One of the enduring myths of the anti-feminist movement is that if all social and economic barriers are removed or balanced then “we’ll all have to use unisex bathrooms.” Deep within that argument lies a concern that androgyny will necessarily follow gender equality.
I think the androgyny concern is a bit of a red herring, even superficially.
Do you think these guys look less manly even though they’re “androgynously” wearing skirts? Do these women look more “androgynous” in pants? Uh-uh, no quibbling that those are “masculine skirts” or “feminine pants!”
The threat of equalitarian androgyny was considered so dire even in the 1970’s that our junior-high principle came into my homeroom class to remove a girl who’d had the temerity to walk to school wearing thick wool pants on the coldest day of the decade. She was sent home because… well… boys wore pants and girls wore skirts or dresses and… well… if girls wore pants then boys might start wearing skirts and then we’d all start using the same bathrooms and… and… civilization would crumble. (Even the principal couldn’t sustain that position for long. Most girls in the school had been grousing about the pants thing all through the cold snap, and the “offender” was a future valedictorian type who was otherwise not a troublemaker at all who argued, simply, that being asked to bare her legs to temperatures in the teens was unreasonable. By the end of the school year the girls-in-pants rule was lifted.)
Again, that wasn’t very long ago at all! And contrary to beliefs of the day civilization, while it has somewhat different contours, has crumbled nary a whit.
The point? Androgyny doesn’t mean what a lot of people think it means. I’ll have more to say about this later.
[By the way, in the two photos above the man is modeling — he’s presented for appearance’s sake only — while the women are dressed for a purpose: to present the horse. That might have raised eyebrows, at best, in the 1960 when “the proper order of things” was for men to do things and women to look attractive. They’d have said civilization was unravelling, and chances are you didn’t even notice. :-) —fl]
Submitted by 989 (not verified) on Wed, 2006-10-25 20:42.
Oh man, I just spent like 15 minutes looking at men in kilts because men in kilts are the sexiest every!
**sigh**
Thank you, Figleaf.
[Glad you like 'em, AAG. You'll like my HNT then too. --fl]
Submitted by 989 (not verified) on Thu, 2006-10-26 00:46.
Figleaf,
I look forward to your posts on androgyny, stereotypes and the end of civilization as we know it (smiles).
I think that stereotypes are so popular because they provide a sense of comfort, although it is a false sense of comfort. If you are a woman, you will do thus and so. And if I am a man, this sphere of activity is mine and not yours. Perhaps stereotypes provide a sense of stability in times of cultural change and upheaval. Unfortunately, it seems to take a very long time for these stereotypes to be viewed as maladaptive.
Speaking of male sterotypes, I wondered what you thought about the Leo Burnett Man Study? Dividing men into categories such as patriarchs, metrosexuals, retrosexuals and power seekers was not that revolutionary, IMO. What I did find interesting were the Five Drivers of Male Adaptation, particularly this one:
Given your knowledge and experience in branding*, I'm interested in reading your thoughts on this.
*Denotes marketing brands; should not be confused with hot iron branding (you wouldn't do that to a girl, would you, fl?)
[Woah, that's an interesting piece of work and it's going to go into a post about androgyny. The data itself seems more forward-looking than the *language* the authors used, which is mired to the axels in the two-spheres ideology. The first secret to getting unstuck is for men to remind themselves "everything I do is masculine" just as women need to say "everything I do is feminine." That there's a tremendous amount of overlap is irrelevant. Every minute spent trying to parse gender in the area that overlaps is a minute you could have spent more productively by, for instance, trainspotting or determining how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. :-) Thanks for the link, Kochanie. --fl]
Submitted by 989 (not verified) on Thu, 2006-10-26 11:26.
I knew there was a reason I always tended towards men with Scottish blood. I want to marry a man wearing a kilt!
Besides, it's perfectly possible to dress in a very UNfeminine manner and still be wearing a skirt. I am living proof of that:)
[Exactly! Since, for instance, I'm even better living proof. :-) A skirt is just a piece of cloth and, as such, isn't really able to determine the essential masculinity or femininity of the person wearing it. Same with math skills, music ability, eloquence, ambition, or whatever we've spent the last quarter of a milleneum trying to divvy into separate categories. Thanks, Camogirl. --fl]
Submitted by 989 (not verified) on Thu, 2006-10-26 19:51.
I don't get what's so threatening about unisex bathrooms anyway, unless it's simply that men refuse to wait in the long lines women are often subjected to :p
[I think they were mostly trying to scare women with the idea, in a sort of "Want men in the restrooms with you girlie? Is that what you want? Huh? Huh?" attempt at intimidation. I don't think it was a very useful threat. A few years before they imploded it women got so sick of the long lines to the women's restrooms at Seattle's Kingdome they'd give the men the first 10 minutes during the halftime breaks and then they'd take over the men's rooms en mass. The replacement stadiums now have proportionately more stalls in the women's rooms. Thanks, Sara. --fl]
Submitted by 989 (not verified) on Fri, 2006-10-27 11:11.
I think, also, women generally don't feel comfortable making bathroom noises in front of men. Lord knows I've turned on the water while in many-a-gentleman's bathroom.
[Same with most men. Talk about shy bladder and/or bowel syndrome! Thanks, Camogirl. --fl]
Submitted by 989 (not verified) on Fri, 2006-10-27 15:26.
I miss the gender neutral bathrooms of my college days.
Not for any particular reason actually except that they always had more toilet paper and cleaner everything than either the men's or women's restrooms.
makes me wonder how many people were actually using them...
[Yup. I don't know about the rest of the country but a lot of the smaller bars and restaurants around the Northwest have unisex bathrooms. (The icons I used as illustrations are from unisex door medallions.) Interesting point that they usually are cleaner than either men's or women's restrooms. Hmm. Thanks, Colette. --fl]
Submitted by 989 (not verified) on Thu, 2006-11-02 02:55.
Very interesting thoughts!
May be it is too much that "civilization would crumble" but this phenomena has a really strong influence to the peoples' mental and physical life.
[Yup. Yeah, it's the mental life part I think about. We worry about a lot of things we only *think* matters. Life's too short to worry about anything that doesn't really matter. Thanks, Alex. --fl]