GI=clothes
Peter Tatchell says oh yes there is too so such a thing as a “gender identity.” What’s more, we all have one. What’s more, we can all tell what everyone’s “gender identity” is by looking at what everyone IS WEARING. So neat, so easy, so simple. Why didn’t anyone tell us this before???
For once I’m not indulging in hyperbole. He really does say that, and after the whole room squawks and shouts and says no, he says it all over again.
Allow me to join all the women in the audience saying “No I don’t!!” The only sense in which I can be said to wear “women’s clothes” is that I wear colors – red, purple, orange, yellow, pretty much all the colors. It’s sad for men that that’s coded female, but if Peter Tatchell’s shirt and necktie were pink and red instead of peculiarly dismal shades of brown, he still would be a man.
Also from that event – Fred Wallace drunk and disorderly, Tatchell telling him “No no no no more drink.”
I had a wee look at Fred’s Twitter. He seems remarkably determined to take the view that he absolutely aced the event and destroyed the GC position. Ah well, once you start with self-delusion it must be hard to give up.
I can’t even stand to watch these people.
I have to do it in tiny bites.
The clothes thing interests me. I think of clothing as a superficial thing. You put them on, you take them off. You wear the clothes made for your sex–or maybe you don’t. You’re going some place fancy, so you dress up. You just want to be comfortable, so you dress down. No big deal.
I don’t think of clothes as revealing anything deeply personal or essential about me. But gender identitarians do.
“Naked” is a metaphor for honesty. When we’re naked we’re without artifice and defense. That’s how I see it: clothes are for covering up, or sometimes for decoration, or for play. But for Peter and his fellow believers, clothes are for revealing something important about the inner person.
I don’t know what to say about this except that I think they’ve got things backwards.
Never judge a book by it’s cover, but always by it’s dust jacket. Got it.
Maybe they’ve been reading too much Superman.
A lot of men wear pink. That’s been okay since the 1970s. The cuts and styles are different, of course, because their bodies are different, and people are often horrible to men who wear “female” fashioned clothes, but colors are not female. Check out the NFL draft sometime – these are not girly men, and the pink and glitter are often quite present.
Putting on clothes does say something about us, of course, since our style can tell people we are flamboyant or somber or hip or whatever…but it isn’t dictated by our sex, and it doesn’t define our sex. I wish people would learn that.
The question that intrigues me is this: why do people of all countries and classes wear clothes at all? The Biblical explanation only begs the question. Vide Adam and Eve:
I had the experience of visiting a nudist camp in my youth (a few years ago now.) It was a most chaste and lustless experience, which has led me to the conclusion that most probably: 1. clothes were first invented for a practical purpose: most likely to provide winter warmth and protection from the elements, and a more controlled environment for the body beneath them. But once invented and put to that protective use weather-wise, further uses must have swiftly become apparent. People who went naked into a fight against raiders etc were at a disadvantage against an opponent clothed.
2. In any power relationship, the greater the clothing difference the more disparate the power, all other factors being equal. The ancient Spartan warriors went naked into battle, as did some Celts. But as a military fashion, it somehow never caught on.
3. Another important consequence must have quickly become apparent: increased sexual allure and attractiveness. A visit to a modern shop selling magazines and newspapers reveals much more aimed at appealing to the base lusts of male customers, and with as little as possible left to the imagination; thereby maximising customer satisfaction and the seller’s profits. But significantly, the nude female is traditionally not full-frontal. Allure is maintained by keeping the genital area mainly out of the picture.
Books and mags pitched at a mass female market feature more in the way of fashion, clothing, cookery and such; within the limits of my experience.
Gender compliance isn’t gender identity.
The dramatic contrast of male and female western formal clothing suggests to me Amotz Zahavi’s handicap principle at work. If one accepts that men typically have larger bodies with faster metabolisms than do women, then they have a greater need to dissipate heat. However convention calls for them to wear long-sleeve shirts with collars secured by (bow) ties, jackets, waistcoats and cummerbunds while women are systematically deprived of any such insulation. In order for either a man or a woman to look even slightly good in such a thermally dysfunctional predicament, they must really be good looking – a perfect example of an honest signal of attractiveness.
The black-brown-gray limits on men’s clothing are not eternal, or biological. Up until the early 19th century, vivid colors were quite common. Blazing yellows, scarlet, bright greens etc.
Peter Tatchell’s brown-on-brown sartorial choices suggest his gender identity is poo.
Wouldn’t it be lovely if at the next event Tatchell attends, all the men turned up in ball gowns, and all the women wore suits. How about a round of “guess the gender identity” then, Peter?