Q Of The Day: In Uniformed Employment, Should Government Enforce Societal Gender Norms?
July 23rd, 2008 by Autumn Sandeen
A lot of people think I’m crazy. This is important to me - I just want to be comfortable. I just want the option.
–Letter carrier Dean Peterson
The Boston Globe is reporting, in an article entitled Mailman seeks comfort in kilt, about one letter carrier’s effort to make a kilt option available for male letter carriers:
As some 10,000 letter carriers gather in Boston this week for the 66th biennial convention of the National Association of Letter Carriers, Peterson is on a one-man mission to persuade his colleagues to approve a change in their strictly regulated uniforms. He has proposed a resolution to allow mailmen to wear kilts, which he calls a Male Unbifurcated Garment, or MUG.
Over the past few weeks, he says he has spent the $1,800 he received as part of the federal government’s stimulus package to send about 1,000 letters and photographs of a mockup of the new uniform to postal union branches in every state, as well as Guam and Puerto Rico.
“MUGs are worn all over the world, and have been for thousands of years because they are comfortable,” he wrote to fellow mailmen. “Unbifurcated Garments are far more comfortable and suitable to male anatomy than trousers or shorts, because they don’t confine the legs or cramp the male genitals the way that trousers or shorts do.”
So when creating uniforms for it’s uniformed jobs and uniformed services, is it a function of government to only allow women to wear unbifurcated garments? And even beyond allowing men to wear MUGs, should biological males be allowed wear government uniforms designed for females, and vice-a-versa, should biological females be allowed to wear government uniforms designed for males?
When thinking through your answer, remember that the military services are uniformed services too.
Posted in employment - housing - public accomodation, gender, military, transgender |
July 23rd, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Lots of men in the military in my country wear “unbifuricated garments” (we call them “kilts”), at least with their dress uniforms in modern times. They’re members of the various Highland and Scottish regiments.
That said, speaking as a female-bodied person who finds unbifuricated garments difficult to move in, it’s hard for me to understand why anyone would want to wear UGs in a combat situation, at least.
So I guess my answer would be — for noncombat uniformed government service, no enforcement of cisgender norms. For combat service, make the uniform truly a uniform, with no sex or gender-linked distinguishing characteristics whatsoever, and designed with strictly utilitarian considerations in mind.
(As someone with a good knowledge of tailoring, I’d also suggest that if Mr. Peterson genuinely finds pants uncomfortable because they’re squashing his external genitalia, he’s wearing pants that are too short in the rise for him, and either needs to change his pants size, his pants cut, or go to a custom tailor. Either that or he has a highly-inflated sense of the size of his balls, which is entirely possible.)
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:29 pm
(here from Shakesville)
This deserves a very thoughtful answer, but off the top of my head, gender norms and roles suck. I wish that the government could stop dictating how and why people are supposed to be comfortable. If this guy wants to wear a MUG, then let him…what is it hurting.
For that matter, when I was in the Navy I raised quite a stink that I could be required to stand uniform inspection in a skirt and heels when the same uniforms were not issued to men. I had to have properly maintained pantyhose, and they only had to press their pants and polish their shoes. You could not get an “outstanding” if you did not wear a high heeled shoe, an item that was never issued. We had to purchase it out of pocket.
The next year they stopped issuing the skirts, and now female sailors stand inspections in the same exact uniforms.
July 23rd, 2008 at 1:49 pm
(Also here from Shakesville)
I certainly don’t see any problem with him wearing a kilt. I mean hell, it looks like a perfectly professional uniform in every way shape and form; so I can’t think of any *reasonable* reason to deny him.
July 23rd, 2008 at 6:01 pm
I think men look awesome in kilts - I have a number of friends locally who wear their utilikilts constantly, to work even. Fortunately for us, we all work in high-tech in an area known for it, so no one really treats it as all that strange.
As to the comment above about wearing kilts in combat - my grandfather was a CSM with the Argylls, and said that he found it a HUGE help in the desert, as the non-Scots regiments were wearing the desert shorts, and they had a bad tendency, he said, to ride up and cause some awful crotch-rot and chafing. Particularly in combat, where the opportunity to wash wasn’t frequently available.
July 23rd, 2008 at 6:01 pm
(oh, and, also here from Shakesville! *waves hi at the other Shakers*)
July 23rd, 2008 at 6:14 pm
(Also here from Shakesville, and a San Diego area resident, so Hello, neighbor!)
I absolutely think that people should be able to wear uniforms that suit their gender identity regardless of their biological sex. I also agree with Interrobang that certain circumstances call for non-gendered clothing. I do not think, though, that any work environment calls for non-gendered sizing or tailoring. Non-gendered sizing/tailoring schemes would probably end up forcing women to wear clothes that don’t fit right.
July 24th, 2008 at 4:36 am
Yet another one from Shakesville.
Here in the UK where school uniforms are common there were a number of civil court cases brought to allow girls to wear trousers as part of their uniform (obviously these trousers were “uniform trousers” and not a free choice of trouser) which were won on the grounds that the uniform policy was sexual discrimination.
I have yet to hear of any boy suing to be allowed to wear a skirt (obviously a suitable uniform skirt) or kilt to school; but I suspect that if any boy did the same legislation would have to apply.
So IMO adding an skirt or kilt to the possible male uniform choices and adding trousers to the possible female uniform choices are sensible and indeed necessary options and ought to be covered under workplace sexism rules. (This provided that a skirt (or trousers) would not actively prevent the worker from doing the job - in this case obviously both male and female employees would have to wear trousers (or skirts) as dictated by the requirement of the job).
July 24th, 2008 at 7:34 am
I think it’s cute, and might be cooler during the stiltifying summers in some places. I think women should have the option of wearing non-UG, and so should men. I think the kilt look is cute, although bordering on TMI about genital restriction. (They’d probably say the same thing about my reasons for hating skirts.)
Combat gear should be non-gender specific, although that *might* mean that different things would need to be taken into account. (Women’s hips, for example, strike me as something that might need a more generous cut. Just wearing men’s uniforms won’t cut it.)
I’m inclined to be more lenient/traditional on dress uniforms; *personally*, I think kilts are mildly whimsical, and while I appreciate them on Scottish traditional military units, they seem weirdly out of place in US dress uniform garb. Theoretically, I support men folks wearing what they want; if a skirt dress option is provided for women, it should be provided for men. I do struggle with the mental image, though - it doesn’t read as “serious” as trousers. I find the women’s dress uniforms to be awesome as all get-out though (skirted and trousered), and I do think it’s appropriate to have a skirted dress code option, operating on the logic that *not* having it would be a rejection of what is read as traditional femininity, and a reinforcement that women in the military are all masculine and *have* to be masculine all the time in order to do their jobs.
I think I’ve confused myself.
July 26th, 2008 at 7:21 am
Don’t tell me that skirts are not utilitarian. From someone who has spent all summer in a non AC’d building let me tell you that pants make it a lot harder to keep cool.
I would have worn skirts every day this summer if it weren’t for the fact that I don’t want to shave my legs every day.