Womens Topless March Attracts Men

The women were within the law to walk around topless. The men were within the law to look, follow (if they felt like it), and take pictures (also if they felt like it). Please note that some of the women POSED for pictures after the march. Sincerely doubt they were intimidated into it either, but hell, the part of the article header that said "without incident" should have been a big enough clue.

And just to save time...

Cy... You're a man-hating cunt. (Mikey having failed to step up and call you that as you expected on page 3.)

If Ty McDowell (organizer of the march) actually is 'aggressive' about deterring future oglers in further protests, odds are she's going to be the one arrested, not the oglers.

OH SHI-

Penguin wrote:

Mafiosa wrote:

Are you being purposefully obtuse

With that specific comment? Yes.

In seriousness: The thing is, these protestors set out to try and set up the idea of women walking around in public topless as being perfectly normal.

Well, in that place, it's not. Yet. But I don't see the behavior of the crowd (MOST of which were male, not all), as being terribly different from the way people would react to, say, demonstrators walking down the street in strange costumes. It's a bunch of people with an outlandish appearance all heading in the same direction. By its very nature it's going to attract onlookers. Then you throw in some idiots with HURR BOOBS and... yeah.

I just wanted to point out that you compared women's bodies to outlandish costumes, when you know that a dozen or so topless men wouldn't have faced the same treatment. This mindset, your mindset, is the one that they were protsesting.

Bamshalam wrote:

I just wanted to point out that you compared women's bodies to outlandish costumes, when you know that a dozen or so topless men wouldn't have faced the same treatment.

Yes, that was the point. It was an unusual mode of dress, well outside of the community's norms for personal appearance in public. It fits.

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This mindset, your mindset,

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

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is the one that they were protsesting.

This is what I have been getting at the whole goddamn time.

Personally I don't think this should stop women who want to do this sort of thing. They weren't harmed or harassed, just ogled. The only way we're going to get over the ridiculous way we react to female toplessness is to stop treating it like a spectacle.

'Just ogled'. I love it.

And you're so right, Ghost. How man-hating of me to expect men to behave like civilised people instead of boorish assholes.

And pray tell, just for the record, what would constitute 'behave like civilised people'?

Clearly, merely exercising the same rights the women did (walking where they wished to walk and taking pictures of something they found interesting) makes men boorish assholes.

As for 'man-hating', you were the one who expected to be addressed that way. I merely obliged you.

Ghost in the Machine wrote:

And pray tell, just for the record, what would constitute 'behave like civilised people'?

Clearly, merely exercising the same rights the women did (walking where they wished to walk and taking pictures of something they found interesting) makes men boorish assholes.

As for 'man-hating', you were the one who expected to be addressed that way. I merely obliged you.

Honey, you BEST be trollin'. Otherwise, shut the fuck up.

Hurf hurf hurf, shut the fuck up Ghost.
Not treating an individual, let alone a group of individuals, like objects with which respect towards does not even remotely float up to the foreground of the mind would be a fucking start.

Actually I'm playing devil's advocate. As the original article said, the protest went 'without incident'. The women broke no laws, the men broke no laws. Since it was stated that some of the women posed for photographs after the event, it is clear that they didn't feel threatened or endangered by the attention they drew.

And drawing attention is what they wanted to do. Their goal being that women will be able to walk around topless and no one will care. (And surprise, that's not going to happen the first time out the gate.) We've had the occasional topless woman down at the Statehouse in Columbus and there was one memorable occasions where a topless woman decided to play in the public fountain at one of the local malls. In none of these cases were the women arrested (they broke no laws) or harassed. The ones down at the Statehouse drew attention to their cause and the one in the fountain, well, nobody knows what her purpose was, but as far as can be discerned, she accomplished it.

Had anyone attempted to lay hands on these women, I'd be condemning it. But to merely witness and/or record an unusual event, I can't condemn anyone, male, female or other.

Oh no, how dare I note the fact that nothing illegal or actionable actually happened. This must mean I'm some sort of hideous misgynist who's struggling with every breath to keep women in the kitchen. It can't be because a whole lot of nothing actually happened here.[/b]

Spotts, help us out here. What's the precedent on reasonable expectations of privacy in the middle of the street?

gaijinguy wrote:

Spotts, help us out here. What's the precedent on reasonable expectations of privacy in the middle of the street?

Generally speaking? You have no expectation of privacy in any public place unless that public place has been specifically provided by a business or a government to ensure privacy (such as a phone booth or a public restroom).

As Justice Stewart put it: "[T]he Fourth Amendment protects people, not places. What a person knowingly exposes to the public, even in his own home or office, is not a subject of Fourth Amendment protection. But what he seeks to preserve as private, even in an area accessible to the public, may be constitutionally protected."

Nice try, gaij, but this isn't about privacy. This is about a small group of women being followed around by a much larger group of men, who either don't know or don't care how women might feel when they're followed around by a large group of men all trying to look at their tits.

