Hmm. This seems to be the third post (after this and this) inspired by Ryan Haecker of Daily Texan Online pean to women in long dresses. Which is sort of funny since the first time I saw it I just rolled my eyes and moved on.

Photo by Flickr user ClothesHorseWhisperer.
Used under a Creative Commons license.

This one’s a bit trickier. I’ve been hard on the guy, and in a way he deserves it, but especially since I feel more sorry about his indoctrination than I do angry about his feeble inability to distinguish women from men without iconic attire (“Dresses allow us to differentiate between the silhouettes of men and women on restroom signs.”) And since I don’t know anything about Haecker beyond his five-paragraph essay it’s really not appropriate for me to question his personal life. And so while I’m going to say his essay inspired this post I want to make it clear that nothing about this post should be construed as questioning the sincerity of his heterosexuality.

That said, one wonders how, say, Senator Larry Craig, or former Rep. Mark Foley, or former Rev. Ted Haggard, or former Rep. Edward Schrock, or former Washington State Rep. Richard Curtis, or any of the hundreds of thousands, or perhaps millions, of men and women who’ve closeted their sexual orientations behind arms-length, “sex for reproduction only” marriages would feel about Haecker’s line of reasoning.

Women should be visually interesting (in “elegant,” “graceful,” and “modest” fashion, of course) but sexually disengaged? Check. Women should be virtuous (though, surprise! very understanding) in the face of men’s vices? Check. Women should stay in the home while their husbands travel (with perfectly understandable stops in Minnesota men’s rooms?) Check.

Again, I don’t mean to suggest that Haecker is a closeted gay man, not at all, at all. I’m just saying that if I was a desperately conflicted and self-repressed gay man trying mightily to pass for straight I could do worse than attempt to form a relationship with the kind of woman who prefers “the flowing elegant dresses of tradition” against “the more degenerate and immodest dresses of our present culture.” I might even have entirely different reasons for decrying the breakdown of the symbols of dress. Because, after all, “pants are symbolic of something – in this case masculinity” cuts both ways, right?