POLL: Gender related opression

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Apart from the beach, I agree. I don't like topless guys in seaside towns in the summer, either, even though I tolerate shirtless women if their swimsuit tops aren't too skimpy... so I guess I'm simply not a fan of hairy chests.

And I really hate it when people remove shirts at parties. But this is a digression.

 

I obviously don't think that. The thing is, the only purpose breasts serve is to provide milk for a child. Any fixation we may have on them is purely cultural. In other words, I disagree with the assertion that breasts are sexual organs.

 

Are hairy-chested women a big problem there?

 

I would not say this necessarily gender-based oppression. Compare it to the practice of "lotus foot" in the far east (I can't quite remember what country exactly).
This was painful, permanently damaging and based purely on aesthetics, regardless of how the woman feels on the matter.
However, I believe you would probably find that many women who are not exhibitionists would rather walk around with upper clothing on than not, and is more a matter of comfort than having it forced on you.
Consider the sports bra.
I find public nudity in a non-beach situation rather tasteless regardless of gender, but that's probably because my torso looks like a toast-rack.

EDIT: Oh yeah, and if you find public nudity of any kind unnerving, I'm telling you now to never go to a beach in Portugal.

 

Not gender related opression. Men as far as I know would be quite fine to see women walking around topless, it's the women who would vote to make it law Can you opress yourselves?

 

Abomination: Assuming a unanimous 'no' vote - that wouldn't be oppression. But it's quite possible for the majority of women who vote against to oppress the minority of women who have no problem with being shirtless...

 

@Abomination: It's true that laws shouldn't be made without the vote of (the representatives of) whom they concern. But it's also true that laws don't only concern the immediate addressees. Indecent exposure laws aren't made by exhibitionists, property laws aren't made by thieves, murder laws by murderers, copyright laws by warez server admins. Right?

 

Actually they often are chev. Thieves recieve the protection of the law, protecting them from theft. Democratic societies choose what laws they wish to be governed by, by electing representatives who in turn will change legislation.

I don't think many men would complain about seeing titties in public, it is usually women who would be more conservative in this manner and wish to protect their younglings from being exposed to such displays. Sure, there will be some men who would be opposed to women showing their hoo-has in public based on religious grounds and they're entitled to vote that way. Personally, I don't care if a girl walks around topless, I'm not offended in any way, shape or form.

But I'm with Tal on this one anyway. Someone, somewhere at sometime decided that breats... or to be more specific: nipples, are sexual in nature. I don't know why, maybe it's because they make men happy in their pants. So it's illegal to show them in public (I think).

 

What Drew says is technically correct - from an anatomical standpoint, breasts are not sexual organs. You do not need breasts to reproduce. However, breasts are a sign of fertility, and thus, many men are attracted to women with large breasts because it suggests (albeit usually subconsciously to the man) that she is quite fertile. So while breasts are not sexual organs, they do cause sexual arousal in men. And it's not just breasts either - the same goes for hips.

 

Since societies exist where women walk about bare chested all the time and men aren't constantly walking around with erections, I would argue that our fixation on women's breasts is actually a function of culture. At the turn of last century ankles were sexy, since nobody saw them. Erogenous zones are actually somewhat arbitrary.

 

@Abomination: What I mean is that thieves aren't picked as a special group to do the theft legislation. Nor are thievery victims. The interests are balanced by 1) not giving in to vengeance urges and limiting the extent of punishment under law, 2) not making theft legal, of course. Women shouldn't be the only people to decide on topless being legal or not because while they are the only people to remove swimsuit tops, they aren't the only to see the result.

And yes, single standard. Women are protected from exposure by men, as well. It just happens that in our biology, female chests are different from male and, in our culture, this difference is relevant in modesty, as men react to female chests differently from the way women react to male chests. The difference may be smaller than it used to be believed, but it isn't entirely a matter of a patriarchal, one-sided view.