Ghost, take your game of devil's advocate and shove it up your ass.

Cyberwulf, take your misplaced righteous rage and fuck yourself with it.

Before topless women can walk around without comment in the United States, it will have to become common enough to not be noteworthy. It isn't yet and all your misandrist condemnation won't make it so. There are places on this planet where these women's actions could have gotten them killed with the full backing of the local government. In Portland, all they did was get looked at. In yet other places, they'd have been pretty much ignored.

They wanted attention, they got attention. Any claims that they could not figure out the nature of that attention ahead of time must be taken with a grain of salt the approximate size of Montana.

Gohst, you're trolling.

All the other reading-challenged lot here: us man-haters (oh dear, we're being so shrill about it, too!) are not doubting the legality of anything. We are pissed off about the societal implications. WHY DO YOU NOT UNDERSTAND THIS?

Women's right to walk around topless=perfectly legal, should be treated as equally as a man walking round topless.

Men's right to leer=perfectly legal, a sign of how far we still have to go.

Women's right to be pissed off about this=perfectly justified.

WHY IS THIS SO DIFFICULT TO UNDERSTAND?

Ghost in the Machine wrote:

Cyberwulf, take your misplaced righteous rage and fuck yourself with it.

Misplaced?

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all your misandrist condemnation

Oh, do point out the misandry in my statements!

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There are places on this planet where these women's actions could have gotten them killed with the full backing of the local government.

"Shut up, bitch, and be grateful for whatever crumbs fall from your Master's table."

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Any claims that they could not figure out the nature of that attention ahead of time must be taken with a grain of salt the approximate size of Montana.

And we're once again back to the erroneous assumption that the women didn't know that this would happen. They're ANGRY that it happened, you shit-sucking syphilis rifle.

CW, I've said it before and I've said it again. ILU. Even though you're feeding the obvious troll

Ghost in the Machine wrote:

There are places on this planet where these women's actions could have gotten them killed with the full backing of the local government.

Cyberwulf wrote:

"Shut up, bitch, and be grateful for whatever crumbs fall from your Master's table."

Swing and a miss. Clearly, it is better for them to be 'merely' ogled instead of killed/raped/assaulted. It would be better yet if their topless state had been ignored completely. However, American society hasn't reached that stage yet. Comparatively, it's progress.

Ghost in the Machine wrote:

Any claims that they could not figure out the nature of that attention ahead of time must be taken with a grain of salt the approximate size of Montana.

Cyberwulf wrote:

And we're once again back to the erroneous assumption that the women didn't know that this would happen. They're ANGRY that it happened.

They are two 'angers' here. One about not being able to walk down the street topless without drawing attention and one from the results of actually walking the streets topless. I find the first understandable but the second I do not. Changing societal perception is not a simple or painless process. Omelette, broken eggs. That said, the article mentioned Ty McDowell's reaction to the event, it did not mention any of the other participants' reactions. If you have that information, please link it.

The problem is, though, that if her goal was to say that female chests should be treated as normal, as unremarkable, as unworthy of attention, as male chests -- a sentiment with which I agree -- then her entire demonstration was fundamentally ill-conceived, and blaming the men only served to further undermine it. The very purpose of holding a public demonstration and advertising it is to draw attention. In that, it succeeded but also made the activity into something unusual and noteworthy.

It would be great if our society treated female toplessness the way it treated the male equivalent, but it doesn't. Women can see men's chests just walking down the street (the women, not the chests), but even where it's legal, it's so rare to see women's bare chests that most people don't even know it's legal. Most of the time, if a man wants to see breasts (that don't belong to his wife or girlfriend, if he has one), he has to go to a place specifically created for that purpose, often some distance away, and there are both costs -- e.g., cover charges and drink minima -- and potential stigma involved. [I don't know how common it is anymore, but feminist and church groups used to publish the license plate numbers of cars parked outside strip clubs and adult bookstores to shame the patrons.] This societal attitude creates this mystique around breasts, making them seem dirty and wrong and rare and wonderful all at the same time. As I said way back on the first or second page, if you tell men who are used to that level of rarity that there will be dozens of breasts out in public, on display -- and yes, a public demonstration is a display -- free of charge and (mostly) free of stigma, then yes, they will show up.

If you want female toplessness to become unremarkable, you have to make it unremarkable, and that will take time; you can't get upset that it doesn't happen the first time out the gate. And for Pete's sake, don't bloomin' advertise that you're doing it. [Also, make sure your women are of varying ages and body types. Letting men see the effects age and gravity can have will help to demythologize breasts.]

Ghost in the Machine wrote:

They are two 'angers' here. One about not being able to walk down the street topless without drawing attention and one from the results of actually walking the streets topless. I find the first understandable but the second I do not.

