Men must wear dresses. In fact, I would like to posit the theory that until all men are able to walk about in dresses without fear of mockery, losing their jobs or putting off potential mates, we will not have achieved freedom and equality in our societies.



So why don't men have the same fashion 'rights' that women have? Well, female fashion was revolutionized when women decided to break free of the restrictions imposed against them by society. Feminism, though now a dirty word, did a great deal in both the social and fashion worlds. Men simply don't seem to have an equivalent drive or movement. Whatever inequalities they are dealt, they seem content to accept them.



You might scoff at the idea of men being discriminated against, however scoff no more! Though men do have it pretty good, there are several major inequalities they face on a day to day basis. For one, they are at a disadvantage when it comes to relationships and children. A woman practically has to boil her babies before a man is granted full custody of children after a separation.



Men are often victims of domestic violence, however they are less likely to get help for it and less likely to receive support from their friends and communities when they are victimized. A man who is being beaten at home elicits far less compassion than a woman in the same situation. Why? Because, as a society, we respect men who are strong and we despise men who are weak.



Though we are supposed to be advanced and civilized, when it comes to our perspectives on men, we're practically stone age. If there is a tragedy, reports that women and children have been killed elicit far more empathy and outrage than reports that men have been killed.



We treat men as disposable commodities. They must be strong to survive, and if they are too weak to do so, then we tend to leave them to fend for themselves. The vast majority of homeless people are men. The vast majority of prisoners in jails are men. And that's not always because men commit more crime. Oftentimes, a man who commits a crime will receive a heavier sentence than a woman who has committed a similar crime. A man who kills his wife faces a long stretch inside, a woman who whacks her husband will serve time, but usually not nearly as much. Why? Because we assume women are victims and men are aggressors.



In fact, if a male / female criminal duo are arrested, the male is almost always likely to get significantly more jail time than his female partner, and he is often regarded as being the ringleader, even if that was not the case at all. Again, men are regarded as being evil doers, and women are simply the sweet little lambs too weak to resist.



Our gender prejudice against males runs deep. We pretend that it isn't there, but yet we see it every day, in the way we keep our men in their tidy men uniforms, reinforcing the idea that they must be strong, they must be simple, they must be masculine.



God forbid that we treat men as true equals of women and admit that men too can be vulnerable, can be weak, can need help. This isn't the stone age anymore, and its time men stood up for their rights as equals.



The day we can see a man in a dress and not giggle to ourselves and view him as a parody of his own masculinity is the day that we will truly have achieved the equality we've been blathering on about for the past few hundred years.

