It has always amazed me that males have the utter GALL to call women overly emotional, when all a woman has to do to emotionally emasculate a man is to excel……..at ANYthing that doesn’t revolve around children, cooking or being “decorative”
This is why it irritates me when you see comments like "X is bad now unlike the god old days!" People have always got offended over something, just different things that we would now consider very stupid. EDIT: There's a public domain audiobook I've been listening to recently, about ladies' etiquette published in 1860. And wow, it seems that practically everything was potential for causing offence and being examples of low breeding. If they could have, they'd have replaced women with perfectly programmable automatons.
It's particularly hilarious because most right-handed humans, if they part their hair on any side, will part it on the left (it's more comfortable when combing or brushing). That's a majority of humans! It's such a reliable indicator that it's used as a kind offhand indicator of handedness in general--look at a group photo, check the hair parts, and count the lefties and righties. Center parts are most common in long hair, so cutting one's hair short usually involves a side part somehow. Women who part their hair on the right are more likely to be left-handed or have servants styling their hair. So the scandal might have been short haircuts, or maybe not being rich enough to have servants?
It was also totally inconceivable (to men) that a woman who want to be romantically attracted to another woman. They acknowledged that men could be (and were) attracted to other men, but thinking so highly of themselves they couldn’t conceive a woman wouldn’t be attracted to them. You still hear it today…’You just haven’t found the right man’ is still on the tips of men’s tongues when any woman says I prefer women.
I am reminded of the boat scene in “Wonder Woman”, where she just calmly tells Steve that yes, men are required if you want to get a baby out of it, but otherwise, they’re not really necessary. And he’s so poleaxed!
shouldn't cishet men be the least surprised that some women are attracted to other women? like bruh, you of all people should be able to see what makes women attractive
Oh how many times I’ve heard that …..and also …. I could turn you straight ….. & …. Your only lesbian because you haven’t been with a ‘real’ man ……. And hearing all these terms just makes me even more glad/convinced that I’m gay !!!
@@m.f.3347 I remember a guy back in the 1980 (teenager) who said he understood why a woman would be a lesbian because women are attractive but couldn't understand being attracted to men because he wasn't.
I think that the law against homosexuality in the UK was against men only because the idea of banning women from same-sex relationships would have given women the idea that the possibility existed in the first place.
When women act like women, they are accused of being inferior. When women act like human beings, they are accused of behaving like men. - Simone de Beauvoir
I experienced a teeny-tiny little bit of this "mannish panic" from my mom when I was 19 or 20 (not that I'd say she was panicked, just concerned, I guess). I preferred sleeping in men's pjs, or a t-shirt & pair of boxer shorts, because they were roomy and comfy on my plus-size frame, and easier to find in larger sizes, too. Mom asked how I expected to "get a man while I wore men's pajamas." I pointed out that I only wore them to bed, not to work or to go out with friends, so if I decided to bring a man to my bed, I'd hope he'd be more interested in seeing me out of my "men's pj's" (which I, a woman, bought & paid for, so they're no longer a man's 😊) than in them, and if he were bothered by my pj's, then he won't be sharing my bed! Mom actually liked my response.
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I had the opposite. Any time I wore "mannish" outfit, my mother was like "ofc, you need to be comfortable" but when I tried being more feminine she'd jump on her feet and say that it was too sexy, I was showing too much etc. I started wearing a long men's coat on top of my actual outfit, so she'd be happy & I'd be womanly alright, but one block away from home xD
(Also, it may be an L perspective, but it's really not unsexy either. (And as a Gen Xer, really some of dudes ideas of wha was 'sexy nightwear' was pretty weird, even clownish. :) )
the intersection of fatness and gender performance is worthy of a whole video series in of itself. i find it hard to shop for womens fashion because its always "hourglass", so often buying menswear, which suits my proportions better, is much more flattering and comfortable to my figure. helps that im a butch gender lesbian. :) i definitely feel you on boxer briefs, they're sooooo comfortable and i love how many fun patterns they can come in! plus if you get up to hit the bathroom inthe middle of the night you're still decent.
You paid for them, they are now YOUR pajamas. If a male person buys and wears a dress, it is HIS. I don't understand the confusion. I bought a Carhartt jacket. The clerk pointed out it was a "man's" jacket. I handed him my money. "It is MY jacket now, thank you." Weirdo....
You go ladies. I was the 1st woman partner in a large law firm. Had to kick the door down. By the way, I got hit on all the time. When I started in 1977, women were told not to wear pants, and a large corporation fired a woman lawyer because she wore a RED DRESS! When I was girl, 1950's , there was a strong denegration of women who wouldn't get back into the kitchen and nursery after they worked in factories in WWII. I decided to be a lawyer then, because I knew that was a way out of the trap.
I can't imagine what these men would have thought about my husband and father. My dad bakes, sews and plays with his grandchildren. My dad also plays sports and can be very competitive. My husband wanted a girl and happily plays with our very girly daughter. He and my dad both help around the house and are not afraid of taking care of children.
My dad was the same ! (He passed years ago. I am 60) He could cook up simple dishes, was great with babies & small kids. He never seemed to call anything "women's work." It was just work. If it needed to be done, he did it. It may have been that his birth family was 14 kids ! I wish he was around so I could ask him. He was a great storyteller, as well.
OMG! YES!! Whenever my mom wasn't around, my dad would take care of all three of us (I'm the a middle child between an older sister and younger brother.) and let us go on wonderful adventures via bike riding and hiking. For me, I was the oddball. I was WAY more adventurous compared to my siblings. Yet, when we weren't on adventures, he'd cook wonderful dinners and just hang around with us. He loved us so much before crossing the rainbow bridge.🥹
See that's why we need to keep challenging these old ideas of gender. They try and stand between people and who they really are, and sometimes they succeed. Caring for your living space can be very satisfying. Creating clothing too. I think we need to talk more about what is good for a particular human and not force half the people who want to do that stuff to "defy expectations." I'd love to see a day when a man who helps around the house, or a woman who finds deep satisfaction in tinkering with her car, stops being notable.
Yes to this. My dad was athletic and had amazing physical strength even into old age, and loved Westerns and biographies of dead U.S. presidents. He also cooked, ironed my school uniform every morning, and was the one who picked me up from school every day and drove me to dance class and introduced me to musical theater. My husband is an unabashedly proud girl-dad and happily DMs My Little Pony role-playing adventures and lets our 6 year old paint his toenails.
It never fails to make me laugh seeing "traditional men" whine about the "downfall" of masculinity and femininity. It feels like society has been on the brink of collapse since time immemorial lol. Best to just live our live how we see fit, since masculinity and femininity change all the time.
There was also the term "bluestocking" that referred to women with academic or intellectual interests or achievements. Being too bright was frowned upon for women, as it made men feel stupid, and women were supposed to be interested mainly in children, clothing, and vicious gossip.
I used to work for a historically women's college and this was actually the term for their yearbook- they called it the Bluestocking! That's interesting, I'd never thought of the name having a meaning such as that, but it makes so much sense now that I think about it!
That was still there in the 60s. The times I got told to pull my marks down to make the men feel more masculine are too many to be counted. One boyfriend broke up with me because he ended up in my math class and my marks were higher then his.
I attended uni about 20 y ago in a quite progressive country and that was still quite the ruling sentiment: don't seem too intelligent, because you'll never find a man. Additionally, male professors born before or during WWII could be very condescending about intelligent women, even if they hired them themselves. I've seen a huge step in acceptance of women in science once that generation and the early boomers retired.
My father (a feminist before the word was coined) always told me to be proud of my intellectual ability. He totally believed that women could do anything..
I think it's really about gatekeeping things like fun, being practical, and a little hedonistic. These aren't inherently male qualities but have been marketed as such for centuries. Women who wanted access to this things were accused of being masculine when they were really just being people, being honest about who they were. Men who had these qualities were assumed to be, fittingly, masculine when they were really just doing the same. Being human.
Its also about power and the degradation of the "old boys network". If women enter a space that used to be just "for the lads", then you have to watch what you say in that space now. You can't behave like a school boy any more. Instead you have to change how you treat the space since its now a mixed space.
Well human means of or belonging to men aka of males and while we modernized mankind to mean both genders collectively it doesn't it means male persons so yeah they can say you're being a man when you're being a person cuz our language is built on only recognizing males as beings & people while women serve him!
Whenever I hear about men being upset and easily offended about stuff I always hear my old equestrian trainer say that "if you ever want to compete in show jumping or cross country or any equestrian sport that needs a horse with courage, never pick a stallion. They loose their confidence as soon as they do any slight mistake and it's a lot of work to get it back. It's as if they feel like they've embarrassed themselves and have to pull downa couple more fences just to say that it was on purpose. Go with a gelding or a mare."
That makes sense. Contrary to popular opinion, stallions don’t run herds. They’re there to deal with attacks, by predators or other horses. A lot of that is done thru body language, hence the “proud, strutting stallion”. The herd is actually run by a dominant mare, and she brooks no nonsense from uppity stallions….SHE’S the herd leader, the one who has to think……he’s a posturing tough guy, who fights off danger.
@@paulinemegson8519 can absolutely confirm. My grandma bred horses and her herd was entirely mares, led by the oldest who was mother and grandmother to several of the others. When they stopped showing she took on some horses as boarders and one was this little Arabian gelding who thought he still had the goods and tried to boss the ladies around. Old Grandma Cloudy taught him some manners REAL quick and even the youngest mares took no crap from him. He still strutted around but he stopped being rude, at least, and if Cloudy so much as huffed in his direction he found another part of the pasture to be in. 🤣
@@paulinemegson8519 Never take the flashiest horse seriously! If they're being flashy, it's to compensate. If all a horse has to do to get to the water or hay is walk up to it, and the other horses mind their manners, *that's* the leader. xD
JRR Tolkien wrote Galadriel as being of amazon disposition, with the mother name "Man Maiden"-I find this hilariously at odds with the ethereal depictions of her we get in more contemporary interpretations-I think Tolkien was using the language of his own time to create a character who was strong, prideful, capable, and powerful-and that made her "mannish"!
Love it! Amazons were considered a subset of mannish, but by way of their physical size and attributes. There were a few traveling shows of women’s doing physical feats or sports. I wonder if Tolkien came across those at some point!
I've always wondered if this is a subconscious part of the reason behind my longstanding fiction-crush on Galadriel? Casting Cate Blanchett as Galadriel in the movies didn't lessen the effect one bit, I must admit... After her performance as Elizabeth I, one of my fave history-crushes? Yes, I have a thing for brilliant, powerful women!
You also gotta remember that Galadriel in the times of the Silmarillion when she is young and strong is also different than she is a thousand or so years later in the Lord of the Rings times, she's aged and grown and become softer and wiser as the elves are fading. All the elves are much more raw, flawed and arrogant and sometimes ruthless in their early days in ways that are only attributed to men in later days, elves being more wise and ethereal then.
Regarding Tolkien's women at war, 'Laws and Customs of the Eldar' presents the elves as having laxer gender roles and even less physical dimorphism than the other peoples, saying, "there was less difference in strength and speed between elven-men and elven-women that had not borne child than is seen among mortals," and on women's usual specialisation in healing, "the virtue of the nissi (lady elves) in this matter was due rather to their abstaining from hunting or war than to any special power that went with their womanhood." What possibilities could there have been for people who would have wanted to explore both simultaneously, rather than giving up one for the other like the elven-men who leave hunting for healing? Going beyond Tolkien's intentions formed by his times, one could imagine a community as fluid in its view of gender as their view on chosen names. You can find the full text on Dokumen or by searching the title.
Ethereal interpretations didn't make her any less powerful. She was running Lothlorien while her husband Celeborn sat back. Not to mention that male elves are depicted pretty feminine compared to the other races.