I'm going to go ahead and assume you're not trolling now, despite the trollishness earlier (though deep down, I do hope you are a troll). This is clearly because you have never been made to feel like a thing because of two arbitrary balls of fat in the middle of your chest. You are not a person. You are an object, and you are nothing more than those two balls of fat in the middle of your chest. The thought of it is horrible. The experience of it is much worse. You are lucky to have never experienced this.

Ghost in the Machine wrote:

Changing societal perception is not a simple or painless process. Omelette, broken eggs.

So shut up and quit whining?

What you are saying does not follow logically. Surely, then, there is all the more need to express that anger?

ZoZo wrote:

Ghost in the Machine wrote:

They are two 'angers' here. One about not being able to walk down the street topless without drawing attention and one from the results of actually walking the streets topless. I find the first understandable but the second I do not.

I'm going to go ahead and assume you're not trolling now, despite the trollishness earlier (though deep down, I do hope you are a troll). This is clearly because you have never been made to feel like a thing because of two arbitrary balls of fat in the middle of your chest. You are not a person. You are an object, and you are nothing more than those two balls of fat in the middle of your chest. The thought of it is horrible. The experience of it is much worse. You are lucky to have never experienced this.

Internetz psychology to the rescue! (Is there a Freudcat I could post?)

gaijinguy wrote:

ZoZo wrote:

Ghost in the Machine wrote:

They are two 'angers' here. One about not being able to walk down the street topless without drawing attention and one from the results of actually walking the streets topless. I find the first understandable but the second I do not.

I'm going to go ahead and assume you're not trolling now, despite the trollishness earlier (though deep down, I do hope you are a troll). This is clearly because you have never been made to feel like a thing because of two arbitrary balls of fat in the middle of your chest. You are not a person. You are an object, and you are nothing more than those two balls of fat in the middle of your chest. The thought of it is horrible. The experience of it is much worse. You are lucky to have never experienced this.

Internetz psychology to the rescue! (Is there a Freudcat I could post?)

Psychology fail, there, gaij. This has nothing to do with Freud. Actually, take this from a psychologist, this has nothing to do with psychology. This is from a sociological perspective, something which is very difficult to quantify. This is to do with an experience that you are privileged to have avoided.

The point I think is that they HAVE just pointed out a huge double standard. Men's breasts = nothing special. Women's breasts = WAHOO SEXY SHAMEFUL LOOK AT THAT ETC.

ZoZo wrote:

This is clearly because you have never been made to feel like a thing because of two arbitrary balls of fat in the middle of your chest. You are not a person. You are an animal, and you are nothing more than those two balls of fat in the middle of your chest. The thought of it is horrible. The experience of it is much worse. You are lucky to have never experienced this.

You think this way because clearly you have never been made to feel like a sexist pig merely because of a bundle of nerves and blood vessels between your legs.. You are not a person, you are an object, and you are nothing more than that bundle of nerves and blood vessels. The thought of it is horrible. The experience of it is much worse. You are lucky to have never experienced this.

^Is this an over-the-top misrepresentation of feminist criticism? Yes. But that's the point. You're making an over-the-top misrepresentation of both what happened and what Ghost and co have been saying. Nobody is saying that these men did the right thing or that it wasn't a clear picture of the double standard. We're saying that trailing the women, creepy though it is, doesn't necessarily stem from misogyny or seeing women as objects. It's not fair to assume that when it could just as easily stem from the societal double standard and the curiosity/unusualness of topless women in public. Men can be clueless idiots without being sexist asshats.

Chaltab wrote:

ZoZo wrote:

This is clearly because you have never been made to feel like a thing because of two arbitrary balls of fat in the middle of your chest. You are not a person. You are an animal, and you are nothing more than those two balls of fat in the middle of your chest. The thought of it is horrible. The experience of it is much worse. You are lucky to have never experienced this.

You think this way because clearly you have never been made to feel like a sexist pig merely because of a bundle of nerves and blood vessels between your legs.. You are not a person, you are an object, and you are nothing more than that bundle of nerves and blood vessels. The thought of it is horrible. The experience of it is much worse. You are lucky to have never experienced this.

^Is this an over-the-top misrepresentation of feminist criticism? Yes. But that's the point. You're making an over-the-top misrepresentation of both what happened and what Ghost and co have been saying. Nobody is saying that these men did the right thing or that it wasn't a clear picture of the double standard. We're saying that trailing the women, creepy though it is, doesn't necessarily stem from misogyny or seeing women as objects. It's not fair to assume that when it could just as easily stem from the societal double standard and the curiosity/unusualness of topless women in public. Men can be clueless idiots without being sexist asshats.

Failed metaphor there. I don't think men are sexist pigs. Really, I don't. Most men see women as people, rather than a disembodied, floating pair of tits. That's not to say that some men don't see women as objects. And when you get leering just for walking around, having breasts, it doesn't half make you feel like an object.

But: Has anybody ever made you feel like an object? Nothing more than a body part? If so, I'm sure you understand the anger.