I tend to agree.

In judeohristian tradition, there's no problem with nudity per se, except stripping people naked to humiliate them. That's wrong. Lustful staring and/or provoking it is bad, but the NT devotes more space to excessive flashiness of clothing than to nudity. And there's no opposition to male doctors with female patients or the other way round. Skinny dipping or showering with the same gender isn't normally frowned up and there are families where members of different genders get to see each other partially or fully naked and no one makes a drama of it. The real problem isn't some imagined, magical special meaning of nudity, but the sexual or humiliating connotations.

There's a difference between having a nude painting on the wall and having XXX magazine posters everywhere. Same way, there's a difference between innocent disrobing for some swimming, and strutting your stuff in a g-string and no top.

Incidentally, the topless thong scenario is humiliating and it's often linked with visions of submissive oral sex. It's objectifying.

@Drew:

That actually explains all. There are such societies but ours is not one. To change that, one would have to change people's mentality, not the law of the land.

This said, I don't care if women wear their tops or not. I just don't want to feel trolling vibes everywhere, there's already enough of cheap sexual depictions everywhere around, and I have lots of beef with the inconsistency between pretending to be a buttoned up saint most of the time and turning into a vamp on the beach, using the excuse that it isn't sexual. It's like putting up a giant cleavage and calling people pervs for looking.

So long as they are either innocent and natural (i.e. just doing it without all the deliberation which suggests you have a problem with what you are doing, that you're making a statement etc), or civilised and reasonable about it (not making infantile statements, not playing infantile games with people who get to see it, behaving themselves, not trolling for attention), they can walk around naked, if they want. It's more natural than swimsuits are, anyway. It's just making infantile statements and the mentality that makes people force themselves to do stupid things just to show they have the right to, which makes swimsuits necessary.

 

there are/where societies where women are completely naked (early aboriginals where this way, some South American tribes as well) and the men weren't sexual fixated on women's genitalia. Excessive stimuli leads normalization of the stimuli and the body becomes less responsive (to the point where only a sex act is going to lead to arrousal).

Lips, breasts and hips are generally the three most important features in choosing a mate in a purely naturalistic sense. Large breasts where signs that a woman had the fatty reserves to produce breast milk, while "womanly" hips where desirable because they make it more likely there would not be complications with birthing and that the child would have a mother (no breast milk in a natural setting equates to a very large problem). With the movement of the female genitalia as we has humans began to stand up right, required a new way to show a woman was aroused as her genitals where no longer in plan view for males to see, hence that is why humans have such large lips (compared to other primates), it is representitive for females.

The school of social thought I've heard give an explination to the social morals in present day society stems from ancient, heavily patriarchical societies (like Asyria, the Hittites, etc...). The ruling men seeked to control the sexuality of lesser males, hence allowing the rulers to have the women they wanted without the women being "spoiled" by other men as the rulers didn't have the time to deal with raising the child of another man. The patriarchs would cover up the parts of their women which men used to decide the appeal of a woman to make it less likely that a lesser male would breed with one of the patriarch's women.

 

Am I the only one who thinks that it's really funny that so far only one woman has posted only once?

Sorry, just a thought.

 

Sexual is related with sex. Sex is not insertion alone but also the other parts of the act, perhaps also some things which lead to the act. Whatever causes arousal is related to sex. Intentiously causing arousal (and exposing body to arouse the other gender falls here) is a sexual act. The degree of it varies, as does the intensity of exposure.

One more thing, Abomination. It's not just nipples. Or rather the exposure of nipples. A coin-sized bra cup doesn't really change much, while nipples stiff from cold on a girl's sweater won't really make a civilised guy think of sex (and it takes a big to complain as if it were here fault). Humongous cleavages serve a sexual function but they rarely actually show nipples. Most often there's a minimalistic bra underneath that covers the nipples.

