TradCatknight: Society Becomes Corrupted When Women Wear Masculine Clothes

I. The first signs of our late arriving Spring indicate a certain increase this year in the use of men’s clothing by women and girls, even mothers of families. 

Up until 1959, in Genoa such dress usually meant that the person was a tourist, but now there seems to be a significant number of girls and women from Genoa itself who are choosing, at least on pleasure trips, to wear men’s clothing (trousers).

The spreading of this behavior obliges us to seriously address this subject and we ask those to whom this Notification is directed to give this problem all the attention it deserves, as is proper for persons who are conscious that they must stand responsible before God.

We seek above all to give a balanced moral judgment on the matter of women who wear men’s dress. In fact, our considerations here bear only on the moral aspect.

First, with regard to covering the female body, the wearing of men’s trousers cannot be said to constitute in itself a grave offense against modesty, because trousers certainly cover more of a woman’s body than do modern skirts.

Second, for clothing to be modest, however, it must not only cover the body but also should not cling too tightly to the body. It is certain that some women’s clothing today fits more closely to the body than trousers, but the latter can also be tight fitting – and in fact generally are so. Therefore, wearing such tight fitting clothing causes us no less concern than exposing the body. Thus it is that the immodesty of men’s trousers on women is one aspect of the problem that must not be left out of a general judgment on the topic, even if it should also not be artificially exaggerated.

II. There is, however, another aspect of women wearing trousers that seems much graver to us

The wearing of men’s dress by women primarily affects the woman herself, first by changing the feminine psychology proper to women. Second, it affects the woman as the wife of her husband by tending to corrupt the relations between the sexes. Third, the woman as the mother of her children loses dignity in the children’s eyes. Each of these points should be carefully considered.

1. Masculine clothing changes the psychology of women

In truth, the motive that impels women to wear the clothing of men is not always to imitate him, but rather to compete with the man who is considered stronger, less encumbered and more independent. This motivation shows clearly that masculine dress is a visible support to bring about a mental attitude of being ‘like a man.’ Further, since the existence of man, the clothing a person wears conditions, determines and modifies the gestures, attitudes and conduct of a person. Thus, just by its wearing, the clothing comes to impose a particular state of spirit in the person.

Permit us to add that a woman who always wears the clothing of men more or less indicates that she is reacting to her femininity as if it were inferior, when in fact it is only different. The perversion of her psychology is clearly evident.

These reasons, added to many others, are sufficient to warn us of how mistaken is the thinking of women who wear men’s dress.

2. Women wearing men’s clothing tends to corrupt the relations between the two sexes 

In fact, as relations between the two sexes unfold with time’s passing, an instinct of mutual attraction becomes predominant. The essential base of this attraction is a difference between the two sexes that is made possible only by the fact that one complements the other. If, then, this difference becomes less marked because one of its major external signs is eliminated, and because the normal psychological structure is weakened, then a fundamental factor in the relation changes.

The problem goes even further. Chronologically, the mutual attraction between the sexes is naturally preceded by that sense of shame that restrains the rising of the primary instincts, imposes respect for one another, and tends to elevate the mutual esteem and a salutary fear to a higher level regarding those instincts, which otherwise would push forward to uncontrolled acts. To change the clothing – which by its difference reveals and maintains the limits of nature and its natural defenses – levels such distinctions and helps to diminish the vital defenses of the sense of shame.

At the very least it obstructs that sense. And when this sense of shame is absent because of some obstacle or impediment, then the relations between men and women degrade into pure sensuality, devoid of all mutual respect or esteem.

Experience teaches us that when the woman is de-feminized, then defenses are undermined and weakness increases.

3. Masculine clothing harms the dignity of the mother in the eyes of her children

A child has an instinct for the sense of dignity and decorum of his mother. Studies on the first internal crisis of children when they awake to the life around them, even before they reach adolescence, show how important their mothers are to them. Children are very sensitive at this age. Adults normally leave all this behind them and no longer think about it. But we should remember the strict demands that children instinctively make on their mothers, and the profound and even terrible reactions roused in them by observing bad behavior on the part of their mothers. At this age and by these first dramas of infancy and youth many of the later roads they will take in life are marked, not always for the good.

The child may not know the definition of immodesty, frivolity and infidelity, but he possesses an instinctive sense to recognize them when they occur. Further, he suffers from them and is bitterly wounded of soul because of them.

III. We should think seriously about the importance of everything said so far, even if the appearance of the woman wearing masculine clothing does not immediately produce the same harm as that caused by a grave immodesty

The change in the feminine psychology causes a fundamental and – in the long run – irreparable damage to the family, to conjugal fidelity, to human affections and to human society. True, the effects of wearing unsuitable clothing are not seen in the short term. But one must think of what is being slowly and insidiously lowered and perverted.

If the feminine psychology is changed, is there some change in the reciprocity between husband and wife? Or is a true education of the children imaginable, which is so delicate in its procedure, so interwoven with imponderable factors in which the mother’s intuition and instinct play the decisive part in those first years? What can these women give their children when they have worn trousers for so long that their self-esteem is determined more by their competition with men than by their function as women?