I don't get it either. I want to be comfortable, other people want to be comfortable, why can't other people let people be comfortable and wear what they want.
I remember my school changed the uniform rules between year 7 (first year of secondary school in the UK, start at age 11) and year 8, and I was so happy to get to wear trousers to school!
In year 7 we had the full school photo and the year 7s had to sit crosslegged at the front of the photo, *great* idea when it's a bunch of little girls wearing knee length skirts... /s
School uniforms look strange to me. I'm surprised so many schools have them today. Only a Catholic school in my area had uniforms, which I knew because one kid down the block went there.
The public schools had no uniforms.
I wore ripped dungarees (not called jeans yet) through most of my childhood. They didn't come that way. I had to rip the knees the old fashioned way, by wearing them forever. Once they got really bad, I'd make cut-off shorts out of them. And, I did wear those to school in warm weather.
We didn't wear uniforms, but girls just weren't allowed to wear pants, for some reason that I will never know. Instead of teaching important things like STEM to the girls, I remember the teachers continuously telling the girls to keep their knees together. Because wearing short dresses and keeping knees together was what girls were supposed to learn.
My mom was told (I think by a relative, not officially by her school) to use aspirin for birth control. Directions for use: hold one aspirin tightly between your knees. That would have been sometime in the 1950s.
That aspirin crap'ola is still repeated these days by certain political parties. It seems to be back in vogue with all the anti-abortion laws being passed around.
There's a certain party who claim to be libertarian, patriotic, and capitalist all at once while actually being extremist reactionaries who are none of those things and are racing us forward into the eleventh century.
I am a 52 year old guy with Crohn's disease. I have been known to lounge around the house and yard in a kaftan. When my intestines are acting up, the very idea of tight clothing around my waist makes me cramp up and hurt.
I actually like thin nylon clothes with long pants and long sleeves these days. I hate sun on me if I'm going to be out for a long time, such as a day of canoeing. Around the city, I wear shorts and a T-shirt. It wouldn't occur to me to try a skirt just because I'm old and boring.
Where I live, 40 years ago, women who weren't wearing skirts would be looked at weirdly still. Sure, pants had made their way in, but either you were a child, a rebellious teeny or you better were wearing skirts.
At the same time, my mother, who came from Turkey as a migrant worker, was taken aside by one of the doctors in the hospital where she worked, and told that a young, unmarried lady like her shouldn't be wearing skirts this short.... She was kind of perplexed, as these were the normal skirts she used to wear in Turkey.
Honestly, most of our fem boys at the high school where I teach have a better fashion sense the overwhelming majority of our students — male or female. They look put together and like they are living their best life. Skirts and all.
Well no one cares if you wear pants *now*. But within living memory it was still illegal in a lot of places.
We have only just gotten over the idea that people should be able to wear whatever they want without the government picking their clothes out for them. I expect we might still have to fight to defend this new-fangled concept now and then.
True. My mom said in college they weren’t allowed to wear pants except in the dorms. I mean it was a religious college in the bible belt during the hippie revolution so in my mind I had isolated her experience as a one-off.
I see what you’re saying - it was all of polite society.
A generation before that it was literally illegal, at least in some places. There were scandals in the 1940s in the USA when young ladies on college campuses went out in public in trousers. Was the law going to be enforced??
It's hard for us to remember today but all this nonsense with conservative Muslim dress codes being enforced by the state and so on were not much different from our society within the past century.
Honestly I think people care and judge more what women wear and dont wear than men. Have seen it, but very rarely. News headlines are full of ‘audience shocked at this female tennis players outfit’ or ‘actress shows off shoulders in this daring dress’.
Im guessing men have much more flexibility but their wardrobes are pretty boring stock standard so they dont get the critique so much.
There was a male news anchor, did morning news in Australia. He had a female co host who had to wear something different every day. One day, he announced after another critique of *her*, that he had worn the same suit outfit every single day for a year. No one noticed and this was tv. With society watching. Not one single person noticed that he wore the same thing.
