Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Crossdressing lawyer in the news

This article turned up in the "Weird news" feed from Reuters. Here's the text in case that link dies...
Cross-dressing lawyer skirts dress code
Tue Jul 25, 2006 8:52am ET166

WELLINGTON (Reuters) - A male lawyer who appeared in a New Zealand court dressed in an ankle-length skirt, lace stockings and a diamond brooch said Tuesday he was protesting against a male bias in the country's justice system.

Rob Moodie, a former New Zealand Police union secretary, stunned the courtroom Monday when he appeared in women's clothing at a hearing related to a long-running case involving the death of a man in a bridge collapse on a North Island farm.

Moodie said he wore the two-piece women's suit because of what he described as a boys' network in the court room.

"I'm objecting to the male ethos that is dominating this case and from now on I'm going to be dressing as a girl in my daily life," Moodie told Reuters.

"It wouldn't have happened if I hadn't seen the gung-ho attitude in this case. The more this goes on and the deeper the cover-up gets, the frocks will get prettier," he said.

Moodie, who said he was wearing a skirt while talking to Reuters by telephone, is married with three children but said he had a strong female gender bias.

"The sexes are not opposite, they're complementary," he said, drawing comparisons with New Zealand's hugely popular All Blacks rugby side.

"The front row of the All Blacks is a very important part of maleness and is not to be disparaged at all, but neither should the guy who wants to do ballet," Moodie said.

© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.


The thing is, I'm not sure from the article if the guy just wants to crossdress, or if he's really doing it as a protest. If the latter, it's unclear whether he's protesting the case specifically, or the justice system generally. Maybe the protest serves two purposes? Maybe he needed the excuse of protest to be able to crossdress, since that's what he wanted to do anyway. I'm not sure and the article doesn't answer that for me. Either way, I'd love to see a day when this makes the regular news wire, and not the "weird news" wire, y'know?

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