Stripping For The Wolf Whistles
This story is interesting — an Israeli woman in New Zealand took offense at the wolf whistles from some construction workers, so she shut them up by stripping off all her clothes before going about her business at an ATM machine.
The interesting part is that she’s the one who got a trip to the police station. Apparently in New Zealand, harassing women on the street is considered normal and acceptable by the cops, but being naked is not:
“She was taken back to the police station and spoken to and told that was inappropriate (behavior) in New Zealand,â€? Police Sgt. Peter Masters said.
I’m not slamming New Zealand here; I can easily imagine this same reaction in many a U.S. town. But it does seem a touch old-fashioned, no?
Story via Naked Protesters.
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“Apparently in New Zealand, harassing women on the street is considered normal and acceptable by the cops”
As an expat Kiwi, I can definitely say female (in particular) harassment in the streets is not common place.
I have a feeling in this instance there’s a lot more to the story none of us are seeing. I wouldn’t think most peoples reactions to a wolf whistle would be to strip naked in a public place when fairly much the world over there are public decency laws.
That’s not to say verbal heckling is justified, just that this was a very unusual reaction to it.
Unfortunately it seems that the woman had more troubles than just wolf-whistles, she’s recently been admitted to a mental health institute for burning a bartender’s face with a cigarette: http://www.news....html
It seems less surprising that she had such an odd response to the men now.
Further, it’s nice to see a balanced approach to this story here, far better than using it as a tenuous link to brainless, misguided and vitriolic feminist rants as done here at a supposedly reputable paper: http://commenti....html
I don’t see what’s so wrong with wolf-whistles, a little uncouth, perhaps, but they’re a sign that you’re found attractive, and what’s wrong with that?
Obviously the only way to get people past this is by having more naked women use ATM’s until it’s as commonplace as the harassment.
Blacksilk, “what’s wrong with that” is that many women already experience the world through a lense of fear, fear that their personal boundaries will not be respected by the men they encounter. Men shouting and whistling about their sexual characteristics kinda tends to reinforce that fear, making it, at best, a horribly uncivilized behavior.
How would you feel about a man who enjoyed putting on a ski mask and walking through dark streets with a coil of rope in one hand, and a roll of duct tape in the other, because he enjoyed watching women become frightened and run away after seeing him? It’s extreme, but analogous.
Anne, I’d say the reaction was pretty obviously unusual, for it to make the newspaper and get mentioned here. My point is that the reaction drew a police response, while the stimulus did not. Female nudity, apparently, was seen by those cops as more threatening to the social order than public harassment of women.
The whole concept makes for an interesting conundrum, don’t it? Despite what Cath Elliott, the crazed and (it IS relevant!) not particularly attractive feminist Blacksilk referred to, had to say, a lot of women do appreciate compliments of some kind on their looks. As do blokes, like me. If I notice a woman looking at me, I tend to walk a bit taller, maybe throw my shoulders back a touch, give my long hair a bit of a shake.
Having worked as a gardener for several years, I’ve often seen women give their walk just that little more sass when they’ve known that they’re been looked at appreciatively. Last Friday, while transplanting a tree near a shopping strip, one woman’s walk went from an angry kinda stride to a beautifully seductive hipshaking stroll once she noticed three men taking furtive (or not so furtive) glances at her.
That said, I’ve never wolf-whistled, well, not since I was 16. I have been known to accidentally sound the horn on my motorbike when I ride past a healthy female jogger. That button is only millimetres from the indicator switch, honest! It’s all about context. Most women I’ve known appreciate a look, maybe a charming smile. I can’t remember a single one who appreciated a wolf whistle, maybe because they tend to come exclusively from beer-gutted construction workers and the like.
When I was 18 I was walking home from an innercity rock and roll gig down Oxford St, then the gayest street in Sydney, kitted out in my leather jacket, boots, tight (ouch!)black jeans and glittery scarf. Strolling past a notable gay pub, a moustachioed leatherman walked out as I passed and gave me this horrible LEER! In one flashing moment, I realised what women have to put up with on a daily basis. This was 1984, so it was a bit of a different world then, but allasame…
We all like to be appreciated, whether for our looks, our brains or our achievements. The difference is, I guess, that we don’t always like being objectified.
I don’t know *any* women who see the world through ‘a lense of fear’, or even unease (with the exception of the couple I know with mental illnesses, naturally, but that’s hardly relevant here). Even when I lived in France, where men tend to be a sight more leery than Britain, we all felt safe enough.
