Genderless Style in Gothic Clothing

It all depends on what kind of 'GOTH' you want to be.

At 51 I became non binary, back in my 20s I was naturally pretty into make up and occasionally burrowed clothes including skirts from my Girlfriend. I have remained a fan of alternative music and style since and went to a club at the weekend where there were many much younger goths and I discovered several were NB, I wonder if we had the term back then many of us would have gone with it.

I love it, thanks!!!!

This is really good, but I go one step further. Honestly I take the gender label on the item or style, and throw it away. With few exceptions all clothing is genderless, and the androgyny of the scene is what pulled me into the scene. I wear gowns, dresses, skirts, leggings, catsuits, flowy blouses, "Men's" dress shirts, tights, heels, pikes...etc, and all while presenting as male, even if quite "feminine" looking. Goth is the perfect setting to test out such styles, but it's even better getting them out of the confines of goth events and out in the mainstream. :P

I am trying my best to get into Goth and the fashion is honestly one of the most interesting thing

I HAVE BEEN DYING FOR THIS TYPE OF VIDEO THANK YOU

Hence why alt fashion choices appealed to me (and many other young queers) while I was exploring my gender expression! (Still appeals to me now, but I try to branch out more often nowadays!)

Hello and thank you so much!

I am a gothic steampunk man. Sometimes I wear long 'feminine' skirts, as well as dresses and petticoats. Gothic fashion truly knows no gender boundaries, and this is liberating for many people who want to break the mold. You have only one limit, your imagination and creativity. I also wear hat and tshirts 🤘🏻

I think that goth fashion is mostly gendered...clothes meant to accentuate the male or female body. However goth fashion allows for the mixing of these into an outfit wearable by either male or female. Goths with their artistic sensibilities make it work spectacularly! As a man, I frequently combine a maxi skirt with a more masculine top and it just comes together looking really good...particularly in the way it adds dramatic effect while out on the dance floor either swirling about to ethereal music or stomping around to industrial!

thank you for such a wonderful video!🖤🦇

I've always felt like gothic styles are extremely distinct when it comes to what men and women wear (for example, in cybergoth and romantic goth, women will wear tight clothes, corsets, low hemlines, and fishnets, while men are more covered up and wear looser, more boxy clothing) but the points you made were quite interesting

Very surface level observations. Goth men are in fact deemed gay and feminine for dressing the way they do. You seem to have no experience living as a gender nonconforming man.

as an agender (masc-leaning) person who's still kind of a baby bat, these goth men are giving me so much gender envy... especially the victorian goths. oh to actually dress like that someday...

I love your illustrations in this video, they're so well-done and cute!

Lets inject some evolutionary theory.
Women tend to pick manly man and avoid unmanly men, hence most men tend to avoid looking unmanly and avoid clothes that make them look more like a woman.
Women don't care and are willing to adopt male typical clothes if they make them look more sexy, more unusual and interesting, or clothes are just more comfortable.
Women are using makeup to look more youthful and more beautiful, this is because of fertility.
Men who will pick 70 years old women as a partner will not procreate, their genes will not be passed to next generations. Men who will pick 20 years old partner will pass their genes to next generations. Basically biological evolution programmed men to prefer young women.
And fertility is rough for women, after 30 fertility drops quite a lot and with each year is worse and worse.
And because men prefer young women, biological evolution programmed women to try look as young and as beautiful as possible (so it is internal genetic need), at least when there are people around, hence they use makeup.
And a lot of women feel bad without makeup when they are among people.
This evolutionary need to look younger and more beautiful led to inventing and developing makeup.
Basically, evolution and genes, not only shaping how tall we are or what is color of eyes, but also has quite a big influence on human behavior and culture.
Culture must be compatible with needs of our biological bodies, and biological drives which we have, obviously there is wiggle room for evolution of culture but human biology is limiting factor for culture.
Notion that "society is programing women to wear makeup" is false, vast majority of people in social sciences are leftists, explaining everything with culture is kind of leftist ideological bias.

