"I just feel like there’s a manual or rule book that people receive and that my copy got lost in the mail."
Said El Layla Johnson, 33, "a former restaurant server who is now a therapist," quoted in "Defining Nonbinary Work Wear/How nonbinary professionals thread the needle of getting dressed for the office" (NYT).
"Feeling liberated in the way that you present is just so important because it will also reflect how your mood is, whether you’re dragging yourself to work or you’re showing up as 100 percent yourself and you love it.... I have denim jeans underneath the maxi skirt... I just pull down the maxi skirt, and boom: I’m masculine again," said Ginger Copes, 32, "a digital producer for CBS in Philadelphia."
"Government, including the Democratic Party, needs to embrace and welcome that it is normal that people wear whatever makes them feel powerful and confident and secure," said Samy Nemir Olivares, 31, who "ran for New York State Assembly last year knowing that if he were elected, he would face a Capitol dress code in Albany that didn’t account for his genderqueer identity."
I remember "unisex" clothes from all the way back in the 1960s. The OED traces "unisex" back to 1966, quoting a Pennsylvania newspaper: "American social commentators have remarked a trend among British and American youth which they describe as the uni-sex look in fashions." And here's Life magazine in 1968 : "With-it young couples..are finding that looking alike is good fashion as well as good fun. The unisex trend was launched by..the teen-agers."
Why the complexity? More than half a century later! It was once just "with-it" and "good fun." Now, it seems to involve agony and confusion and unpleasant interactions with other people. How did that happen? Because of the way everything became political? Because human beings hunger for a struggle of some kind? Because it's just too darn simple to wear pants? Pants and a shirt. And boom, you're nonbinary.
ADDED: The NYT names the fashion retailer Nordstrom as a purveyor of "gender-fluid options." I looked up their page of options, and it's ludicrous — all oversized t-shirts and baggy shorts. It's the least challenging solution to masking the femininity/masculinity of your body! It's certainly useless to anyone wanting something to wear to "the office" — though I know there are offices these days where people dress in roomy loungewear, like that place where Sam Bankman-Fried worked.
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Yeah their lives are so complicated now. So many layers of genderqueer theology, ever changing and quite arcane.
I don't recall this oppressive level of gender stereotyping even in 1960.
"Because of the way everything became political? "
It isn't politics. It is control and coercion born of measuring yourself by comparison and competition with others. It is pride - the mechanism of measuring how well you are doing by counting the people above and below you, and the motive to seek to have more be below you than above.
"Feeling liberated in the way that you present is just so important because it will also reflect how your mood is, whether you’re dragging yourself to work or you’re showing up as 100 percent yourself and you love it.
But where is the liberation from what other people think of you? Ever notice that those who want to control what others think and say always seem to talk about freedom and liberation, but their actions show that they care deeply to the point of grief what others think about them. Or put differently, they are in bondage to others' opinions.
If they weren't a slave to what other people thought or said about them, they wouldn't feel the desire or need to control what other people think and say about them.
The NYT headline labels this as a nonbinary issue. Is that word used by the people in the article? I see the quotes are "genderqueer". It's not that they want to be unisex. They want to be absolutely, full-stereotype sexed with the option to swap as they like. The man wants to wear a skirt and be treated as a lady some days.
"How did that happen?"
Well, it has been happening since the 60s. The whining started then and hasn't stopped.
"Because of the way everything became political?"
Because of the way progs took control, hence raising rewards for prog-approved self-display.
"Because human beings hunger for a struggle of some kind?"
Socially approved struggle. Not that uncouth 1/6 stuff, please.
I think the New York Times is slowly turning into Seventeen magazine.
You know......14 year old girls wanting to know if they're pretty.
In the sane office of a sane corporation producing a sane product or providing a sane service, there's room for hilarity and derision.
It's "dress for success" only much more complicated. I always wear clothes that will help me accomplish my my goal, whether it is a business meeting, skiing or just shopping at Walmart.
I've reached my limit of free articles, so no telling if the people calling themselves "non-binary" in the article are really male or female. I can see the bearded guy in a dress at the top. Sorry, dude, you're still a guy.