My favorite thing about the history of mannish women is that I would be considered so mannish by almost any standards except today’s. In today’s standards I am peak fem. It’s great and I love it. I speak loudly. I’m politically active. I’m out here with my dogs and my cheeses and my college degrees and my boyish nerd hobbies and my big old group of friends taking up space. But I do it in a dress I made myself and with long hair and nice makeup so it’s feminine. Ah standards, how interesting they are
It's almost like people are complicated and can, each, be many things. Most of them fine. But that doesn't lead to very effective controlling people through moral panic haha.
It seems that anything women do is subject to criticism if it doesn’t fit men’s notions of how women should live their lives. Last week in my home town there was an outcry about a middle aged man who called out a 9 year old girl at a school sports event and claimed she should not be allowed to compete without a certificate showing she was female, because he believed she was transgender. He also accused her parents of unspeakable crimes. What triggered this was that the girl had a pixie haircut. Her parents happen to be a lesbian couple. As you might imagine, this was very traumatic for the 9 year old girl. The sporting event was relocated. The accuser will probably be stripped of some sporting honours he has achieved in the past. Everyone from the premier down has condemned this outburst.
I just read about that incident with the little girl before watching this video! That's your home town? Dang, things must be especially tense there rn.
I just read about that article 2 days ago.. from both side of the story It's still terrible that the guy thought that poor girl was trans all because of a hair cut !
I recently read a biography of May Morris (daughter of William Morris) and it seems she was one of these "new women". She divorced her husband, set up societies and guilds for professional women, supported her mother and sister, and then spent the last years of her life living with a land girl (is she...you know?) Despite her life's work being textile art, she was described as dressing comparatively plain and practical. I don't think she'd have been considered "mannish" in her time, but she certainly didn't seem to care for being overly feminine
So I'm doing a project on female hobos, especially early female hobos before the great depression. Many of these women passed as men, making the research very difficult. Female hobos were almost erased from history... You might want to poke about this subject. ❤
Any reads you can recommend on this topic apart from Boxcar Bertha? I read that one with fascination but it is indeed based on Great Depression times if I remember correctly. I recently learned that there is a Scorsese movie based on it, but I haven't got my hands on a copy yet.
The historical version of tagging me in their photos. Like, geez. Did you have to be so weirdly specific? Who knew it would be cheese and a left-part that was my downfall, and not wearing trousers!
Men are rightly anxious about having to compete with our beloved furry companions… These women daring to compare men unfavorably to dogs and horses and cats! (Surprised Pikachu face)
I enjoyed your video. One observation I found in doing family genealogy is that my working class women ancestors had to work. They were mill works, umbrella makers, domestics, children's nurses, governess etc. It is interesting to see in census records under employment the lists of jobs wives and daughters had as well as their husbands, fathers and brothers. The mannish or new women were of the middle or upper classes. The working and lowers class women seem to be immune to criticism by economic necessity.
Some of the earlier discussions about women in trousers talk about women who did mining in the 18th c (too small of spaces for most men) and needed to for safety! No one panicked over them, just saw them as strong.
It's also worth noting that working-class women were already generally regarded as undesirable in the eyes of wider society. There wasn't any reason for panic over the clothing choices of working and poor women because they weren't supposed to be attractive or desirable in the first place. In contrast, middle and upper-class women were expected to be attractive and desirable by their society so their not conforming to social expectations of beauty and femininity would cause more of an upset because they were going against the social expectations of the time.
As a tall woman, I often had to go into the men's department to find slacks that would fit the length of my legs. When I was fitted for a uniform all the women's pants ended around mid-calf, and trying to get it through to the ladies of wardrobe that they needed to use my hip measurements to size the waist of the men's pants they had to use for my uniform was...difficult. Anatomy wasn't their strong suit.
I'm5'9" . I remember all too well trying to get pants long enough in the early 2000's . 😮💨 Ive had to get mens shirts just to keep my work shirts tucked in and fit my shoulders . now i just "borrow" my husbands shirts
I was 5'9" by age 14... my mother would basically glare down anyone who gave us weird looks for shopping the men's dept as that was the only way I had jeans that came anywhere near my ankles (unless I went like 6 sizes up, which created other issues, primarily keeping them up)
My problem is that I'm tall but have narrow hips. I have to wear men's pants, because if I got tall women's pants I'd look like I were wearing potato sacks in the seat if they fit my waist. I also need longer length shirts, both in the body and in the sleeves, which requires me to buy men's shirts.
I'm fuzzy on when that occurred in the public school I went to. I'm guessing I was probably wearing pants to school before it was acceptable, since our Dad probably told them to stuff it, as I would have been wearing my brother's hand me downs and other clothing practical for outdoor chores.
I was in high school when they allowed girls to where pants in my junior year. Funny thing was, we could not where pants in the summer, we could only wear shorts.
My brother-in-law’s mother said how pants for women were very much accepted in this area for almost a whole decade before girls were allowed to wear them to school.
The obsession and panic over what a person (especially women) wears will never not make me laugh. I love when you share your research with us. History is so fascinating to me.
@@bossyboots5000 wish woman would do more crimes, specially against men. maybe that way men would actually realize that their actions against women have consequences for their group.
This could not come at a more timely manner, as just 15 min ago I was reading about the wave of cis afab little girls and women being harassed or even assaulted at sporting events or public bathrooms for not looking "feminine enough" by someone's standards - universally the crime of having short hair like a pixie cut. 🙇♀🤷♀🤬
unfortunately that's been a thing for a long time, it got better for a little while and now it's rearing its ugly head full force again. when i was still in school some thirty years ago now a girl i knew ended up switching schools because the gym teacher disliked her because she was into several sports and had short hair, the teacher started rumors that she was gay and being a creep to other girls in the showers and yelled at her in class often. I was there the day several girls beat her pretty badly in the showers, one of many reasons i refused to use the shared shower room and stuck to an individual stall, wasn't the first time i'd seen someone get bullied or hurt in them for dumb reasons. girls having short hair is still seen by a lot of backwards idiots as wrong and unfeminine, same in reverse with guys having long hair. it's stupid and i keep hoping people will grow out of doing this nonsense to each other, but looks like it's gonna take a few more generations yet, if ever unfortunately.
@TheMichigami Oh that's such a shame about that poor girl in school. That teacher was sadistic. It's bad enough to have those views, but to hurt a child over them is unconscionable. You're right that these homophobic/gender phobic incidents have always happened. But it def feels like someone has turned the temperature way up in the present.
even when i was in sports as a lil black girl in a primarily white school system parents and coaches loved to point out my "natural" superiority and unfairness to the other girls even though i wasnt even that good XD i also was very hairy and broad for my age, if i was that age now in this trans panic a parent would definitely suspect me of being trans.
This stuff isn't new, it's just found new targets and justifications. I remember there was a big outrage about whenether the lesbian girl in my freshman year should be allowed to change in the same room as the rest of us. The opinions ranged from "she can stay but will be kicked out and punished as soon as she's found ogling other girls" as the most benign to "she should change in the boy's room". She was consistenly harassed and picked on by both boys and girls, and apparently even some parents said extremely nasty things in emails and at parent-teacher days. This was in 2010, in a supposedly progressive big city in the Netherlands, which was the first country to legalize gay marriage. Two years later, the opposite debate occurred, when a trans boy wasn't allowed to use the bathrooms, hallway or anywhere else to change and was forced to change in the girl's room. It's a shame issues like this keep happening, one would hope understanding and tolerance would've improved by the years.
I remember my girlfriend Evy, mother of 2, who worked as a secretary in the early 1990"s. Her husband was called into the miliary service again. He spoke to his boss to allow Evy to work at his job as an Electrician, which she did. Her dad showed her the ins and outs and got her licenses and start making $18/ hour. She got 2 pay raises. After she did a job, she always cleans up after the mess of the job. But the others did not. Well 5 years later, hubby can home for good. He wants his job back and told her to go back to work as a $7/hour secretary! Hell no! Hubby's friends said that women are taking all the good "Man" jobs. She started her own Contracting company and clean up the mess after a job.
13 minutes in and I had to stop and comment about that "Mannish figure" they were complaining about. Looks exactly like Greco-Roman statuary if you ask me ! In other words, beautiful! Back to the video. Thanks Nicole ! Always enjoyable, educational & entertaining!
I had a similar thought. And it also struck me as obviously chucking science completely out the window that the form was based on the average measurements of actual women. Like, how could the form be "wrong" if that's what average proportions were?
Exactly! It was obviously based on Classical Greek statues, pose and hairstyle and all. And all it really proved was that… well, not sure. Either it proved that the average women looked like the Classical Greek portrayal of Aphrodite (nice), or else that Aphrodite was “mannish” (hilarious).
What a riot! TY Nicole, this gave me quite a few chuckles. Here's to feminism and humanism!! Be the woman, man, non-conforming, non-binary or non-gendered person you wish to be, my friends! Happy Pride Month 🌈🌟
🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈 HAPPY PRIDE Y´ALL, my lovely alphabet kids! enjoy your queerness and -as a fun side effect of it - driving pathetic man crazy with the power of a single rainbow emoji! 🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈
I am a manly woman and people on the Internet, e.g. therapists tell women like me that we are just to afraid to be more feminine and that we may fear descrimination when, guess what, I was descriminated all my life for not being more feminine. My mother told me that I cannot take of my t-shirt like a man, that I can't sit like a man, that I am not allowed to order these shorts because they are for men, men fell in love with me because quote: you are not like other girls. But when we were in a partnership I should at least wear make up around my eyes and should wear dresses more often, colleagues in retail pushed me to wear dresses more often because I looked so good in them. "Why don't you wear them more often?" "Because I don't feal comfortable in them but I can't cope with warm an sunny weather, so sometimes I wear them for work so I don't feel like dying.^^" "But you look so good in them!" "Yeah, but I don't feel comfortable in them" "But you look so good in them!" 😳 😒 I get told from my brother and some women that I can't be without partner and kids all my life, it's not natural, it's not good! Just let me be!
I say the same thing and I'm immediately challenged to define what a man versus a woman are. Ummm.... Where to even start with that complete deflection
@@scallopohare9431 Because that's what the video is about and what I'm familiar with. I have no idea about these topics outside of Europe and northern America so I would not dare to judge it.
It is both hilarious and frustrating when I hear people clutching their pearls about 'these days'. Men used to be men and women used to be women! No, gender has always been a beautiful spectrum, there was never a perfectly black and white time you could go back to where everyone fit neatly into the only two boxes you deem acceptable.
Every day that I learn about what social conservatives said in the past, the more I learn that it’s literally just exactly what they’re saying now but with like, a slightly different target. “We can’t let feminism happen! All the women will turn unattractive & will do reverse sexism!” “We can’t let gay (now trans) people be gay/trans in public, it’ll infect our kids!” It’s exactly like she said, tweak the language to be a bit more modern & I wouldn’t bat an eye at most of these articles.
Well, this perfectly explains some of the crazy things I was warned of while growing up. My mother literally told me to hold back on the exercising and martial arts because it might over-mascilinize me, making me undesireable! Her elitist socialite mother was born at the end of the 1800s... It’s fascinating to watch how the views of masculinity and femininity have changed. Funny thing is I had always been a man on the inside... unfortunately, none of my hard physical work paid off in making my exterior fit my instinctual sense of self. No amount of women's activities and hobbies could turn me into a man. Now I'm just a guy who looks like a gal and I have tons of hobbies associated with any gender. Gender is so complicated. I experience it as a complex interplay between a fixed internal sense, the role I perform, and external interaction with me. My innate inborn sense of self that says I should be reproductively male, and I have felt this in my earliest memories (Interestingly I have evidence of high testosterone levels in the womb during some phases of fetal development, apparently I ended up with the neurological map for a male body)... but this inborn sense of self then interacts with my lived experience, my preferences, and society's gender constructs. I don't feel comfortable calling myself a Man by U.S.American machismo standards (though I'd happily call myself a man by some other cultural standards that I've researched)... For now I settle with being trans masculine, or the more male end of the nonbinary spectrum (a he/they).