Men aren’t some kind of enemy that we all worry about getting ambushed by, I’m as likely to be frightened by a rowdy woman as I am a rowdy man.
I personally would take whistling as a compliment, a sign that I’ve been found attractive. And who doesn’t, apart from very insecure people, like being considered attractive? I’ll admit its hardly the most refined way to signal this fact, but then you’ll find that it tends to be the unrefined men only who do it.
Actually, scrap that, because I know damn well its not just the unrefined men, its the unrefined women too. Or didn’t you know that women have been known to hoot and whistle at an attractive man?
As for your ski mask example its not at all similar, a mere whistle has, since we’re all aware of how they work, no connotations of violence like your extreme example. Further I’ve no idea who your example reflects the appreciation of a good-looking body that comes with the whistling.
Also I wouldn’t feel too worried on meeting that man, he won’t be able to do much to me with his hands full :P
Growing up in NZ to the age of 30, I was wolf-whistled at exactly once. I wonder how many Americans could say the same?
Being as she was described as “not unattractive”, I was disappointed to not find an accompanying mug-shot…
The police quite possibly DID tell the workmen to knock it off – I once had NZ police officers stop their strolling and ask a group of guys who’d been staring and whistling at me to stop because it wasn’t respectful, and how would they like it if somebody much bigger than them did the same, etc.
But guys getting told off by cops is hardly news compared to people getting naked at ATMs, eh?
And I agree with Veinglory – it’s really just not very common for NZ guys to yell stuff out and whistle and whatnot, like you read about in the comments on Feministing. I’m sure there are reasons galore for it but this comment is already way too long!
Bacchus wrote:
“Female nudity, apparently, was seen by those cops as more threatening to the social order than public harassment of women.”
That would be because public nudity (I’ll drop the superfluous reference to gender) *is* a greater breach of the public order than the mild harassment (compared to how bad harassment can get). Sure, the cops should have done something about the builders and it should have been reported to their employer, but the women should have been arrested. The police seem to have done the right thing in this situation.
The only error made seems to be that, despite such behaviour being indicative of mental instability, they didn’t detect anything (assuming, from principle of charity, that they submitted her to psychiatric tests for the nudity) until she went and caused bodily harm to another human being. That’s the worse element of all this.
“Public nudity *is* a greater breach of the public order…”
The belief that our natural state is a breach of public order of any kind is a very sad commentary on American culture.
I’m with Aphrodite on this one.
“The belief that our natural state is a breach of public order of any kind is a very sad commentary on American culture.”
“I’m with Aphrodite on this one.”
As an academic, these aren’t the most engaging responses I’ve ever encountered, but I’ll humour them for argument’s sake.
First, American culture? We’re discussing an Israeli in New Zealand and I’m Welsh, not American. American culture has plenty to be battered for (after all, it produced Hip Hop music), but its concepts of public decency are not one of them (at least not in one aspect where it pretty much agrees with most other societies in the world).
Second, our natural state as a breach of the public order? Why yes, it is, in this case. Why is that sad that we only allow some natural things to be performing in private spaces? It’s not immoral per se, but it does breach decency customs (of most societies, leave poor America alone) and not respecting decency customs, all else being equal, surely is immoral.
There’s that “all else being equal” in there, though, so there are the cases where one has to resist cultural decency customs that are themselves immoral, but unless you are willing to argue some hard line Natural Law theory of ethics or argue from something like Mill’s harm principle that harm only extends to the physical, I can’t see how you would argue that any of the various cultures which have developed nudity taboos are doing something immoral by doing so.
Given that the incident is from New Zealand and Fractal is British I wonder where either of you got the reference to American culture from, especially as public nudity is gainst the law in many countries, not just America.
Fractal is Welsh. :P
Sorry, I didn’t see the news story and assumed it happened in the USA. But I still think that public nudity laws are stupid no matter where they apply. My older sister nearly got arrested for discreetly breastfeeding her daughter in public, and that’s just wrong.
As an academic, these aren’t the most engaging responses I’ve ever encountered, but I’ll humour them for argument’s sake.
Thank you soooo much.[/sarcasm] Bacchus, let’s get a couple of those mail-order doctorates so we can be academics too, mkay?
LOL, Aphrodite, I was going to ignore that particular bit of snarky condescension. ErosBlog aspires so hard to conduct all discussions at the most rigorous academic level, after all!
