Male student in dress shut out of prom.
 

From MSNBC.com
Right or Wrong?


I say it is completely wrong. The dress code should not discriminate by gender. Nothing should.

No he should be banned because men in dresses is so ten minutes ago.

Especially if he's been dressing like a woman the whole year already. No reason the prom should be different.

And in the larger sense, women have been able to dress "like men" for a while now. It's about time it went the other way for those who want to.

Ain't it great...one more opportunity for folks to confuse "being a drag queen" with "being transsexual".

Nobody ever said he was transexual. The boy liked girls' clothes. It is his right to not be discriminated against because of his gender. Simple as that. His orientation should have no bearing on that simple fact.

In the first place, it seems like something like this happens somewhere in the country every couple years. The attention directed at the school as a result (positive and negative) is almost never welcome. You'd think school officials would realize that when deciding how to react to something like this.

Second, I was unsuccessful because it's not posted on the web site, but in these situations I like to take a look at the actual rule that's alleged to have been broken. It's always interesting. I'm willing to bet at least some other people were wearing stuff that would violate the dress code. Not to mention the question of exactly which school rules are in force at the prom.

Not true...look at the press coverage on this story on Google News. That's the "confusion" I'm talkng about.

$85.00?? Eighty-Five freakin' dollars??

Let's see... My son is 6 and my daughter is five... so hmmm... that's mmblgph... carry the naught... plus mmfgglllmph... at 10% for 11 years... times 2...

Hey, anybody need their grass cut???

Priced college tuition lately? The prom is the least of your worries.

May I suggest to everyone, if you are making a comment on something that's not included in the original post or any link therein, give me a clue, or better yet a link, to what you're talking about.
My poor old punkin head gets soooo confused sometimes.:rollanim:

I read the story. Light on facts, and it doesn't get into the detail of the what "rule" was broken. I reckon if it is a prom-specific rule about no boys in dresses, then it came about as an organizational response to boys goofing off and causing a disruption by wearing a dress as a joke. Who knows?

In any event, I don't see why this young person should be turned away in this way. It sure doesn't seem fair to me. I hope he succeeds in his protest.

Again, administration being unable to think.. nothing new there.

It may have been prom-specific, but I have a feeling it wasn't... most schools forbid guys to wear skirts or dresses no matter when.

My original comment was about the actual event the linked story referred to....somebody said "he didn't claim to be TS" and my response was pretty much "exactly...he claimed to be a gay drag queen, but a significant fraction of the press is getting it wrong".

These days Google News is indispensable...what passes for mainstream media journalism is such crap; when it's not biased it's just plain mistaken. Or both.

Recent TV coverage had the suicide doc Edward Van Dyk killing both his kids "and then turned the gun on himself". A pretty cliche, but in fact no gun was involved: he threw them off a 15th-story balcony and then jumped himself. An AP story on the same suicide was slugged "Ill. Town Try to Decipher Doc Suicide Note" and contained the sentence "Investigators said Van Dyk left no suicide note, leaving no clues for investigators, neighbors, and Van Dyk's wife and other relatives."
I guess that's why it's so hard to decipher.

How can you get the story that wrong and then claim it's "news"? At least with Google News you have a chance to compare coverages and maybe average out the noise.

If so, then why wait until the end of the year at prom time to enforce the rule, when, as the article states, he has been wearing women's clothing all year long? :eyebrow:

Because it was the first time he wore a dress.

They didnt forbid him to wear makeup, or do his hair, or wear tight clothes... like Magster said, this was the first time he tried to wear a dress.

From here.
Emphasis mine.

I don't see where this says it was the first time he wore a dress. Based on what I have read so far, this is a case of the administrator in charge at the door making a judgement using their discretion. I think the decision is a very bad one, and represents a losing cause in court, should it get that far. So what is the story? He was banned because he was wearing a dress? Or he was banned because his attire was disruptive? Or because his dress was disruptive? It comes down to the administrator's judgement. Perhaps they have a legal leg to stand on; it's a pity they're using it to stomp on this kid's prom.

Also

I think school administrators may have absolutely no idea what clothing would cause a "disruption". Unless they think snickering is disruptive.

Which they may.

"Disruptive" is when an civl-service administrator thinks an issue requires them to actually do something to protect their position.