There’s a song from the 1920’s called “Masculine Women, Feminine Men” that I found and played for my history class in high school. It was lowkey hilarious to hear people up in arms about not being able to tell what genitalia people had because PAAAAANTS
11:32 What I find immensely interesting in all debates of the style is that MEN ARE AFRAID THAT WOMEN COULD TREAT THEM LIKE THEY TREAT WOMEN. So they freaking always knew they were treating women like inferior and often badly and really, REALLY didn't want to be on the receiving end of the same stick. So much so that they couldn't even imagine women equally powerful as them yet treating them humanely... It's VERY telling (sadly).
Somewhere in our family archives is a photo of my grandma, circa 1920, astride a motorcycle and wearing tweed knickers. My mom asked her if she was going to a costume party, and Grandma said, “No-that’s what we wore to go motorcycle riding!” Aside from that pic, Grandma always dressed in a traditionally feminine way, and never wore trousers.
The more I delve into fashion history in particular, the more I realize ideologies don't really change, and even the visual representation/symbols of those ideologies are just variations on a theme. There have always been feminists of some stripe or other. There have always been people who challenged the norm of gendered clothing. The only thing that changes age to age is who is in the majority/holds the power at the moment.
🎉 In the early 70s my mother tried to dress me like a 1950s girl. I dispised it. By the time i was about 7 i was winning the battle to wear courduroy pants, turtle neck shirts, etc...things that WERE in style and i chose the boy's stuff. My mother hated my clothes until she died. She actually made our relationship very difficult by constantly telling me how ugly I looked and dressed in HER opinion. She chose to dress like it was still the 50s or early 60s. Her choice. No one else in my family or friend group has treated me badly over my clothes. To this day I wear exactly what i want to wear and its ALL from the "mens" departments. My money, my choice. And that's how I think it should be. There is no reason NOT to wear what you enjoy or what makes YOU feel comfortable. You get one life and one body and it is not fair for anyone to force you to dress it in ANY manner you don't like. My mother used to enjoy saying, "A whistling woman and a crowing hen both will come to no good end". 😅 Totally disturbed.
Since the dawn of humans, the males of the species have sported 'such a delicate ego', epitomised by the domination and subjection of all things female. The poor dears would be so lost without us that they made life almost unbearable to be around in the first place.
As always, thanks for your videos. I had to pause and go find the "All the girls are doing the fellow's jobs now" poster image. I do 3D renderings and worlds and have to have that as a prop hiding in one of my pieces.
My dad always told me that he and mum really had no preference for a boy or girl (I'm adopted). He then proceeded to raise me like a son. I hunted, fished, worked on cars, and did farm work (anything to be with him). Mum, on the other hand, didn't want me in her kitchen learning to cook, she had no patience trying to teach me to sew, do crochet, or knit.
Very good content, Nicole. This is what I think we all need, a reality check. I do think it is working. People are much more aware of the irony of our moral dilemmas now than ever before. We do need to be reminded. We have come a long way, but we still have much to do. In the Introduction to one of Dickins books, Bleak House, or maybe Great Expectations, Dickins laments that it was less than 100 years ago that England did not see fit to record the birth of females, as they did not inherit it was not necessary to record their birth. Keep looking, history is full of stories that we need to hear.
I find these old newspaper articles absolutely fascinating, and pause every one of them so I can read it in full. Consequently, it took a lot longer than 18 minures to watch the piece 🙂 But all of them go to show that the past was never some halcyon era where people behaved "better": the middle-aged and/or conservatives were as shocked by the young then as they are today.
honestly i've shopped in the mens section since i was old enough to be allowed to choose my own clothes, and heard enough noise about it that i just stopped listening long ago. mostly i shop there because i enjoy relatively consistent sizing, shoes that actually fit and don't fall apart in two months, and the abundance of geeky t-shirts that simply aren't made or sold in women's sizes and would be useless paper thin fabric covered in pink glitter if they were. The fact that there's such a huge quality discrepancy between clothing made for men and made for women makes me furious, especially jeans- why is something made of WORSE quality fabric and construction not only more expensive but cut with pockets i can't even fit a housekey into in women's sizes? I'm of the opinion that it stops being "mens" clothing once its owned and worn by someone who declares it women's clothing, because if a woman is wearing it, it's women's clothing, and vice versa and all things between. my daily fashion choices are for my own enjoyment and comfort, because if i'm not comfortable in what i'm wearing why am i putting it on my body? why should i be uncomfortable for other people's enjoyment, life is too short for that nonsense. It makes me happy to know this was somewhat also a preference historically for others, for their own varying reasons.
Me the same. I hate that "women's wear" without pockets and with awful colors. Men's clothing have better quality and are more often made of pure wool or cotton or linen, not that synthetic shit they make women's clothes of. I have very few womanly clothes in my wardrobe, most is men's stuff, except my underwear. At work as an engineer I dressed like a man (jeans and shirts and safety boots), I spoke like a man, I moved like a man. One day I wore a skirt (some social event) and I saw my coworkers and me mirrored in a window, and I asked myself "who is that woman?" "Why should I be incomfortable for other people's enjoyment" is just my thinking.
I'm glad to see I'm in good company. One of my all-time favorite pieces of clothing is men's plaid boxers. They're loose and breezy in the summer, comfy with a tank or tee for bed, and they're plaid! 💚🏴✌️😎
same, the horror on my mother face when I told her i lightly decked a guy because he was teasing me and I didnt like it and the fact she was always trying to get me to dress more feminine in dresses etc despite my mid back hair and makeup wearing from 16-19
“She chooses to not be nice to them by “telling them when they are wrong, and talking back to them.” Oh the horror! What is this thing about men wanting women who “need” them. I’ve heard this in recent times too. I need to understand where that comes from.
Tbh I think it comes from the fact that men know women DONT need them. Really, other than reproduction(and not even that in some cases) men aren’t a requirement, and they know it. Uneasy is the head that wears the crown. And rather than trying to become the kinds of people that women(and other men) would enjoy being around, who would be invaluable simply because they were good human beings, men have allowed themselves to be conned into this “alpha male” bs that doubles down on the “you must behave the way I say or you’re a failure” without realising that this crap is put out there and supported by men with REAL power, and that the average “guy on the street” is NEVER going to get anywhere with this woman hating, “must be subservient”, misogynistic crap, and THEYRE NOT MEANT TO. They’re just there to run interference to keep those above them happily ensconced in their power base……all pigs are equal, some are more equal than others.
That's part of how boys are socialized, you can never just be a boy, you have to constantly earn, maintain, defend and prove that title by either excelling, defeating or protecting others, by making yourself useful and needed. A boy pretty quickly gets to learn that if he is neither lording it nor serving others he is null and void as a person. So by and by there are basically only two roles left that seem to be acceptable in a man's relationship: Dominant master or loyal protector. If their is nothing to protect anymore, the "manly" honor is lost. You are neither needed nor in command, therefore you are worthless as a human being. It's why Ronin were despised in pre-modern Japan. And it's how the patriarchy up to today still cripples boys and men and robs them of any sense of emotional self-reliance and security as a sovereign individual. If you can't find someone that depends on you "as a man", you are out of honor, worthless, do not belong.
My great-grandmother was Lady Una Troubridge's lady's maid. A couple of generations of my family were in service to the Troubridges; in fact it's still a family tradition to give the boys the middle name "Troubridge". There's a lot of proud boasting about the connection with Admiral Troubridge, but nobody ever talks about Lady Una, it's very hush-hush. So you can imagine my joy as a queer teenage girl seeing a picture of her with Radcliffe Hall and their dachshunds and "mannish" suits, and realising hey, that's OUR Lady Troubridge! My great-grandmother was the one helping her into those fabulous suits! Suddenly I have a link to queer history to be proud of - maybe I should look into changing my middle name... 🤔
Very interesting topic. I have a quiet edgy haircut, shaved neck and sides, longer and combed to the back or the side above it, like many men have since the 1920s and 1930s. My style is edgy, metal with a slight influence of goth, so in my peergroup this haircut is not unusual, but during the rest of my life I have been more than once asked, whether I was a lesbian just because of that. My usual reply is just the question "Curious or interested?", because interrogations like that don't deserve an answer, but it says quite a lot about peoples' perception.
I've had people get on my ass over my hair, too. One woman accused me of being a junkie 'cuz I had an undercut (shaved back & sides), the top hair long, braided & dyed purple. I could only roll my eyes at the stupid. I was still presenting as female, then (trans-masc), & the idea a simple hairstyle was enough to make someone think I was a druggie was so asinine, I could only laugh at her & call her a moron.
This has been my entire life, I never meant to be "mannish" but it turns out, cars and video games and beer and cheese and being comfortable are all masculine I guess 🤣 I love that we live in a time where it's at least more acceptable, and yet also love learning that people like me have always existed and, sounds like, totally slayed ❤
I wish I lived in a timeline where it would be socially more acceptable and normalized to genderbastardize fashion, as at this point of our current timeline (and especially for cis-het-men) the pressure to conform to certain gendercoded standards is just insane (even more so than at any time of my lifespan that I can remember).
The description of the new woman reminds me of Natalie Woods character in the Great Race. Which takes place in the early 1900’s. While she still wears feminine clothes and corsets, she smokes, raises her skirts to show off her legs, railroads her way into a job as a reporter, talks openly about sex, fences, speaks various languages, drives cars, inspires her editors wife to start a local suffrage movement, and on one occasion wears trousers for practical purposes and her clothes as a whole are usually tailored
I usually dress in a highly feminine way, however I can pull masculine styles and have already been asked whether I am a man or a woman despite having make up and long hair in a Gibson Girl updo lol I find it hilarious and play up on it for the sake of being chaotic lol I'm also a horse girl, my dog is my son and I like children as long as they aren't mine. In 1900, I'd absolutely pissed off a lot of people (especially men) by being myself. I'd also have gone my whole life with undiagnosed autism/social anxiety/c-ptsd so FUN!
5:32 Miss Zulu Hudgens; what a great by-line. It is weird/scary seeing all the current anti-trans talking points coming up in the newspaper articles from 100+ years before. Thanks for another informative and entertaining video.
Some decades ago, I saw a psychological test that included a most perplexing question: “Agree/disagree - I like mannish women”. I couldn’t think of any reason I should dislike “mannish” women, whatever they were supposed to be, so…Agree? I found out years later that “Agree” was an answer counted toward a score indicating mental disorder! And I was happy to learn this question had been removed in a revised version of the test.
As an elementary school child, I was forced to wear skirts to school. And what I remember most as being freezing cold all the time. So I developed an aversion to skirts that had nothing to do with femininity or sexual preference. In 6th grade, we were finally allowed to wear pantsuits but fabric of pants and shirts had to match. I was a pretty good seamstress and made enough of these to wear daily. It wasn’t until 7th grade that we were allowed to wear jeans. While dressed in skirts, I DREADED recess in my cold climate and developed an aversion to playing outside in general.
For me it's the other way around: Were it normalized for boys up to (middle-) aged men to wear bellybuttonbareing spaghetti-tops and micro-skirts in summer, I just might be less of a couch potato during summer season.
Reading the entire article, an appropriate umbrella for a man is the walking stick version carefully twisted around and center post with a metal ferule tip and cane handle. Apparently, at the time a new style was coming into fashion that was more similar to our folding umbrellas today with stub handles and wrist strap that was (Gasp!) similar to a ladies handbag.
