Had to take the bus into town today, and wore a kilt. Some Delores decided to take issue; which sadly I'm used to. "Why are you wearing a skirt?!" and so on. As I said, used to it (and big scary white dude, so I have some privilege to wield), so I'm calmly addressing it with her
But then she said "well how am I supposed to explain that to my kid?!", and friends, I didn't have to say a thing, because the most awesome Black lady jumped in. She turned to her kid (I'd guess roughly 13 years old) and said "hey, why is he allowed to wear a skirt?"
Kid: "he's grown enough to wear whatever the fuck he wants"
Mom: "see?! Ain't hard ma'am"
Delores huffed but that was pretty much the end π€£
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calcifer π§―
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kelbot βββ ββ
in reply to calcifer π§― • • •Digital Mark Ξ» βοΈ πΉ π
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0perator
in reply to calcifer π§― • • •calcifer π§―
in reply to 0perator • • •I suspect this particular Delores took Unbridge at what she perceived to be a man wearing women's clothing (she's half right: I'm a man. But skirts being "women's" is a really modern idea, and even now a kilt is generally masc-associated)
Folks like this often want their morality to be a set of clear rules about who fits in what bucket, and can't grasp that the rest of us are comfortable with difference and ambiguity: they see that comfort as an attack
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MarkusL
in reply to calcifer π§― • • •Trying to avoid an unnecessary question, I searched the Web for "Delores" and ended up at the always-edifying Urban Dictionary. My advice would be: don't do that.
*Shudder*
calcifer π§―
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hollie
in reply to calcifer π§― • • •@lilo I love this story! The funny thing is that itβs much harder to explain the rightness of gendered clothing to kids than the wrongness. We let our kids wear whatever they wanted, but it was interesting to watch other parents try to explain why gendered clothing made sense. It really breaks down on explanation. Kids see through that quickly.
What she was really upset about was that her kids might see how illogical she was.
Also skirts and kilts on dudes are awesome. :)
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Mayor of Banjotown
in reply to calcifer π§― • • •calcifer π§―
in reply to Mayor of Banjotown • • •I tend to like "why are you wearing jeans/shorts/whatever?"
Usually it's "I like it!" And I only need to say "well, there you go"
Sometimes it's "it's NORMAL", and I like to pull a sad face and say "oh, how boring for you"
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Elena ``of Valhalla''
in reply to calcifer π§― • •Was she wearing pantaloons? or some other kind of absurd reform dress? possibly even without a corset?!?
That's definitely a huge scandal that no woman should be allowed ever to do, unless she wants to be mistaken for some extremist like a suffragette or something!
@calcifer
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Anatra
in reply to calcifer π§― • • •You are lucky to have people like them around!
some fedifriend
in reply to calcifer π§― • • •calcifer π§―
in reply to some fedifriend • • •the thing is none of the things people ask that about are actually at all hard to explain to kids. Half of them are things my own kids asked about at very young ages, and it was never hard
Why are those men holding hands? I'd guess it's because they love each other
Is that a boy or a girl (person with beard wearing a sundress)? I don't know, maybe neither, and it's really not anyone's business anyhow.
Wait "maybe neither?" Yep, not everyone is a boy or a girl; it's true most people are, but there are lots of other options, so we can't really know unless someone decides to tell us
And so on. Really easy conversations. They just don't WANT to explain to their kids that the boxes they grew up with might have not been the whole story and/or have changed
Fishercat
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