A long, long time ago, back when we were young and dewey, and ultra conservatives were still blackballing me for being a toxic radical castrating feminist, rather than friending me like crazy as the freshest incarnation of Catherine of Siena, I made a thing called a Pants Pass.
It’s weird. I know. Let me sum up: This mediumish name in the Catholic world put out a weird little message (“not a hard-and-fast directive!)” listing 14 reasons why women ought to wear skirts and dresses allatime. Oh yes, it’s still online. Bunch of Catholic women unanimously declared it bullshit, and to that chorus I added my Panstifesto.
There was a strenuous backlash among the Assholio Community, and so I felt compelled to fisk the not-a-directive in more detail. Here’s the salient part, which led to the creation of The Pants Pass. The sola skirtura guy had said:
[Wear skirts] for us, the minority of chaste men who merit the gift of enjoying your beauty in such a way as to be grateful to your creator without temptation. Make it so it is good for men to look upon you, rather than requiring us to look away (which is a tragedy).
“Merit?” “Make it so it is good?” I’ll translate this for you:
I don’t cheat on my wife, and that’s really hard, so I’m entitled to some compensation. So line up, girls, and show me something special. Neutrally modest isn’t good enough — I deserve something niiiiiiiice.
Oh, you sound just like Padre Pio; really you do!
Several other men in various comboxes expressed a similar idea of their right, as a virtuous man, to enjoy all women in a virtuous way. They’re not satisfied with cracking down on their own wives — they feel that they’ve won the privilege of savoring and setting the standards for everyone else’s wife, too.
A few guys said that they could tell by the way I talk that I’m a disobedient wife. How can they tell? Because their wives wear skirts. I usually don’t. Therefore I must be disobeying my husband.
Never mind that my husband likes me in pants. Which I mentioned. So I guess they’re saying . . . that I should be obeying them?
Luckily for me, I have a husband who is just dying for someone to say something like that, so he can punch their lights out. He recently quit smoking, and is looking for someone to punch.
But, ladies, what if your husband likes you in pants, but you happen to leave the house without him? What if you’re doing some errands, you’re wearing pants, and some pigeon-toed guy with a scaly neck sidles up and confronts you for revealing the fact that you have legs — two of ‘em?
He scowls through his horrible beard and, once he gains control of the self-righteous quivering that shakes him from head to toe, he speaks: “WHERE IS THY SKIRT, WOMAN? WHY HAST THOU APPEARED AT WALMART IN THESE DETESTABLE PANTALOONS? DOST THOU NOT RESPECT THY HUSBAND’S WISHES?”
Here’s what you do: print out the following card, laminate it, and show it to the guy.
While he’s mentally translating it into Latin so it makes sense to him, you will be able to make a speedy getaway. And since you’re wearing dem pants, you’ll do it without showing any skin! Run, ladies, run!
Okay! So now we’re all caught up.
The reason I’m bringing this up now is because (a) aren’t we all looking for something, anything to talk about, other than The Thing? And more importantly, (b) my dear friend Elisa of Door Number Nine has actually made and actually laminated some actual Pants Passes, which you can actually buy. $2.75 a pop, and worth every penny, I say.
And because she is who she is, she made up this little video, just to . . . well, I don’t know why.
You guys. That was eight years ago. Remember when the Catholic internet was torn apart by a battle over pants? I shall sigh forever.
