Organizers with the cheekily named “Equalititty” and GoTopless groups walked about with a simple proposition: In 2024, there isn’t a particularly good reason to bar women from taking their shirts off entirely in the summer heat wherever men are allowed to do the same.
Teach them not to stare.
It’s pretty easy.
Sure it’s easy until you deal with the fallout. If you legalize it you have acknowledged that a woman’s breasts are not sexual. There is no recourse. The reason this is a tough subject is legally we are saying a woman’s breasts are no different from a man’s and that is a costly statement. Equal? Yes. But it opens a lot of doors and some of them are unquestionably undesirable.
No, you literally do not have to do that. You can legalize toplessness and every other aspect of every other law would remain the same.
Your argument essentially means that a person staring at a woman’s leg constantly could not constitute harassment, and that simply isn’t true.
You nailed it. I don’t understand the argument of “being legally topless = not sexual”, because who in their right mind would be saying that? They are just saying “If men can do it, so can women”. Rational people don’t bat an eye when they see a woman breastfeeding in public, because it isn’t sexual. And this isn’t any different. Hell, if any hint of sexuality in public caused uncontrollable, orgiastic behavior, then a whole bunch of the advertising in our country would have men unable to function on a daily basis.
Women should be as free as men to display themselves however they like. The other path, taken to the extreme, leads to your society’s women wearing sheets over their entire body when they go out in public.
This is making a bad faith argument. Nobody, including myself, is disagreeing that there shouldn’t be equality in this space… the statement being made is that legalizing it has side effects IN ADDITION TO the desired result. Some women want the freedom to bare their chest in public. I cannot think of any women that would want to lose protections from being objectified and abused. This is the point I was making. It’s not fair… but I understand why many parties have concerns about it.
In what bizzaro world would this ever result in a successful complaint? This is the point I am making. There is a difference in body parts and expressing intent.
I’m not saying it’s not wrong. It can be. I’m saying it’s not easily actionable which leads to abuse.
Legally, you do. You may not like it but that’s how it works. The law is about precedent and interpretation.
This is the road that will be traveled first:
What needs to be covered up? Why does it need to be covered up? Naughty bits. There was a time when a woman’s bare leg was sexual and staring at it was, of course, a deviant behavior. Now? Legs for days. Can you take someone to court for looking at your legs? Sure. Will it have a good chance of success? No. What changed? The level of sexuality attached to legs. Extrapolate from here.
My argument isn’t about how it should be. People should be decent. They often aren’t. My statement is about the legal implications of the decision. Breasts either remain sexual which means all naughty bits are on the table or… they aren’t and are legally no different than any other nonsexual thing.
I’m an attorney, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
This isn’t how sexual harassment is determined at all. Nothing you’ve said has any connection to reality.
YES! If you’re in a workplace and that behavior is happening and it consistent, it is a hostile work environment. It would be no different if the unwanted attention was on a leg, an arm, or a breast.
Enlighten me. Dave had someone staring at his chest all meeting. He wants to make a case. Play that out.
I said this much.
That case would end before it reached a courtroom. It would be insanely difficult to prove intent if we are talking about a back, arm, leg, non sexual part of the body, etc.