On a related note...

The irony of the unfair double standard is underlined in the first article I linked to in my previous post. It quotes a female student, a lesbian, who wore a tuxedo to the prom. She was accompianed by her female date, who, presumably, wore a dress. This obvious cross dressing caused no reaction on the part of the administration whatsoever.

The subtitle of the article confusingly states:
:scratches head:

Tuxedos are male, right? So, the article of clothing is having his rights violated by being worn by a lesbian.

Most schools have the "disruptive clothing" rule ... the exact meaning of disruptive to be determined on a case by case basis. This is not unusual. My high school had the same rule ... covered every circumstance imanginable, from large breasted girls in halter tops to chicks who legally should be restricted from wearing spandex, as well as teeshirts with inappropriate slogans.

In some districts the "disruptive" element includes gang colors, etc.

"his" == the guy in the dress, I think.

Well..it's not confusing when you know the lesbian wasn't hassled for the tux. Unless you're having pronoun problems about "him"...."him" being the drag queen.

I haven't heard any coverage mention whether this guy had a date, and if so how the date was gendered and attired...anybody?

Similar story from last year, here in Florida:

One link to the original story is found here http://www.local6.com/news/4232902/detail.html.

I haven't seen any mention of a date. I seem to remember that going stag was not allowed but my memory of that time is hazy.

I find that it is easy to use gender-specific pronouns correctly when applied to the genderbenders...use whatever pronoun is appropriate for the gender the person in question is presenting to the world, no matter that you (or anyone else) is not fooled. I have several friends that are gay, lesbian and/or transvestite. Some of them wear clothing that is best left to the opposite sex. When my TV friends are dressed like women, I refer to them as women, even going so far as to use their chosen female names. And I revert back when they dress as males. Sometimes things get confused when I use BOTH names to identify one that has the same name as another friend but a different opposite-sex name. (eg John/Marsha refers to one in particular, differentiating them from the "Jon" who is NOT a TV)

In my humble opinion, this is much ado about nothing. Such rules should be restated that the clothing worn should be "tasteful" and specifically allow crossdressing. It is relatively rare anyway so what's the big deal? I understand (but have not seen a picture) that the prom dress in question was tasteful and appropriate. I'd have let it go, personally.

Have you read the article?

It is a short story about a lesbian prom goer dressed in a tuxedo holding forth on the subject of the male student being banned for wearing a dress. She is very supportive of the other student's plight.

I was confused by the pronoun gender mismatch in the subtitle. I associate "lesbian" with "her" not with "him". No offense to anyone intended, but I would be surprised if I was alone in this assumption.

No, the lesbian was saying that the gay student in the headline had his rights violated. The lesbian's rights weren't violated.

The rights violation in question was the drag queen(him) being refused admission because of the dress. The lesbian is "her"...and she wore her tux without being hassled. Hence the theory that to not allow him to wear a dress was gender discrimination...because if he was female he'd apparently be allowed to wear either a dress or a tux...since she was.

Thank you for that clarification. It does make sense read that way. Not particularly well written, but...ok.

Until you remeber that the lesbian is a gay student too. ;-)

There's only one Drag Queen in the story though. The lesbian is a Drag King.
I wonder if she was packing?

I noticed that, which is why I added the "in the headline" clause.

Sure but only for stories worth pursuing. I don't have time to cross check every news item, every day. This item peaked your interest, but it's unfair to assume everyone is going to research it.
All I'm asking is to reference what you're commenting on if it hasn't been presented already.

Personally I think a guy wearing a dress is silly, it just ruffles my kilt. ;)

It doesn't explicitly say it, it just gets mealy-mouthed about having "worn female garb all year".

Formal clothes are much more tightly and explicitly gendered than casual wear. You can tell whether trousers--bluejeans, for example--are tailored for men or women, but they're still pants.

But when you dress for the prom, the gender wiggle room just about disappears.

As did the bigoted administration's ability to think for themselves.

Had he worn a (real) kilt and associated items, would he have been banned?

I doubt it very much. Unless by "associated items" you mean something other than sporran or pipes.

A sgian dubh would no doubt be a violation of the "zero-tolerance for weapons" policy.

Or the 2 Dirks and 2 pistols in the belt as required for formal attire.:rolleyes: