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?
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As the wife of a Hispanic Marine, I can conform. A large majority of those who give their lives with the idea of keeping America safe and protected is in fact not a bunch of white guys. They normally come from a place of privileged that they can do things like go to higher education without the military assistance. The reason my husband is in the marines is because he wants to be an engineer. he comes from the large family, the military will pay for up to a bachelors degree and help out with housing when he is no longer active duty. It is the best way for him to make his goals possible.
Undoubtedly, Shapiro and his ilk would consider it a symptom of modern Western degeneracy that young white men (such as himself) aren’t much interested in military careers anymore. As for why POC are more likely to join the military, he wouldn’t assign it to either economic class or (hypothetically) extra patriotic culture among POC, but rather sheer masculine vigor of black and brown men. (Unclear what he’d say about black and brown women joining the military, though.)
@Yutolia & @Naglfar
I’m always most surprised by mens ranges of shoes in most shops. “Here’s forty different types of black brogues, and if your feeling adventurous… there’s brown!”
They would probably blame some of Roger Taylor’s solo work from his album “Happiness?” (released 1994). “Dear Mr Murdoch” is one, which basically takes the media mogul to task for what he had done to the media in the UK.
But more interesting is the song “Nazis 1994”, whose lyrics were so controversial that most stores wouldn’t stock the single and it was banned from UK radio! As for how harsh the lyrics are – this is probably the worst language in the song:
So Roger Taylor has been on the frontline of destroying Western Civilisation and being a lefty SJW for over 40 years now 🙂 I wonder if there is some sort of medal or other recognition he has received for such an achievement.
@LindsayIrene
I was curious (and needed a distraction from my negative thinking) so went looking for information. According to Brian May the idea for the opening scene came from Roger Taylor’s girlfriend at the time (this was in an interview in Q magazine March 2011). So you were close 🙂 Apparently Freddie was also going to shave off his moustache for the scene as well until the director stopped him 😛
Sounds more like a narcissist’s enabler’s excuse: “My son has no empathy therefore when he does things wrong it’s not his fault”.
Why is this concept so hard to grasp for the Ben Shapiros of the world? If you don’t want to wear a dress, don’t wear a dress. Literally no one outside of their little bubble could give a shit. (Can we swear here?) Seriously, these people need to find a new hobby, like fanfiction they never publish.
I’m remembering a story from the exceptionally hot UK summer three years ago. Boys at a mixed school with a strict uniform code, denied permission to wear shorts for relief from the heat, turned up the next day wearing school regulation skirts instead. Would Ben proclaim this – taking a personal risk to push back against unjust rules – as a manly virtue? Or were those boys destroying western civilisation?
Styles filmed a music video suspended from a helicopter over a stretch of shore land and open water.
I’d put his manly-cred over Shapiro’s any day.
Dude can wear what he wants. Any dude can wear what they want.
The lack of pockets in women’s fashion is a disgrace. But there are ways to cope.
Okay, admittedly Queen is a good way to cope, but this is what I actually meant to paste in.
*sigh*
My day is just being too danged weird.
Ben Shapiro complains about men in dresses tearing apart Western Civilization when Western Civilization is literally falling apart before our very eyes. Thousands of people are sick, dying and out of work. People are flocking to the streets to protest racial violence, and the police are violently and brutally trying to shut down dissent. With all of this chaos going on Ben is going to choose to ignore it and instead throw a temper tantrum about a man in a dress? Ok Ben, nice to see that you have your priorities in order. Good luck with that.
I don’t remember where in the US the following occurred, or exactly when, but:
A certain US high school forbid students to wear shorts to school, but permitted miniskirts for the girls, provided they weren’t too short.
Apparently, this happened during the end of the school year, when the weather began to get warm – a group of boys wore miniskirts to school, in protest. The principal called them into his office, and asked one of them: “Are you a girl?”. He answered ” Does it matter?”
There’s nothing intrinsically feminine about dresses and skirts. I’m reminded of Moammar Gaddafi – I’ve seen some pics of him in what appear, to my western eyes, to be quite floofy dresses. (I don’t know much about attire in his culture.). I don’t think anyone would question Gaddafi’s manhood.
@Eric Hughes Robillard:
Oh my GHODZ! A celebrity is doing something for attention! It’s amazing! Astounding! Stop the presses!
Comments policy …
@ Lollypop
Forty different black brogues? Not fair. As I move further into my thirties, I find I want to dress more, dare I say it, “conservatively.” Unfortunately, shoe places around here seem to have more like forty different pairs of absurdly colored clunky sneakers that scream wannabe rapper, then a handful of overpriced dress shoes not in my size. (Because 10.5 wide is apparently too esoteric a size?)
Harry Styles’s choices are clear: he can either wear what he wants to, or be pushed around by a girl and tag himself as less macho than Ben Shapiro.
What a quandary. I wonder how the guy can sleep at night.
I’m confused. Who the heck are these angry people and why does anyone care what they think?
TBF, Shapiro does sort of acknowledge that gendered dress codes are cultural and arbitrary. He just asserts that it’s important (and supposedly universal across traditional human cultures) to have some kind of clear division in gender roles, in dressing and otherwise. Citation needed for that, I think.
@ginger
They’re both conservative tokens who have a wide reach in right wing circles. I think that’s why we’re talking about them.
Defended by white masculine men? Shapiro obviously know fuckall about the US military.
Hmm, wait, i was thinking : are not those persons the same who were enjoying and praising the comic, and the movie adapted from it, “300” ? With a lot of men in leather mini skirt, often no shirt and all ? Does that means that the old greek civilization crumbled because of those mini skirts and togas ?
@45. Ah maybe the brogue experience is particular to the UK! I used to work on a supermarket clothing section and wonder at how many different type of smart shoes you could possibly need.
@ginger
Unfortunately Shapiro has some of the most shared videos on Facebook 🙁
@VP
Ah, the delightful Ms Banner! My nibbling has got really in to her videos and has completely changed their bedroom to a sewing room in a similar style. They are reading and into history because of Bernadette! I’m so happy.
@ Lollypop
Hadn’t thought of that. I imagine there are some significant differences in clothing retailers and preferences between the US and the UK. Well, heck, I know there are some significant differences in different areas within driving distance of yours truely, so yeah…
“Does that means that the old greek civilization crumbled because of those mini skirts and togas”
No — it means mini skirts and shirtlessness are okay. Bedsheets too. Civilization would only have crumbled if the Greeks had started wearing eyeshadow and jewelry with glittery long dresses like the Persians.
The reason we can be certain about these things is because we’ve absorbed the hard lessons history has to teach us. We have hundreds of thousands of generations of bad dressers behind us, and we’ve learned from their mistakes. That’s what a heritage is there for.