Thursday, March 12, 2020

The Breast Double Standard

In American society at large, it is not considered utterly strange to occasionally see men appear in public with no upper body clothing.  Women may find the sight sexually arousing or attractive, but men are not socially penalized simply for forgoing shirts in casual contexts.  However, the sight of a woman in public with nothing covering her upper body would widely be considered bizarre, offensive, or even inherently sexual, despite only some men finding female breasts sexually attractive in most or all cases (almost always due to social conditioning, in all probability).

The hypocritical sexism around this issue embedded in American law is not the worst instance of sexism that has been present in the American legal system (for instance, sexual assault laws have long failed male victims more than they ever did female victims), but it is one that is visible to anyone who has ever seen men jog or walk around without shirts on and thought nothing was "inappropriate."  The most foundational problem with this set of norms is that the sight of breasts of either gender is not nudity, yet everyone from the common person to members of rating boards for films and video games treat it as such in the case of women.

A woman who walks around topless is not truly naked, and thus there is no nudity present on her part.  Of course, Western culture treats female breasts as if their exposure is nudity, but if this were true, male shirtlessness would also be nudity.  That almost no one, if anyone, thinks the latter is nudity shows that this is a thoroughly sexist stance.  Since forgoing a shirt (and brassiere in the case of a woman) is in no way nudity--which is a total lack of clothing, with nothing covering the genitalia--female toplessness cannot be legitimately equated with female nudity one way or another to begin with.

Universal laws against public nudity are arbitrary (no amount of clothing is appropriate or inappropriate outside of relevance to specific tasks), unsound (one cannot argue for them without a host of fallacies), and asinine (subjective discomfort does not justify the legal prohibition of anything), but laws that permit men to appear in public without any clothing on their upper bodies while also prohibiting public exposure of female breasts are explicitly sexist towards women.  If there is no rational defense of a universal legal prohibition of public nudity, there is certainly no basis for laws that treat non-nudity as nudity only when it comes to the female body.

Women have done nothing harmful by treating their breasts like the nonsexual body parts they are, by showing them around other people without the intent to offend, or by challenging the double standard that convinces so many people to oppose female toplessness in everyday settings.  If anyone is comfortable seeing the upper body of one gender in public places but not that of the other gender, they need to abandon whatever cultural or personal ideas might be feeding their selective discomfort.  Double standards like the one in question would not survive if various people of both genders were not supportive of it.

Logic, people.  It is very fucking helpful.

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