After playing for a bit I noticed Sogg was wearing worn ladies boots. For the life of me I thought he had +5 Boots on. So after buying myself some fine stouts I gave Sogg my +5 boots for him to wear. Wouldn't you know it, he wouldn't auto equip them. Guess he liked the feminine feel of his ladies boots.
Its a weird glitch that a lot of the followers (especially Virgil) seem to have. Personally I think that Troika did it on purpose.
It seems like followers choose items based on the value of the item. Looks like Troika couldn't be bothered to write an equation weighing the stats of each item and compare the tech and magick complexity of the item and NPC.
I vote we do the opposite: I think we should hack the game so that virgil can wear dresses. It strikes me as fitting.
I say we take it a step further. Make it so Virgil can ONLY wear dresses. That would be a lot more appropriate.
I've looked into this problem some time ago, I thought that the boots were missing flags for gender specific use. But they do have correct flags! Ladies' boots have OARF_FEMALE_ONLY and Shoes have OARF_SIZE_MEDIUM, iirc. Turns out, the game makes checks for size and gender only for body armor.
Well maybe sleeping dogs should lie...after all this could give rise to claims for "strap-ons" for females and "codpieces" for males...