The annual email reminding students of Halloween costume guidelines featured a new addition this year — the school’s stance on crossdressing in costume:
“For many people, clothing that expresses their gender is not a costume, it’s who they are. Dressing as “a man” or “a woman” for laughs can unintentionally make fun of those who are transgender or non-binary.
We strive to create a place where all students feel safe and respected. Costumes that make fun of any group including those based on gender, can make others feel unwelcome, uncomfortable, or targeted.”
We agree with everything stated in this email. It’s true that there are cases where cross-dressing can be abused to make fun of others’ chosen expressions and identities, and that is unacceptable. We’re living in a time of heightened violence and hate towards transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals, so students must be vigilant of the potential impact of their actions.
However, although we fully support the call for students to be considerate, we don’t support discouraging all cross-dressing on Halloween, which has been the result of this guideline in practice. For instance, a group of male students were told they could not dress up as princesses for Halloween. Mr. Lamont Quattlebaum, Dean of Students, stated that students should not be cross-dressing as it would “more than likely” be offensive to others in the community. He continued to say that although there isn’t an official policy on cross-dressing in the Handbook, students who cross-dressed on Halloween, violating the guidelines, would have a conversation with the Deans Office and put themselves in a position where the administration would have to make a decision about a costume’s appropriateness.
There is an important difference between one’s costume and their conduct. The attempts to deter male students from cross-dressing on Halloween don’t reflect that nuance. Cross-dressing is not inherently harmful; instead the intention to mock or insult other members of our community, and one’s behavior when in a costume, is what causes harm. The Dean’s Office guidelines remove student agency in order to eliminate risk. Instead, students should be given the wise freedom to express themselves respectfully and appropriately.
Furthermore, in prohibiting all cross-dressing, the school is restricting many of the underlying benefits of cross-dressing at Halloween. What about the queer community, who has historically used Halloween as a time for self-expression? What about students who are interested in experimenting with gender, but no longer have an opportunity to explore? What if someone simply thinks it would be fun to do? Halloween is about dressing up and being something different for a day—students should be able to do that. The queer community fought for the right to cross-dress for years — how is taking away this right any protection? Furthermore, female students regularly dress as male characters and celebrities at Sacred Heart without any push back. A number of SHP students dressed up as celebrities from the other gender last year for Halloween with no consequence, and Adam Sandler was an official theme of a Homecoming dress up day.
Restricting cross-dressing further reinforces arbitrary distinctions between male and female costumes. We should be moving towards a society where if a male student wants to be a princess on Halloween, and a female student a prince, they can do that without worry. If these guidelines are enforced as a full cross-dressing ban, how are they different from a cross-dressing ban motivated by a more malicious intention? Self expression should not be protected by restricting… self expression.
Going forward, we believe the stance set out in the email, trying to protect the community through calling students to be considerate and kind with their costumes, should be the one followed—not unclear guidelines trying to prevent all cross-dressing on Halloween. At the heart of these guidelines is a desire to protect students, and we acknowledge and agree with those intentions, but cross-dressing is not fundamentally harmful and shouldn’t be treated as such. In trying to accommodate everyone, this guideline has accommodated no one.
