Women in New York Have the Right to Go Topless

[Drea]

According to the NYPD

Deputy Commissioner of Public Information,

Paul Browne, when questioned about the legality of women going topless in New York:

"The state's highest court established long ago that women have the same right as men to appear topless in public."

Thank you @kami for the video:


Apparently this has been legal in New York since 1992 (provided women are not using their breasts for commerce.)

I'd like to hear your opinions on this. I personally bip and beep with happiness knowing that at least some part of America is embracing this idea of equality, even if I didn't know about it until today. You learn new things all the time and I'm happy to have been enlightened. I hope that other states adapt similar policies.

For those of you who are concerned and have not watched the video or done any googling, the woman who has prompted my posting has not reported any cases of sexual harassment. I will hold off on any comments regarding my opinions on women's breasts and sexuality for the moment.

[Micky]

I don't see any problem with revealing breasts but it's not something I'd like to see in public :U
Equality is great, as long as it's not being mistreated (it's not, in this case!)

So kudos to the women there!
I have really no different opinion about this matter so yeah.

[Sirkowskii]

That...That is just so awesome.
I never knew about that and I live in New York x'D. Learn something new everyday :3.

[Toongears]

ok so i guess I'll be the voice of reason...

I mean I'm all for equality and women's rights... you know power to the women and all that. And hey, I'm a cool dude, I'm all for girls walking around topless. That is just a college boy's dream come true... but I mean let's state the obvious. If you walk around topless, you're just asking for some sexual predator, rapist, or molestor to try his luck. I mean its like putting a giant target on yourself and walking around the world like it's a big happy magical cartoony place where the sun has a big smile and the flowers are all dancing around singing songs. I think this woman is just making herself into bait for some stalker to walk around with a camera. I just hope she doesn't end up found buried in a ditch somewhere.

[Gabby]

@Drea

http://foxnewsinsider.com/2012/05/09...hot-dog-truck/

Reminds me of the similar thing.

(provided women are not using their breasts for commerce.)

My only issue with it, and this is a serious from the heart issue, is the fact it provides people with easier reasoning/motivation to rape a woman. It doesn't justify it, but it provokes a man

[Toongears]

@Gabby thats what I was saying. I totally agree.

[Drea]

ok so i guess I'll be the voice of reason...

I mean I'm all for equality and women's rights... you know power to the women and all that. And hey, I'm a cool dude, I'm all for girls walking around topless. That is just a college boy's dream come true... but I mean let's state the obvious. If you walk around topless, you're just asking for some sexual predator, rapist, or molestor to try his luck. I mean its like putting a giant target on yourself and walking around the world like it's a big happy magical cartoony place where the sun has a big smile and the flowers are all dancing around singing songs. I think this woman is just making herself into bait for some stalker to walk around with a camera. I just hope she doesn't end up found buried in a ditch somewhere.

This is where I'll make my first statement regarding the issue of sexuality: While it may be perceived as a "risk," if women's breasts weren't so oversexualized in the first place, there would not be such an issue with it. The way that American society views breasts as sexual objects is the reason why they are seen in that light; by making them more "normal" in the sense of them being natural parts of our bodies, I believe that this can be reversed and that people will become more aware of the fact that breasts do not have to be sexual.

As far as "asking for some sexual predator, rapist, or molester to try his luck," this can happen in any situation, regardless of whether or not you are topless. The majority of rapists do not rape for the sex, they rape for the power, and the women that they target are the ones that they deem to be the easiest to catch. It has little to nothing to do with their appearance, and when appearance is a concern, it is only for things such as: does she have a ponytail which I can easily grab, could she hurt me with the heels in her shoes, etc. And to make a statement to cover other forms of sexual harassment, I believe that a man would find it difficult to target a women who is confident enough to show her breasts in public. Again, it is a power issue: If a predator believes that he can have control over his victim and overpower her, or if he believes that he can "get away" with the behavior, he is likely to do it. While I will not disagree that having your breasts exposed may pose some sort of "risk," I don't think it is any different than wearing a revealing outfit. It may, in fact, be less dangerous, because it displays an amount of confidence that may correlate to confidence in other areas that would deter a sexual predator.

I won't argue that there isn't a risk to it, and I won't argue that it won't or couldn't happen, but I doubt having a woman (or several) walk around topless is going to suddenly spur sexual predators or molesters into targeting them. If it did happen it would be in the public eye which would pose even more of a deterrent.

Aside from all of that, I believe it is the woman's choice whether or not she wants to take that "risk," and that any women could take a similar risk by wearing a short skirt or a revealing top. I hope that this woman's actions help to deobjectify women's bodies so that such "risks" are actually lessened. The sooner we can understand that breasts, butts, legs, are just a body parts, not sex objects, the sooner we can openly embrace it. If no steps are taken, it will only continue.

EDIT: @Gabby , same post as above.

[Mentalist Traceur]

ok so i guess I'll be the voice of reason...

