Derek Guy has a whole thing about menswear and how the clothes you wear are a potent signal of your social standing, which in-groups you belong to, and what ideological tilt your opinions will tend to fall. If a communist wears the same clothes as a banker, it completely short-circuits how the public at large views them, because they're not wearing a Che shirt or fatigues or some other tired symbol that's been played to death by the MSM scaremongers. Suits are what stoic professionals wear! The communist is thereby granted the same baseline cultural respect that anyone in a suit gets.

[–] MayoPete@hexbear.net 4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

My autistic brain can't understand why people are so petty and weird about stuff like this. Why is it so hard for people to mind their own business?

[–] fox@hexbear.net 2 points 1 hour ago

de-encyclopedia Fellow autistic here: clothes do indeed carry a lot of subtext about you, even if you don't intend for them to do so. We do not live in a value neutral world where clothes are purely utilitarian, and even utilitarian clothes (aprons, overalls, work gloves, etc) include connotations of social station (farming, service industry, manual labor -> common laborer, low social standing). Leather jackets carry a message of being physically tough. Tech CEOs all wear synthetic-fiber athleisure to show they're too busy/important to care how they dress, and now that style has become associated not with exercise but with wealth and disdain.

Knowing that dress has these constructs associated means you can alter how others perceive you. Being autistic isn't ever easy but being a well-dressed autistic person buys you some grace. Derek Guy is a lib but he's got a lot of very useful posts about the history of clothing items and where their social associations came from, helpful if you're a gestalt learner.