{"id":1250,"date":"2009-11-26T10:13:07","date_gmt":"2009-11-26T16:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=1250"},"modified":"2009-11-26T10:15:56","modified_gmt":"2009-11-26T16:15:56","slug":"gender-dress-and-high-school-resistance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2009\/11\/26\/gender-dress-and-high-school-resistance\/","title":{"rendered":"gender, dress, and high school resistance"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times<\/a> reports:<\/p>\n

In recent years, a growing number of teenagers have been dressing to articulate \u2014 or confound \u2014 gender identity and sexual orientation. Certainly they have been confounding school officials, whose responses have ranged from indifference to applause to bans.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Further:<\/p>\n

Dress code conflicts often reflect a generational divide, with students coming of age in a culture that is more accepting of ambiguity and difference than that of the adults who make the rules.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis generation is really challenging the gender norms we grew up with,\u201d said Diane Ehrensaft, an Oakland psychologist who writes about gender. \u201cA lot of youths say they won\u2019t be bound by boys having to wear this or girls wearing that. For them, gender is a creative playing field.\u201d Adults, she added, \u201cbecome the gender police through dress codes.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Recently, a Mississippi 17-year-old wasn’t allowed to wear a tux for her yearbook photo:<\/p>\n

At Wesson Attendance Center, a Mississippi public school, just that sort of fight erupted over senior portraits. Last summer, during her photo session, Ceara Sturgis, 17, dutifully tried on the traditional black drape, the open-necked robe that reveals the collarbone, a hint of bare shoulder.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was terrible!\u201d said Ms. Sturgis, an honors student, band president and soccer goalie, who has been openly gay since 10th grade. \u201cIf you put a boy in a drape, that\u2019s me! I have big shoulders and ooh, it didn\u2019t look like me! I said, \u2018I can\u2019t do this!\u2019 So my mom said, \u2018Try on the tux.\u2019 And that looked normal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shortly thereafter, students were informed that girls had to wear drapes for yearbook portraits; boys, tuxedos.<\/p>\n

The Mississippi chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union wrote to the school. Rickey Clopton, superintendent of Copiah County schools, did not return phone calls. Last month he released a statement affirming that the school\u2019s decision was \u201cbased upon sound educational policy and legal precedent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last month, Veronica Rodriguez, Ms. Sturgis\u2019s mother, paid for a full-page ad in the yearbook that is to include a photograph of her daughter in a tuxedo.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Schools have some freedom in how they will respond:<\/p>\n

But generally, courts give local administrators great latitude. In Marion County, Fla., students must dress \u201cin keeping with their gender.\u201d Last spring, when a boy came to school wearing high-heeled boots, a stuffed bra, and a V-neck T-shirt, he was sent home to change.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was cross-dressing, and it caused a disruption in the normal instructional day,\u201d said Kevin Christian, a district spokesman. \u201cThat\u2019s the whole point behind the dress code.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sociologists weigh in on how non-conformity can lead to harassment:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are other places where there are real safety issues,\u201d said Barbara Risman, a sociologist at the University of Illinois who studies adolescent gender identity. \u201cMost boys still very much feel the need to repress whole parts of themselves to avoid peer harassment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Last fall, Stephen Russell, a professor at the University of Arizona who studies gay, lesbian and transgender youths, conducted a survey of about 1,200 California high school students. When asked why those perceived as not as \u201cmasculine\u201d or \u201cfeminine\u201d as others were harassed, a leading reason students gave was \u201cmanner of dress.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So…<\/p>\n

When a principal asks a boy to leave his handbag at home, is the request an attempt to protect a student from harassment or harassment itself?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times reports: In recent years, a growing number of teenagers have been dressing to articulate \u2014 or confound \u2014 gender identity and sexual orientation. Certainly they have been confounding school officials, whose responses have ranged from indifference to applause to bans. Further: Dress code conflicts often reflect a generational divide, with students […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[39112,34,39114,321,100],"class_list":["post-1250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-culture","tag-education","tag-gender","tag-law","tag-youth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1250"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1255,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1250\/revisions\/1255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}