If there's so much trolling in such a relatively casual and simple matter as cleavage (when it's being made big, eye-catching etc), how come getting rid of the top altogether could really be so innocent, asexual and intended solely for comfort? I'm sure it is for some women. But definitely not the majority. And not the majority of those topless ones, either.

Eh, skinny dipping in mixed company actually looks quite innocent compared to what people do with their clothes to get attention.

 

@ Rally: Good call, and one that the male SPers probably wouldn't have thought of.

There's certainly an expectation that people will generally walk around fully clothed in public, as long as circumstances don't dictate otherwise (eg: swimming, breastfeeding).

Unless it's acted upon by means of an indecent exposure law, then I don't think it's discriminatory. I can't imagine too many restaurants, retail outlets or places other than strip clubs would admit or tolerate a topless man or woman. I think topless men would be considered less scandalous, though.

To a point, everything in social etiquette is discriminatory, although adopting that attitude really achieves nothing. Hell, I'm expected to show up to work clean shaven, in a suit and with a tie, every single day - is that not discriminatory, when the female staff are not expected to conform to the same standards? I'd hardly call myself a victim of discrimination - and I think that the sort of person who would is just looking for something to complain about and feel unjustly treated for. T2's list sounds about right to me.

Personally, I'd be surprised to see a woman walking down the street topless - but I wouldn't do anything about it, because it's her decision and I don't see how it would affect me. I'd be in the same basket as Chev and Merlanni in my appraisals - I'd think the person an exhibitionist (if they weren't on the beach, although Australia has few nude beaches) and ignore them.

It has been my experience, though, that the average male who walks around topless in Melbourne should preferably be swathed in bolts of opaque cloth. It is seldom the least bit attractive to look at (beer guts will do that).

I think the jury's still out on that one, Abom...

 

You can't oppress yourself. That is, the physical person that is you. No one should be able to determine what is right for you to do to yourself, so long as it doesn't hurt anyone else. But if by "yourself" you mean a group oppressing itself, then the answer is yes, because certain members/factions of the group can bully, pressure, or outvote other members/factions of the group into submission. Thus, if all women in, say, the U.S.A. were given a ballot and asked to vote on whether or not to be allowed to go topless in public, and they voted NO, it is possible that that group (U.S. women) are oppressing themselves (a.k.a. the rest of the group).
Now the whole topless women issue is a bit tricky. I think that there should be no law forbidding it. Laws should not enforce social custom. Now of course, if a social custom is derogatory to society, then the society should be able to forbid that custom. For example, I think it is a good thing the law prohibits human sacrafice, because that is harmful to those who don't believe the custom to be in the right. However, Women going topless is not derogatory. Some people might think it indignant, and even offensive, but tough. Some people think rap is offensive, so should it be banned? Perhaps women going topless would be so offensive (and mabye distracting to males) that it interferes with society and causes too much upror. In that case, banning women going topless would be self-preservation on society's part, not oppression. But as things stand now, I don't think giving women the OPTION of going topless is too harmless, considering that most would still remain clothed anyways.

 

I really like it when my wife stimulates my nipples. I guess I should keep them covered, then.

 

What about men? Women show it but men get to see it. No vote? Should then men be entitled to walk around with hairy butts as they damn well please if they vote so?

The custom is to cover up, not to walk around naked. Or topless.

What if only willing subjects were to be sacrificed? It doesn't work like that.

Some people think public belching, farting and puking is offensive, so tough? Shall we make it good now?

Erm. Laws requiring that kind of nudity would be quite extreme. From what I know, only sick dickheads in the police and education make people do it when looking for a couple of stolen backs or having a bunch of teen girls do obligatory check-up at school and inviting a male doctor to the party.

I agree on the principle that there's nothing wrong with nudity on its own, i.e. independently from perception, though.

 

I have a thought. How many of you guys would still support the law with the realization that most of the women going around topless would be the 5'4", 250 lb clearly obese types that dominate American society today?