Pants and a shirt. And boom, you're nonbinary.
In 21st century America perhaps. But certainly not in some places or cultures at all times. It used to be masculine to wear pants.
"I think the New York Times is slowly turning into Seventeen magazine."
Slowly? Turning? 1917?
If you know your therapist has decided they're "Non-binary" and you continue going, you really do need therapy. From a sane therapist, not the one you're going to.
"I just feel like there’s a manual or rule book that people receive and that my copy got lost in the mail."
Page #1 there are Two Sexes... Male, and Female.. YOU are one or the other
I don't recall this oppressive level of gender stereotyping even in 1960.
olden days: Boys can like to cook, and Girls can like Science!!!
NOW: If your child likes the color pink.. They CANNOT BE a boy, they are either a girl; or 'nonbinary'
Your 'girl' likes to work on cars? THAT, is NOT POSSIBLE!! You mean, ZHEE likes to work on cars
Our next cultural civil war will be between non-binaries who want to wear extravagant outfits and non-binaries who prefer unisex overalls and jumpsuits.
"I just feel like there’s a manual or rule book that people receive and that my copy got lost in the mail."
Everybody feels that way. How does a therapist not know that everybody feels that way?
Declaring oneself non-binary is like driving with one's hazard lights on. It doesn't solve the underlying problem; it just lets people know to be careful around you because you're in danger of crashing.
a former restaurant server who is now a therapist
Someday in the future, Wm. Kerrigan wrote in the 90s on politically correct language, there will be a truck driver who leans over the counter, likes what he sees, and asks, "How long have you been a server, Honey?"
Please tell 'El Layla' that I don't give a sh*t how she dresses, for that matter, I could care less about anything concerning her, no matter how much she goes around massacring pronouns. 'El' Layla. Jesus.
I'm old enough to remember when you had to be a trusted expert, allowed to use the words dignity and femininely in the same sentence.
Nonbinary gender identity is an aggressive, competitive, and unintended outgrowth of the left's social agenda and language for the last 50 years. Start with broad pushes against racism, women's liberation, prisoner's rights, hate speech laws, immigrant rights, and end with mandatory embraces of diversity and sexuality in any form (even when harmful to bodies and children).
The trouble is that the children and grandchildren of the 1960s left 'regressed to the mean' of politics and personality. Many were born with conservative/bigoted souls and are also forced to use leftist language and framing of what's actually primal animal aggression. Many children don't like different kinds of people and want badly to be winners at any cost. If male, if white, you can win by not conforming to the crude stereotypes of successful square-straight-cis white folks. This is a literal embodiment of passive aggression (using literal literally): Change your body presentation to move up the social pecking order. Dominate others by affecting phony differences and phony deformities.
Woke morality turned into a bunch of snarling and biting dogs seeking to establish who's Top Dog...but thinly disguised as diversity, tolerance, and must-be-yourself talk. And the political pendulum swings again.
There is a weird disconnect in the article. The author wants 'freedom' to dress in whatever way enhances her/his feelings of self worth, identity, whatever. OK, fine, go right ahead -- whatever works for you, love. But what she gripes about is the 'freedom' of others to observe and react by expressing in whatever manner how they feel about the display. So it's not about 'freedom' at all -- it's just a demand that no one react, certainly not react except in some celebratory way, to hi8/her self expression. But how each of us dresses is part of how we present to the world. (And I am imagining how this author would react to an uber-preppie in full Brooks Brothers.) Demanding that no one react except in an approved manner is a pretty wild attempt to exercise control over others -- it's at the heart of wokidoke 'I feel offended' culture, and is just what the new inquisitorial priesthood tries to enforce.
Whatever. I just don't want U.S. Gumment employees looking like schlubs.
(When it comes to genderfluid, at my age I feel like I'm a quart low.)
The social currency of "non-binary dress" is not widely distributed enough for its cachet to organically emerge. Couple that with the seemingly combative nature of it's kindred ties to Wokeism and you got a formula for angst about things that used to be "the least challenging" for young kids.