Right?? A mom who dragged her two bored kids along (because every kid has had that experience: having to tag along to something where Mom is hanging out with her friends), a woman in full mourning being supported by other women and maybe having a little fun to take her mind off it, a full bar with a woman serving drinks (no leering here!)… sounds like a pretty great space. Today, there would probably be a weekly Stitch ‘n Bitch held there, and maybe regular drag shows.
Really interesting video and sad that we (women) and queer people of every gender still get to hear many of those "arguments". And the only thing I hear is "we (men) are afraid to lose power" and "people could start treat us(men) as bad as we treat them" :( They say its the clothing that bothers them or whatever but in the end its only about power.
Hey, fellow enby! I love gender bending/blending historical fashions, particularly dapper ladies outfits, or anything Oscar Wilde wore! One of my favourite fashion inspirations is a book of historical photos with the simple and hilarious title "Women In Trousers". It is what it says, and it is glorious!
It's wild that I relate to a lot of what these past women's experiences were, despite being older gen z. It's actually crazy how much sexism and misogyny we still have today.
The way the articles you mentioned saw women wearing more masc clothing or acting in a "manly" way as the end of men reminds me of an anxiety spiral that occurs with panic attacks, OCD, GAD, etc.
It does. It's a style of Propaganda or argument called Ad Absurdium, if I recall. The, "If you allow this, you all all these other things and then THIS will happen and then society will collapse!!"
Fascinating research! I'm a fairly mannish woman myself: When I was young and skinny and flat-chested I often wore men's clothes, not because I wanted to make a statement (I'm straight and have no gender confusion), but because not only did they fit my broad shoulders and height better than women's clothes they were better-made, longer-lasting and, importantly, cheaper to buy at thrift stores. Since I have a deep voice and don't usually wear makeup I did sometimes get mistaken for a man (despite my long hair), which could be annoying but not discouraging. I grew up during the 60's and 70's and remember being told to not do things like walk with a broad stride or sit on the edge of tables etc etc because it wasn't "ladylike", but I thought that was all nonsense and just did what was comfortable. Now that I've become matronly I've developed a style I like to call "Miss Marple in Dungarees" (floral blouses and cardigans with jeans and Mary Janes) so that I don't look like a bear in a suit, but I still get mistaken for a man on the phone! I wish we could all wear what pleases us without having to wonder whether it's appropriate for our gender; I bet a lot of identity issues would never emerge if that were true.
I wish I had the guts to wear a backless spaghetti-strap dress or a mini-skirt in summer, for I might be het-man but I am most definitely not heat-man. Unfortunately, I mostly don't have the guts to go topless either for I don't want to get associated with the aggressively sexist bunch. Accessories, make-up, dress-codes might be one of the very few areas where the patriarchy has grown to be more lenient towards girls*women than towards boys*men. But basically, it screws everyone over, only in different ways and to different degrees.
i won't lie i find myself wishing i was able to break gender norms through dress as easily as women did back then. i mean, me wearing a graphic tee and black jeans is just kind of standard, at least where i live. it's not FAIR i wanna cause a RUCKUS
Take up the wearing of fabulous hats! Much easier and less expensive than changing larger parts of the wardrobe. A little 1950s fascinator with a black veil over your eyes and one long black feather swooping back over your head, plus the graphic tee and black jeans? Chef’s kiss. Cause that ruckus!
Go bald and topless in baggy trainer pants and combat boots sporting a dogtag/razorblade necklace and no makeup and/or get a bearded male friend to wear a low-cut spahetti-strap top, breezy mini-skirt and thong sandals while going out with you. You (both) will be bound to cause a ruckus in most places, be it at the beach, at the local library, at an opera or at a nightclub.
Oh! I spotted something about women's feet getting bigger being "evidence" in one of those clips, and you know I heard someone espousing that in the 1990s? As in someone told me that to my face. The ridiculous arguments don't change at all, do they?
Growing up I was admonished by men and women alike (not my parents, thankfully but aunts, uncles, teachers, and local religious busybodies) for showing my intelligence too much. They worried about me that I'd never find a man to love me because I was "too smart" and didn't hide it. The number of times I was reminded that men don't like it when a woman is smarter than them (or more successful or makes more money so I shouldn't pursue this or that career) is uncountable. I was accused of "flaunting" my intelligence and purposefully trying to make people feel stupid and how that would leave me alone and bitter at the end of my life. I actually had a guy come up to me in class out of freaking nowhere and lament that he thought I was pretty but he would never date me because I was "too intimidating" (asshole I didn't ASK?!) Meanwhile I just wanted to read, do well in school, and talk to the pretty girls lol
Honestly, I think this discussion and accusations in 1880 to 1920 is all about Women's Suffrage and how much that scared men, in general and the power structure, in a big way. Because if you bring in all these women, with their votes...who knows what will happen to the current Power Players and the structure as is. Are they going to want to change things that men were just fine leaving alone? Oh and I don't remember name of the couple you referenced near the end of the video but it's possible that no one bothered them because they were seen as being in a Boston Marriage. I'm pretty sure that they were still being referred to in that time period but I'm not positive. Thanks for another great video on a very interesting topic! Take care and big hugs, k 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈
This battle is still going on in 2023. In college I scored sky high as male in gender tests, which had me baffled. I've always been accused of not having a feminine bone in my body. I think that the first in sizing me up is that I have a major rectangular figure. For some reason it's been equivocated with being fat. I don't have the time to talk in circles and communicate with specificity. Still folks seem to take other meanings. I'm autistic and navigated this world long before diagnosis in my late 30s. I more often than not wear dresses or skirts especially in the summer temps of 90+. It helps me stay cooler. I sew, garden, had most of my kids at home, breastfed my kids and love to go walking. Somehow others say I scream masculine woman and it often causes problems at work. Especially with guys. I know myself better and no longer try to be what I am not. If others wish to be childish and immature, that is their problem, not mine.
My great grandma loved smoking, drinking, grilling and was one of the very few women in the town wearing pants back then. It sounds like a "meh" thing for the average Jane nowadays... till you consider she also controlled rattlesnakes with a stick. Was she any less of a woman because of that? Hell no, she was also a heartbreaker 😉
@@artikulv731 she was a kick-butt great-grandma... unfortunately she passed few months after I was born. But her grandkids still relish on telling us her adventures :3
Oh Merci !!!! Love !!!! French i am! and i don't speak and understand English very welll hoouuuu !!!! ...... But understand globalement le propos !!!! super, j'adore l'energie et l'ambiance qui s'en dégage !!!! je suis fan
The opening of this gave me lesbian panic. You look absolutely dapper! I’ve been accused of being “mannish” my whole life despite being feminine in appearance. It’s also a attitude , some men call you “mannish” if you are assertive.
The cartoons with men taking care of their children...Heaven's to Betsy and clutch the pearls, Margaret...what is the world coming to. I tried to listen to this with a thought that this was a long time ago. But the thought that came to me again and again was that these comments (in newspapers and magazines) sound like what some people write in social media today. I guess they didn't know how to mind their own business back then either.
Ngl, that "bawdy mannish woman" caricature is quite the aesthetic. Gives me the same energy as medieval prints of women beating men with their distaffs
I enjoy your fashion history lessons and look forward to them. The more things change the more they stay the same is totally applicable to this subject. By they end of your lovely video I thought my eyes had rolled out of my eye sockets. I love the subjects you come across and share with us all.
Lol, that description of the Mannish woman in the newspaper clipping about 10 minutes in sounds like me 😂. I’m in my early 50s and have identified as non-binary for about 4 years now, and I could definitely see myself having been a new woman during this time.
And they call women emotional. Imagine losing your mind over someone crossing their legs and telling the person who's sitting comfortably that theyre the emotional one for reacting to your temper tantrum. And that's supposed to be the superior, stoic, logical thinker? Sure Jan. If women were half as emotionally unstable as men have been throughout history a lot more of us would be in jail, we just learn to deal with it differently from a young age.
So much of misogyny/homophobia is rooted in men being afraid of being treated the way same way they treat women.
100%!
That’s the very definition of Patriarchy.
Very well said.
It has always amazed me that males have the utter GALL to call women overly emotional, when all a woman has to do to emotionally emasculate a man is to excel……..at ANYthing that doesn’t revolve around children, cooking or being “decorative”
And Heaven forbid a woman should be an artist who was taken seriously without the typical boys club push back
Unless you're in education or a restaurant lol. They know everything about children and cooking as well
And God forbid an individual woman be better at cooking or childrearing than a man, too.
things that bother women would make men want to unalive themselves I swear
They start wars. While calling us emotional.
“They parted their hair on the left” 😮 What a scandal! Turns out strong opinions and being easily offended isn’t a new thing.
Course not. Traditionalist had been a pain in the nethers since ancient greece, and they'll keep being till the end of the human race.
I have long hair and don't part it, did I go wrong somewhere!!
word!
This is why it irritates me when you see comments like "X is bad now unlike the god old days!" People have always got offended over something, just different things that we would now consider very stupid.
EDIT: There's a public domain audiobook I've been listening to recently, about ladies' etiquette published in 1860. And wow, it seems that practically everything was potential for causing offence and being examples of low breeding. If they could have, they'd have replaced women with perfectly programmable automatons.
It's particularly hilarious because most right-handed humans, if they part their hair on any side, will part it on the left (it's more comfortable when combing or brushing). That's a majority of humans! It's such a reliable indicator that it's used as a kind offhand indicator of handedness in general--look at a group photo, check the hair parts, and count the lefties and righties. Center parts are most common in long hair, so cutting one's hair short usually involves a side part somehow.
Women who part their hair on the right are more likely to be left-handed or have servants styling their hair. So the scandal might have been short haircuts, or maybe not being rich enough to have servants?
I’m 47 but I was raised with 1950s values. This is fascinating.
It seems like the entire panic was over men’s feelings.
No, dear. All the panic was over female penis envy😊
Very much so yes. Just rolling my eyes at the incredible lack of self awareness 🙄
We men are quite delicate creatures, it’s true. Even mentioning the possibility that we might be so delicate is very upsetting.
@@nurmihusa7780 😆
I never want to hear a man saying a woman is too “emotional” for something again
It was also totally inconceivable (to men) that a woman who want to be romantically attracted to another woman. They acknowledged that men could be (and were) attracted to other men, but thinking so highly of themselves they couldn’t conceive a woman wouldn’t be attracted to them. You still hear it today…’You just haven’t found the right man’ is still on the tips of men’s tongues when any woman says I prefer women.
I am reminded of the boat scene in “Wonder Woman”, where she just calmly tells Steve that yes, men are required if you want to get a baby out of it, but otherwise, they’re not really necessary. And he’s so poleaxed!
shouldn't cishet men be the least surprised that some women are attracted to other women? like bruh, you of all people should be able to see what makes women attractive
Oh how many times I’ve heard that …..and also …. I could turn you straight ….. & …. Your only lesbian because you haven’t been with a ‘real’ man ……. And hearing all these terms just makes me even more glad/convinced that I’m gay !!!
@@m.f.3347 I remember a guy back in the 1980 (teenager) who said he understood why a woman would be a lesbian because women are attractive but couldn't understand being attracted to men because he wasn't.
I think that the law against homosexuality in the UK was against men only because the idea of banning women from same-sex relationships would have given women the idea that the possibility existed in the first place.
When women act like women, they are accused of being inferior. When women act like human beings, they are accused of behaving like men. - Simone de Beauvoir
👌I'm reading (slowly) The Second Sex rn
Quite right madam de Beauvoir was.
We just can't win lol
common Beauvoir W
There’s a moral panic surrounding men who are in touch with their feminine self
I experienced a teeny-tiny little bit of this "mannish panic" from my mom when I was 19 or 20 (not that I'd say she was panicked, just concerned, I guess). I preferred sleeping in men's pjs, or a t-shirt & pair of boxer shorts, because they were roomy and comfy on my plus-size frame, and easier to find in larger sizes, too. Mom asked how I expected to "get a man while I wore men's pajamas." I pointed out that I only wore them to bed, not to work or to go out with friends, so if I decided to bring a man to my bed, I'd hope he'd be more interested in seeing me out of my "men's pj's" (which I, a woman, bought & paid for, so they're no longer a man's 😊) than in them, and if he were bothered by my pj's, then he won't be sharing my bed! Mom actually liked my response.
