Thank you so much Harold! You highlight some very important points about the current state of feminist discourse.

Preventing or shunning men's perspectives when it comes to the decisions affecting girls is preposterous precisely because most girls have fathers-- the suggestion that men have no right to control or limit girls' autonomies also fundamentally curbs their ability to parent, which ironically reinforces the stereotypes about fathers parenting less than mothers.

But of course, many mothers are notably quiet on parenting for this issue because many of them share the same perspective as the author. But it goes quite far beyond that.

Dads posturing in this comment section about how supportive they are of their own daughters dressing similarly in public are participating in the common trend in social justice of self-flagellating for the sake of virtue-signaling allyship--except that you're not a real "ally" of anything if your own child is collateral damage in your pursuit of social capital.

And regardless, even if you don't have children, I don't think this is a conversation that should be gatekept. Like almost every other facet of contemporary social justice, as you nodded to, we're at a place where unless you are the precise identity of whomever has been deemed oppressed, then you have no right to participate in the conversation or offer perspectives whatsoever.

That is asinine (and not to be conflated with talking over or dismissing the experiences of people sharing what they have personally witnessed/endured) in any topic, but in my mind all the more so when it comes to matters of gender.

Gender is very complex. It is inextricably tied to sexuality, which we all possess, as you said. Every person in society will undergo a process of sexual maturation, which will also bring them into an expression of gender identity that aligns with their sexuality.

All of us have been children, and all of us reach sexual maturity and grow into adults, and many of us will have and raise children to do the same.

The conversation around sexual empowerment and boundaries pertaining to children is not just confined to girls -- it's the same conversation people were having about boys sagging in the 90s, and as more children identify as gender non-conforming, I'm assuming that the kind of getups that we usually primarily see from male-bodied people during Pride (or similar environments) will increasingly start appearing in public and raising the same questions we're discussing on this thread (e.g. is it appropriate for boys or men or kids born as males wear tiny, skin-tight spandex short shorts and no shirt or see-through mesh shirts to Starbucks or to school?).

The irony is not lost on me that many of these so-called feminists who consider themselves "LGBTQ allies" neglect to understand that the very same spectrum of gender expression that they are "allies" to is the one that fundamentally involves ALL of us when we are discussing public matters pertaining to sexuality and gender expression (even just as showing lots of skin).

It is critical that this remains an inclusive conversation, because women are EQUALLY capable of being shitty people, and because like I said, this affects everyone.

We live in a civilized society, and that means our decisions impact other people. I'm not even saying that it's wrong to feel angry that girls showing skin elicits such a strong reaction; I'm saying that the same would be true (for different and the same reasons) for boys, and that de-sexualizing generations of entrenched hyper-sexualization isn't like EMDR -- we're not going to desensitize the masses by using children as sexual pawns (cosplaying as "autonomous young women" or whatever the "feminists" are trying to call it) to normalize it.

And that certainly isn't going to work as long as the children in question (or adults) are borrowing from almost textbook examples of porn, soft-core porn, and/or the mainstream popular, hyper-sexualized pornstar-adjacent (and probably has an OnlyFans lol) influencer/celebrity culture that is built and maintained through desire, manipulation, flaunting and repression-- a phenomenon that touches all people of all genders.

Long response, but all this to say, you have every right to speak up and engage in conversations about gender issues and gender equity. This absolutist garbage around female empowerment is what has set the stage for all the crappy "lean-in feminism" where many of these women think that by behaving like the shittiest men used to, that they're "reclaiming" something and making it better, even though they're actually just the ones instilling contemporary 1950s Betty Draper-meets-Jessica Rabbit values in their own children and pretending that that is socially just.

Thanks for the comment!