Women tend to pick men based on how capable men are, how high is their socioeconomic status, how manly they are, so for men makeup is pointless waste of time.
Men in makeup are exception: actors, goths, singers, drag queens.

Notion of normalcy is provided by us observing reality around us, so when we see a cat we don't expect to hear barking, because of previews experiences with cats.
So, it is surprising for people to see a man with makeup, unless it is a goth or drag queen, because those exceptions are known.

Also i disagree that Gothic fashion is androgynous (maybe a little bit), androgynous means that if You see a person You are not sure if it is a man or a woman.
If You see a man who is a Goth or Death Metal fan or Black Metal fan, wearing a skirt, this is a skirt which is different than skirts worn by female Metal and Goth fans.
What we can see is emergence of male skirt.
By the way, if You look at Europe in 10th century You will see men wearing tunics which are very similar to some modern dresses worn by women now, but women in 10th century were wearing dresses and skirts which were totally different than male tunics in 10th century.

By the way, I like Rock, Metal and Gothic music. I'm part of Metal and Gothic subculture.

I find goth fashion and subculture very comforting because of the nonconformity that extends to gender. I consider my gender to just be androgynous and I find that it's easier to pull off that kind of look when you're goth or emo rather than the mainstream in which male or female fashion is clearly delineated.

Most "genderless" things just go by the logic of male as the default an female as the other, so in turn all they do is make traditionally masculine clothing kinda oversized and call it a day.
Gothic fashion is very different, it grabbed things we would consider feminine and *took the gender out of it*, concentrating on aesthetic and pushing boundaries.
They work in different ways and this is why I love gothic fashion so much, it's true gender abolition.

To quote Slipknot:
"ANDROGYNY AND INSULTS, YOU TRY SO HARD TO BE DIFFICULT!! You want to win the war? KNOW WHAT YOU'RE FIGHTING FOR!!!"

I’ve been spam watching your content. I love the gothic lore you create 🖤

Love that presentation, short yet quite detailed, and the reflection about androgyny VS genderlessness. Thank you for that vid !

I loved how well researched this video is and you back up your points clearly and concisely. For me as a genderfluid person, I love how fluid and free gothic fashion can be.

Ive been goth for over a decade and the androgeny of the fashion helped me so much with my confidence and finding out my gender identity. I love being able to go back and forth between masculine and feminine and mixing the two. Goth fashion just feels so liberating and freeing.

I prefer comfortable clothes but not plain ones. Usually gender neutral with masculine leaning or just masculine ones. I like to wear long pants and layers and that's why I hate summer. But I often like to experiment with my outfits.

You did a great job explaining this to everyone 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 & now I'm sure people will understand the differences

Just started the video, but I wanted to say thank you for bringing up the nuance and differences between "gender-neutral/genderless" and "androgynous." Because, it's right in the word, andro (masculine) gyno (feminine) - it's both masculine and feminine, not neither. (Tho I understand words change meaning over time, I just personally find it more useful to actually have a term to describe the mixing of masculinity and femininity rather than a third term to describe lack of masculinity/femininity).
Edit: ALSO thank you for bringing up how most clothing or outfits referred to or thought of as "gender-neutral" is really just traditionally masculine clothing. Always interesting to see how things designed for men are seen as "default" (ungendered, in this case) and things designed for women are seen as deviation from the default (inherently gendered, in this case).

I never really thought about it, but you're 100% right when it comes to makeup. Why the general public doesn't accept men wearing makeup, but nobody bats an eye if it's paired with goth fashion? That's weird.

ᚻᚫᚢ᛫ᚫᛒᚫᚢᛏ᛫ᚾᚩ

Very interesting channel and this video was very insightful into goth fashion. I'm looking forward to more of your content.

I usually dress very casually, comfortably, pants, t-shirts and boots. When I go out it's the same, but for important outings I usually wear a skirt. In the past I dressed more masculine, or at least what it was from my point of view, wearing shirts, which I still have. Depending on the weather is the way I dress.

May the spirit of Pride Month linger! Hope this is not too late to celebrate.
By the way, do you have particular preferences for your wardrobe?

Edit: English subtitles added!