Dressing up is visual, concrete, if you don't want it to be, take the politics out of it.
Binary sex. Transgender confusion (e.g. sexual orientation). Transsocial fluidity (e.g. clothing).
...whether you’re dragging yourself to work...
I see what they did there
"Because of the way everything became political? "
Political congruence ("="). Cultural appropriation. Albinophobia. Pro-Choice ethical religion. Democrat leverage.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Marlo Thomas has a lot to answer for.
I'd lay you long odds that most of this perceived difference in treatment exists solely in the mind of the individual involved in it.
Most of this sort of person that I've met in real life? They're toxic narcissists, constantly projecting onto other people things that exist entirely in their own heads.
I had to deal with one not that long ago. I was accused, by her, of being sexist when I looked at her. It wasn't what she thought it was, either--I wasn't looking her over because I was charmed with her appearance, it was because I recognized all the warning signs of her having a set of "issues" that came in volumes. Nose rings, facial tattoos, piercings, bizarre clothing choices that screamed "Look at me!", coupled with a very strange body language and presentation. This was why I was paying so much attention, because I didn't want to start off on the wrong foot. Which I managed, anyway.
It'd probably be very disillusioning for a lot of these people, were they to know how others actually see them. If I had to work around someone who made a habit of dressing in a "masculine" manner one day, and a "feminine" way on another, I probably wouldn't even notice. I'd lay long odds, however, that that individual would be paying very close attention and reading things into our interactions that they'd see as highly significant, and were you to ask me, I'd likely go "What?".
Basically, I'd file this under "Malignant Narcissist is Narcissistic", and be done with it. 99.9% of this issue lives entirely inside their own heads.
Maybe she is treated differently because she behaves differently depending on how she dresses.
Maybe she is treated differently because she behaves differently depending on how she dresses.
Finally, some useful information from the NYT
To shamelessly quote myslf: "The social currency of "non-binary dress" is not widely distributed enough for its cachet to organically emerge."
Another reason they proselytize at the schools.
A silly article by a non serious publication. The publisher of this is at fault. A perfect example of it's type.
Clyde said...
I've reached my limit of free articles,
Delete cookies, begin anew
"I think people treat me with more dignity when I dress more masculinely, but people are way nicer to me when I dress more femininely."
Diversity [dogma] (e.g. feminism, masculinism) not limited to racism, sexism, ageism.
Delete cookies, begin anew
These culinary terminologies are getting out of hand.
I didn't read the article, but I looked at the pictures. I would be uncomfortable seeking financial or medical advice from someone who dressed like that. When people look like that, you can't help wondering what other discomfiting ideas besides fashion they possess.... Maybe I'm behind the curve re non binary dressing. I see all sorts of people in all sorts of professions other than porn who have tats and I'm sort of okay with it. (Nose rings are out though. They look like metallic snot dripping from the nose.) Maybe our grandchildren will be comfortable with a bearded lady in a soft knit dress that emphasizes the sensual curve of his codpiece, but, right now, it's a bridge too far for me.
This reflects the latest Democrat Act of bigotry. Once they excised "our Posterity" from The Constitution, and denied the binary nature of human sexes, there was no further justification to cater to couples and couplets. Civil unions for all consenting adults.
It must be exhausting for those who have to pay attention to - and appease - these whack jobs.
I'm glad I don't have to.
I think Eleanor might be on to something.
We do tend to behave differently depending on a lot of factors. I remember one time when my Mom was making one of her extremely rare visits to where I was stationed. We had reason to go on base, and while we were eating lunch at the PX, we ran into a couple of my soldiers.
After I was done interacting with them, my Mom's looking at me all wide-eyed and weird, and I'm left wondering why she'd reacted. What she said sort of shocked the hell out of me, and made me realize something about myself. I did not realize that I presented differently "on-duty" versus "with family". Apparently, the moment my guys had come up to me, everything had changed in the way I presented: Body language, the way I talked, everything. My Mom described it as being like watching a werewolf transform in front of her; I was suddenly a totally different person than the one she recognized as her son.
