TIL it’s the right of women of all ages to go topless wherever men can in the states of Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Kansas and Oklahoma, including all their cities.
I know this because at the college I worked at, a city public safety officer walked up to a young man who was sunbathing on campus thinking it was a woman, and told him to put his shirt back on or be charged with indecency or something. The school was outraged and had a shirtless demonstration march around town.
Also legal in Ontario, Canada. A woman was arrested for walking around topless in hot weather. She was finned by police but topless men in the area were not. Ontario courts eventually rulled this was discriminatory but the provincial government did not appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada so the ruling only applies in Ontario.
Equal protection clause. Any law that imposes itself on women and not men should be unconstitutional.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
I was told (but didnt confirm this) that in Barcelona you can go full nude almost everywhere and there is a naked guy on a bike that is pretty famous there (didnt get to see him fortunately?)
The prohibition on public exposure of breasts by women and girls over 10 years old is now gone from the city code as of this week.
I never thought I'd be conflicted on this, because I am absolutely of the opinion that female breasts and nipples shouldn't be treated as exclusively sexual body parts, especially since men have them too and we aren't held to that standard.
But being confronted with the idea that 10-17 year old girls can now bare their breasts in public without restraint reminds me that treating female bodies as non-sexual is great as an ethos, but it is not reflective of reality, and that this specifically could be problematic.
But how to solve it? You can't make it an 18+ only rule, or you're further entrenching the idea that female breasts are exclusively sexual and adult, but if you let teens and tweens go topless, they will be sexualized / ogled / photographed by adult men, and that's a bad precedent to set as acceptable. We usually treat photographs of underage female breasts as a form of CSAM, but can we still say that if we're treating female breasts as non-sexual? This is an interesting new line to draw, given societal attitudes on adolescent nudity.
Regretfully, I believe that the true problem is men. The reason women have to cover their breasts is because they have to protect themselves from men. I'm all for bodily liberation and the de-sexualization of female existence, but we need an overhaul on our society's attitudes towards women in general if we're going to get there. Maybe bare breasts help get us there. Maybe girls need to learn the right way how to kick a man in the balls before they go topless.
Why is it not legal everywhere that it is for men? This is ass backwards lol. I just always assumed it was more of a women saying "not gonna do that cause pervs" type thing and how overly sexualized boobs are
AFAIK anyone can go fully nude in most public spaces in Germany. It's actually kind of weirder to not allow it and carve out arbitrary exceptions if you think about it.
I feel like they might have been wise to wait for a less fucked up SCOTUS before taking this before it.
It's not a bad idea, as it's something that needs doing but it's unlikely to be passed as a federal law, and they're kind of right that it is unconstitutional.
But this is bad timing.
Edit: It might not be clear that I was referring to the three women who are avoiding to the article taking freedom of toplessness to the supreme court, where I think they're unlikely to get support with the court's current constellation. Losing the case now might make it harder to get a similar case before a more favourable constellation of the SCOTUS in the future, so it's not very strategic in that sense.
Then it was rightfully pointed out that the article was old, and they had already lost the case before the SCOTUS (in it's current constellation). So indeed bad timing.
Maybe I wasn't clear. Or maybe there's an unpopular opinion in there. Dunno. Cheers.
I have an "umm what about" regarding "of all ages."
Say a 15 year old girl decides to walk topless down main street. Is everyone on that street who has a security camera running going to be convicted of making child porn?
I don't trust the legislature to have been competent enough to edit the rest of the code to reflect that change nor do I trust the thin blue line punisher sticker crowd to pass up something they can portray as a crime.
I'm like tonr between this like one side thinks who cares if men can do it women should have the right, but you get angry religious nutjobs. On the other side you get weirdos who will just be even bigger creeps.