Nobody started the gender conversation in fashion - it's always been there in society. You would think this would be common knowledge by now, especially in the UK where Anne Lister (1791-1840) has become so well-known and iconic after the 2019 TV drama 'Gentleman Jack' brought her diaries to life, including her non-binary fashion and her lesbian marriage to Ann Walker. After the global success and huge popularity of the drama, it's returning this month to the BBC! I can't wait to watch it! 🙂🎩 Lister's gender non-conforming masculine attire looks so 🔥 and I can identify with her bold approach to life, her openness about her lesbian sexuality and the way she deals with men as an equal, not as some weaker, opposite sex. 👍
Nevertheless, it's liberating to have the vocabulary nowadays, unlike in Lister's time, to somewhat succinctly sum up who one is. For example, that I am a demi(cis)woman/demifluidflux artist who enjoys expressing herself through fashion as well as having fun designing it. What's all that demi stuff? I'll explain in a minute.
For me, clothes are self-expression and I like to explore endless possible types of gender identity and expression through clothes and accessories. The static part of my gender identity is female (same as my sex assigned at birth), I am generally masculine of centre but my feminine side fluctuates in intensity (demiwomanflux). So I enjoy wearing women's clothes that are butch or more feminine. Although I do have to be in the mood for a burst of glamour before wanting to put on some womenswear eg short, tight floral skirts and dresses! Whereas I always feel comfy in less feminine womenswear, gender neutral clothes and sportswear. I am also demi-nonbinary because I have fluid, multigender parts of my gender identity too. I have always found that fashion is a great outlet for exploring and expressing all my genders creatively as well as being able to express my lesbian sexuality through those types of gender identities eg feeling and dressing more sporty lesbian, boi, boyish, soft butch or butch. But because I'm demiflux (a type of genderfluidity), I don't restrict my look by, for example, cutting my hair very short as though short hair immediately marks you out as a lesbian!😅And I can sometimes be seen in a floral print dress, when I feel like it!
So how does my genderfluidity influence my fashion style? In short, it means I collect a range of so-called masculine and feminine attire, as well as fashion items along the non-binary spectrum, including genderfree to arty other genderedness. For instance, I have a tie collection which includes various women's ties, rock-punk ties, unisex ties, arty ties, a couple of men's ties and a dickie bow tie (what can I say, I loved the prints on them! 😍). And if I prefer the design and features of a men's sports/tennis shoe, I'll wear them (size permitting)! For example, my clay court tennis shoes I wore in my matches were menswear. I loved them and how wonderfully they drained the clay from the soles to be slip-free, even if they were a little long for me! Come to think of it, maybe that's why the coin tosser who didn't stick around to be umpire in my first match had a random fit over my tennis top and insisted I change it in the hut, despite my top being in accordance with the ITF rules on the size of sports label brands on tenniswear. It wasn't the top, it was the shoes! I'm there to play a match not look pretty! 🙄 Personally, I never gave it a thought mainly because my mother equally wears men's tennis shoes. They fit better and give her better foot support for injury prevention. How backward are people who make a thing out of gender and what people wear? 🤔 But then there seems to be an unhealthy ideological trend which tries to interfere in people's private lives and makes them feel the need to moralise over things that are none of their business. That's authoritarian, puritanical and most likely homophobic!
Fashion as a way of expressing gender identity is not to be confused with merely dressing up as the opposite sex. That's just playing with clothes for fun or because you think it's cool. That's fine, but conflating the two is just an offensive myth perpetuated in mainstream media, in ignorant articles such as this:
It's sensationalist newspaper articles like this which spread disinformation /misinformation about LGBT+ people and the true concepts behind fashion. We expect better from mainstream media outlets than derogatory comments attempting to attract attention, sell newspapers and mislead readers into thinking that:
- If I wear more masculine clothes I'm dressing like a dad. No, non-binary fashion is not about playing a game of mummies and daddies! I didn't enjoy that game as a child and could never understand why children kept wanting to play it. 🤷
- Non-binary fashion means dressing in shapeless figure hiding clothes. No it doesn't, simply look at a variety of the fashion designs and you'll see this is wrong! 🙄
- Dressing genderfluidly is a fad for Generation Z ie those born between mid-90's - 2012. 🙄 No, I've always dressed genderfluidly and I was born in the 80's! And people have been identifying and or dressing outside the gender binary for centuries! You'd think it would be common knowledge by now, after years of celebrating LGBT+ History Month every February in the UK which raises awareness of people outside of the gender binary. Indeed, why did we need all this awareness when as far back as the 18th century, D'Eon who worked for Louis XIV of France, lived openly as both a man and a woman. However, when fencing he dressed in female attire and from 1777 started to live only as a woman. See this post about Chevalier D'Eon.