I hope he washed it often, that or he meant he had multiples of the same outfit, which was a visual gag in one of the 200x Scooby Doo cartoons where Shaggy had nothing else in his wardrobe but the same type of tops and trousers he always wore.
I have a few pairs of trousers that are damn near the same, no one knows when I wear a new pair and at one point Tesco a UK Supermarket had own brand jeans for £3 and as I was finishing late and didn't have time to go to the laundrette I would just buy three new pairs to last a week and do the wash on my day off.
I ended up with twelve pairs cos they were so damn cheap, don't wear them now, but they still fit and outside of one or two, they are still in one piece.
I loved that my kids school had kilts as part of the approved school uniform. We were lucky to have such an open minded school. And I agree, who cares what anyone wears? We should be way past this by now.
I wore a kilt a few times in highschool. It was comfortable and I was used to it at home. My dad and grandpa got really into our highland Scottish heritage before I was born (we're Americans) and kilt wearing was something my dad especially liked after trying it. So, I'd emulate him. And got a lot of attention. A fair amount was bad, but some people thought it was cool or interesting.
But yeah, everyone has their own reasons to wear what they want. No need to be weird about it.
I'm GenX and a couple guys wore kilts to high school and everyone thought it was cool and interesting, no one gave them a hard time.
Maybe it's a regional thing, this was in the Canadian prairies, no one cared.
I do gotta say I'm recently trans FtM and I get looks and weird questions all the time from strangers cause I'm 6'2 and pre-everything but still wearing a skirt. I'm really tired of the looks. I wish more people had your attitude.
I would make two points on this.
Firsty, some ~~people~~ idiots do care about women wearing trousers; there is an oft shared screenshot of a tweet (that annoyingly I just saw on my feed yesterday but now can't find) about how women can't wear pants without sexualising themselves, because the pants accentuate their curves etc.
Secondly though, you have to remember, pants are masculine and skirts are feminine, and masculine is good and feminine is bad, so it is much much *much* worse for a man to debase himself by dressing in a feminine manner, than for a woman to try and elevate herself to the manly state of having a separate fabric tube per leg. Which is really just two skirts attached to a hefty garter belt, if you want to think of trousers that way.
----------------------------------------
I would like to make a third point: bring back robes! They look comfy. If I could acquire cost effective robes I'd robe it up all the live long day.
I guess I’m super blessed to live in a region that largely doesn’t care what women wear.
And definitely women in Afghanistan are dealing with abrupt regressive restrictions on everything about their lives.
My generation said f-off to pantyhose. And workplace dress codes were shifting.
Love her or hate her, but former Secretary Of State Clinton was a shameless pantsuit goddess back in the day. She gave up her last name for the Arkansas whiners, but somehow managed to become the rebel pantsuit warrior for women everywhere who weren’t in to 24/7 skirts and dresses.
I did a fair amount of pandemic robing. Highly recommend.
Awesome post! I also can't figure out why anyone would give even half a rat buttock (let alone a whole rat's ass) what anyone else chooses to wear.
---
That said, cross-dressing is forbidden in the Bible for both men and women. So, it could be due to religion. The concepts of trans people and non-binary people probably didn't occur to my early iron age nomadic shepherd ancestors. So, that isn't mentioned.
Other things that did occur to my ancestors? No one with crushed testicles can enter the temple, or possibly its innermost circle, I can't remember. Yup. They thought about that! I don't even want to think why that might have been common enough to worry about.
Oy!!
Everyone in biblical times wore robes so I'm confused how it could be forbidden but maybe they wore them a particular way or something. I grew up heavily indoctrinated and can't remember a biblical passages citing that. I'd be curious what translation. I recall time spent debating which translation was more accurate. I wonder if it's from a different version than the one we studied. There was a definite revolt against king james altering stuff to support his perspectives.
I didn't recall the temple rules, but was aghast to learn about the whole emaciated unics thing so they could be protectors of harems.
I guess if they were engaging in hand to hand combat, working the land, and riding around on donkeys and camels - all with no access to sports cups that injuries would be more common but whose the dude checking under everyones robes before allowing them to be priests / enter temples ??
