this post was submitted on 09 Sep 2025
843 points (98.0% liked)
Witches VS Patriarchy
943 readers
941 users here now
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
To be fair, boys swimsuits are already basically just shorts, there's not much to make rules about. If a boy turned up in a speedo, there'd probably be a new rule.
Yeah, more often than not the lack of rules for men's clothing is because culturally, what's thought of as "men's clothing" is so boring that there's no way it could be sexualized.
Seriously here are the bathing suit options for men: Shorts, Smaller Shorts with no pockets (speedo), Cargo Shorts, Shorts with a T-Shirt and (theoretically, I don't even know where you'd buy one) a one-piece. Everything else, mankini or g-string or whatever, is lingerie and is covered under "decency laws" so you don't have to explicitly address it in your summercamp rules (the reason pants arent included in "No Shirt, No Shoes, No Service")
Meanwhile every bathing suit option women have has been sexualized to the moon and back, and half the options are just lingerie that's acceptable to wear in public bcz all our laws were written by horny hypocrites. A men's speedo covers more than your most basic bikini, are way harder to find and aren't usually sold in boy's sizes. A women's one-piece suit is a camel toe nightmare that should qualify as a fucking miracle if it doesn't leave both cheeks hanging out, and now most of them are including a fucking boob window.
We've internalized the masculine aspects of sexism to the point where we don't need to explicitly state it, and instead spend all our time correcting for the obvious cultural deficiencies that result from it and shifting the responsibility for dealing with it to women. "Why would I change my behavior, I'm fine, nobody's ogling me at the pool." It's great. Really winning as a society.
I'll do my part by sending my kid to summer camp in a mankini.
Men’s speedos are definitely at least as revealing as women’s bikinis.
I am a bit confused by
When i was in a swimming club as a kid, we almost all wore "speedos". Someone wearing the versions with a little bit of leg on them was the rare exception. I used to be made fun of at lakes in the summer sometimes by people wearing the "bermuda shorts". Turns out it is a bad idea to make fun of someone who is good at swimming while being in the water and wearing the faster swimwear.
You wowed them with your speed and they all clapped?
Yeah sure. I totally didn't pull them under water for a few seconds or anything like that. No good kid would do that in a lake.
I won't argue very hard here, I'll just say that I didn't have bikini briefs in mind when I wrote this - but the coverage is roughly the same if you use those as the baseline bikini, which is fair enough.
The French would like to have a word with
Who are these French who want to have a word with 12 year old boys🤨
Speedo is the law
Other way round for us. In school I remember being pulled to the side with like 3 other kids after a swimming lesson and told we should be wearing speedos instead of shorts because it reduces drag in the water.
I continued wearing shorts because I genuinely don't give a shit if it takes a second longer to cross the pool, I just want to swim. Now as an adult I don't need to worry about pedo-nazis telling me what to wear.
I actually think a man in swim shorts is pretty hot, so maybe some kids think so too? For me a man's exposed torso is much more sexual than a woman's. Maybe all the kids should be wearing burkinis regardless of sex or gender.