest move in this stupid simulation we’re living in. not all heroes wear capes
a lot of people to this day think that a professional ice skater did those skating scenes from i, tonya (2017) but it was all margot robbie… she literally trained five days a week for five months and her skating coach was astonished with her progress AND SHE DIDNT EVEN GET NOMINATED FOR HER ROLE like her 3D head scans were taken and then were superimposed on her doubles’ faces when they skated close to the camera but for someone to train 5 times a week for 5 months… SHE HAS THE RANGEEEE
I hate when men smirk and gloat and say shit like “Women are attracted to powerful men,” like that negates any feminist impulse, like they think that at the heart of all women is this little, mincing girl that wants to be dominated.
I just roll my eyes because, dude. If you ever read the second half of any fucking harlequin novel ever, and saw how the hero always ends up blubbering on his knees and saying shit like “I can’t live without you! You unman me!” you’d realize that being attracted to powerful men is just the first part of a two-step plan.
The second step is to completely fucking annihilate him.
Apparently this is the most important thing I’ll ever say.
*clears throat* Allow me to quote Jayne Ann Krentz:
“In the romance novels … the woman always wins. With courage, intelligence, and gentleness she brings the most dangerous creature on earth, the human male, to his knees. More than that, she forces him to acknowledge her power as a woman.” (“Introduction” from Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of Romance.)
The romance hero may start as a total alphahole, but by the end of the novel, as stated above, HE HAS TO CHANGE. He needs to become respectful and treat the heroine as an equal partner, otherwise it won’t work. This is why Elizabeth Bennet refuses Mr Darcy the first time but accepts him later. This is what so many people miss. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for this post.
Fact is, men are attracted to powerful men. Not necessarily romantically or sexually, but did you ever wonder why superheroes look like muscle men? It’s because it’s a male fantasy to be that way, and they assume it’s what women want, too.
girls who are 14-16 rn are really going through it with makeup and instagram culture in a way that young teenagers of my day did not and it’s very concerning 😶
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