What’s most funny to me is the blithe assertion that puritanical American nudity taboos are common to “most other societies in the world.” There’s an academic (and breath-takingly wrong) over-generalization for you! Somebody needs to spend a summer in the Mediterranean and then write a 500-word essay.
“mail-order doctorates”
[sarcasm]Yes, I’ve seen that the Ivy League is full of them.[/sarcasm] My problem with your statement was it was just that, an ethical statement with nothing to back it up or defend it, like a conclusion with no premises.
“My older sister nearly got arrested for discreetly breastfeeding her daughter in public, and that’s just wrong.”
Fine, you’ll have no argument from me there and, if that is a problem in the States, it’s something to be criticised (though I imagine it’s more to do with individual states). However, there is no real reason to equate it to full nudity in public. Largely, because it is the case that most people wouldn’t want to see the latter and breast-feeding has an important functional aspect. You could argue that we’re supposed to be mentally mature enough to resist offence at something which doesn’t physically harm us (a Millian line), but then that equally applies to the woman as regards the whistling.
It goes deeper than the Millian point, any attempt to defend public nudity on the basis of freedom of expression is going to end up equally defending the original act of whistling. I can’t say I’m interested in defending public nudity taboos on anything other than pragmatic grounds (certainly not on ethical ones, I wouldn’t condemn a society lacking such taboos), but there seems to be no dichotomy between condemning the original whistling (as Bacchus has done, I assume he is the poster of this blog) and condemning public nudity laws; at least, not if the moral basis is freedom of expression.
Ultimately, it is a breach of public order and that is an empirical claim. If one wished to test this, one only needs to go in a public space naked. The fact that it is sad that people are arrested for public nudity is not and needs defending if it is to be claimed at all.
Aphrodite, you can of course do as you will in this thread, but I’ve never had any plan to engage with Fractal’s arguments.
I think speaking dismissively about the “mild harassment” of women identified Fractal pretty conclusively with the backward police attitudes I was attacking. Which is pretty much all I can say consistent with the tone of civility I strive for here at ErosBlog.
I’m having great difficulty believing that these constructiion workers felt threatened, or were otherwise harmed, by seeing this woman in her birthday suit.
I would imagine therefore, that as the original victim, this woman felt victimized a SECOND time by the police, and therefore had “just one nerve left” as they say, by the time she walked into that bar, and apparently, the bartender must have somehow “got on it”, and THAT’S why she “went postal”.
I see her nudity at the very most a victimless “crime”, and therefore I see her arrest as totally unnecessary.
I don’t care whether Bacchus dropped out of school in the second grade, and self-educated himself, or whether he’s a Harvard grad. Either way he’s brilliant and quite learned, his logic is regularly nearly flawless, and he certainly can be as articulate as anyone who posts here, when he cares to.
I personally don’t see why either he, nor Aphrodite, needed to cough up an “academically engaging response” in this particular incidence. My guess is they both assumed readers of a sex blog weren’t too likely to be squeemish about a nude female, and would therefore (as I did), equally enjoy the absurdity of the entire incident, without any further detailed explanations being necessary.
I’m not entirely sure how backwards it is to enforce the *law*, which she broke. Or for that matter to do one’s job. Fine, claim the law as being backward if you like, though I’d expect to here some reasoning backing this up, but you can hardly blame the police for the law.
Further, yes, *mild* harassment. I can think of much stronger forms of harassment (and stripping off unwanted in front of someone would also count as sexual harassment)and very few weaker ones. Wolf-whistling is, as much, if not more, to do with flirting than with harassment. Now, you can claim that the flirting was unwanted, but really how is anyone to know that without trying?
It seems to me to be attitudes like these that make women the victim, suggesting we need to be protected from the bad bad men, rather than the relatively harmless flirts of these uncouth guys.
Of course you’re free not to engage in any of Fractal’s, or my, arguments, it just seems that where we could have ended up with a healthy open debate we’ll have nothing but narrow-mindedness. It seems strange for a sex blog to shut down debate on such a topic.
“I think speaking dismissively about the “mild harassmentâ€? of women”
I never spoke dismissively of it, you are putting words into my mouth. I spoke of wolf whistling being a much milder form of harassment than many others (say, those that contain the overtones of violence like physical threats).
“Fractal pretty conclusively with the backward police attitudes I was attacking.”
