When Harry Styles agreed to model a series of dresses and skirts for a Vogue cover shoot, he knew it would stir up controversy. He probably didn’t think he was going to be blamed for undermining civilization itself. But that’s what some right-wing opinion-havers would have you believe.
“Blexit” leader Candace Owens started the brouhaha with this melodramatic tweet:
She followed up with a swipe at feminism:
It wasn’t long until fast-talking dunderhead Ben Shapiro decided to chime in.
But Ben wasn’t content to simply share a couple of tweets on the issue, and so he took it to his podcast today, delivering a nearly half-hour rant on the subject, interrupted only by Shapiro reading out ads for luxury bedsheets and his publication the Daily Wire.
He began by not-so-subtly suggesting that men wearing dresses might deserve a punch in the mouth, and followed with a rambling, repetitive rant taking on what he, likes Owens, sees as a dire threat to western civilization: men in “floofy” frocks.
This excerpt will give you some of the flavor of the thing:
But Shapiro wasn’t just annoyed; he presented himself as a noble guardian of civilization fighting off the cross-dressing barbarians.
“This stuff matters,” he declared.
It matters. Because these are fundamental ideas for the preservation of civilization. Boys and girls are different. Boys and girls are different. And it’s important to inculcate in your children that boys and girls are different. And any parents who fail to inculcate in a boy that manliness is a good thing, and that responsible manliness helped build civilizations … any parent that does not teach their girls that femininity, meaning the protection of hearth and home in a different way than masculinity, is a good thing. Any parent that doesn’t teach their girls that is not doing their kid any favors. They’re undermining the civilizational compact that men and women [have], based on biology and in every human culture.
Dude, it’s just a man in a dress. Cis male musicians have been donning dresses for decades — from David Bowie to Kurt Cobain — and somehow civilization hasn’t come tumbling down.
But Shapiro thinks this is a Very Important Topic.
We shouldn’t be shy about discussing these issuesl the left certainly isn’t shy about discussing these issues. They’ll put these [ideas] in public schools, they’ll tell your kindergartener that real men wear dresses. And then you’ll be explaining to a five year old that real men don’t wear dresses. And I don’t feel that’s an acceptable ramification of our cultural discussion.
I really don’t think there’s much discussion of cross-dressing in kindergarten.
Shapiro throws in a weird racial aside:
Harry Styles is a free man, living in a western country, in a west by the way that is defended by white masculine men, as a general rule.
Shapiro insists he has nothing against Harry Styles. It’s just that when Styles puts on a dress he is TEARING APART THE VERY FABRIC OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION
I’m not saying don’t pick up his CDs; I’m not saying don’t listen to his music; I’m not saying don’t watch the movies he’s in. All I’m saying is that when you put out an argument that men ought to act like women and that this is a good thing you’re doing something that tears at the fabric of not only civilization but family and the fabric of childrearing and everybody with half a brain knows this.
Again, Ben, it’s just a man in a dress, a playful tweak of conventional notions of masculinity. How fragile is masculinity — how fragile is civilization itself — if it can be brought to its knees by a handful of pictures of a man in a dress?
Follow me on Mastodon.
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies on support from you, its readers, to survive. So please donate here if you can, or at David-Futrelle-1 on Venmo.
Gosh. That YouTube clip is… look, if anyone wants me, I’ll be in my bunk. *fans self*
So…no true non-Scotsman?
Why is this an invalid example? If anything, it proves that skirts/dresses/kilts/saris/togas are a cultural, not biological, marker of gender. There’s nothing inherently masculine or feminine about garments that aren’t divided below the waist.
His real worry: if women and men don’t dress differently, like star-bellied Sneetches, how can we tell who’s on top?
SJWs: “Black/trans/Mexican/etc/etc people are literally dying.”
Conservatives: “You people are SO sensitive, always looking for inconsequential stuff to whine about. Get a life.”
Also Conservatives: “A MAN IN A DRESS IS DESTROYING OUR WORLD VIEW!!!”
I’m pretty fucking pissed off with those who hold Shapiro’s and Owens’ attitude. Even among those who are more accepting they may still be inclined to view it as a solely white and/or showbiz thing.
I can remember when I was a young kid my parents dressed in drag for a party they went to. My dad was/is a bit of a hippy but essentially a man of his era, and the thing that sticks in my memory is the absolute glee he had choosing the high heeled shoes he was going to wear. Looking back, it kinda of stands out that men have been very artificially limited in their clothing choices and have a lot of fun when they get the opportunity to wear “taboo” stuff, and that Shapiro can probably calm down seeing as the experience didn’t damage me for life.
My ex used to get so excited when we would be going to a costume party and I would let him wear my clothes and heels and do his face. Men don’t get to express themselves this way on a regular basis, and I think it’s harmful to them.
Every time someone looks at a picture of pop star Harry Styles in a dress, someone with a uterus becomes infertile. It’s called science; look it up.
Edit: Oh no, I read this several times and copied and pasted it and somehow through all of that still thought it said “childbearing” instead of “childrearing.” I’ve become almost as embarrassing as Ben Shapiro. This is a terrible day.