I had the opposite. Any time I wore "mannish" outfit, my mother was like "ofc, you need to be comfortable" but when I tried being more feminine she'd jump on her feet and say that it was too sexy, I was showing too much etc. I started wearing a long men's coat on top of my actual outfit, so she'd be happy & I'd be womanly alright, but one block away from home xD
Oh my gosh that was the perfect response, go girl 👌🏻😌
(Also, it may be an L perspective, but it's really not unsexy either. (And as a Gen Xer, really some of dudes ideas of wha was 'sexy nightwear' was pretty weird, even clownish. :) )
the intersection of fatness and gender performance is worthy of a whole video series in of itself. i find it hard to shop for womens fashion because its always "hourglass", so often buying menswear, which suits my proportions better, is much more flattering and comfortable to my figure. helps that im a butch gender lesbian. :)
i definitely feel you on boxer briefs, they're sooooo comfortable and i love how many fun patterns they can come in! plus if you get up to hit the bathroom inthe middle of the night you're still decent.
You paid for them, they are now YOUR pajamas. If a male person buys and wears a dress, it is HIS. I don't understand the confusion. I bought a Carhartt jacket. The clerk pointed out it was a "man's" jacket. I handed him my money. "It is MY jacket now, thank you." Weirdo....
You go ladies. I was the 1st woman partner in a large law firm. Had to kick the door down. By the way, I got hit on all the time. When I started in 1977, women were told not to wear pants, and a large corporation fired a woman lawyer because she wore a RED DRESS! When I was girl, 1950's , there was a strong denegration of women who wouldn't get back into the kitchen and nursery after they worked in factories in WWII. I decided to be a lawyer then, because I knew that was a way out of the trap.
How was that affirmative action and gender privilege
Im in school rn for law as a woman so this was a very interesting read for me
I can't imagine what these men would have thought about my husband and father. My dad bakes, sews and plays with his grandchildren. My dad also plays sports and can be very competitive. My husband wanted a girl and happily plays with our very girly daughter. He and my dad both help around the house and are not afraid of taking care of children.
#goals
My dad was the same ! (He passed years ago. I am 60) He could cook up simple dishes, was great with babies & small kids. He never seemed to call anything "women's work." It was just work. If it needed to be done, he did it. It may have been that his birth family was 14 kids ! I wish he was around so I could ask him. He was a great storyteller, as well.
OMG! YES!! Whenever my mom wasn't around, my dad would take care of all three of us (I'm the a middle child between an older sister and younger brother.) and let us go on wonderful adventures via bike riding and hiking. For me, I was the oddball. I was WAY more adventurous compared to my siblings. Yet, when we weren't on adventures, he'd cook wonderful dinners and just hang around with us. He loved us so much before crossing the rainbow bridge.🥹
See that's why we need to keep challenging these old ideas of gender. They try and stand between people and who they really are, and sometimes they succeed. Caring for your living space can be very satisfying. Creating clothing too. I think we need to talk more about what is good for a particular human and not force half the people who want to do that stuff to "defy expectations." I'd love to see a day when a man who helps around the house, or a woman who finds deep satisfaction in tinkering with her car, stops being notable.
Yes to this. My dad was athletic and had amazing physical strength even into old age, and loved Westerns and biographies of dead U.S. presidents. He also cooked, ironed my school uniform every morning, and was the one who picked me up from school every day and drove me to dance class and introduced me to musical theater. My husband is an unabashedly proud girl-dad and happily DMs My Little Pony role-playing adventures and lets our 6 year old paint his toenails.
It never fails to make me laugh seeing "traditional men" whine about the "downfall" of masculinity and femininity. It feels like society has been on the brink of collapse since time immemorial lol. Best to just live our live how we see fit, since masculinity and femininity change all the time.
There was also the term "bluestocking" that referred to women with academic or intellectual interests or achievements. Being too bright was frowned upon for women, as it made men feel stupid, and women were supposed to be interested mainly in children, clothing, and vicious gossip.
I used to work for a historically women's college and this was actually the term for their yearbook- they called it the Bluestocking! That's interesting, I'd never thought of the name having a meaning such as that, but it makes so much sense now that I think about it!
That was still there in the 60s. The times I got told to pull my marks down to make the men feel more masculine are too many to be counted. One boyfriend broke up with me because he ended up in my math class and my marks were higher then his.
@@lenabreijer1311 Sounds like he took himself out with the rest of the trash! Never lower yourself for a man.
I attended uni about 20 y ago in a quite progressive country and that was still quite the ruling sentiment: don't seem too intelligent, because you'll never find a man. Additionally, male professors born before or during WWII could be very condescending about intelligent women, even if they hired them themselves. I've seen a huge step in acceptance of women in science once that generation and the early boomers retired.
My father (a feminist before the word was coined) always told me to be proud of my intellectual ability. He totally believed that women could do anything..
I think it's really about gatekeeping things like fun, being practical, and a little hedonistic. These aren't inherently male qualities but have been marketed as such for centuries. Women who wanted access to this things were accused of being masculine when they were really just being people, being honest about who they were. Men who had these qualities were assumed to be, fittingly, masculine when they were really just doing the same. Being human.
All just to show that women were not allowed to be actual people in many places and time.
Its also about power and the degradation of the "old boys network".
If women enter a space that used to be just "for the lads", then you have to watch what you say in that space now. You can't behave like a school boy any more.
Instead you have to change how you treat the space since its now a mixed space.
Well human means of or belonging to men aka of males and while we modernized mankind to mean both genders collectively it doesn't it means male persons so yeah they can say you're being a man when you're being a person cuz our language is built on only recognizing males as beings & people while women serve him!
Whenever I hear about men being upset and easily offended about stuff I always hear my old equestrian trainer say that "if you ever want to compete in show jumping or cross country or any equestrian sport that needs a horse with courage, never pick a stallion. They loose their confidence as soon as they do any slight mistake and it's a lot of work to get it back. It's as if they feel like they've embarrassed themselves and have to pull downa couple more fences just to say that it was on purpose. Go with a gelding or a mare."
I never thought I would learn that stallions are in fact cats, but here we are! 😂
That makes sense. Contrary to popular opinion, stallions don’t run herds. They’re there to deal with attacks, by predators or other horses. A lot of that is done thru body language, hence the “proud, strutting stallion”. The herd is actually run by a dominant mare, and she brooks no nonsense from uppity stallions….SHE’S the herd leader, the one who has to think……he’s a posturing tough guy, who fights off danger.
@@paulinemegson8519 Same with lions. Male lions are there to father kittens and drive off other lions, and the lionesses do everything else.
@@paulinemegson8519 can absolutely confirm. My grandma bred horses and her herd was entirely mares, led by the oldest who was mother and grandmother to several of the others. When they stopped showing she took on some horses as boarders and one was this little Arabian gelding who thought he still had the goods and tried to boss the ladies around. Old Grandma Cloudy taught him some manners REAL quick and even the youngest mares took no crap from him. He still strutted around but he stopped being rude, at least, and if Cloudy so much as huffed in his direction he found another part of the pasture to be in. 🤣
@@paulinemegson8519 Never take the flashiest horse seriously! If they're being flashy, it's to compensate.
If all a horse has to do to get to the water or hay is walk up to it, and the other horses mind their manners, *that's* the leader. xD
JRR Tolkien wrote Galadriel as being of amazon disposition, with the mother name "Man Maiden"-I find this hilariously at odds with the ethereal depictions of her we get in more contemporary interpretations-I think Tolkien was using the language of his own time to create a character who was strong, prideful, capable, and powerful-and that made her "mannish"!
Love it! Amazons were considered a subset of mannish, but by way of their physical size and attributes. There were a few traveling shows of women’s doing physical feats or sports. I wonder if Tolkien came across those at some point!
I've always wondered if this is a subconscious part of the reason behind my longstanding fiction-crush on Galadriel?
Casting Cate Blanchett as Galadriel in the movies didn't lessen the effect one bit, I must admit... After her performance as Elizabeth I, one of my fave history-crushes? Yes, I have a thing for brilliant, powerful women!
You also gotta remember that Galadriel in the times of the Silmarillion when she is young and strong is also different than she is a thousand or so years later in the Lord of the Rings times, she's aged and grown and become softer and wiser as the elves are fading. All the elves are much more raw, flawed and arrogant and sometimes ruthless in their early days in ways that are only attributed to men in later days, elves being more wise and ethereal then.
Regarding Tolkien's women at war, 'Laws and Customs of the Eldar' presents the elves as having laxer gender roles and even less physical dimorphism than the other peoples, saying, "there was less difference in strength and speed between elven-men and elven-women that had not borne child than is seen among mortals," and on women's usual specialisation in healing, "the virtue of the nissi (lady elves) in this matter was due rather to their abstaining from hunting or war than to any special power that went with their womanhood."
What possibilities could there have been for people who would have wanted to explore both simultaneously, rather than giving up one for the other like the elven-men who leave hunting for healing? Going beyond Tolkien's intentions formed by his times, one could imagine a community as fluid in its view of gender as their view on chosen names.
You can find the full text on Dokumen or by searching the title.
Ethereal interpretations didn't make her any less powerful. She was running Lothlorien while her husband Celeborn sat back. Not to mention that male elves are depicted pretty feminine compared to the other races.
My favorite thing about the history of mannish women is that I would be considered so mannish by almost any standards except today’s. In today’s standards I am peak fem. It’s great and I love it.
I speak loudly. I’m politically active. I’m out here with my dogs and my cheeses and my college degrees and my boyish nerd hobbies and my big old group of friends taking up space. But I do it in a dress I made myself and with long hair and nice makeup so it’s feminine. Ah standards, how interesting they are
It's almost like people are complicated and can, each, be many things. Most of them fine. But that doesn't lead to very effective controlling people through moral panic haha.
🔥
It seems that anything women do is subject to criticism if it doesn’t fit men’s notions of how women should live their lives. Last week in my home town there was an outcry about a middle aged man who called out a 9 year old girl at a school sports event and claimed she should not be allowed to compete without a certificate showing she was female, because he believed she was transgender. He also accused her parents of unspeakable crimes. What triggered this was that the girl had a pixie haircut. Her parents happen to be a lesbian couple. As you might imagine, this was very traumatic for the 9 year old girl. The sporting event was relocated. The accuser will probably be stripped of some sporting honours he has achieved in the past. Everyone from the premier down has condemned this outburst.
I just read about that incident with the little girl before watching this video! That's your home town? Dang, things must be especially tense there rn.
I just read about that article 2 days ago.. from both side of the story It's still terrible that the guy thought that poor girl was trans all because of a hair cut !
This is the natural consequence of transmisogyny, yet another moral panic from men that is harming all women.
@@HosCreates What both sides would that be?
@@HosCreates it's horrible he thought it was OK to harass a child period
I recently read a biography of May Morris (daughter of William Morris) and it seems she was one of these "new women". She divorced her husband, set up societies and guilds for professional women, supported her mother and sister, and then spent the last years of her life living with a land girl (is she...you know?) Despite her life's work being textile art, she was described as dressing comparatively plain and practical. I don't think she'd have been considered "mannish" in her time, but she certainly didn't seem to care for being overly feminine
do u happen to still have the title of the biography in mind?? id love to read it to know more abt the pre raphaelites and their lives
@@melowlw8638 it's just "May Morris: Arts and Crafts Designer" from V&A Museum. It's mostly about her work with a summary of her life at the start
That tracks, considering how supportive her farther was of socilaism and equal rights.