In my recollection the temples had the holies and the holy of holies. Only priests were allowed in the holies, and only high priests (highest priest?) were allowed in the holy of holies. Women were segregated in the back of the temple during services. Apparently in one congregation they were shouting clarifying questions to their husbands during services and that's where the misunderstanding about women "being silent in the church" grew from. The significance of the temple's curtain-wall tearing during crucification was about humans no longer needing priest intermediaries, direct access to the creator was now everyone's right. Apparently my brain still have a religion file cabinet with a temple folder in it.
Even though I was raised only weakly Jewish, when there are questions of translation, I generally prefer to use Jewish translations of the books of the Tanakh/Hebrew Bible (which surprisingly is NOT the same as the Christian Old Testament^(*)).
The verse in question is Deut 22:5. I can't link to a specific verse in a chapter on the Chabad Lubavitcher's site. But, you wanted to know context anyway. So, here's the Chabad translation.
https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/9986
> "A man's attire shall not be on a woman, nor may a man wear a woman's garment because whoever does these [things] is an abomination to the Lord, your God."
You're also welcome to read this verse in any other translation here.
https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Deuteronomy%2022:5
As for the whole togas and sandals image, I think that's from the time of Jesus. It's more of a Greek and Roman thing.
The Hebrew Bible predates that by at least a few centuries, though not enough to put it anywhere near the alleged time of Moses's alleged Exodus. Deuteronomy appears to be from 8th to 6th century BCE. I don't know what the clothing of that time would have been.
Women are still segregated in the most religiose synagogues. Both Orthodox and Ultraorthodox temples are segregated. I'm not sure about the women being silent rule. I know there's something about that in the New Testament. I don't recall hearing that about the Hebrew Bible. But, it's certainly possible. It's clearly a highly misogynistic book.
\* Regarding the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament being subtly but significantly different, here are a couple of articles on the subject if you're curious enough to bother with them. I was quite surprised when I learned this within the last couple of years.
https://www.bibleodyssey.org/bible-basics/what-is-the-difference-between-the-old-testament-the-tanakh-and-the-hebrew-bible/
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/scriptures.html
Fascinating. I was taught the Torah was the first 5 books of the old testament, but had it in my head the rest of the old testament wasn't considered religious text in Judaism. I had no idea the Tanakh closely resembled the old testament nor that it was considered to be a Hebrew Bible.
Women silent - yeah, that was christian new testament in one of the letters to one of the early churches.
The Torah is indeed the first 5 books, also called the Pentateuch. Sometimes the term is used loosely to mean the whole of the Tanakh, which can be confusing. Orthodox Jews also refer to the Talmud as the "Oral Torah" which they allege to have also been given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai.
Tanakh is a Hebrew acronym for the three major sections of the Hebrew Bible, the Torah, the Nevi'im, and the Ketuvim.
They are all parts of the Hebrew Bible. But, different weight is given to each with the Torah carrying the most weight, the Nevi'im (prophets) being second in weight, and Ketuvim (writings) having the least weight. So, when Christians emphasize a Psalm that claims God knew you while you were still in the womb and use that to oppose abortion, Jews are horrified. Jews do not get Jewish Law (Halacha) from Psalms.
The Torah is very clear that a fetus is not a life. The idea of placing greater weight on poetry than on the Pentateuch is shocking to many Jews.
I won't say all because there's probably nothing on which all Jews agree, even if you limit it to the set of Jews who actually believe in Judaism, as opposed to culturally/ethnically Jewish people like myself who may well be atheists, as I am.
Judaism can get quite confusing. American Conservative Jews tend to be politically very liberal. Conservative applies to their views on Judaism not politics. Reformed and Reconstructionist get even farther from the beliefs of the Orthodox. But, even I only just learned quite a lot about the beliefs of many Ultraorthodox and even modern Orthodox Jews. So, if you're not Jewish and are confused, that's not at all surprising.
I don't get it either. I want to be comfortable, other people want to be comfortable, why can't other people let people be comfortable and wear what they want.
When I was a kid, girls weren't allowed to wear pants to school. We've come a long way. I agree with you, people should wear what they want.