@Viscaria – Not even close, don’t worry 😛
@Naglfar – you beat me to the joke about “fabric” and dresses 🙂
Why didn’t anyone tell me I could skip out on all the birth control side effects by having my husband wear a dress?!
@Naglfar is right about the inconsitency, of course.
It’s not the only one.
“We’re the party of FREEDOM!!!!ELEVENTY!
Also “We’re the party who tell you what you can wear! And whether you can vote! And your religion! And who you can have sex with! And whether that sex has to make babies! Because FREEDUM BABY!”
It does not escape my notice that Halloween parties are always full of cishet men in drag. Frats at my college used to throw drag parties sometimes too. It’s pretty obviously a common desire among men to be more expressive with clothes and it’d be nice if we didn’t have to give men the costume party excuse to so without their masculinity being threatened.
Famously manly man Ben Shapiro is having a normal one? Must be a day which ends in ‘y’.
CDs? Ben with his finger firmly on the pulse of today’s music there.
As for teaching kids about “manliness”: why? Teach them compassion, courage, honesty, intellectual curiosity, and fairness… you know, the traits which Ben lacks. They’ll turn out alright.
My only concern about Harry Styles in a dress is that it’s irresponsible to normalise clothes without pockets.
Ben Shapiro is kind of right here. It is not actually a referendum on masculinity for men to don floofy dresses, and he is actually a full-on idiot.
@ moggie
Duffelblog had a nice post about new body armour for women. It was exactly the same as the men’s body armour, expect pink, more expensive, and the army had sewn all the pockets shut.
@ Naglfar – My fear was that the defense in the Alek Minassian trial would throw all autistic people under the bus. I’m furious that this is actually happening and that the media is not refuting this harmful propaganda at every step.
If it’s the case that boys and girls are so different, then boys wearing dresses and girls wearing trousers won’t make a blind bit of difference, and if wouldn’t need inculcating into children because they’d know it.
Society invests so much energy in telling people that ‘boy and girls are different’; what are they afraid of? That if the message stops being shouted so loudly then people would just be themselves rather than being forced to fit two narrow definitions? That actually, boys and girls aren’t all that different? That there excuse to abuse people will come to an end and will be seen for the violence it is?
Since what counts as being a girl and what counts as being a boy changes with place, culture and time period, and what might be for girls in one while the same is for boys in another, there clearly is no innate distinction. Humans are telling themselves stories again.
@Naglfar
Damnit! Just when we were finally starting to make some progress, that murderous scum bag and his family use the ‘it’s the autism’ excuse. Whether Minassian is autistic or not, doesn’t matter, he’s still a murdering terrorist. There was a paper (from Brazil, paid for by a university in France) in a Neuroscience Journal last week that claimed autistic people were too concerned about the potential consequences of our actions – they framed not wanting to cause harm as a bad thing because obviously if it’s done by autistic people it must be a bad thing – but that doesn’t square with this terrorist’s actions. It doesn’t support the defence’s ‘autistic people have no empathy therefore when they do things wrong it’s not their fault’ argument. Hey, I managed to find a good thing in bad research.
Anyone else think that video was all Roger Taylor’s idea because he wanted to show off how pretty he was?
This reminded me of a really stupid play i was in in middle school. Called “if boys wore the skirts” and it was about this school being horrified about a boy wanting to wear pants and break the gendernorms. at the end of the play a girl he’s friend with puts on his skirt, he gets some pants and they hold hands.
Gosh, wasn’t he though?
If boys and girls / men and women are So Very Completely Different from each other and it’s Because Biology… Why would any parent ever NEED to impress this difference into their children? ???
@LollyPop and others
I agree. Although I’m not a man, one thing I especially hated about living as a man was that limitation. On some level I wonder if men like Shapiro are projecting their frustration in that regard, whether they are angry with more liberated men who can wear what they like and express that anger by reinforcing the problem.
@North Sea Sparkly Dragon
I saw the study you’re referring to. No matter what we do, it’s pathologized. As for Minassian, he is autistic, but that shouldn’t be relevant to the case.
Is this a good time to bring up Neil “Bunny” Roger, known for his sang-froid in combat as well as his flamboyant dress sense? Never mind, it’s always a good time: http://gayinfluence.blogspot.com/2012/04/bunny-roger.html
Yeah, really not happy about the “he’s not responsible for his actions because autism” defense in Alek Minassian’s ongoing trial, and I keep having to hear about it on the tv when I go into the lunch room. Everyone I know on the spectrum manages to not go around murdering people.
Autism Canada isn’t too happy about the claims either, but I don’t know how much attention the average person is likely to pay to their statement.
@ lindsayirene
The video was indeed Roger Taylor’s idea. The official story is that he wanted to spoof Coronation Street; but you may be on to something.
Let me get this straight. Manly men are so powerful that they can singlehandedly fight off raging hordes of barbarians, protecting all of civilization. But they can also be taken down by dresses? I guess it’s like their kryptonite.