So I'm doing a project on female hobos, especially early female hobos before the great depression. Many of these women passed as men, making the research very difficult. Female hobos were almost erased from history... You might want to poke about this subject. ❤
Any reads you can recommend on this topic apart from Boxcar Bertha? I read that one with fascination but it is indeed based on Great Depression times if I remember correctly. I recently learned that there is a Scorsese movie based on it, but I haven't got my hands on a copy yet.
I am living for Nicole going "I am being called out right now" every 5 minutes 🤣🤣
The historical version of tagging me in their photos. Like, geez. Did you have to be so weirdly specific? Who knew it would be cheese and a left-part that was my downfall, and not wearing trousers!
Men are rightly anxious about having to compete with our beloved furry companions… These women daring to compare men unfavorably to dogs and horses and cats! (Surprised Pikachu face)
I enjoyed your video. One observation I found in doing family genealogy is that my working class women ancestors had to work. They were mill works, umbrella makers, domestics, children's nurses, governess etc. It is interesting to see in census records under employment the lists of jobs wives and daughters had as well as their husbands, fathers and brothers. The mannish or new women were of the middle or upper classes. The working and lowers class women seem to be immune to criticism by economic necessity.
"Imune to criticism by economic necessity" very well put
Some of the earlier discussions about women in trousers talk about women who did mining in the 18th c (too small of spaces for most men) and needed to for safety! No one panicked over them, just saw them as strong.
It's also worth noting that working-class women were already generally regarded as undesirable in the eyes of wider society. There wasn't any reason for panic over the clothing choices of working and poor women because they weren't supposed to be attractive or desirable in the first place. In contrast, middle and upper-class women were expected to be attractive and desirable by their society so their not conforming to social expectations of beauty and femininity would cause more of an upset because they were going against the social expectations of the time.
@@peggedyourdad9560 I feel like this hasn't changed much.
@@Mynnia Absolutely, it's an example of the intersecting of classism and misogyny. I feel like this could be an entire video essay in and of itself.
As a tall woman, I often had to go into the men's department to find slacks that would fit the length of my legs. When I was fitted for a uniform all the women's pants ended around mid-calf, and trying to get it through to the ladies of wardrobe that they needed to use my hip measurements to size the waist of the men's pants they had to use for my uniform was...difficult. Anatomy wasn't their strong suit.
I hear you .. same here. With 5´10 almost everything looks 3/4 length :)
I'm5'9" . I remember all too well trying to get pants long enough in the early 2000's . 😮💨 Ive had to get mens shirts just to keep my work shirts tucked in and fit my shoulders . now i just "borrow" my husbands shirts
I was 5'9" by age 14... my mother would basically glare down anyone who gave us weird looks for shopping the men's dept as that was the only way I had jeans that came anywhere near my ankles (unless I went like 6 sizes up, which created other issues, primarily keeping them up)
I was 5‘11 at 12 and am 6‘1 and a few now. I also am broad shouldered. It was never fun to buy clothes and men do not know how to act around me.
My problem is that I'm tall but have narrow hips. I have to wear men's pants, because if I got tall women's pants I'd look like I were wearing potato sacks in the seat if they fit my waist. I also need longer length shirts, both in the body and in the sleeves, which requires me to buy men's shirts.
We fought so hard in high school for them to change the dress code to allow girls to wear pants ... they finally did ... a year after I graduated 😂 😢
I'm fuzzy on when that occurred in the public school I went to. I'm guessing I was probably wearing pants to school before it was acceptable, since our Dad probably told them to stuff it, as I would have been wearing my brother's hand me downs and other clothing practical for outdoor chores.
Think of it like planting a tree - we might not reap the benefits ourselves, but that doesn't mean it was in vain.
I was in high school when they allowed girls to where pants in my junior year. Funny thing was, we could not where pants in the summer, we could only wear shorts.
My brother-in-law’s mother said how pants for women were very much accepted in this area for almost a whole decade before girls were allowed to wear them to school.
Dang 😅
The obsession and panic over what a person (especially women) wears will never not make me laugh. I love when you share your research with us. History is so fascinating to me.
Unfortunately, it stopped making me laugh when people started getting assaulted for it.
@@bossyboots5000 That has definitely never been funny, and angers me a lot. People need to leave others alone.
Basically men just panicking over girls that are as strong in skills/abilities. In a nutshell, some men are stupid.🤣😅
@@bossyboots5000 wish woman would do more crimes, specially against men. maybe that way men would actually realize that their actions against women have consequences for their group.
This could not come at a more timely manner, as just 15 min ago I was reading about the wave of cis afab little girls and women being harassed or even assaulted at sporting events or public bathrooms for not looking "feminine enough" by someone's standards - universally the crime of having short hair like a pixie cut. 🙇♀🤷♀🤬
unfortunately that's been a thing for a long time, it got better for a little while and now it's rearing its ugly head full force again. when i was still in school some thirty years ago now a girl i knew ended up switching schools because the gym teacher disliked her because she was into several sports and had short hair, the teacher started rumors that she was gay and being a creep to other girls in the showers and yelled at her in class often. I was there the day several girls beat her pretty badly in the showers, one of many reasons i refused to use the shared shower room and stuck to an individual stall, wasn't the first time i'd seen someone get bullied or hurt in them for dumb reasons. girls having short hair is still seen by a lot of backwards idiots as wrong and unfeminine, same in reverse with guys having long hair. it's stupid and i keep hoping people will grow out of doing this nonsense to each other, but looks like it's gonna take a few more generations yet, if ever unfortunately.
@TheMichigami Oh that's such a shame about that poor girl in school. That teacher was sadistic. It's bad enough to have those views, but to hurt a child over them is unconscionable.
You're right that these homophobic/gender phobic incidents have always happened. But it def feels like someone has turned the temperature way up in the present.
even when i was in sports as a lil black girl in a primarily white school system parents and coaches loved to point out my "natural" superiority and unfairness to the other girls even though i wasnt even that good XD i also was very hairy and broad for my age, if i was that age now in this trans panic a parent would definitely suspect me of being trans.
This stuff isn't new, it's just found new targets and justifications. I remember there was a big outrage about whenether the lesbian girl in my freshman year should be allowed to change in the same room as the rest of us. The opinions ranged from "she can stay but will be kicked out and punished as soon as she's found ogling other girls" as the most benign to "she should change in the boy's room". She was consistenly harassed and picked on by both boys and girls, and apparently even some parents said extremely nasty things in emails and at parent-teacher days. This was in 2010, in a supposedly progressive big city in the Netherlands, which was the first country to legalize gay marriage.
Two years later, the opposite debate occurred, when a trans boy wasn't allowed to use the bathrooms, hallway or anywhere else to change and was forced to change in the girl's room. It's a shame issues like this keep happening, one would hope understanding and tolerance would've improved by the years.
I remember my girlfriend Evy, mother of 2, who worked as a secretary in the early 1990"s. Her husband was called into the miliary service again. He spoke to his boss to allow Evy to work at his job as an Electrician, which she did. Her dad showed her the ins and outs and got her licenses and start making $18/ hour. She got 2 pay raises. After she did a job, she always cleans up after the mess of the job. But the others did not. Well 5 years later, hubby can home for good. He wants his job back and told her to go back to work as a $7/hour secretary! Hell no! Hubby's friends said that women are taking all the good "Man" jobs. She started her own Contracting company and clean up the mess after a job.
I really wish more women would go into the trades and become contractors so we could have more choice in who we hire!
13 minutes in and I had to stop and comment about that "Mannish figure" they were complaining about. Looks exactly like Greco-Roman statuary if you ask me ! In other words, beautiful!
Back to the video.
Thanks Nicole ! Always enjoyable, educational & entertaining!
I had a similar thought. And it also struck me as obviously chucking science completely out the window that the form was based on the average measurements of actual women. Like, how could the form be "wrong" if that's what average proportions were?
I thought so too !
Exactly! It was obviously based on Classical Greek statues, pose and hairstyle and all. And all it really proved was that… well, not sure. Either it proved that the average women looked like the Classical Greek portrayal of Aphrodite (nice), or else that Aphrodite was “mannish” (hilarious).
What a riot! TY Nicole, this gave me quite a few chuckles. Here's to feminism and humanism!! Be the woman, man, non-conforming, non-binary or non-gendered person you wish to be, my friends! Happy Pride Month 🌈🌟
Wow, I wasn't aware that they allowed internet access to patients in psychiatric hospitals.Hang in there D.P. there's still hope.
🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈
HAPPY PRIDE Y´ALL, my lovely alphabet kids! enjoy your queerness and -as a fun side effect of it - driving pathetic man crazy with the power of a single rainbow emoji!
🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈
@@dontyoudaresubscribe7893 Well you made this comment so clearly they do.
woo hoo! xoxoxoxoxoxo
To humanism and freedom for all! Fens and mascs of all kinds to live in happiness and harmony
I am a manly woman and people on the Internet, e.g. therapists tell women like me that we are just to afraid to be more feminine and that we may fear descrimination when, guess what, I was descriminated all my life for not being more feminine. My mother told me that I cannot take of my t-shirt like a man, that I can't sit like a man, that I am not allowed to order these shorts because they are for men, men fell in love with me because quote: you are not like other girls. But when we were in a partnership I should at least wear make up around my eyes and should wear dresses more often, colleagues in retail pushed me to wear dresses more often because I looked so good in them. "Why don't you wear them more often?" "Because I don't feal comfortable in them but I can't cope with warm an sunny weather, so sometimes I wear them for work so I don't feel like dying.^^" "But you look so good in them!" "Yeah, but I don't feel comfortable in them" "But you look so good in them!" 😳 😒 I get told from my brother and some women that I can't be without partner and kids all my life, it's not natural, it's not good!
Just let me be!
The urge to gender everything from fashion to activities and life choices has not left the western cultures yet. High time for it!
why can't we just do stuff 💀
I say the same thing and I'm immediately challenged to define what a man versus a woman are. Ummm.... Where to even start with that complete deflection
@@NIHIL_EGOit’s very complicated 😅
Why single out Western culture?
@@scallopohare9431 Because that's what the video is about and what I'm familiar with. I have no idea about these topics outside of Europe and northern America so I would not dare to judge it.
I loved this. Happy Pride to all Butches! Past and present
It is both hilarious and frustrating when I hear people clutching their pearls about 'these days'. Men used to be men and women used to be women! No, gender has always been a beautiful spectrum, there was never a perfectly black and white time you could go back to where everyone fit neatly into the only two boxes you deem acceptable.
Everything has been broken down the to simplest ideas now, in everything. People want everything to be black and white, when it's really all gray.
Every day that I learn about what social conservatives said in the past, the more I learn that it’s literally just exactly what they’re saying now but with like, a slightly different target.
“We can’t let feminism happen! All the women will turn unattractive & will do reverse sexism!” “We can’t let gay (now trans) people be gay/trans in public, it’ll infect our kids!”
It’s exactly like she said, tweak the language to be a bit more modern & I wouldn’t bat an eye at most of these articles.
Well, this perfectly explains some of the crazy things I was warned of while growing up. My mother literally told me to hold back on the exercising and martial arts because it might over-mascilinize me, making me undesireable! Her elitist socialite mother was born at the end of the 1800s... It’s fascinating to watch how the views of masculinity and femininity have changed.
