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.
To answer your question, it could be legal grey area because not all pictures depicting nudity are automatically considered pornographic, if you are speaking in terms of legal precedent regarding obscenity in the US.
To further muddy the issue, photographing other peoples kids is considered creepy by nearly everyone but it isn’t expressly illegal unless certain localities have specific statutes against it. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in public places, so you have the potential situation where people are doing a presumptively legal activity in a public area where photographing that activity could be illegal depending on… intent?
Further, the courts have ruled that getting naked in public in the act of protesting something is part of protected speech. Presumably that applies to people of all ages and sexes as well but I doubt it has ever been tested.
Comments like this are why I left reddit. This is a completely hinged and totally reasonable thought process that calls in a question, a lot of facets of the issue and ways them against each other appropriately. Maybe something more crazy would spark a bunch more replies but I totally like that Lemmy is a place that just lets people be normal.
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.
I feel like the simple solution is that if you can’t have topless kids because of pervs, then you can’t have topless kids and gender isn’t part of it
To answer your question, it could be legal grey area because not all pictures depicting nudity are automatically considered pornographic, if you are speaking in terms of legal precedent regarding obscenity in the US.
To further muddy the issue, photographing other peoples kids is considered creepy by nearly everyone but it isn’t expressly illegal unless certain localities have specific statutes against it. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in public places, so you have the potential situation where people are doing a presumptively legal activity in a public area where photographing that activity could be illegal depending on… intent?
Further, the courts have ruled that getting naked in public in the act of protesting something is part of protected speech. Presumably that applies to people of all ages and sexes as well but I doubt it has ever been tested.
Comments like this are why I left reddit. This is a completely hinged and totally reasonable thought process that calls in a question, a lot of facets of the issue and ways them against each other appropriately. Maybe something more crazy would spark a bunch more replies but I totally like that Lemmy is a place that just lets people be normal.