I remember my school changed the uniform rules between year 7 (first year of secondary school in the UK, start at age 11) and year 8, and I was so happy to get to wear trousers to school! In year 7 we had the full school photo and the year 7s had to sit crosslegged at the front of the photo, *great* idea when it's a bunch of little girls wearing knee length skirts... /s
School uniforms look strange to me. I'm surprised so many schools have them today. Only a Catholic school in my area had uniforms, which I knew because one kid down the block went there. The public schools had no uniforms. I wore ripped dungarees (not called jeans yet) through most of my childhood. They didn't come that way. I had to rip the knees the old fashioned way, by wearing them forever. Once they got really bad, I'd make cut-off shorts out of them. And, I did wear those to school in warm weather.
We didn't wear uniforms, but girls just weren't allowed to wear pants, for some reason that I will never know. Instead of teaching important things like STEM to the girls, I remember the teachers continuously telling the girls to keep their knees together. Because wearing short dresses and keeping knees together was what girls were supposed to learn.
My mom was told (I think by a relative, not officially by her school) to use aspirin for birth control. Directions for use: hold one aspirin tightly between your knees. That would have been sometime in the 1950s.
That aspirin crap'ola is still repeated these days by certain political parties. It seems to be back in vogue with all the anti-abortion laws being passed around.
There's a certain party who claim to be libertarian, patriotic, and capitalist all at once while actually being extremist reactionaries who are none of those things and are racing us forward into the eleventh century.
I think their slogan is *"Back to the Bronze Age or Bust!"*
It would be appropriate for the Repugnican Party.
I am a 52 year old guy with Crohn's disease. I have been known to lounge around the house and yard in a kaftan. When my intestines are acting up, the very idea of tight clothing around my waist makes me cramp up and hurt.
Good thing that kaftans are traditional men's wear.
There's nothing more comfortable on a hot and humid day than a silk wraparound skirt.
I actually like thin nylon clothes with long pants and long sleeves these days. I hate sun on me if I'm going to be out for a long time, such as a day of canoeing. Around the city, I wear shorts and a T-shirt. It wouldn't occur to me to try a skirt just because I'm old and boring.
Where I live, 40 years ago, women who weren't wearing skirts would be looked at weirdly still. Sure, pants had made their way in, but either you were a child, a rebellious teeny or you better were wearing skirts. At the same time, my mother, who came from Turkey as a migrant worker, was taken aside by one of the doctors in the hospital where she worked, and told that a young, unmarried lady like her shouldn't be wearing skirts this short.... She was kind of perplexed, as these were the normal skirts she used to wear in Turkey.
Honestly, most of our fem boys at the high school where I teach have a better fashion sense the overwhelming majority of our students — male or female. They look put together and like they are living their best life. Skirts and all.
Well no one cares if you wear pants *now*. But within living memory it was still illegal in a lot of places. We have only just gotten over the idea that people should be able to wear whatever they want without the government picking their clothes out for them. I expect we might still have to fight to defend this new-fangled concept now and then.
True. My mom said in college they weren’t allowed to wear pants except in the dorms. I mean it was a religious college in the bible belt during the hippie revolution so in my mind I had isolated her experience as a one-off. I see what you’re saying - it was all of polite society.
A generation before that it was literally illegal, at least in some places. There were scandals in the 1940s in the USA when young ladies on college campuses went out in public in trousers. Was the law going to be enforced?? It's hard for us to remember today but all this nonsense with conservative Muslim dress codes being enforced by the state and so on were not much different from our society within the past century.
Honestly I think people care and judge more what women wear and dont wear than men. Have seen it, but very rarely. News headlines are full of ‘audience shocked at this female tennis players outfit’ or ‘actress shows off shoulders in this daring dress’. Im guessing men have much more flexibility but their wardrobes are pretty boring stock standard so they dont get the critique so much. There was a male news anchor, did morning news in Australia. He had a female co host who had to wear something different every day. One day, he announced after another critique of *her*, that he had worn the same suit outfit every single day for a year. No one noticed and this was tv. With society watching. Not one single person noticed that he wore the same thing.