I tend to associate terms like “backward police attitudes” with the sort of people who are going to insist that “9/11 was caused by the Bush administration and covered up by the Zionist-run media”. Actually, I’m a libertarian. So far my central claims have been:
a) Wolf whistling is a milder form of harassment than physical harassment and several other forms of harassment.
b) Public nudity is a greater breach of the peace, on purely pragmatic grounds.
c) Any defence of the latter on grounds of freedom of expression will ultimately allow the former.
d) Breast-feeding, however, is defensible in public on functional and ethical grounds.
Now a and b to have have also lead to:
A1) The wolf whistling should have been punished by fines or informed complaints to the employers.
B1) The police were right to take her away.
If this is the sort of response you identify as “backward police attitudes”, one shudders to think of the terms you’d apply to genuine authoritarianism, no matter how well-defended.
But let me put all this aside, since I think this is a debate I’ve effectively won, let’s look at what you’ve done on this blog. You’ve made a piece of social commentary and yet neither seek to defend it, convince others of it if they raise objections (beyond a few limp arguments) or engage with its opponents (by your own admission here). This seems totally backwards to the very reason of making social commentary in the first place. You have here stated an opinion, maybe you should put a warning on your blog that the author invites no criticism of his views and will respond (at best) with shoddy arguments or (at worst) with dismissals of being in league with authoritarianism/conservatives/. The practice of stating ones views only around the sort of people who are not going to to be critical in order to feel better about oneself and never actually have to risk intellectual engagement is an age-old tradition, but I’m afraid I have little sympathy for it.
P.S. By the way, I’ve lived in the Mediterranean and seen most of the European parts of it and yes, it was during the Summer and yes, they do have nudity taboos there too. Try walking down the streets of Athens, Rome, Madrid, Lisbon, Gibraltar, Crete Cyprus or Istanbul naked, empirical claims again.
I don’t know about New Zealand, but police in the U.S. selectively enforce laws all the time. There are games built around ridiculous old laws that are never enforced, and a cop always has a choice about how to handle a situation, especially a nonviolent one like this.
I have a few libertarian friends and I think they would view wolf-whistling as freedom of expression, not harassment. Back in the day I got whistled at and I didn’t care what the whistler’s intent was, I thought it was a very nice compliment. If the guy followed up with some talk, then it became something else, but I could just ignore it. Way too many people have forgotten how to do that.
Public nudity is a greater breach of the peace, on purely pragmatic grounds.
That is an opinion, not a fact. If it were a fact, how are nudist colonies exempt from it?
I didn’t intend to join any debate or argument, I was just expressing my opinion that nudity taboos go overboard in “civilized” society. In the U.S. it’s so bad that among my friends, some are afraid to take a bath or shower with their kids, and there are enough stories of parents getting arrested for child abuse for the cute bathtime pictures that used to be common. Taking the mystery out of what normal human bodies look like would help end a lot of sexual hangups, imo.
And while we’re talking about hangups, I have been around academics alot for some jobs and the Ivy Leaguers are always the ones preening the most. They’re the ones that look down on people like me that have a southern accent, like the way I sound automatically means I’m not as smart as them. It’s like they know they overpaid for the indoctrination-education they got, and have to feed their egos by lording it over the rest of us. They can stuff their degrees and pedigrees. We’re all just people. Don’t libertarians talk about “argument from authority” a lot?
Blacksilk, I haven’t “shut down debate” on the topic, I’ve just declined to get drawn too deeply into it myself. From the first comment, I had Fractal pegged as one of the people who thinks you can “effectively win” a debate on the internet, and was motivated to do so.
I don’t write ErosBlog, or maintain the comments, to provide a playground for people who are out to score debating points or derive mental pleasure from proving that there are people who are, ZOMG, wrong on the internets! As far as I’m concerned, life is just too short for that. I have views, sometimes I express them, if people want to discuss them in a civil and friendly way, sometimes I’ll do that. But I’ve got nothing to prove, and not enough mental energy to argue with somebody who’s just trying to “win” and who is eager to condescend whenever they think they may have scored.
Let Fractal chalk up a win on the great scoreboard of internet victories that nobody else can see. I’m not invested in that contest. I made my point. From the reaction of the regular commenters, it appears my point was comprehensible and comprehended. From there, the arguments people are making against my point are doing a better job of reinforcing my point than any arguments I could make myself. It may not be internet victory, but it suits me just fine.
