“If a miniskirt is responsible for everything, if [wearing] a miniskirt means immorality and unchastity, if a woman who wears a miniskirt is sending an invitation about what will happen to her, then we are also sending an invitation!” explains a Facebook page supporting the action.

By Feb. 21, Turkish men wearing skirts were seen marching in vigils through the streets of Istanbul.

Turkish men protesting on Feb. 21 in Istanbul, Turkey.
Turkish protestors wearing skirts on Feb. 21 in Istanbul.
Image: Julius Constantine Motal
At a protest for Özgecan Aslan in Istanbul, Turkey. February 21, 2015.
At a protest for Özgecan Aslan in Istanbul, Turkey. February 21, 2015.
Image: Julius Constantine Motal

Now, men as far as Italy are posting photos of themselves in skirts in solidarity.

It’s not the first time men have donned skirts and dresses to protest injustice and violence against women. In Jan. 2013, 200 men in Bangalore, India, gathered in a park wearing skirts to protest violence against women. “Wear a skirt and speak to as many as you can against the misconception that what a woman wears is the cause for sexual violence against her,” urged the Facebook page where the event was organized.

Male protestors wearing skirts in Bangalore, India.
Male protestors wearing skirts in Bangalore, India.
Image: From the Facebook page "Work for a Cause."

Two months later, in April 2013, Kurdish men in Marivan, Iran, protested against a court order to parade male convicts through town in women’s dresses as humiliation, by posting photos of themselves in traditional Kurdish women’s clothes.

“I did not feel any strangeness when I put on a woman’s dress. I just wanted to demonstrate who we are: this is what we look like, this is our culture and they cannot insult our culture, our mothers and sisters. We cannot accept that,” said Sasan Amjadi, contributor to the Facebook page Kurd Men For Equality, which organized the Marivan skirt protest. “There can be no free society without free women.”

Reza Sheikhan for the the Facebook group Kurd Men for Equality.
Reza Sheikhan.
Image: Facebook page Kurd Men for Equality
Men in traditional Kurdish women’s dress.
Men in traditional Kurdish women’s dress.
Image: From the Facebook page Kurd Men for Equality

And in December 2014, students at National Taiwan University started posting photos of themselves in skirts to support their transgender peers.

Men posing for a Gender Equality Workshop at National Taiwan University.
Men posing for a Gender Equality Workshop at National Taiwan University.
Image: Facebook page NTU Gender Equality

Turkish women are breaking taboo in their own way: on Feb. 18, hundreds of women carried Aslan’s coffin to its final resting place, against the orders of a local imam. Online, more than a million women have made the protest personal by telling their own stories of harassment and fear with a different hashtag: #sendeanlat, or “tell your story.”

Both men and women marching in the streets of Istanbul are also wearing masks of Aslan’s face, but this, too, has been criticized by the nation’s president. Erdogan, despite his vow to punish Ozgecan’s killers, doesn’t seem to understand what her death represents for women across the country.

Why are you wearing masks?” he also asked of protestors on Feb. 25. “If you are not a terrorist, don’t hide your face.”

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