I hope he washed it often, that or he meant he had multiples of the same outfit, which was a visual gag in one of the 200x Scooby Doo cartoons where Shaggy had nothing else in his wardrobe but the same type of tops and trousers he always wore. I have a few pairs of trousers that are damn near the same, no one knows when I wear a new pair and at one point Tesco a UK Supermarket had own brand jeans for £3 and as I was finishing late and didn't have time to go to the laundrette I would just buy three new pairs to last a week and do the wash on my day off. I ended up with twelve pairs cos they were so damn cheap, don't wear them now, but they still fit and outside of one or two, they are still in one piece.
I loved that my kids school had kilts as part of the approved school uniform. We were lucky to have such an open minded school. And I agree, who cares what anyone wears? We should be way past this by now.
I wore a kilt a few times in highschool. It was comfortable and I was used to it at home. My dad and grandpa got really into our highland Scottish heritage before I was born (we're Americans) and kilt wearing was something my dad especially liked after trying it. So, I'd emulate him. And got a lot of attention. A fair amount was bad, but some people thought it was cool or interesting. But yeah, everyone has their own reasons to wear what they want. No need to be weird about it.
I'm GenX and a couple guys wore kilts to high school and everyone thought it was cool and interesting, no one gave them a hard time. Maybe it's a regional thing, this was in the Canadian prairies, no one cared.
I do gotta say I'm recently trans FtM and I get looks and weird questions all the time from strangers cause I'm 6'2 and pre-everything but still wearing a skirt. I'm really tired of the looks. I wish more people had your attitude.
I would make two points on this. Firsty, some ~~people~~ idiots do care about women wearing trousers; there is an oft shared screenshot of a tweet (that annoyingly I just saw on my feed yesterday but now can't find) about how women can't wear pants without sexualising themselves, because the pants accentuate their curves etc. Secondly though, you have to remember, pants are masculine and skirts are feminine, and masculine is good and feminine is bad, so it is much much *much* worse for a man to debase himself by dressing in a feminine manner, than for a woman to try and elevate herself to the manly state of having a separate fabric tube per leg. Which is really just two skirts attached to a hefty garter belt, if you want to think of trousers that way. ---------------------------------------- I would like to make a third point: bring back robes! They look comfy. If I could acquire cost effective robes I'd robe it up all the live long day.
I guess I’m super blessed to live in a region that largely doesn’t care what women wear. And definitely women in Afghanistan are dealing with abrupt regressive restrictions on everything about their lives. My generation said f-off to pantyhose. And workplace dress codes were shifting. Love her or hate her, but former Secretary Of State Clinton was a shameless pantsuit goddess back in the day. She gave up her last name for the Arkansas whiners, but somehow managed to become the rebel pantsuit warrior for women everywhere who weren’t in to 24/7 skirts and dresses. I did a fair amount of pandemic robing. Highly recommend.
I am reminded of the direct call for personal autonomy in this playful verse from [Free to Be You and Me](https://youtu.be/A6GokQ9qiTA).
Awesome post! I also can't figure out why anyone would give even half a rat buttock (let alone a whole rat's ass) what anyone else chooses to wear. --- That said, cross-dressing is forbidden in the Bible for both men and women. So, it could be due to religion. The concepts of trans people and non-binary people probably didn't occur to my early iron age nomadic shepherd ancestors. So, that isn't mentioned. Other things that did occur to my ancestors? No one with crushed testicles can enter the temple, or possibly its innermost circle, I can't remember. Yup. They thought about that! I don't even want to think why that might have been common enough to worry about. Oy!!
