Breasts are not dirty. Not dirty. Not dirty, period.
In their own words: why people were celebrating International Go Topless Day on Sunday
Women and men in approximately 60 cities across the globe took part in the International Go Topless Day on Sunday.
Demonstrators in cities like New York, Paris and London took to the streets in order to break taboos around female nudity, protest against double-standards and to make it easier for women to breastfeed.
In their own words, here’s why people were willing to bare their chests in public:
We’re not protesting. We’re exercising our right to bring awareness to the subject. This is about equality. There’s no problem with men not wearing shirts at the beach. I made the drive here to take away the stigma for women.
- Emilee Hyland speaking to the Boston Globe
As long as men are allowed to be topless in public, women should have the same constitutional right. Or else, men should have to wear something to hide their chests.
- Claude “Rael” Vorilhon, founder of GoTopless.org
In our society, men and women are supposed to have equal rights. But women are commonly arrested, fined and humiliated for daring to go topless in public, a freedom men have had for decades. To protest this unconstitutional gender discrimination, GoTopless.org is holding National Go-Topless Day events in cities nationwide. Thousands of women will be baring their chests that day in the name of equal rights.
- GoTopless.org statement
It’s logical. Why can a man go outside topless and a woman can’t? We should be able to do it without anyone harassing us. It’s just meat, it’s just breast and it’s nature.
- A demonstrator in New York speaking to the Guardian
It’s absurd that someone has judged topless women as obscene, and yet topless men is considered normal in our culture. We just abhor the double standard. We are practicing our rights. We think everyone should try it — it’s a lot of fun.
- Carolyn Estes, a demonstrator in Austin, Texas, speaking to NBC
The significance is really to challenge the double-standard and to challenge this notion that there’s something morally reprehensible about women being topless when men have been able to be topless for so many years. It’s just about loving your body in whatever state it is in.
- A demonstrator in New York speaking to the Guardian
A woman’s nipple being criminalised and so hyper-sexualised make certain things like breast-feeding really difficult, especially in public … It is discrimination based on gender to tell women to cover up.
- Demonstrators speaking in New Hampshire
The main problem people have with breast-feeding is they sexualise breasts, so it offends them. If we could make them less taboo, breast-feeding would be much more acceptable in society.
- Jessica Wardell, a demonstrator in New Hampshire speaking to Reuters
To which we can only say, “HEAR HEAR”. This is a topic we have discussed on this blog before, and will again. This double standard is simple sexism, and should be done away with. Womens’ bodies are not “dirty”.
Last but not least – have a look at this photo, doing the rounds in American media. Why the f*** do you have to PIXELATE a nipple? Have Americans never been on holiday in Europe?
Don’t look too closely, the demons will get you.
Bizarre. Simply bizarre.
The human body, in all it’s wonderful and weird shapes and sizes, is beautiful. We should celebrate it.
Most of all, we shouldn’t let one half of the population do something the other half of the population isn’t allowed to.
Patriarchal bullshit. So there. Harumph.
Well, This Is What I Think 
We had thousands of years of women being property, sold into marriages that were just sex slavery…their bodies were never theirs. In early Chrianity there as a lot more equality. Somen were Deacons (one was called an apostile) and then St Augustine of Hippo came along – a famous teacher trained in rhetoric who was also FIRST a member of a Greek Gnostic faith because his supposed conversion. After his “conversion” St Augustine shoved big hunks his OLD religion (manacheism … an anti enjoyment Greek gnostic faith which blamed women for all the worlds problems)…. and so St Augustine invented the dogma of “original sin” in which …we all are doomed to hell because Adam and Eve liked having sex for fun… and it was (of course) all Eve’s fault….and SHE held the taint (hahah…sorry had to) of original sin and passed it on to her kids. Sex went form being a blessing from God to being the ultimate evil, and women were officially “to blame” for all of it. Women were not allowed into a church in the month they gave birth as they had recently imparted the “sin nature” into their child (at birth). This is still official Catholic Theology.
But hey bare breasts were not “nasty bad” for ages longer. In the middle ages we had about 400 years of much beloved style of “Extreme Décolletage”. A lot of women wore it (gowns that revealed the nipples). Women not wealthy enough to have a servant to dress them (the true style required this) unlaced their bodices to show their breasts. As for WHO would have worn this stuff : Mary of Orange, Queen Elizabeth I, Anne Sorell, Wilhelmine Encke (Countess Lichtenau), Isabella Rich, Madame Sermet , Marie-thérèse Louise de Savoie-Carignan (princess de Lamballe)…and on and
But part way through that time we get the “Council of Trent” when the church leaders got together to attack nudity. They censored the art works in the Cathedrals (no bare boobs on Eve, raint over it or they just burned it).. and then moved on to ALL public art, and then had a fixation on “public modesty” (St Augustine again). The Council of Trent was responsible for the destruction and censoring of art all over the western world (for a long time).
Can we grow up yet?
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My opinion: I don’t like seeing topless guys in public, I’d prefer to not have to be distracted by topless females on top of that. Keep those shirts on people of all genders!
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Oh, you mean a complete arse, like Donald Trump?
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Yes, he qualifies.
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