- Ironically, the author of the article above (Daily Mail) doesn't seem to have noticed that they have a contradiction in it 😕 - while claiming it's a trend for the last few months (in 2022) among woke Gen Z, they consult a stylist who worked with Boy George who has been a pop star singing in non-binary fashion since the early 80's! 🤦 He is considered one of the two most famous examples of androgyny in the 80's, alongside Annie Lennox. The article even admits that similar styles were around in the 90's and early 2000's too while making it sound like it's something new! 🤦 Yes, we have seen it all before, so what's the big deal now? 🤷
- It seems to me that it only bothers some people more now because it's labelled as non-binary/genderfluid so relates to the LGBT+ community, is popular with even more people and is considered mainstream culture not fringe. When LGBTQIAPD+ had even less rights, people wore it without identifying as anything and since it wasn't considered popular nobody gave it a second thought. Hence, the worry that there is more 'substance behind the aesthetic' seems to me to be more of a political and religious worry and the policing of non-conservative values and social identities than really talking about fashion itself.
- It's somehow 'woke' to dress outside the gender binary. No, it's not woke. Not that there's anything wrong with being woke, it's simply an African-American term for being alert to injustice, discrimination and prejudice. This term is merely used and abused by those who wish to be insensitive, inconsiderate, insult others as often as they please and discreetly support prejudice. 😡 Yet when others want to do likewise and speak against anti-woke views, they suddenly become oversensitive and want you to pussyfoot around their anti-woke views and walk on eggshells with them! How hypocritical is that! Gender expansive fashion is just the way people have always identified and expressed themselves. Not having non-binary fashion is an active suppression of freedom of speech, self-expression and creativity. It really is as simple as that.
Such dangerous myths about the fashion style, self-expression and choices of gender non-conforming cis people as well as variously identifying non-binary people (eg agender; gender neutral; genderfluid; genderflux; demigender; bigender; trigender, aporagender etc) is not helping anyone, whether LGBT+ or not. It's not a case of discovering some new identities that didn't exist before. They existed but there wasn't the vocabulary to talk about it. So, a pansexual always knew they were attracted to a person rather than a particular sex. Now we call it pansexual which is just a short cut to say the same thing.
An example which shows how 'non-binary' clothes were considered normal a few decades back is when Judi Dench was clearly wearing gender non-conforming clothes in this interview with Terry Wogan in 1985. Nobody made a thing of it. At least, my mother doesn't think there was any fuss. She wore trouser suits to work as a secondary school teacher. She also wore the occasional tie. In any case, I came across this Judi Dench interview on BBC Archives Facebook. Her outfit could be worn as non-binary fashion today! But it could also be placed in the women's runway fashion section because not every cis woman wants to look like Holly Willoughby who invariably wears ultra-feminine fashion. It's not realistic for women to walk around looking like that all the time and it's unhealthy to do so because ultra-femininity is an artificially created societal construct based on patriarchal stereotypes of women.
So, it means a lot to me that the fashion world, from high street to haute couture, is finally embracing non-binary and genderfluid fashion designs! 😍💖Some fashion designers see fashion as only part of the lifestyle sector, not art. But for me, fashion is a timeless way to become a walking work of art that nonetheless expresses something true and unique about oneself.
Here's an article with some fab examples of Non-binary street fashion to enjoy and a piece by the V&A about the gay, genderfluid, fabulous fashion designer Harris Reed. 🙂 Happy Genderfluid Day today! 👖👕🎽👚👔👗🩳🧥🎩👒👛👜💼👠👟👞🥿👡👢🥾💄🎒
For a discussion of genderfluidity, see my blog post, available at:
https://lgbtqiapd2sphilosophy.blogspot.com/2022/04/genderfluid-day-2022.html