Funny thing is I had always been a man on the inside... unfortunately, none of my hard physical work paid off in making my exterior fit my instinctual sense of self. No amount of women's activities and hobbies could turn me into a man. Now I'm just a guy who looks like a gal and I have tons of hobbies associated with any gender. Gender is so complicated. I experience it as a complex interplay between a fixed internal sense, the role I perform, and external interaction with me. My innate inborn sense of self that says I should be reproductively male, and I have felt this in my earliest memories (Interestingly I have evidence of high testosterone levels in the womb during some phases of fetal development, apparently I ended up with the neurological map for a male body)... but this inborn sense of self then interacts with my lived experience, my preferences, and society's gender constructs. I don't feel comfortable calling myself a Man by U.S.American machismo standards (though I'd happily call myself a man by some other cultural standards that I've researched)... For now I settle with being trans masculine, or the more male end of the nonbinary spectrum (a he/they).
Perhaps intersex? That too exists on a spectrum
There’s a song from the 1920’s called “Masculine Women, Feminine Men” that I found and played for my history class in high school. It was lowkey hilarious to hear people up in arms about not being able to tell what genitalia people had because PAAAAANTS
The pants are coming hide your children
Men’s inability to realize that anger is also an emotion, and it makes you very irrational when you don’t manage it, is an ongoing problem.
11:32 What I find immensely interesting in all debates of the style is that MEN ARE AFRAID THAT WOMEN COULD TREAT THEM LIKE THEY TREAT WOMEN. So they freaking always knew they were treating women like inferior and often badly and really, REALLY didn't want to be on the receiving end of the same stick. So much so that they couldn't even imagine women equally powerful as them yet treating them humanely... It's VERY telling (sadly).
Somewhere in our family archives is a photo of my grandma, circa 1920, astride a motorcycle and wearing tweed knickers. My mom asked her if she was going to a costume party, and Grandma said, “No-that’s what we wore to go motorcycle riding!” Aside from that pic, Grandma always dressed in a traditionally feminine way, and never wore trousers.
The more I delve into fashion history in particular, the more I realize ideologies don't really change, and even the visual representation/symbols of those ideologies are just variations on a theme. There have always been feminists of some stripe or other. There have always been people who challenged the norm of gendered clothing. The only thing that changes age to age is who is in the majority/holds the power at the moment.
🎉 In the early 70s my mother tried to dress me like a 1950s girl. I dispised it. By the time i was about 7 i was winning the battle to wear courduroy pants, turtle neck shirts, etc...things that WERE in style and i chose the boy's stuff. My mother hated my clothes until she died. She actually made our relationship very difficult by constantly telling me how ugly I looked and dressed in HER opinion. She chose to dress like it was still the 50s or early 60s. Her choice. No one else in my family or friend group has treated me badly over my clothes. To this day I wear exactly what i want to wear and its ALL from the "mens" departments. My money, my choice. And that's how I think it should be. There is no reason NOT to wear what you enjoy or what makes YOU feel comfortable. You get one life and one body and it is not fair for anyone to force you to dress it in ANY manner you don't like. My mother used to enjoy saying, "A whistling woman and a crowing hen both will come to no good end". 😅 Totally disturbed.
My maternal grandfather used that expression! Funny that two of my aunts were bachelor ladies....
Eeee sounds like she was stuck in the past 😶
I love how everything a woman does is "if she can do that, she wouldn't need men and then what will we do?!"
Since the dawn of humans, the males of the species have sported 'such a delicate ego', epitomised by the domination and subjection of all things female. The poor dears would be so lost without us that they made life almost unbearable to be around in the first place.
As always, thanks for your videos. I had to pause and go find the "All the girls are doing the fellow's jobs now" poster image. I do 3D renderings and worlds and have to have that as a prop hiding in one of my pieces.
What a great video! It's both frustrating and comforting that moral panics aren't new.
My dad always told me that he and mum really had no preference for a boy or girl (I'm adopted). He then proceeded to raise me like a son. I hunted, fished, worked on cars, and did farm work (anything to be with him). Mum, on the other hand, didn't want me in her kitchen learning to cook, she had no patience trying to teach me to sew, do crochet, or knit.
Very good content, Nicole. This is what I think we all need, a reality check. I do think it is working. People are much more aware of the irony of our moral dilemmas now than ever before. We do need to be reminded. We have come a long way, but we still have much to do. In the Introduction to one of Dickins books, Bleak House, or maybe Great Expectations, Dickins laments that it was less than 100 years ago that England did not see fit to record the birth of females, as they did not inherit it was not necessary to record their birth. Keep looking, history is full of stories that we need to hear.
I find these old newspaper articles absolutely fascinating, and pause every one of them so I can read it in full. Consequently, it took a lot longer than 18 minures to watch the piece 🙂
But all of them go to show that the past was never some halcyon era where people behaved "better": the middle-aged and/or conservatives were as shocked by the young then as they are today.
honestly i've shopped in the mens section since i was old enough to be allowed to choose my own clothes, and heard enough noise about it that i just stopped listening long ago. mostly i shop there because i enjoy relatively consistent sizing, shoes that actually fit and don't fall apart in two months, and the abundance of geeky t-shirts that simply aren't made or sold in women's sizes and would be useless paper thin fabric covered in pink glitter if they were. The fact that there's such a huge quality discrepancy between clothing made for men and made for women makes me furious, especially jeans- why is something made of WORSE quality fabric and construction not only more expensive but cut with pockets i can't even fit a housekey into in women's sizes? I'm of the opinion that it stops being "mens" clothing once its owned and worn by someone who declares it women's clothing, because if a woman is wearing it, it's women's clothing, and vice versa and all things between. my daily fashion choices are for my own enjoyment and comfort, because if i'm not comfortable in what i'm wearing why am i putting it on my body? why should i be uncomfortable for other people's enjoyment, life is too short for that nonsense.
It makes me happy to know this was somewhat also a preference historically for others, for their own varying reasons.
Oh I’m SO with you on this.
Me too.
me three, I have noticed that as well and think pretty much the same.
Me the same. I hate that "women's wear" without pockets and with awful colors. Men's clothing have better quality and are more often made of pure wool or cotton or linen, not that synthetic shit they make women's clothes of.
I have very few womanly clothes in my wardrobe, most is men's stuff, except my underwear. At work as an engineer I dressed like a man (jeans and shirts and safety boots), I spoke like a man, I moved like a man. One day I wore a skirt (some social event) and I saw my coworkers and me mirrored in a window, and I asked myself "who is that woman?"
"Why should I be incomfortable for other people's enjoyment" is just my thinking.
I'm glad to see I'm in good company. One of my all-time favorite pieces of clothing is men's plaid boxers. They're loose and breezy in the summer, comfy with a tank or tee for bed, and they're plaid! 💚🏴✌️😎
"Women are in fact being permanently affected" Thank you for reminding me to do my testosterone shot! 😂
20 pockets??? SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!
I remember being on the receiving end of such moral panic in the early 2000s from my mother
same, the horror on my mother face when I told her i lightly decked a guy because he was teasing me and I didnt like it and the fact she was always trying to get me to dress more feminine in dresses etc despite my mid back hair and makeup wearing from 16-19
“She chooses to not be nice to them by “telling them when they are wrong, and talking back to them.” Oh the horror!
What is this thing about men wanting women who “need” them. I’ve heard this in recent times too. I need to understand where that comes from.
Tbh I think it comes from the fact that men know women DONT need them. Really, other than reproduction(and not even that in some cases) men aren’t a requirement, and they know it. Uneasy is the head that wears the crown. And rather than trying to become the kinds of people that women(and other men) would enjoy being around, who would be invaluable simply because they were good human beings, men have allowed themselves to be conned into this “alpha male” bs that doubles down on the “you must behave the way I say or you’re a failure” without realising that this crap is put out there and supported by men with REAL power, and that the average “guy on the street” is NEVER going to get anywhere with this woman hating, “must be subservient”, misogynistic crap, and THEYRE NOT MEANT TO. They’re just there to run interference to keep those above them happily ensconced in their power base……all pigs are equal, some are more equal than others.
Insecurity
Time period
That's part of how boys are socialized, you can never just be a boy, you have to constantly earn, maintain, defend and prove that title by either excelling, defeating or protecting others, by making yourself useful and needed. A boy pretty quickly gets to learn that if he is neither lording it nor serving others he is null and void as a person. So by and by there are basically only two roles left that seem to be acceptable in a man's relationship: Dominant master or loyal protector. If their is nothing to protect anymore, the "manly" honor is lost. You are neither needed nor in command, therefore you are worthless as a human being. It's why Ronin were despised in pre-modern Japan. And it's how the patriarchy up to today still cripples boys and men and robs them of any sense of emotional self-reliance and security as a sovereign individual. If you can't find someone that depends on you "as a man", you are out of honor, worthless, do not belong.
My great-grandmother was Lady Una Troubridge's lady's maid. A couple of generations of my family were in service to the Troubridges; in fact it's still a family tradition to give the boys the middle name "Troubridge". There's a lot of proud boasting about the connection with Admiral Troubridge, but nobody ever talks about Lady Una, it's very hush-hush. So you can imagine my joy as a queer teenage girl seeing a picture of her with Radcliffe Hall and their dachshunds and "mannish" suits, and realising hey, that's OUR Lady Troubridge! My great-grandmother was the one helping her into those fabulous suits! Suddenly I have a link to queer history to be proud of - maybe I should look into changing my middle name... 🤔
You do you, and you can do so regardless of under whom your grand-grandmother served.
Very interesting topic.
I have a quiet edgy haircut, shaved neck and sides, longer and combed to the back or the side above it, like many men have since the 1920s and 1930s. My style is edgy, metal with a slight influence of goth, so in my peergroup this haircut is not unusual, but during the rest of my life I have been more than once asked, whether I was a lesbian just because of that. My usual reply is just the question "Curious or interested?", because interrogations like that don't deserve an answer, but it says quite a lot about peoples' perception.
"Curious or interested?" Is going in the response book now. Thanks.😂
I love that reply!
I've had people get on my ass over my hair, too. One woman accused me of being a junkie 'cuz I had an undercut (shaved back & sides), the top hair long, braided & dyed purple. I could only roll my eyes at the stupid. I was still presenting as female, then (trans-masc), & the idea a simple hairstyle was enough to make someone think I was a druggie was so asinine, I could only laugh at her & call her a moron.
That Punch illustration of the smoking woman glaring at her children is honestly everything I aspire to in life 😂
I feel like she’s saying “Okay, okay, you can have ONE more chocolate milk. The money’s in my purse.”
This has been my entire life, I never meant to be "mannish" but it turns out, cars and video games and beer and cheese and being comfortable are all masculine I guess 🤣
I love that we live in a time where it's at least more acceptable, and yet also love learning that people like me have always existed and, sounds like, totally slayed ❤
I wish I lived in a timeline where it would be socially more acceptable and normalized to genderbastardize fashion, as at this point of our current timeline (and especially for cis-het-men) the pressure to conform to certain gendercoded standards is just insane (even more so than at any time of my lifespan that I can remember).
The description of the new woman reminds me of Natalie Woods character in the Great Race. Which takes place in the early 1900’s. While she still wears feminine clothes and corsets, she smokes, raises her skirts to show off her legs, railroads her way into a job as a reporter, talks openly about sex, fences, speaks various languages, drives cars, inspires her editors wife to start a local suffrage movement, and on one occasion wears trousers for practical purposes and her clothes as a whole are usually tailored
I'm a female and I love being masculine I feel More confident and comfortable like that.. damn this is so cool 😎
As an androgynous man, love your video! ❤ This world has bigger problems than fashion (which constantly changes anyway).
Even though this was a little later it occurred to me that the wicked witch of the west rode a bicycle.
I usually dress in a highly feminine way, however I can pull masculine styles and have already been asked whether I am a man or a woman despite having make up and long hair in a Gibson Girl updo lol I find it hilarious and play up on it for the sake of being chaotic lol I'm also a horse girl, my dog is my son and I like children as long as they aren't mine. In 1900, I'd absolutely pissed off a lot of people (especially men) by being myself. I'd also have gone my whole life with undiagnosed autism/social anxiety/c-ptsd so FUN!
