Men's IssuesGood article on Victorian-era boys in dresses, i.e. what all little kids wore

submitted by our_team_is_winning from self.LGBDropTheT

When millions of little boys wore dresses and it was normal -- it was just little kids' clothes.

Dressing boy toddlers in dresses made the process of potty training significantly easier and much more flexible. Parents were able to change the toddler’s diapers without the need of undressing them. Just lifting their skirts up would suffice. Additionally, the flexibility of the dresses allowed them to be worn from infancy to about age six or seven

https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/03/20/breeching-boys/

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[–]lovelyspearmintLesbeing a lesbian 13 insightful - 1 fun13 insightful - 0 fun14 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

It's not mentioned here, but another 'so-called' marker of being trans is boys liking pink and girls liking blue..except up until about the mid-20th century, boys wore pink as it was a strong, masculine colour like red, whereas girls wore blue to signify passivity and calm.

[–]reluctant_commenter 10 insightful - 1 fun10 insightful - 0 fun11 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

And yet I was told growing up that I was "not girly enough" for avoiding skirts and dresses. Funny how people act like such prescriptions are ironclad, yet they differ so much depending on the time period and context.

[–]censorshipment 3 insightful - 6 fun3 insightful - 5 fun4 insightful - 6 fun -  (0 children)

Lol but this was more about practicality and child-rearing.

https://www.heraldbulletin.com/community/in-history-why-little-boys-wore-dresses/article_8b2c6d1d-265d-5559-90f2-77db21696573.html

Philosophers and educators had been opposing the standard practices of child rearing for centuries, but Jean-Jacques Rousseau was in the right place at the right time. His writings encouraged children’s rights and age-appropriate methods of child rearing. The Industrial Revolution and Queen Victoria in England helped make Rousseau’s ideas of the purity of childhood more achievable by parents. He saw children as people in their own right to be cherished for the blank slate of their potential. If at first the new industrialization took advantage of young child workers, the products of that industrialization in the end helped liberate the children from those very factories.

[–]Three_oneFourWanted for thought crimes in countless ideologies 1 insightful - 3 fun1 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 3 fun -  (3 children)

The victorians also put arsenic in their makeup and radon in their medicine, I wouldn't exactly look to them for advice

[–]wafflegaffWoman. SuperBi. 18 insightful - 1 fun18 insightful - 0 fun19 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

The OP's (likely) point was that wearing dresses didn't start gender-identity crises en masse for those kids.

[–]Three_oneFourWanted for thought crimes in countless ideologies 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Ah, ok, that makes sense

[–]our_team_is_winning[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yes! Thanks. It just shows that in an era where sex roles were much stricter, still nobody thought "oh he's wearing a dress, therefore he's a girl." Clothes don't make the sex.