I wasn't in uniform, but I've noted that people present differently in uniform and out; I do that sort of "code-switching", and noticed it when I became aware.
I wonder if there is something similar going on with this case. It's not outside the realm of possibility that our author here is behaving differently herself, and that's what everyone is responding to.
And, again: It's all inside her own head.
Another reason they proselytize at the schools.
Grooming. In ancient times, in pursuit of social progress, they would sodomize boys and girls so that they would take a knee to the State, to democracy, to dictatorship, to pedophiles, etc. Today, there still do. That, and human rites performed for social, redistributive, clinical (e.g. albinophobia among "people of black"), criminal, political, and fair weather causes.
The social model of selfie-affirmation, whether feminist, trans/homosexual, trans/social, etc., would explain the progress of gender (i.e. sex-correlated attributes) dysphoria, including boys and girls cutting healthy body parts, or amending their bodies to simulate a vision acquired through grooming, peer pressure, authoritative sanction, therapy, etc., and girls aborting the "burden" of evidence to so that they conform with liberal culture, political progress, clinical profits, etc.
Whatever happened to "other people are not responsible for the way you feel"? This was a major self-help mantra in, what, the 90s maybe? Early 2000s?
Now it seems like everyone else is supposed to be at fault for how a person feels and adjust their own behavior accordingly.
I guess the people who write such nonsense do not realize how ridiculous they sound to those who dress differently according to the the way they want to present themselves, and based upon the expectations of those in charge of and attending said event. If someone would reveal to lefties that life and history did not actually start the day they were born, I suspect they would be shocked.
My closet is stocked with a variety of clothes so that I have something for every occasion. It has always been that way.
Nothing I wear is based upon whether or not someone will think I'm racist or expressing my 'white supremacy" or trying to oppress someone (the current narrative), but on based upon my knowledge as to what I'm expected to wear for the occasion. I have two "funeral" outfits that I've worn to family and friend funerals for the past 20 years. I have my "interview suits" for those settings, although those should probably go to a Goodwill store since I know I will no longer need them. I have the standard professional office wear, along with the "little black dress" for evening receptions. And, I have a couple of "big-wigs are coming" very professional outfits for super-special occasions. Other than that, it is slacks and a turtle-neck or blouse, and jeans and t-shirts for everyday wear.
This person acts as if she is offended because she is expected to dress for the occasion. It's too much trouble for her and she doesn't like the way it makes her "feel". Yeah, I didn't feel comfortable in that skirt, blouse, jacket, pantyhose, and heels that I wore the few times when I knew I would be meeting with a couple of judges. Suck it up buttercup! And, don't worry about whether you feel "masculine" or 'feminine". Just dress for the occasion and shut up!
I suspect that most hard-working lower middle-class professional women have much of the same type of wardrobe selections I have to choose from. Not every women bases their clothing purchases on what is currently 'in style" and not everyone worries as to whether or not their purchases will "offend" the style writers at NYT and Wapo.
Why does EVERYTHING have to be politicized and dissected as to whether or not it is designed or worn to offend someone? And then the word put out that those that did not adhere to the same suddenly discovered rules is due to lack of sensitivity. There should not be, and previously was not, such stress in such decisions. The stupidity of it all makes my head hurt!
Just a deeper level of "Enough about me, let's talk about you. What do you think of me."
Shorter NYT: There is more than one kind of privilege.
This stuff is why my Althouse Vista went from daily to weekly.
Not having read this, but able to see a pic of a rugged fella(not puny)in some kind of skit… is this a male to female trans talking?
Confusion on not being sure who you’re talking to or how offended they may get if the “wrong” thing is said- tends to cause a bit of kid-glove caution. That’s my take.
So do the pronouns change daily along with choice of clothing?
Do the coworkers get hauled into HR for misgendering when they can't remember which sex it is supposed to be that day?
Is there any bigger sign NOT to hire someone than when they tell you their pronouns? Aside from a man wearing a dress, that is. These people are unstable lunatics. They need professional psychological help, not a reordering of a society to suit their delusions or a splashy puff piece in the New York Times. Fuck their feelings.
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