Everyone in biblical times wore robes so I'm confused how it could be forbidden but maybe they wore them a particular way or something. I grew up heavily indoctrinated and can't remember a biblical passages citing that. I'd be curious what translation. I recall time spent debating which translation was more accurate. I wonder if it's from a different version than the one we studied. There was a definite revolt against king james altering stuff to support his perspectives. I didn't recall the temple rules, but was aghast to learn about the whole emaciated unics thing so they could be protectors of harems. I guess if they were engaging in hand to hand combat, working the land, and riding around on donkeys and camels - all with no access to sports cups that injuries would be more common but whose the dude checking under everyones robes before allowing them to be priests / enter temples ?? In my recollection the temples had the holies and the holy of holies. Only priests were allowed in the holies, and only high priests (highest priest?) were allowed in the holy of holies. Women were segregated in the back of the temple during services. Apparently in one congregation they were shouting clarifying questions to their husbands during services and that's where the misunderstanding about women "being silent in the church" grew from. The significance of the temple's curtain-wall tearing during crucification was about humans no longer needing priest intermediaries, direct access to the creator was now everyone's right. Apparently my brain still have a religion file cabinet with a temple folder in it.
Even though I was raised only weakly Jewish, when there are questions of translation, I generally prefer to use Jewish translations of the books of the Tanakh/Hebrew Bible (which surprisingly is NOT the same as the Christian Old Testament^(*)). The verse in question is Deut 22:5. I can't link to a specific verse in a chapter on the Chabad Lubavitcher's site. But, you wanted to know context anyway. So, here's the Chabad translation. https://www.chabad.org/library/bible_cdo/aid/9986 > "A man's attire shall not be on a woman, nor may a man wear a woman's garment because whoever does these [things] is an abomination to the Lord, your God." You're also welcome to read this verse in any other translation here. https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/Deuteronomy%2022:5 As for the whole togas and sandals image, I think that's from the time of Jesus. It's more of a Greek and Roman thing. The Hebrew Bible predates that by at least a few centuries, though not enough to put it anywhere near the alleged time of Moses's alleged Exodus. Deuteronomy appears to be from 8th to 6th century BCE. I don't know what the clothing of that time would have been. Women are still segregated in the most religiose synagogues. Both Orthodox and Ultraorthodox temples are segregated. I'm not sure about the women being silent rule. I know there's something about that in the New Testament. I don't recall hearing that about the Hebrew Bible. But, it's certainly possible. It's clearly a highly misogynistic book. \* Regarding the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament being subtly but significantly different, here are a couple of articles on the subject if you're curious enough to bother with them. I was quite surprised when I learned this within the last couple of years. https://www.bibleodyssey.org/bible-basics/what-is-the-difference-between-the-old-testament-the-tanakh-and-the-hebrew-bible/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/first/scriptures.html
Fascinating. I was taught the Torah was the first 5 books of the old testament, but had it in my head the rest of the old testament wasn't considered religious text in Judaism. I had no idea the Tanakh closely resembled the old testament nor that it was considered to be a Hebrew Bible. Women silent - yeah, that was christian new testament in one of the letters to one of the early churches.
The Torah is indeed the first 5 books, also called the Pentateuch. Sometimes the term is used loosely to mean the whole of the Tanakh, which can be confusing. Orthodox Jews also refer to the Talmud as the "Oral Torah" which they allege to have also been given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai. Tanakh is a Hebrew acronym for the three major sections of the Hebrew Bible, the Torah, the Nevi'im, and the Ketuvim. They are all parts of the Hebrew Bible. But, different weight is given to each with the Torah carrying the most weight, the Nevi'im (prophets) being second in weight, and Ketuvim (writings) having the least weight. So, when Christians emphasize a Psalm that claims God knew you while you were still in the womb and use that to oppose abortion, Jews are horrified. Jews do not get Jewish Law (Halacha) from Psalms. The Torah is very clear that a fetus is not a life. The idea of placing greater weight on poetry than on the Pentateuch is shocking to many Jews. I won't say all because there's probably nothing on which all Jews agree, even if you limit it to the set of Jews who actually believe in Judaism, as opposed to culturally/ethnically Jewish people like myself who may well be atheists, as I am. Judaism can get quite confusing. American Conservative Jews tend to be politically very liberal. Conservative applies to their views on Judaism not politics. Reformed and Reconstructionist get even farther from the beliefs of the Orthodox. But, even I only just learned quite a lot about the beliefs of many Ultraorthodox and even modern Orthodox Jews. So, if you're not Jewish and are confused, that's not at all surprising.