“If it were a fact, how are nudist colonies exempt from it?”
Well, that’ll be cause they’re private property.
“I didn’t intend to join any debate or argument, I was just expressing my opinion…”
Heheh, well see there’s a slight problem with putting those phrases together :)
Okay, your problems with the police force in the United States may or may not be well-founded, but that isn’t part of my original argument about public nudity and harassment. My argument against Bacchus’s original claim was over what the police ought to enforce, not how they ought to or, in fact, do enforce it. I have opinions on that subject and I am willing to defend those opinions, but they bear no relevance to my original claim.
On your second point: yes, most libertarians do defend whistling as a freedom of expression and so would I, however, what I would state is that employers can insist that employees conduct themselves in a certain manner and, as such, something can be done about the builders (a similar system exists in several places in Europe). What I would also say is that a wolf-whistler isn’t automatically justified to whistle, it may still mean that person is doing something morally suspect, at least.
On your next point, yes it is an opinion and a fact. It is an opinion about an empirically testable fact. If you walk down a high street wolf-whistling at attractive passers-by, you will be shunned in most places; if you walk down it naked, you will probably be arrested. Further, nudist colonies do not constitute “public spaces” and, surely, that can be gleaned from the second word in “nudist colony”. I can be offended by someone’s nudity in a public space, while happily it allowing on, say, a nudist beach (which marks a designated bound where such taboos do not apply).
As regards the link between nudity taboos generally and the atmosphere of fear surrounding things like you mentioned, that may well be the case, but I am only concerned with public nudity. Public nudity is the specific sphere of discourse I was interested in as regards Bacchus’s original claims.
On the final paragraph, as regards Ivy Leaguers: looking down on you as regards your accent is wrong, fine. As regards the “preening”, yes, doing better at one’s chosen goal and attain a higher status in society and amongst ones peers is a good thing. I have a choice between two of the best institutions in Europe (one being Oxford) for my Ph.D. and I feel pretty good about it, because it is an achievement and represents a better career and more academic success for me by achieving that possibility. This idea of “indoctrination-education” sounds like bitterness ungrounded in the realities of institutions of higher learning.
As regards libertarianism and authority, I don’t know what you mean by “argument from authority”. The premise important to libertarians is, or should be, “question authority”, but not “reject authority for rejection’s sake”, given the importance of human rights for libertarians (consequentialist libertarians aside, as a minority) denotes an obvious authority for rights-libertarians and those in the U.S. obviously hold the U.S. Constitution in high regard as an authority on many matters.
Finally, no, we are not “just people” as you say. We are individuals with a varying level of skills and competence in a variety of different areas. Knowledge is not a democracy, I would not trust a doctor to do my plumbing or a plumber to heal an illness (all else being equal) and opinions on any subject are not just that, they are more or less well-informed and are correct or wrong in virtue of the truth or falsity of the values and facts they reflect.
This will be my last post, I feel as the force of this debate has wound down, but:
“Fractal pegged as one of the people who thinks you can ‘effectively win’ a debate on the internet”
Yes, one can, just as one can debates in any medium of discourse. The arguments and the conclusions are what are important.
“mental pleasure from proving that there are people who are, ZOMG, wrong on the internets!”
No, it’s for the ability to actually put those conflicting beliefs on the line and in doing so, have ones erroneous beliefs corrected and ones correct beliefs epistemically strengthened.
“But I’ve got nothing to prove”
Then I heartily suggest that you stop making sweeping social commentary that you are unwilling to defend based on facts that you only half-know or this will keep happening your entire life.
“I made my point”
Made as in stated clearly, yes, it was perfectly clear what you were claiming, which is why I took odds with it.
“it appears my point was comprehensible and comprehended”
That I never contended.
“are doing a better job of reinforcing my point than any arguments I could make myself”
By presenting you with a variety of epistemic problems in your stated claims that you refuse to address? In most people’s book, holding beliefs without justification doesn’t reinforce those beliefs. I believe your definition of civility seems to preclude any intellectual disagreement; okay, the response I received at first was not really defended and seemed to bring in American culture arbitrarily, but I humoured it still. The only tones I set was to tell you where your arguments were weak and structure mine analytically.
My real reason why I debate like this on the internet? The same reason I debate analytically when debating anything from mathematics to computational logic to ethics. Analytic debate is the best and surest way of arriving at the truth of the matter. Occasionally, outside academic circles, when one finds someone who believes something quite strange (like truth relativism or nihilism). Nine times out of ten, they won’t be changed, but occasionally one finds one who’s actually willing to strive to find out what is the truth of a given matter.
