A New Thai Uniform Policy

We in the US often forget that students--even at the university level--all over the world still wear uniforms.  

I wore a uniform to Catholic School. That was more years ago than I care to admit.  Some Catholic schools still require them, and there are some public and charter schools that have adopted them. But, for the most part, American students can wear whatever they want to school.

That is, as long as what they're wearing conforms to the accepted gender norms of their community.  Speaking of which:  While some parents say that uniforms are a "leveler" (If all kids are wearing the same outfit, none is "cooler" than the others), they also are a way of enforcing accepted gender norms.  Typically, males wear black (or other dark-colored) trousers and a white shirt with a plaid tie in the school's colors, while females wear a  skirt in that plaid with a white blouse.


In very few countries are transgenders more visible than they are in Thailand.  But even in the country that does more sex-reassignment surgeries than any other and whose Miss Tiffany transgender beauty contest is a national event, students are expected to wear the uniform that conforms to the gender on their national ID cards, which is all but impossible to change, even after transition and surgery.

Also, trans females are still referred to as "ladyboys" and trans males as "tomboys", which represents a different view from those in the West regarding transgenderism, not to mention an underlying male bias.

So it is significant that Bangkok university has changed its uniform policy to accommodate trans students.

A "ladyboy" can wear either of the uniforms shown above.  On the left is the female uniform; on the right is a modified male uniform with the trousers cut tighter than the ones males wear.

A "tomboy" can wear the modified female uniform shown on the right or a male uniform with the trousers cut a little looser than the ones biological males wear.

Hmm...Do you think Catholic schools will follow suit (pun intended)?  Prep schools?
 

How To Ride Like A Lady

Historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich has written, "Well-behaved women seldom make history".

She, of course, is correct.  However, when women are entering previously-unchartered territory, we sometimes have to behave in accordance with accepted gender norms in order to hold onto our places in those worlds.  In other words, we can't be perceived as a threat to men.  On the other hand, we also have to do whatever we're doing in our own way--and, indeed, we often have to figure out what that way is--in order not to be seen as inferior to the men who are doing whatever it is we're doing.

I know from whence I speak: In my transition from living as a man to my life as a woman, I have been criticized for being too much like a man and too much like a woman--sometimes by the very same people.  The same people who told me I was too aggressive on the job told me, in the next breath, that I was too submissive--"like a woman."  It's a bit like telling a woman she throws too hard for a girl but that she "throws like a girl".

I thought about that when I came across this list of "don'ts" for female cyclists that was published in the New York World in 1895:

Don’t be a fright.

Don’t faint on the road.

Don’t wear a man’s cap.

Don’t wear tight garters.

Don’t forget your toolbag

Don’t attempt a “century.”

Don’t coast. It is dangerous.

Don’t boast of your long rides.

Don’t criticize people’s “legs.”

Don’t wear loud hued leggings.

Don’t cultivate a “bicycle face.”

Don’t refuse assistance up a hill.

Don’t wear clothes that don’t fit.

Don’t neglect a “light’s out” cry.

Don’t wear jewelry while on a tour.

Don’t race. Leave that to the scorchers.

Don’t wear laced boots. They are tiresome.

Don’t imagine everybody is looking at you.

Don’t go to church in your bicycle costume.

Don’t wear a garden party hat with bloomers.

Don’t contest the right of way with cable cars.

Don’t chew gum. Exercise your jaws in private.

Don’t wear white kid gloves. Silk is the thing.

Don’t ask, “What do you think of my bloomers?”

Don’t use bicycle slang. Leave that to the boys.

Don’t go out after dark without a male escort.

Don’t go without a needle, thread and thimble.

Don’t try to have every article of your attire “match.”

Don’t let your golden hair be hanging down your back.

Don’t allow dear little Fido to accompany you

Don’t scratch a match on the seat of your bloomers.

Don’t discuss bloomers with every man you know.

Don’t appear in public until you have learned to ride well.

Don’t overdo things. Let cycling be a recreation, not a labor.

Don’t ignore the laws of the road because you are a woman.

Don’t try to ride in your brother’s clothes “to see how it feels.”

Don’t scream if you meet a cow. If she sees you first, she will run.

Don’t cultivate everything that is up to date because yon ride a wheel.

Don’t emulate your brother’s attitude if he rides parallel with the ground.

Don’t undertake a long ride if you are not confident of performing it easily.

Don’t appear to be up on “records” and “record smashing.” That is sporty.

Some of these "don'ts" made me cringe.  But I had to get a laugh out of "Don't try to ride in your brother's clothes 'to see how it feels'!"

Myerson Agonistes

I’ve just learned of the death of Bess Myerson.  In fact,  members of the media didn’t know about it until a couple of days ago, even though she passed on the 14^th of December.

