Fauxmenism: Lady Pants

You should probably know that I consider myself a feminist. I do. I tend to be a rather conservative feminist, though. My brand of feminism is one that thinks that legally, men and women are equal. In general terms (because let's face it, there are exceptions to every rule) men and women are socially, physically, psychologically, and emotionally complementary. I don't have to do--or even be able to do--everything that men can do to be a man's equal, any more than he has to want/be able to do everything I can to be equal. My brand of feminism is one that is pro-woman, not anti-man; I think women can be womanly and strong instead of wannabemanly. I distrust a feminism that:

• thinks I have to be proabortion to be a proper feminist
• disdains stay-at-home-mothers
• disdains career women who also have families
• thinks all men are out to get all women
• thinks that everything is hunky dory and that all gender-based inequality has been resolved
• tells me what to believe rather than demanding that I figure out what I believe and giving me the tools to do so
• tells me that I can have it all without making any sacrifices: there are opportunity costs for everything
• thinks that simply being a female qualifies any woman to do something well (e.g., a woman president will automatically be better thank a male)
• thinks that being female doesn't change what said woman brings to the table (life experience is always influenced by gender, race, age, and ability--your experience is what you bring to the table, and people who dismiss that are are either delusional or just stupid)

That said, I acknowledge that people who believe any or all of those things believe themselves to be feminists, and more power to them (unless they support Sarah Palin, in which case, no. Just no.). They are not examples of fauxmenists.

Fauxmenism is what I call anything that is lady-specific but not really worth arguing about at all. It's the kind of thing that you can blow up to be gender-bias, but really is just stupid, and that's what I'll be hitting on for Fauxmenism entries.

The first one: Lady Pants. As those of you who have worn or removed lady pants know, lady pants (and shirts, for that matter) open left.  As in, you use your left hand. But not jeans. No, jeans zip up on the right. Because they started out as menswear, and men have traditionally dressed themselves while women dressed each other, due to the cumbersome nature of women's clothing throughout history. (Really, though, wealthy men were just as likely to have someone else dress them, so it should be a class thing, not a gender thing.) I've heard the arguement about shirts, that it's so guy, who traditionally escort girls on the right, can't peek through the gaposis, but I think that's more a side effect than a goal.

I guess my point here, though, is that most women dress themselves these days, even if some should really let someone else pull the outfits together. So why is it that there's still a difference between the closures? Why, at the very least, don't we have some consistency on the closure front? Because I have to be honest...I have, in the past, forgotten to zip the Lady Pants altogether (only one pair, and I'm pretty sure it's because they have a wide waistband that has 4 buttons itself, and I thinking I'm done once the buttons are done. All I'm asking is for some consistency.

The real reason, though, that this is an issue that every fauxmenist should take up is this, which I found while doing exhaustive research on the Internets. When asked why women's and men's clothing closures were different, this was the response:

Men's clothes button from the right because most men are right-handed.
And most women's clothes button from the left is because most men are right-handed.

Uhuh.  I knew you'd feel me. Let the rage ensue.