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Briefly, breeching was the "rite of passage" when boys would start wearing breeches or trousers (pants as you call them in the US). It would also involve their long hair being cut.
As a priest, I'm not always in a cassock these days, but it has given me the experience of wearing a long "dress" in public, with a pair of shorts of only underpants under it. It is a lot more comfortable than trousers.
In this forgotten custom, like women always wearing their hair up and with a hat, we see the roots of many of our habits. When I was a little kid, I put on a dress to play with my two sisters, and was often annoyed at having to take it off and put on boy's clothes to go out with my mother into town. But, my hair was always short as a child in the 1960's.
Perhaps, some seeing my little posting might conclude that long-haired men are regressing to the state of "unbreeched" children! No, but the cultural root is there and we argue that it there is no need to have short hair to be a man... Our modern society includes cross-dressers and people who more or less identify with the opposite sex along a "continuum". People do need to be free.
I'm looking forward to reading other views.
Anthony
PS. Please delete the first post with the bad html coding. Thank you.
Of course there is another way to accomplish this...........it's called a kilt. You really need to try one to see how really comfortable they are.
Of course some guys, like me at the age of 61, have regressed back to the days of "unbreeched" children in that I have long hair, am wearing shorts most of the time.
Anthony, do you see yourself as transgender?
What kind of question is that? Because he likes the freedom
of wearing a dress? Do I need remind you men in Scotland have been wearing kilts for many years.
I wear a kilt and i'm not transgender.
Only when you wear a kilt do you find out how amazingly comfortable it is.
Anthony, do you see yourself as transgender?
No, I am not transgender, but a biological male. I have no problem with that. I have no desire to be a caricature of a woman. I say "caricature" because a transgender can only achieve the appearance of the opposite sex.
However, I do believe in the notion of the "androgynous continuum", that of people being at every point possible between the "airhead" girl and the kind of ultra-masculine guys you find in America's maximum security prisons with Nazi symbol tattoos (or Alpha successful businessmen, politicians, etc.). Between the extremes, the stereotypes and the caricatures, you get sincere human beings identifying with different kinds of human characteristics - some associated with women and some with men.
I am not even a cross-dresser, but I do tend to like "softness" and "homeliness" and be caring rather than competitive. But, that being said, I am a male and assume it.
Anthony
Hi Anthony,
Breeching is a new term for me. Here in San Francisco, where both gay men and strait men alike enjoy pushing the clothing style boundaries, it's not uncommon to see a lot of "utili-kilts", for example (kilts that do not have a traditional Scottish heritage plaid, but are made of leather or other material). I've also seen some men wear skirts out in public (men who otherwise just look like an ordinary guy). My nephew, a strait guy in his late 20s now, owns a util-ikilt or 2 (although I don't know if he wears it all that often anymore).
Most of the year, I like to wear shorts, rather than long pants -- the exception being during the few cold months out of the year here (basically only during December, January, and February -- and even Feb. can have wonderful spring-like weather, which is often when I decide to return to wearing shorts again)!
Interesting post, Anthony, thanks for writing it!
- Ken