This is the first time I—or, for that matter, most other people—have heard anything at all about her in at least two decades.  I would venture that most young people—including my students—have never heard of her.

I met her once, briefly, at a ceremony in which Poets In Public Service, in which I worked, received an award for arts in service to the community.  Ms. Myerson was the Commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs and the founder and president of PIPS, Myra Klahr, apparently knew her—well enough, anyway, to introduce me.

Myerson was in her 60s and looked even better in person than she did in the photos I saw, which is saying a lot.  Tall and elegant, she was often described as “regal” in her bearing.  I could see why, though I think “imperious”—one word I would use to describe to use Klahr—would have fit equally well.  Ms. Myerson was pleasant enough to me, but I had no illusion that, even if I’d had more contact with her, I would ever know her any better than I did at that moment.

Of course, getting to know Ms. Myerson wasn’t the reason why I was at that ceremony.  Actually, there was no particular reason for me to be there except for the fact that I was one of the poets who worked for PIPS.  Oh, and I think it was the second or third time I wore the one suit I owned at the time.

I don’t actually recall the ceremony or much else about my brief encounter with Bess Myerson.  But I recall what I recall because of what would follow just a few weeks later.  Those events would, in essence, end Myerson’s public life.

Those events can be said to be a result of her involvement with Edward Koch, the mayor at the time of the ceremony.  Yes, she was his DCA Commissioner.  But it seemed, at times, that they had their pinkies hooked around each other.  He half-jokingly referred to her as his “designated date” when she worked on his campaign.  You had to be comatose not to see that she was his “beard”:  Whether or not he was actually gay, he had to suppress the rumors that he was in order to get elected, and re-elected. 

She was perfect for the role:  From the day in 1945 she became the first Jewish woman—and the first New Yorker—to be crowned Miss America, she was loved by about as many people as anybody was in the Big Apple.  Plus, the careers as a concert pianist and as a radio and television personality that followed her pageant win lent glamour to the campaign and mayoralty of Koch who, before his election in 1977, was little-known outside Greenwich Village.

What did she get in return?  Well, she got to continue the career in public service that began in 1969, when newly-reelected Mayor John Lindsay made her the first Commissioner of the Department of Consumer Affairs, an agency he’d just founded.  To her credit, she initiated some of the laws on unit pricing, product safety and deceptive retail practices that people all over the US—and in much of the world—now take for granted.  However, four years later, Abe Beame won Lindsay’s office and she never became a part of his administration.  Koch re-ignited her career in public service, which she tried to use a springboard into electoral politics.   The result was her one and only campaign—a Democratic primary loss to Elizabeth Holtzman, who in turn would narrowly lose a bitterly-fought election for a Senatorial seat won by Alfonse D'Amato.

Even with that loss, Myerson remained in the spotlight, thanks to being the chair of the DCA and her residual popularity, particularly among the pre-Baby Boom generation.  But, as she often complained, no matter what she did, she was always identified first and foremost as Miss America.  Of course, few others who’ve won the crown have managed to trade it for as many other—and as gaudy—hats as she wore.  But, as she said, given the gender politics of her time, she probably would not have accomplished the other things she did had she not won the title, her intelligence and other qualities notwithstanding.

And, it could be said that her title—or, at least, the beauty that won it—led to her undoing:  It led her to make compromises, to make deals, that simply wouldn’t have even been available to other women.  Moreover, for all that she cultivated the image of the sophisticated, urbane, independent New York woman, her rise was buoyed by powerful men, just they led to her fall.

About the latter:  She got involved in an affair with Carl A. “Andy” Capasso, a married man more than two decades her junior.  Even by the murky standards of the Koch administration, Capasso’s ethics were as putrid as what his company built as a contractor for the city:  sewers.  He divorced his wife and, some say, influenced Myerson to do what led to her downfall:  She hired Sukhreet Gabel, the daughter of the judge who reduced Capasso’s alimony payments from $1500 to $500 a week.  

Capasso went to prison and the judge stepped down.  Bess Myerson didn’t suffer such fates, but she was disgraced and seemed to become unhinged.  Not long afterward, she was arrested for shoplifting in Pennsylvania.  She claimed that she “forgot” to pay for the items found in her bag when she “absentmindedly” walked out of the store.

To be fair, she may well have had a mental lapse, as she wasn’t known as the most stable person in the world.  And she died from complications of Alzheimer’s Disease, more than a quarter-century after the shoplifting incident—and the last most people, including me, had heard of her.

An Open Letter To A Young Victim Of Homophobia

For two years, I co-facilitated a weekly group for LGBT teenagers and young adults.  I was a volunteer and had to stop because of changes in the scheduling of my paid work.  However, I wonder how much longer I would have continued as a co-facilitator.  Few things I've done were more rewarding. However, few things are more  heartbreaking than to see a fourteen-year-olds who were cast out of their families or bullied out of their schools and communities because they were--or people perceived them to be--members of the LGBT communities.

