US women protest for the right to bare American women are preparing for protests this weekend against laws which allow men to remove their shirts in public, but treat women who do the same as guilty of misdemeanour. The action will take place on Sunday 23 August when, according to the gotopless website (PNSFW), "topless women will rally in great numbers across the …
The USA is fundamentalist puritanical state mostly populated by ultra-conservative religious zealots. Remember, this is the same country that has to actually debate whether or not to teach evolution!
The GTA "Hot Coffee" fiasco always amused me. It was "OK" to run around and mow people down with automatic weapons ("The Righteous Arm of God" or whatever crap the gun-nuts spout), but if you hack around with the game and unleash a tiny bit of rather poor simulated rumpy-pumpy...well...THOU ART THE MINION OF SATAN! It beggars belief. Surely a bit of consensual rumpy-pumpy is far less damaging to the psyche and society in general and blasting people's heads off with a full clip?
The USA is not unique of course. Almost all the current "problem" states are ruled by religion, and it is a shame to see that this great evil is on the rise again; bringing with it all the intolerance and hate it can muster.
Even here we cannot divest ourselves of the cancer that is religion, we still give senior church leaders power in the land can cow-tow to illogical religious doctrine (e.g. Sikhs not having to wear crash helmets - what?).
And, of course, it's not even religion itself that is to blame (although church leader do exploit it to their own ends). It is people's inability to critically think and simply accept differences. You get the same stupid hate with football fans as you do with religious fools. Then again, believing that your team is "best" regardless of what evidence lies before you is blind-faith in the same vein as the existence of a god.
Due to a 1992 state supreme court ruling, the ladies residing in the state of New York won the right to go top-free on an equal legal basis as men without threat of arrest or penalties.
That right hasn't been widely exercised by ladies in NY but it's at least on the books. Pity most other states aren't so enlightened in this day and age. D.C. respects this as does a few individual cities around the country.
A few years ago, whilst in America on holiday, I was watching The Witness on the telly in my hotel room. There's a key scene where the Harrison Ford character accidentally sees the Kelly McGillis Amish character bathing semi naked. There is a long and knowing look between the two characters and Ms McGillis is topless throughout. It's not in the least bit titillating and is shown to demonstrate the impact the two previously chaste characters have had on each other. Fair enough, but the prurient US TV censors cut out the topless part of that scene, lopping off a huge amount of its significance.
Ah well, we all have our moments.
However, this scene was immediately followed by commercials for beers in which young women were frequently to be seen being showered with water, soaking their t-shirts, or their bikinis, or their skimpy tops, and so on.
The hypocrisy in attitudes was extraordinary.
Firstly, womens breasts are sexual objects, pretty much most of their time (unlike most mammals) they are large when not lactating, this is a biological/genetic vehicle to attract a mate, sometimes they perform the second function of feeding a child, although, often the mother choses not to breastfeed (typically a western-world decision).
As beautiful/wonderful/amazing etc. breastfeeding is one can understand that it may be difficult to forget the primary breast function.
Personally, I fully support a womans right to breastfeed in public as there is almost never any comfortable, pleasant private (public) places to breastfeed, besides if it's done modestly I can't see how anybody can complain.
I'm also a big fan of women not bearing their breasts all the time, this is purely because I like womens breasts and think that they are special, if they were to be about all the time then they would cease to be special (and let's face it, gravity is not a breasts best friend), the desexualisation of breasts would probably brings us closer to an asexual society but is that actually a good thing?
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Give me some tippex, the Bill of Rights and a pen. I can kill two birds with one stone:
"the right of the People to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed"
becomes
"the right of the People to keep and bear breasts, shall not be infringed"
All is now well in the world. God bless you, and God bless the United States of America!
@AC
"Then again, believing that your team is "best" regardless of what evidence lies before you is blind-faith in the same vein as the existence of a god."
Same goes for working-class socialist types who still vote for Labour....
Beer.. cos.. well.. working class and that.
Surely anyone who's spent a day on a topless beach can understand that you soon get over the NOVELTY (and that's all it is) of seeing breasts out in public. If men are allowed to walk around semi-naked without fear of prosecution, so should women be. It's quite simple. I'm quite happy to see a women breastfedding in public - it may be sensual but it's really not sexual in nature. Grow up, Anglophones.
Women's breasts are only sexualised because they are forced to keep them covered. In societies where this is not the case then toplessness is not seen as immoral or sexual.
The primary role of mammery glands is to feed babies, and women should be free to do that wherever it is necessary, not hidden away in a dingy back-room.
Whether or not a woman bares her chest where a man is free to do so, should be her decision only. A French beach is an example of this choice, and depending on the beach, from 5% to 60% (empirical) of women exercise this choice.
This should not be dictated by (male) lawmakers.