Now, I’m not accusing you or anyone I’ve seen here now as having strange beliefs like nihilism, just ones I took issue with. What irks me is that there are people willing to make very grand statements about an issue that they then never intend to defend. A colleague once defined this as being part of the “slackivist” age where people like the comfort of cushy moral judgements (though often held relativistically) without the effort of having to risk them, defend them or fully define them. I didn’t even believe you were that when I first posted, I just came to that conclusion. The only reason I was aware of your particular blog was the fact that my girlfriend reads it occasionally.
Ave atque Vale.
Some people seem to be saying that if a woman wants to strip all her clothes off in public, she should be allowed to.
What if she had been a guy?
I saw a naked man masturbating in the shrubbery at a beach overseas once, and when he saw me, he “pointed” his masturbation at me as I went past. Is it his right to do this? If he had been a woman, would his behaviour have been permissable? Is it a tourist’s right to take her clothes off (it must be pointed out that she was not in her home country or culture) whenever she feels like it? There are times and places for getting naked, and doing it while using an ATM on a busy public street really doesn’t seem very appropriate, no matter who or what provoked her. It was still her choice, and her decision was a very odd one.
She wasn’t charged with anything, just told it wasn’t cool and to please not do it.
I don’t see why so many people are taking issue with the NZ police’s actions – it’s hardly police brutality or sexism. They just asked somebody to stop doing something that was against the law. And for the sake of fairness, I DO think that it should be against the law! If a man had done it it would have been considered sexual harassment by some. Best to keep things simple, and have one law for all.
Not sure if anyone is still following this thread, but…
I think a wolf whistle is threatening to some women and not threatening to others. I think most women are not living in constant terror of men. We know that most men have the drive/urge to protect women, not harm them. However, I think there is a lot of confusion in the current climate.
Not using power is not the same as not having power to use. For the most part men are physically stronger than women. And aside from laws and civilized society, men could do whatever the hell they wanted with women. (Which still doesn’t mean most would want to harm them, but it only takes one. And typically the kinds of men who harm women harm them with or without laws, so really it’s all just the appearance of safety. Not actual safety. And no, I’m truly not some paranoid who thinks she’s gonna get jumped by a man any day now.)
So when a man wolf whistles, while he probably isn’t a threat, I think it does reinforce the potential threat. What can a woman do really? She can’t beat him up. That escalates a situation to potential violence against her. She can’t make him stop it. Unless she wants to shoot him, but just like stripping, that’s a pretty extreme reaction to a wolf whistle. When someone operating from the place of physical power abuses that by doing something even as innocuous as wolf whistling at a strange woman, it makes some women skittish.
But most of these men are just clueless, not bad. They don’t really know what a woman’s life is life. We may not live in constant terror but we operate with far more caution than most men. We don’t think about it. It’s just part of our day, being aware of our surroundings, not walking down dark alleys, etc. (I’m not saying men aren’t aware only that women have far more potential threats than men, and managing risk without paranoia isn’t the same as there not being any risk or greater risk for women.) Men don’t come from that world or that possible threat. Even though men can be violent against other men, there are slightly different circumstances and dynamics usually at play.
The fact that the law saw her nudity as a larger threat when she poses NO danger to the male by being nude, but they ignored what could be seen as a potential display of power from a man toward a woman who hasn’t consented to be in that situation… That’s a social problem. Because it continues the view that “women ask for it” and that women’s sexuality is the real danger to a civilized society. Her mental issues aside.
I don’t know what to do with the “what if it was male nudity” issue. I know that taboos against females showing body parts tend to be more rigorous than males. Men can’t show their penis. (Men show their ass all the time. Witness “nightmare on crack street” the next time a plumber comes to your house. Nobody calls the cops over that, even though it’s usually gross.)
Men can walk around topless. Women can’t. Even though breasts are secondary sex organs, nipples are also erogenous zones for men. The fact that women can’t show breasts, often can’t even discreetly breastfeed in public, while men can mow the lawn topless, is an issue for me. If we want to talk about sexual equality in terms of nudity laws, then really, either everyone can be topless or no one can, because there is nothing all that threatening about a female breast. I mean, hello Janet Jackson debacle. Society has some issues with women and their parts, above and beyond the issues they have with men. IMO.