I can only imagine how I would have felt had I known Zachary Dutro Boggess. He is the four-year-old boy whose mother thought he would become gay. "He walks and talks like it.  Ugh," Jessica Dutro wrote to her boyfriend, Brian Canady, whom she instructed to "work on him".  

Work on him they did.  Someone should have seen this tragedy unfolding, as Ms. Dutro had a history of abusive behavior toward other kids and her message to her boyfriend was not her only or most virulent expression of homophobia.

Now Rob Watson--himself a gay father--has written this open letter to Zachary, whose life ended so terribly:

Dear Zachary,
Goodbye. We, the world, have failed you little one. You came to us, bright and full of promise, and we left you in the hands of one who did not appreciate your brightness, and in fact, she sought to make you suffer for who she thought you might be.

I am sorry. I did not cause the force that killed you, and in fact, I fight it daily. You are dead, however, and for me, that means that I did not fight hard enough, not nearly hard enough.

You were killed by homophobia, my child. It came through the hands of parents, through the very hands and arms that should have been there to grab you, and hold you and love you. It was the force of homophobia that killed you however, not just those physical blows that delivered it. While your parents embodied that hatred, it was not created by them, it had been given to them in many ways from the world around them.

I am sorry you were born in a world where too many voices tell you not to be you. No one should have to fight for the right to be themselves, least of all, a 4-year-old child.

I am sorry you were born into a world where so many feel that the ability to physically make a child is more important that the ability to love and nurture one. Where people are writing court papers vilifying parents who do not physically procreate, they should be writing briefs condemning parents who do not love. Birthing a child is merely bringing it to life. Loving a child is truly giving it a reason to live.

I am sorry you were born into a world where people believe in misinterpreted Bible passages and tired dogmas. They hold onto them only so they can rationalize hating something they don’t understand. Something they see in you, even in your innocence.

I am sorry for all the beauty, magnificence, talent and life that you represented that is now gone. I miss the adult you were to become: the father, the artist, or the hero. I mourn the children you did not get to raise and the better world you did not get to help build.

A man named Fred Phelps died a few weeks ago, two years after you did. He lived his life being hateful, trying to get people to be more homophobic. He failed and his efforts made people not want to be like him. Homophobia lost. You lived your life being loving, and your efforts made two people hate you. Homophobia still lost however, because I will never ever forget you.

I pray that your short life is held up as the horrible cost of the homophobic mindset. That mindset is not an opinion. It is not a right to religious beliefs. It is a deep and ever-present danger that kills the innocent. I pray that your life robs homophobia of its glory and helps shame it into non-existence.

Nothing will replace the life we lost in you. You were our child and we allowed our world to inspire your fate. You deserved so much better.

With you in our hearts, little man, I promise you, we will do so much better. We will shut this intolerance, this indecency down even harder. We can’t give you back your life, but through your memory, we can take back our own lives and this world.

We have the power to make this world one of love, fairness and peace. You have reminded us why we need to do that for all the future little boys and little girls just like you. We owe it to them. We owed it to you. We will not fail again.

Doing Their Good Deed Daily?

On my other blog, I've mentioned that The Bowery Boys is one of my favorite blogs that isn't about bicycling or gender. Now I'm going to introduce you to another: Old Picture of the Day.


Like Bowery Boys and Nikon Sniper (another favorite), OPD is not normally bike- or gender-related. However, today's photo featured two Boy Scouts giving rides to girls. The question is: To whom do those bikes belong?

As you've probably noticed, those bikes have girls'/female frames. Now, we've all seen guys on girls' bikes: Come on, admit it, all of you guys have ridden your wife's, girlfriend's, sister's or mother's--or some other woman's--bike. Maybe you didn't know whose bike it was. That's OK. ;-) Or, maybe you even owned the bike. That's OK, too. At one point of my life, I was commuting on women's bikes because they were completely out of fashion, so they weren't being stolen as much as men's bikes were.

But how likely is it that both of those Boy Scouts owned girls' bikes?

Were they riding men's bikes, I would have guessed that those boys were following the Scout pledge: Do A Good Deed Daily. However, if those bikes belonged to the girls, I would have to wonder whether they "picked up" those Boy Scouts. From what I understand, that would have gone against the gender norms of 1937, when that photo was taken.

And it looks like the Scouts' troop is standing in the background, off to the left in the photo. Could it be that those girls went up to that troop and picked the two boys they thought were the cutest? Now that would be a real breach of gender norms of that time!

Or do you think there's some other story behind the photo?