When I was in middle school, way back in 1994, we had An Incident. A few popular boys dared each other to wear skirts to school on Monday. To, in their own words, âSee what it was like to wear skirts, lol. Why shouldnât we?â. It wasnât anything fancy, they just pulled some long hippie skirts over their jeans in the bathroom and giggled their way to class.
I want to go back a bit here. It was 1994. There were no out gay people anywhere near our school. Certainly no trans people. A few celebrities on TV, sure, but mostly in jokes. And not everyone had access to MTV or cable. The internet didnât exist for us. Only a few kids had ever even heard of Rocky Horror Picture Show, which would be my first brush with gender fuckery that came close to positive rep in the media. Our city and state had a measure on the ballot almost every year since the mid eighties attempting to criminalize even mentioning the word gay. AIDs was still a looming specter over everything. It was dangerous to be seen as gay or gender nonconforming.
So these boys. They werenât trying to make a statement. They werenât even making a gay joke. They just thought it wold be silly to wear skirts. They wanted to see what it felt like. They were experimenting. The teachers flipped out. The boys wear marched into the principleâs office, their parents called, they were sent home for the day, a school announcement was made about inappropriate clothing and being lewd in school. Again, long loose skirts over pants. âSkirts arenât for you. Itâs wrong for boys to wear skirts. Stay in your straight boy boxâ. In response we, the students, responded with âFuck the police!â.
2 Days later about 2/3 of boys showed up in skirts, jewelry, and makeup. No girls wore skirts, makeup, or jewelry. Some girls drew mustaches and wore suits. It began as just a anti-authoritarian response to what we saw as a ridiculous over reaction to boys in skirts, but the more we thought about it the more upset we got. Why couldnât they wear skirts any time they wanted??? Why shouldnât they paint their nails??? What if they did it all the time??? Yeah maybe some of them did like other boys, so what??? Maybe some of the girls in school never wanted to wear skirts or makeup, didnât like their boobs, and/or didnât like boys??? MAYBE IT WAS ALL BULLSHIT
In about a week a large number of us had become queer advocates without even knowing what that was. And in the face of that many kids, the school didnât know what to do. Send us all home? We had several days of no free periods allowed, no recess time, lunch was for eating and quiet contemplation. Parents were called and warnings mailed that school dress codes were being updated. Unfortunately for school policy enough parents also thought that enforcing the gender binary was ridiculous that meetings had to be held. And some of the wealthier parents rolled up with lawyers ready to argue that Timmy had every right to wear a long skirt, and you couldnât suspend Alice because sheâd buzzed her hair on Thursday and started wearing mens suit pants and jackets. So it was dropped mostly. Skirts couldnât be above the knee, no spaghetti straps, no drawing on your face - regardless of gender. But the air had changed.
Most kids went back to wearing whatever they had before. But, several boys continued painting their nails, grew out their hair, and occasionally wore skirts. Several girls chopped their hair off and wore âboysâ clothing. One person, and this was literally unheard of, asked their friends to stop calling them Bridgett and call them Brandon. And they did. I lost track of most of the students, this town isnât that small, but I know some of them came out as queer later in life. I canât say that incident was a turning point for them, but it was for me.
It started as boys being silly. But at least 2 of those initial boys ended up wearing skirts and makeup regularly after that well into high school, and not as a joke. If theyâd been shouted down? If other kids hadnât said, âYou know what? Good for you!â I hope they still would have been able to come out, but it probably wouldnât have been as easy.
And yes, it did start as a joke. But the response is what matters here. It wasnât treated as a joke. It was met with anger. Then acceptance. And it made a positive difference.
So, I see people upset that âstraight cisâ people arenât wearing clothes correctly and⌠Y'all. I just see another instance of some kids playing with ideas and experimenting, pushing the boundaries. And being met with anger. And told to get back in their gender appropriate box.
âWell well well what if they mean it as a joke???â Tell them they look good and should wear skirts more often, if they want to. Tell them that yellow isnât their color, but theyâd look great in green. Tell them that if they get thigh chaffing to try bike shorts underneath. If you canât handle that, donât say anything. Block them and move on. If theyâre assholes, block them and move on. But donât tell them they canât wear clothing because they havenât labeled themselves correctly.
You canât say you support queer rights and gender nonconformity and then get pissy when people donât wear pants/skirts in narrow ways you like.
Stop trying to validate yourself by pushing down other people.
(Iâm using pronouns for people that were used when I last knew them, since I have no way of knowing if theyâve changed)
EDIT: I do know this situation is specific. It wouldnât have happened the same at some of the other schools in town. Families trended more liberal, and the popular kids were mostly wealthier. So, we all had adults saying, âgays arenât evil but also not encouraged, but you canât say you donât encourage themâ. The parental support was mostly of a âdonât tell my kid what to doâ liberal posturing. Very few of the parents actually supported their kid being queer at the time. Brandon changing their name was a secret. We, the students radicalized ourselves on accident, but no one actually came out until years later. Our supporting each other to wear whatever we wanted, joke or not, was influential in coming out though. (my parents basically asked if I wanted to buy a suit to wear to school, also did I want to form a picket line. I did not, but appreciated the idea. Mom told one of the boys he looked very pretty when he wore a dress to graduation. Which was another Incident, and also very funny because they couldnât punish him at all by then)
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