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Comment by wredcoll | Hacker News Reader

I think there's something to this, but also you've got to think about the cultural standards where "female" is considered "abnormal".

e.g. you have "toys" and "girl toys". "clothes" and "girl clothes" and such. It's not everywhere or everything but there is a trend.

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Yeah, a woman wearing pants to an office job became totally normal. A man wearing a dress or skirt would be assumed to be transitioning gender or wearing a costume.

Women used to be arrested for wearing pants many places, and still kept doing it until it was normal and legal. I don’t think straight men had the same motivation to push for the right to wear skirts; if they did that would be normal too.

Straight men wear "kilts" or "sarongs". If you think either is not entirely and unarguably straight and male I would invite you to repeat your views in certain places....

Or a dhoti if it’s hot out.

I live in a place in North America where it is not uncommon to see men in kilts. Still, you can safely assume that anyone you encounter in such attire is attending a formal function or cultural event. While it may be gendered as masculine, it is not a norm for everyday dress.

Sure. But I would similarly invite you to go up to a straight Scottish male in traditional attire and ask if they are wearing a skirt :)

That is one of the places I had in mind. Maybe Glasgow?

Women in Paris were only legally allowed to wear pants in 2013.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-21329269

There are lots of ridiculous unenforced laws like that; it doesn't tell you much.

There sure are. I wish there was some clause though that any law not used in a court of law for say 30 years, has to be actively renewed to not expire. From time to time, malicious actors try to abuse such laws.

I like that idea because it'd take a lot of teeth out of "this won't hold up in court but we can still harass you with it" type laws.

No, precisely because people associate wearing "female" clothes with being gay, as you do. I know plenty of 100% straight men who are into crossdressing, something they feel comfortable revealing to me (a queer man), but not to other straight man.

It seems that people still don't realize that a good half of" femboys" are straight men who exclusively date women.

Which really reveals how far we still have to go as a society when trivial things such as the above are taboo.

Quite rare, but there is the occasional Scotts-descendant who wears a kilt to work --on occasion--. They are not skirts but they are similar in the way that a blouse is not a shirt but is very similar.

Lots of actual Scots where kilts for formal occasions. The current King of Scots sometimes does too.

When I put on makeup I wear a suit. /halloween

And then we have skincare products and wellness.

> also you've got to think about

We really don’t.

And shouldn’t.

close one, you almost had to think about something there.

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