The problem is that it still remains illegal for me as a man to look at said naked breasts without being accused of sexual harassment. Therefore if everyone wandered around topless it would cause hundreds of thousands of injuries as blokes attempt to find somewhere else to look whilst driving, cycling, walking, etc.
As a serious point though, you can't have this kind of law without equality in the other surrounding laws. If it is an offense to stare at parts of a person, then those parts should be covered up in public.
Agreed. I'm all for seeing, fondling, filming, and properly using one's mamms. Puritanical panic certainly seems to be the brick wall here (or more like a sticky, rubbery wall)... I also agree that just because I like them does not mean they have to be front-and-center all the time. But I think that's moot, because many women won't do that anyway, and all these folks are complaining about is the _right_ to do this, not a mandate for a state-controlled Happy-Booby-Hour every day. What I don't get is the whole cult angle. Well, I should rephrase... it makes perfect sense for a spaceman cult to recruit its less discerning members with promises of boobies. But if they really cared, they'd know that the puritanical public perception confronting them isn't exactly going to be swayed by this:
"Who can participate? We welcome everyone! GoTopless was founded by the Raelian Movement, which recognizes that life on Earth was created by advanced extraterrestrial scientists. These scientists, both male and female, used their mastery of genetic engineering to create humans in their own image (breasts included!). GoTopless includes thousands of women and men, who have a wide variety of beliefs, affiliations, etc..."
If they were serious, they'd hook us up with some of these hot-breasted "scientists", durn it.
>Sumo wrestlers learn to tuck them up out of harms way.
No, they don't . It's just another urban myth and was invented by Ian Fleming in the James Bond book "You only live twice."
Next you'll be telling us that NASA wasted million designing a space pen whilst the Russian used pencils and that a duck's quack does not echo.
...characterises a child feeding at its mother's breast as a sexual act? Says far more about the twisted psyche of the accuser than it does of any alleged moral deficiencies of the accused.
Given the USA's apparent breast-phobia, I now understand why Ghadaffi employs a troop of female bodyguards. 'Oh my lord! Cover your eyes men - nekkid ladies at 12 o'clock.'
"if you deport all the Puritans and leave them for a few hundred years. The US."
Says the man probably being watched by half a dozen "security" cameras, who can't take a snapshot of a bus without being accosted by the rozzers.
"i thought it was well known that the main difference between the uk and the us was that over here violence is considered to be worse than nudity & it's vice-versa in merkland."
And yet there was "The Sweeny", "Spooks", "The Long Good Friday"...
Speaking as one who lived through the 60s and 70s in the hallowed land of the violence-free breast-a-palooza that is fondly remembered by some here, I have to ask: "What in Azathoth's name are you smoking?"
Violence was and is just as revered in the UK in the visual arts and in real life as it is here in NY. We just have fewer bare tits on display in the newspapers is all. No broacast TV show here has yet depicted anyone having their face deep fried other than the one brought over from...the UK.
Hell, even The Young Ones featured wholesale gobs of extreme violence, and a total of zero topless females. To hear you lot talk you'd think Benny Hill was still on the box seven days a week.
The more prudish a person is, the dirtier their mind and the more they think about sex. The prudes are in effect projecting their own distorted attitudes onto the population at large.
Normal, well-adjusted people don't give a naked person a second thought: we've all seen naked bodies of both men and women, and as the old saying has it, seen one, seen 'em all.
I live in upstate NY, and when it was first passed you saw a lot more women going topless just because they could. It slowed down after a few years, but it's not that uncommon to see sun bathers go topless or a few women to go topless at the music events they throw constantly where I live (sometimes 3-4 a week in the summer.)
"..this is a biological/genetic vehicle to attract a mate.."
Interesting assertion here. Surely if breasts were important in attracting mates then there would be a dominant breast size, which one would assume to be large but not too stupidly large?
However a quick walk outside on a nice day suggests that there is a huge disparity in breast size which suggests that this is not the case.
RE: "Young Women demanding to go topless in public?"
I fear you miss the point somewhat. This is not about women demanding to go topless in public as much as it is women demanding the same toplessness rights as men.
Dawn French and Maggie Thatcher are both (technically) women.
Think very carefully before you back this one.
It's a shame that a cause that might have recruited every right minded IT bod in the UK (Plus every wanabe tard who defiles el-reg.) to women's lib, should be tainted by involvement of the raeliens.
should make everyone's flesh crawl. It's about as egregious an example as you could ask for of the evil, prurient drivel which now routinely pours out of the degenerate, brain-dead petty bureaucracy which has somehow gained power over the western world. Things aren't going to get any better until the last of these specimens are thrown out.
I salute our bare-breasted sisters, and wish them a good - and successful - day.
Er ... what /is/ the IT angle? ...
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