Everytime I hear boomers claiming that only the current generation had women like this and in the past "women looked and acted like women" 🤡💀🤡💀🤡💀
5:32 Miss Zulu Hudgens; what a great by-line.
It is weird/scary seeing all the current anti-trans talking points coming up in the newspaper articles from 100+ years before.
Thanks for another informative and entertaining video.
Some decades ago, I saw a psychological test that included a most perplexing question: “Agree/disagree - I like mannish women”. I couldn’t think of any reason I should dislike “mannish” women, whatever they were supposed to be, so…Agree? I found out years later that “Agree” was an answer counted toward a score indicating mental disorder! And I was happy to learn this question had been removed in a revised version of the test.
As an elementary school child, I was forced to wear skirts to school. And what I remember most as being freezing cold all the time. So I developed an aversion to skirts that had nothing to do with femininity or sexual preference. In 6th grade, we were finally allowed to wear pantsuits but fabric of pants and shirts had to match. I was a pretty good seamstress and made enough of these to wear daily. It wasn’t until 7th grade that we were allowed to wear jeans. While dressed in skirts, I DREADED recess in my cold climate and developed an aversion to playing outside in general.
For me it's the other way around: Were it normalized for boys up to (middle-) aged men to wear bellybuttonbareing spaghetti-tops and micro-skirts in summer, I just might be less of a couch potato during summer season.
The excitement I feel when Nicole posts is unmatched
And the irony of Nicole wearing a tie & what appears to be a waistcoat (along with her lovely short hair style) for this topic did not escape me! 😁
Reading the entire article, an appropriate umbrella for a man is the walking stick version carefully twisted around and center post with a metal ferule tip and cane handle. Apparently, at the time a new style was coming into fashion that was more similar to our folding umbrellas today with stub handles and wrist strap that was (Gasp!) similar to a ladies handbag.
When you read the list of attributes of masc women I felt like you were reading a description of me 😂
So wild how much this sounds like the narrative of the current trad wife
I love that Puck Illustration of the All-Woman bar so very much.
Right?? A mom who dragged her two bored kids along (because every kid has had that experience: having to tag along to something where Mom is hanging out with her friends), a woman in full mourning being supported by other women and maybe having a little fun to take her mind off it, a full bar with a woman serving drinks (no leering here!)… sounds like a pretty great space. Today, there would probably be a weekly Stitch ‘n Bitch held there, and maybe regular drag shows.
Really interesting video and sad that we (women) and queer people of every gender still get to hear many of those "arguments". And the only thing I hear is "we (men) are afraid to lose power" and "people could start treat us(men) as bad as we treat them" :(
They say its the clothing that bothers them or whatever but in the end its only about power.
Yuuuup.
As an enby, it's hilarious that the first extant garment I would wholeheartedly wear without modification, is the dress at 3:04
There are SO MANY amazing tailored styles from this era that mix “gendered fashions” together. I keep coming back to it for a reason!
Hey, fellow enby! I love gender bending/blending historical fashions, particularly dapper ladies outfits, or anything Oscar Wilde wore! One of my favourite fashion inspirations is a book of historical photos with the simple and hilarious title "Women In Trousers". It is what it says, and it is glorious!
Aziraphale would agree!
It's wild that I relate to a lot of what these past women's experiences were, despite being older gen z. It's actually crazy how much sexism and misogyny we still have today.
The way the articles you mentioned saw women wearing more masc clothing or acting in a "manly" way as the end of men reminds me of an anxiety spiral that occurs with panic attacks, OCD, GAD, etc.
It does. It's a style of Propaganda or argument called Ad Absurdium, if I recall. The, "If you allow this, you all all these other things and then THIS will happen and then society will collapse!!"
Fascinating research! I'm a fairly mannish woman myself: When I was young and skinny and flat-chested I often wore men's clothes, not because I wanted to make a statement (I'm straight and have no gender confusion), but because not only did they fit my broad shoulders and height better than women's clothes they were better-made, longer-lasting and, importantly, cheaper to buy at thrift stores. Since I have a deep voice and don't usually wear makeup I did sometimes get mistaken for a man (despite my long hair), which could be annoying but not discouraging. I grew up during the 60's and 70's and remember being told to not do things like walk with a broad stride or sit on the edge of tables etc etc because it wasn't "ladylike", but I thought that was all nonsense and just did what was comfortable. Now that I've become matronly I've developed a style I like to call "Miss Marple in Dungarees" (floral blouses and cardigans with jeans and Mary Janes) so that I don't look like a bear in a suit, but I still get mistaken for a man on the phone! I wish we could all wear what pleases us without having to wonder whether it's appropriate for our gender; I bet a lot of identity issues would never emerge if that were true.
I wish I had the guts to wear a backless spaghetti-strap dress or a mini-skirt in summer, for I might be het-man but I am most definitely not heat-man. Unfortunately, I mostly don't have the guts to go topless either for I don't want to get associated with the aggressively sexist bunch. Accessories, make-up, dress-codes might be one of the very few areas where the patriarchy has grown to be more lenient towards girls*women than towards boys*men. But basically, it screws everyone over, only in different ways and to different degrees.
Wow, men are such fragile flowers, and easily threatened by the doctor of equality. 😳👍💙🇺🇸🕊
i won't lie i find myself wishing i was able to break gender norms through dress as easily as women did back then. i mean, me wearing a graphic tee and black jeans is just kind of standard, at least where i live. it's not FAIR i wanna cause a RUCKUS
Take up the wearing of fabulous hats! Much easier and less expensive than changing larger parts of the wardrobe. A little 1950s fascinator with a black veil over your eyes and one long black feather swooping back over your head, plus the graphic tee and black jeans? Chef’s kiss. Cause that ruckus!
@@jennypaxton8159 this is LIFE ALTERING advice thank you so much🙏
Go bald and topless in baggy trainer pants and combat boots sporting a dogtag/razorblade necklace and no makeup and/or get a bearded male friend to wear a low-cut spahetti-strap top, breezy mini-skirt and thong sandals while going out with you. You (both) will be bound to cause a ruckus in most places, be it at the beach, at the local library, at an opera or at a nightclub.
Oh! I spotted something about women's feet getting bigger being "evidence" in one of those clips, and you know I heard someone espousing that in the 1990s? As in someone told me that to my face. The ridiculous arguments don't change at all, do they?
Growing up I was admonished by men and women alike (not my parents, thankfully but aunts, uncles, teachers, and local religious busybodies) for showing my intelligence too much. They worried about me that I'd never find a man to love me because I was "too smart" and didn't hide it. The number of times I was reminded that men don't like it when a woman is smarter than them (or more successful or makes more money so I shouldn't pursue this or that career) is uncountable. I was accused of "flaunting" my intelligence and purposefully trying to make people feel stupid and how that would leave me alone and bitter at the end of my life. I actually had a guy come up to me in class out of freaking nowhere and lament that he thought I was pretty but he would never date me because I was "too intimidating" (asshole I didn't ASK?!) Meanwhile I just wanted to read, do well in school, and talk to the pretty girls lol
You sound like you were the kind of girl I might have fallen for. Another one whose type I am clearly not, seeing you went for the girls. 😂
Honestly, I think this discussion and accusations in 1880 to 1920 is all about Women's Suffrage and how much that scared men, in general and the power structure, in a big way. Because if you bring in all these women, with their votes...who knows what will happen to the current Power Players and the structure as is. Are they going to want to change things that men were just fine leaving alone?
Oh and I don't remember name of the couple you referenced near the end of the video but it's possible that no one bothered them because they were seen as being in a Boston Marriage. I'm pretty sure that they were still being referred to in that time period but I'm not positive.
Thanks for another great video on a very interesting topic! Take care and big hugs, k 🏳️🌈🏳️⚧️🏳️🌈
This is exactly the sort of language that they use to describe modern LGBT women and afab trans people in the modern day.
So yeah once someone told me when I was 10 if I was a boy or girl I responded with "thank you "
This battle is still going on in 2023. In college I scored sky high as male in gender tests, which had me baffled. I've always been accused of not having a feminine bone in my body.
I think that the first in sizing me up is that I have a major rectangular figure. For some reason it's been equivocated with being fat. I don't have the time to talk in circles and communicate with specificity. Still folks seem to take other meanings. I'm autistic and navigated this world long before diagnosis in my late 30s.
I more often than not wear dresses or skirts especially in the summer temps of 90+. It helps me stay cooler. I sew, garden, had most of my kids at home, breastfed my kids and love to go walking. Somehow others say I scream masculine woman and it often causes problems at work. Especially with guys.
I know myself better and no longer try to be what I am not. If others wish to be childish and immature, that is their problem, not mine.
Righton!
"Men are the instruments of society. Women ARE society." - Joseph Campbell
Don't y'all know wearing pants and riding bicycles is bad for the uterus? 😂😂😂😂😂😂
My great grandma loved smoking, drinking, grilling and was one of the very few women in the town wearing pants back then. It sounds like a "meh" thing for the average Jane nowadays... till you consider she also controlled rattlesnakes with a stick.
Was she any less of a woman because of that? Hell no, she was also a heartbreaker 😉
Your grandma sounds badass I want a grandma like that 😭
@@artikulv731 she was a kick-butt great-grandma... unfortunately she passed few months after I was born. But her grandkids still relish on telling us her adventures :3
I'm writing my masters dissertation on these concerns in early Punch so this has come at the perfect time!
Cool. Can’t wait to read it!
Oh no, if women like their horses too much, what will men do? Develop actual personalities to compete? Heaven forbid.
They know good and well that if they have to actually compete with our beloved cats or dogs or other animals, they will lose.
Oh Merci !!!! Love !!!! French i am! and i don't speak and understand English very welll hoouuuu !!!! ...... But understand globalement le propos !!!! super, j'adore l'energie et l'ambiance qui s'en dégage !!!! je suis fan
Thanks so much for this video. Especially the fantastic vintage photos, those mannish women had some serious drip!! 🥵 Amazing compilation.
I feel like the Sapphic side of the “mannish” style is a great bit of fashion history!!
This video is perfection. Currently I have a migraine and your audio is very well balanced. Thank you ❤
The opening of this gave me lesbian panic. You look absolutely dapper! I’ve been accused of being “mannish” my whole life despite being feminine in appearance. It’s also a attitude , some men call you “mannish” if you are assertive.
The cartoons with men taking care of their children...Heaven's to Betsy and clutch the pearls, Margaret...what is the world coming to. I tried to listen to this with a thought that this was a long time ago. But the thought that came to me again and again was that these comments (in newspapers and magazines) sound like what some people write in social media today. I guess they didn't know how to mind their own business back then either.
It's amazing how this stuff doesn't go away. People freak out over women doing things like weight lifting. It's absurd.
Ngl, that "bawdy mannish woman" caricature is quite the aesthetic. Gives me the same energy as medieval prints of women beating men with their distaffs
That women's bar at 7:44 looks freaking awesome and I'd go there all the time.
I enjoy your fashion history lessons and look forward to them. The more things change the more they stay the same is totally applicable to this subject. By they end of your lovely video I thought my eyes had rolled out of my eye sockets. I love the subjects you come across and share with us all.
Enjoyable and informative, thank you! Very well documented. Now I’m going to watch again and read all the printed material.
Lol, that description of the Mannish woman in the newspaper clipping about 10 minutes in sounds like me 😂. I’m in my early 50s and have identified as non-binary for about 4 years now, and I could definitely see myself having been a new woman during this time.
And they call women emotional. Imagine losing your mind over someone crossing their legs and telling the person who's sitting comfortably that theyre the emotional one for reacting to your temper tantrum. And that's supposed to be the superior, stoic, logical thinker? Sure Jan. If women were half as emotionally unstable as men have been throughout history a lot more of us would be in jail, we just learn to deal with it differently from a young age.