I'm going to be touching on the freestyler/braveheart split during my speech in class tuesday and I wanted to run this by the people who were there since I wasn't. Most of this history I've picked up along the way by listening to people who were part of the early days, but not from direct questions, so if I got things wrong let me know. Thanks.
In 1996, Tom’s Café was established as a web presence. From what I have been able to glean from early participants of that forum, the initial focus was to be on fashion freedom and accepting of all types of traditional men’s wraps - kilts and other types of wraps traditionally associated with men, such as the lava-lava of Polynesia, and the dashiki of Africa. However, soon after its inception, men of a different opinion began to gravitate toward the forum. These men were of the opinion that any type of wrap should be allowable, indeed, that all forms of gender classification in clothes should be done away with, and that it should be acceptable to wear anything, including, in some cases, blatantly feminine styles such as full-length gowns and mini-skirts, and accessories like high heels and purses.
This caused a rift in the forum membership, leading to a war of sorts over the future direction of the forum. The traditionalists, or “Bravehearts”, wanted to limit the discussions to the garments that were traditionally men’s styles, while the new people, who called themselves “Freestylers” argued that since the premise of the forum was “fashion freedom”, their viewpoints were valid contributions to the discussions. The Bravehearts, most of whom were kilt wearing men, soon tired of the constant flame wars and moved on to establish their own sites on the web.