Sorry Lorileah, but you and many others are many just too big a deal out of all this. They are not intentionally nor unintentionally mocking anyone. They are following a school sanctioned ritual to do something different prior to their prom. If it is mocking women, then as someone else said early in this thread we CD's are doing the same, and according to your reasoning we should stop and show more respect to women and whoever else is offended by it, including the men who do not understand why another guy may want to wear women's clothing and actually go out into the real world. What about those guys who dress up for Halloween as women, regular ones or sexy ones? They must be mocking women and must stop doing that according to your reasoning. Actually, they should just ban Halloween because people mock priests, nuns (you know the pregnant nun costumes), football players, hobos, injured war veterans with crutches and fake bloody bandages, vampires and everyone else. What about all those wonderful pet owners who continually dress up their pets in dresses, and sweaters and put pink bows in their dog's fur to make them look pretty? That must be mocking the poor pets who are more than happy not taking baths, wearing their own fur without adornments. I think that all vets should be telling their clients to treat their pets with more respect and stop living their cute fantasies at pet's expense. What about this charity events where men dress as women in support of the event? I sure someone out there will consider that an insult to women.

The point is that we do things all the time that someone can take as an insult, when in fact they are not, except for that offended someone. If you want to look for offenses, they are there everywhere from the funny ads (reference the recent Veet ad thread or some of the Honda commercials that depict the man as a complete idiot while the wife gets everything), the initiation rites of passage into select groups like fraternities and sororities, to even the military, as someone pointed out above. Being respectful is one thing and it is good, having fun is another when it, in my opinion, is innocent as this schools annual pre-prom special activities.

I understand how someone can see something that someone else is doing and feel bad. That does not always mean that the other person is doing something wrong. I would guess that most of the time it just means that the offended feeling bad person sees something that reminds them of their own issues that they have yet to come to terms with. It is not bad to feel that way and is probably very natural. However, instead of leading a campaign to end a simple school ritual because one feels bad, the person needs to learn how to deal with their own issues and get on with their lives. If the ritual or activity was obviously directed toward them in the sense of discrimination, putting down some subset group of people, then yes, that is wrong. This whole ritual is there to have a good time by all. If one of the contestants doesn't want to participate they can always say no. Yes, they will probably take some flack for that, but learning to stand and hold your ground about what you will or will not do is also a very good learning process. Standing out from the crowd when necessary is good.

On a closing note, I am one who believes that the more press that we get, the more that we TG's are out there in all shapes, forms and presentations, the more non TG people participate in our dress up activities in plays, school rituals such as this one the more and other public ones like the charity men in heels walks or crossdressing for charity events, that over the long term the general public will start to understand that we are also part of their society and this real world and that as human beings we have the same rights as anyone else in this diverse world.