For those of you who don’t live in the Northwest, there is a Seattle company called Utilikilts who made the first kilts with pockets. They still do, actually, and there are several companies who make similar garments. It’s kind of a Cascadia thing.

I currently have two, and a traditional, Scottish-made, woolen, plaid kilt. I wear the Utilikilts in the summer, especially for hiking, and the wool one in cooler weather. My wife loves them and they are awesomely comfortable and smart. I get frequent complements, out and about.

Now, admittedly, kilts are a minority taste in menswear, so when I saw that there was a Facebook group called Men in Kilts, I joined. The rules are simple, no posts without pictures, be polite, no bad language etc. My wife took a picture, I posted it and got some feedback. Most of it supportive, commenting on the plaid, asking about the jacket etc.

And one pointing out that no Scot would wear a kilt without the full, formal, traditional kit that goes with it, that it was a travesty of the writer’s culture and my socks were wrong.

Leaving aside that the writer was quite simply wrong, as I have known Scots who wear the kilt with a tee-shirt and flip-flops and think nothing of it, I found myself thinking the same thought that inspired an earlier* sermon here, “What’s it to you?” But it is Facebook, and one can expect that kind of thing. After all, there are dicks everywhere.

But I quickly discovered a pattern; just about every picture posted had a mixture of replies, mostly positive and a few complaining that, in effect, kilts were strictly Scottish in heritage, and that there were rules governing how, when, and with what they should be worn. The one that I especially liked was the one that stated that “no true Scot” would wear what the individual pictured had on. I laughed, because it was an honest-to-goodness example of the logical fallacy called the No True Scotsman argument.

Now if you are unfamiliar with that particular fallacy, it is a form of argumentation that gives an example by way of proof of an argument, and when that assertion is countered by an example which disproves the assertion, the first person disallows the counter example for some reason, usually because the speaker considers it unfit. Or, in the example of our kilt-wearing men, when someone shows up in a kilt and short socks the purist says, “No true Scotsman would do that.” And when an example of Dougal McDouglas wearing flip-flops is presented, the counter is, “Oh, but Dougal is one-sixteenth English!”

Now, in any formal debate situation, the No True Scotsman argument is strictly disallowed as a logical fallacy. In real life, we come across it every day. Republican In Name Only or RINO is pretty common in right-wing circles, and I have been condemned for being both too Socialist and too Centrist.  ‘No True Liberal’, if you will.

But you know, the No True Scotsman argument, and the viewpoint that it illustrates, might be seen as a kind of response to my original “What’s it to you?” reaction to the people who got their kilts in a twist because the way other people wore the garment. Perhaps it offended them some way. Fair enough, being offensive is the act of a dick. But I’m pretty sure the fellow who wore his kilt without brogues/ sock flashes/ a kilt pin/ a flat cap/ a striped tie/ a tee-shirt, didn’t mean to offend anyone. (All of the above were actual reasons that some negative responses were posted.)

Which brings me to an interesting dichotomy. Being offensive is dickish, for sure, but so can being offended. After all, you have a choice in both cases. If I mean to be offensive by wearing my kilt with an SA shirt, complete with swastika armband, that is pretty good proof I’m being a dick. (Actually, the kilt would be superfluous.) But what about taking offence when none was intended? Is finding an excuse to be rude a kind of low-grade dickishness? Justifying dickish behavior doesn’t make it any less dickish.

Still, I suppose we are all liable to the reaction shown by the people who criticized the way some bloke in Montana wears his Utilikilt. And the extent that we are aggressive or nasty in our reaction to whatever it is that triggers us is the extent to which we are being a dick.  In short, being offended is an excuse, if perhaps a weak one.

So, in an effort to help all of us avoid being offended for insufficient reason, I would like to offer the following exercise: imagine the offending thing is someone wearing a kilt the wrong way. Then remove the idea of the kilt and replace it with a pair of jeans. Wearing jeans can never be cultural appropriation, so that argument is gone. Wearing jeans with the wrong shoes is impossible, so that’s out. Wearing jeans with or without a dress shirt or tie or suit jacket are all ok, so no grounds for offence there. To say that a particular pair of jeans is the ‘wrong type’ because it has five belt loops instead of seven is downright stupid, because Wrangler and Levis are both obviously jeans. (Do you know which has which number of loops? Do you care?)

In short, you can choose what to be offended by, and how offended to be, really. Are some things more offensive than others? You bet! But is this thing that is pulling your chain really worth starting a fight over? Or is it just a pair of jeans?

Now, take a deep breath and think about how we might apply this idea to the people who voted the opposite way to us just a few days ago.

The picture is of the wonderful Sukhvinder Sunger of the Vancouver police who stole the show at the Edinburgh Tattoo this summer

*January 22, 2026