Keep your fragile vessels
What I’ve always said about skirts – they’re designed to confine and hobble women and girls.
A North Carolina school violated the constitutional rights of its female pupils by requiring them to wear skirts, a US federal court has ruled.
The Charter Day School, in the city of Leland, had said its uniform promoted girls as “fragile vessels” deserving of courteous and gentle treatment.
But a group of parents who challenged the policy said it put their daughters at a disadvantage compared to males.
The 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals agreed on Wednesday by a 10-6 vote.
How do skirts “promote girls [and women] as fragile vessels”? By inhibiting them. By hobbling them and reducing their freedom of movement. The think about skirts is the ever present danger of humiliation.
Writing the majority opinion, Senior Circuit Judge Barbara Milano Keenan said Charter Day had “imposed the skirts requirement with the express purpose of telegraphing to children that girls are ‘fragile,’ require protection by boys, and warrant different treatment than male students, stereotypes with potentially devastating consequences for young girls”.
In skirts they can’t run around as freely, they can’t wrestle, they can’t play so energetically they might fall. They can’t hang from the trapeze by their ankles or knees. I was quite proud of myself as a little kid when I mastered both skills, but I could only do them at home, not at school.
Plaintiffs in the North Carolina case were parents whose female students attend kindergarten through eighth grade at Charter Day, and were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union non-profit.
They argued the dress code had led their daughters to receive unequal treatment and limited their ability to participate in activities like recess or emergency drills.
“I’m glad the girls at Charter Day School will now be able to learn, move, and play on equal terms as the boys in school,” lead plaintiff Bonnie Peltier said in a statement following the ruling.
Exactly.
In other words, clothes that cover less protect less. (Which is kind of a “duh” observation. Have you ever walked through a meadow in shorts and sandals? That’s not a fun day.) No one should be forced to be less protected than he or she feels comfortable with.
Way to be overly broad. Girls and boys do warrant different treatment in some domains. Having sex-specific athletics, locker rooms, restrooms, and the like is a good thing. Teaching boys to look out for girls, especially with respect to male predation, is also a good thing. It’s when you start saying things like, “girls can’t do foo, because [inferiority stereotype],” that there’s a problem.
Or a forest? I learned the hard way my Ecology teacher knew what she was talking about when she told us long pants. (I don’t usually do sandals.) So much greenbriar I looked like I was attacked by a tiger. Okay, so it was August. So it was Oklahoma. So we were in the middle of a hot droughty summer. I learned my lesson, and now I wear jeans.
When I was in school, we weren’t allowed to wear anything but dresses and skirts until I was in junior high, then they allowed girls to wear ‘pantsuits’, but only if they were matching sets. By the time I was in high school, we were allowed to wear jeans and t-shirts, just like the boys, and we were all dressed comfortably for the first time in forever. I know men complain about ties, but they cannot possibly be as restrictive as high heels, skirts, and other accoutrements of stereotypical “girl’s” clothes.
Well, not “in other words”. The issue with skirts is not the coverage but the fact that the girl’s underwear can be seen by looking under the skirt or lifting the skirt. That’s the humiliation being referred to. Boys in shorts run around or hang upside down without problems; girls in skirts, no. Boys and men seek to peek or photograph under skirts without the consent and often without the knowledge of the wearer; there’s a whole genre of “upskirt” porn. And consider walking across an elevated glass walkway or a reflective floor. It’s not just about skirts being shorter than trousers.
Absolutely. It’s all about the crotch shot. I’ve had jobs around men who laughed about following women up stairs in hopes of getting a look up their skirts. There’s a schoolyard jingle: I see Spain, I see France, I see X’s underpants. Hur hur.
… If one’s underwear can be seen, then one’s underwear is not covered.
(At least, not by cloth. Unless we’re talking lace or the like, but that’s because such things only partially cover.)
Well yes but you get the idea, surely. It’s not about generalized protection, it’s about crotch shots. Shorts are “safe” in a way that a knee-length skirt is not. That’s become clearer in recent years as we learn of men who use cameras and mirrors on sticks to spy up women’s skirts.
Nullius, I don’t think the issue with skirts can be generalized to “coverage”. It’s not equivalent to wearing shorts while walking through a meadow. The shorts fail to provide protection and the walk is physically uncomfortable, but you quoted about “humiliation”, not physical discomfort. The point is that it is humiliating to have one’s underwear seen, and skirts make such glimpses more likely and more difficult to prevent.
I grew up in Ottawa & about 1970 my older sisters in high school were required to wear skirts. In *winter* they were required to change from pants to skirts once they got into the school. My mother gave the principal hell for that rule & got it changed.
When there is some fairly rigid law or custom that this is men’s clothing & that is women’s clothing, the women’s clothing is more often than not less convenient than the men’s & is both a symbol of & men’s of keeping women down.
This is a major reason I don’t understand male crossdressers.
symbol of & men’s of -> symbol of & means for
Gee it would be nice to have an edit function
I mean, yes? Twas kinda my point, in fact: skirts cover incompletely and imperfectly.
Perhaps or communication breakdown is in my using “to cover” to mean “to lay or spread something over” (senses 3 & 4) as well as to mean “to lie over” and “to hide from sight or knowledge” (sense 2). If one reads “to cover” exclusively in sense 3 or 4, then the proposed correction certainly holds. A garment can cover (3,4) while not covering (2). We can even wax philosophic about shades of meaning, such as partial or contingent coverage.
But … I both intended and intend it to be read as the superset, not just the strict subset. My aim was to say that clothing is partly protection; that just as they protect against thorns and ticks and the like, clothes also protect against the unwelcome gaze. (While I’m at it, they can act as psychological armor, too, as in the case of uniforms.) If that intent is irredeemably opaque, I genuinely would like to know what phrasing would be clear, so that I can be so in the future.
Ugh.
Erratum:
– “Perhaps or” → “Perhaps our”. Because typo.
Addenda:
– “clothing is partly protection” → “clothes are partly protection”. Because parallelism.
– “intend it to be read” → “intend the word to be read”. Because pronoun reference.
Ah, I get you now. I didn’t recognize the parenthetical quality of the observation, despite the parentheses. Maybe more my fault than the fault of your phrasing. Anyway you’re generally so crystal clear I wouldn’t bother too much about this one small tangle.
Heh, see? While I was typing 12 you were INCREASING THE CLARITY.
Always. Moar. CLARITY.
Back when I was in 6th, 7th, 8th grades:
1. It was standard procedure for girls to wear shorts under the uniform skirts.
2. “Friday flip up skirt day”