Follow-up: lesbian high schooler's promFollow

Totally sigged.

[EDIT]

Or it will be if I can get alla to stop hating me.

Edited, Mar 29th 2010 11:48am by idiggory

Correct.

The rules were established for white, Christian, heterosexual, middle-class couples.

How could anyone see that as outdated?

What the everloving FUCK are you on about?

There ARE no traditional "rules" for prom. There were only presumed guidelines of comportment, and these guidelines could be and have always been flouted easily so long as it was all in good fun and didn't trigger anyone's kneejerk homophobia.

1991: Platonic guy/girl pals Drew and Holly go stag to prom together at a high school in one of the most conservative areas of the midwest Bible belt. Deciding it was unfair that she should have to pay buy a gown while Drew rented a tux for considerably less, Holly showed up in tux as well. Ha ha, wink nudge, girl-in-a-tux lulz ensued.

1992: Yours truly attends prom at the same high school stag with two other female friends. At least 1/4 of the people there were attending stag, usually in groups of two or more, since the point of the prom was to dress up and go to a formal dance, regardless of whether or not you had a date.

1996: My younger brother also attends prom stag at this same very conservative high school with a group of six of his friends, complete with rented limo.

2003: My younger cousin goes stag to prom with her best friend.

2008: My niece attends prom stag with a group of her friends. Tickets are sold on an individual basis; no requirement for coming in a pair or bringing a date exists.

I find it exceptionally difficult to believe other parts of the country would have more stringent rules on bringing opposite-sex dates and dress code than an area where there existed the highest number of churches per capita in the country.

Do I believe these "rules" about what girls MUST wear to prom were fabricated once the concept of a girl wearing a tux left the realm of ha-ha-wink-nudge-what-a-good-joke and entered the realm of actual gender expression? Damn straight I do. Do I believe that "rules" requiring opposite-sex dates suddenly cropped up only once the possibility was raised that someone might bring an actual same-sex love interest to prom as opposed to a "stag" partner? Oh, hell yeah.






Transgender identities begin emerging in early childhood. If this girl has always identified as transgender, wearing a tux is simply an expression of who she is.




And I'm just saying you're a fucking idiot if you're naive enough to think it unlikely that these "guidelines" weren't conveniently cemented as "rules" until very recently when the possibility of same-sex dates and transgender dress became a serious consideration.

Edited, Mar 29th 2010 8:04pm by Ambrya

I went to proms from 1982-84. There were no tickets. (what the hell kind of schools did you guys go to??) There were no restrictions on who you could or could not bring. Girls came without dates. So did guys. They also came with their friends. This was back in the dark ages, when teh gay was the srs bad. This was also 4 different proms. I'm also in the south, where it would be even WORSE to not come with a date of the opposite sex, lest you be thought of as teh geyz.

I love watching gbaji make up ****.

The idea of a prom being a formal "coming of age" event reminiscent of debutante balls is what a traditional prom is. That some schools have reduced their standards over time doesn't mean that every school must. You get that you're basically arguing that since your school didn't make prom out to be a big deal that other schools not only shouldn't, but should be legally barred from doing so.

I'm sorry. That's nuts. We're not talking about my school, or your school. We're talking about this school. This school has a set of rules for their prom. Is anyone seriously suggesting that they invented the "one girl one guy on a prom ticket" rule just this year to deny this one gay girl the ability to attend?

Or is it more likely that this rule has been in effect for as long as the school has held a prom? Yeah. I think so.



Do you know this for a fact? Or are you just assuming so because it makes for a convenient argument?

Look. Just because your school treated prom like it was just another dance, doesn't mean that every school did or does. And guess what? Many schools with restrictive rules for prom have had them since long before any students in any school even hinted at wanting to take someone of the same sex because they were gay. The rule has been around precisely for the reason I've already explained to you. They don't want people taking their friends.


The school I attended had the same rules for prom for something like 40 years. Exactly how many gay students were pushing for the right to attend prom with a same sex partner back then? That would be zero. You want to assume that the rules changed in order to punish gay kids, but that simply isn't so.

Don't confuse the effect you perceive as the motivation. Just because a schools rules happen to negatively impact a group does not mean that those rules were created specifically to do so. And if some schools choose to change their rules to accommodate gay students, that's great! But it's unfair to assume that those who don't are doing so out of specifically anti-gay reasons. That's projection on your part.

Apparently, we attended schools with class. I'm kinda surprised at the number of people posting here who's schools treated prom as such an informal thing. Like I said in the above post, we had dances like that every few weeks during the school year. Why on earth make your prom such a crappy thing? At that point, why bother?


The flip side is that some schools do bother to make prom a more important experience. I don't think it's fair to attack them for doing so...

Wow! That's hysterical Joph. Really... Way to perpetuate your own lack of clue!

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Wow. In the course of two posts, you somehow managed to forget that I attended a school without regulations regarding date/sex/gender-specific attire requirements and somehow grossly misinterpreted the fact that our proms were formal affairs held in swanky locations to mean they also had those stringent regulations, and then used that as a basis to assert any prom without those draconian rules was somehow a less classy affair.

You really are just out there in your own little world, aren't you?

Well, since we're talking about this school, it might be instructive to know when and why that specific rule was put into place.

According to lolWiki, not only was the girl's girlfriend a student at the school (this was brought up earlier in the thread), but the principal told McMillen when she asked about bringing her girlfriend that it wasn't allowed, due to a concern that pairs of same sex friends who were not in a relationship would buy less expensive couples tickets instead of individual tickets. So, apparently, there aren't any rules that people must go as couples, since individual tickets are sold.

It's also interesting to note that this is not the first issue they've had this year at this school with the LGBT community.

Edited, Mar 30th 2010 10:01am by Belkira

This is such a ******** excuse.

A. At my school, nearly everyone who went stag still "went" with someone. It was like 10% off the ticket price ($45 instead of %50 or something like that). So you and a friend would buy the couples ticket, but not go together. For example, I went with my best friend. I didn't buy her ticket, we both paid $45.

B. This still is making the claim that they are not a couple by refusing to allow them to buy a "couples" ticket. Thus, it is completely true that the reason they couldn't go together is that they were gay. The fact that the school felt it would set a precedent for straight girls to go together for cheaper tickets just shows that he doesn't put any value in their relationship.

C. This is high school. EVERY student probably has a mix of girl and guy friends. They will just as easily pair up cross-gender, with no romantic interest, as they would together.

D. Couples tickets are ********* Considering that proms are funded mainly by fundraising from the class and ticket sales, the school is requiring "single" students to pay for the couples to attend. They mask that with the excuse that the guy would be paying for two tickets instead of one. Sure, maybe some guys would, and that sucks. But it isn't the single's responsibility to pay extra so he can get a discount.

E. Prom is about having a formal dance. For SOME people, it might be a special night with your high school sweetheart. But for the vast majority in attendance, it isn't. It's about hanging out with your friends. Know why? Because the population of couples is extremely small next to the population of singles, so it makes no sense to have a class fund-raise to give that small population a special dance. Instead, it is now about your class having a special, formal night together. The vast majority that attend don't have romantic partners.