I mean I'm all for equality and women's rights... you know power to the women and all that. And hey, I'm a cool dude, I'm all for girls walking around topless. That is just a college boy's dream come true... but I mean let's state the obvious. If you walk around topless, you're just asking for some sexual predator, rapist, or molestor to try his luck. I mean its like putting a giant target on yourself and walking around the world like it's a big happy magical cartoony place where the sun has a big smile and the flowers are all dancing around singing songs. I think this woman is just making herself into bait for some stalker to walk around with a camera. I just hope she doesn't end up found buried in a ditch somewhere.

So by that reasoning, if you walk around making stupid remarks, you're just asking for some zealously anti-stupid-people zealot, vigilante, or sociopath to come and incapacitate you to the point of being incapable of making stupid remarks?

Anyone who makes a "they're asking for it" argument as if it were valid, should ask themselves: "would it be right for another person to say that I was asking for it by saying what I just said if someone flies into a fit of murderous rage at my remarks and beats me to a bloody pulp for what's coming out of my mouth right now?" No? The only difference is that one's maybe more statistically likely than the other, because rape's pretty tied to primitive hardwired impulses while anger at perceived stupidity is rarely found in people prone to anger-induced violence.

If you cannot establish a logical reason for why a right shouldn't exist, or why it's unethical to exercise it in a given situation, then exercising that right is not asking for anything, any more than you propagating a fallacious line of reasoning that countless rape/abuse/molestation victims have suffered due to and countless a-holes have used to either emotionally wound others or to justify their own repugnant actions to themselves.

[Mentalist Traceur]

Just remembered this after posting the above: I assure you there are males in college years (and high, and middle, and really all of their lives) who don't spend their time dreaming about things so... base, I guess, is the right word? Maybe it's just me, but I fantasize about things like reforming the education system to teach kids cognitive skills like universal empathy/sympathy/compassion from an early age, reforming penal systems into more ethical institutions focused on fixing people using what we know of psychology and cognitive behavior therapy, etc. ...Okay, that is just me, but I resent the supposition that every male of my age group is so shallow in what their thought processes priorize. (And in my experience even most college kids aren't that sex-focused, and for those in committed relationships, jealousy and possessiveness would likely kick in far more than the 'heh, breasts' thing.)

Furthermore, I think Drea dissected the other flaw in your premise well too: most rapists rape / molestors molest, etc, because deepseated personality predispositions cause them to care about things like harming their victims. Now, from what I recall there are four categorized types of rapists, and only one of those is about power, and if I recall correctly the majority are actually driven by an internalized anger that's directed/vented at women, and the rape is a particularly effective way of expressing that anger in a hurting/harming, etc. Honestly, all 'main' rapists aren't motivated by jack shit except their own internal feelings about women and/or people.

Which is why my argument against the 'asking for it' notion is more victim-facing. Yes, there are some rapists, who aren't in the psycholoigically-predisposed-to-rape category, and for those that argument might make a difference if they stop and think about their actions. If the endeavor to 'treat' rape-predispositions is ever undertaken by humanity, the 'asking for it' notion would probably become more of a pressing problem because then it would kick in as a reason to justify one's rape urges, but it's almost never the driving cause. The worse damage from the 'asking for it' argument is to the people who get raped/abused/molested because they either wanted to express themselves through their clothing or lack there of or, dear god, succumed to the human urge to appear attractive (attractive as defined by social norm, which currently equates to revealing clothing for women).

In the meantime, Drea, one thing about your second post in this thread: typically when people say the 'the women are asking for it' arguments, they extend that reasoning to revealing clothes too, so that example doesn't really get to the unerlying reasoning flaw of these arguments (that no one's asking for jack shit - even if they understand a risk increases due to their actions, it's still utterly irrelevant to the wrongness of what was done to them and the undeservedness of them becoming a victim to it.

[Drea]

In the meantime, Drea, one thing about your second post in this thread: typically when people say the 'the women are asking for it' arguments, they extend that reasoning to revealing clothes too, so that example doesn't really get to the unerlying reasoning flaw of these arguments (that no one's asking for jack shit - even if they understand a risk increases due to their actions, it's still utterly irrelevant to the wrongness of what was done to them and the undeservedness of them becoming a victim to it.

Of course; I wasn't going to try and initially argue any further than what I'd already brought up unless/until there was a response to the first statement. I was going to try and go "halfway," so to speak, unless I otherwise thought it was more "needed".... You basically covered anything that I'd say regarding that matter but had you not I most certainly would have chimed in eventually (provided there was a response that called for it.)

Guess I felt like just covering that one issue first and foremost, and tackling the second aspect of it later if the need arose. I'd hoped that by providing a less provocative argument (at least one that I believed to be so) I'd be less likely to alienate others; I always seem to do that here. *bip*

Having said that, I appreciate your contribution to the discussion... as I always do. I'll consider my tactfulness for future postings.