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    HappyHighwaymanEllie Shechet
    4/20/16 5:41pm

    Can someone name a single non-religious rationale for why women shouldn’t be allowed to be topless?

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      LargeNZ1HappyHighwayman
      4/20/16 5:50pm

      Well I’m sure that certain guys would say to prevent rape?

      http://gawker.com/men-s-only-har...

      Us men apparently just have no impulse control and apparently rape is just one our impulses. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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      jinniHappyHighwayman
      4/20/16 5:55pm

      Yes! This also bothered me! I mean this statement from the school is fine:

      (Because of our rapidly changing culture we need to ensure respectful treatment of transgender, androgynous and people dealing with the discovery that their birth gender is not what feels right to them.)

      Except on two counts.

      1.) Because of our ‘rapidly changing culture,’ or because it is the right thing to do?

      And 2.) It implicitly agrees that women should be prohibited from topless sunbathing whereas for men, no problem.

      This is entirely fucked up. I’m a girl with a definite rack, and I remember at 18, in a local park on a warm summer day, feeling so envious of the men who without any aforethought just stripped down to their shorts. Whereas I was expected to cover in the same heat.

      This really has to stop. Are we such animals that a woman uncovered will cause the culture to absolutely collapse? That marauders would run riot?

      Topless beaches in Europe would seem to belie this premise.

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    MissCrystalEllie Shechet
    4/20/16 5:58pm

    FUCK ANDROGYNY. I don’t believe in it because everything about it is coded male. Now that I have that off my chest this is just stupid that it’s escalated to this level.

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      fortheloveofbeetsMissCrystal
      4/20/16 6:18pm

      We can talk about why androgyny often reads masculine (hint: under patriarchy, masculinity is considered the default—“neutral”—while femininity is treated as a variation on masculinity), but “fuck androgyny” is a strong take. I have a hunch that people who feel comfortable more around the middle of the gender spectrum instead of one end or the other might not appreciate your disparaging androgyny. You might be interested in reading this (excellent) article: Why Does Gender Neutral Clothing Always Mean Boy Clothes for Girls?

      ...

      Is it really that revolutionary for girls to wear pants and muted colours, no matter what the soundtrack? Why does “gender neutral” have to mean “without any traditionally feminine signifiers”?

      Because girl clothes are for girls. Boy clothes are for everyone.

      I don’t want to downplay the merits of this clothing line, or the importance of advocating for little girls who were so stoked to take their Spiderman backpacks to school this week, only to come home in tears because “Spiderman is for boys.” Not every girl feels like herself when wearing ruffled dresses or head-to-toe pink and purple, and I’m really glad those girls have some other fun choices now. Like graphic tees with quotes like “And though she be but little, she is fierce” (from every little girl’s favourite writer, William Shakespeare).

      But the same gender-role-wiggle-room is not available to their brothers. Where is Adam Lambert’s line for Gap Kids, promoted with an upbeat commercial of young boys playing with dolls and doing ballet while wearing shiny sparkly glam clothes and lipgloss while Diamond Rings serenades us all?

      If The Gap did this, I think everybody would have what my late Nan would call “a complete conniption fit.” Remember when J. Crew President Jenna Lyons appeared in a picture tickling her delighted son’s toes, whose nails she had just painted pink? It sparked a week’s worth of debates that saw actual doctors calling it “a dramatic example of the way that our culture is being encouraged to abandon all trappings of gender identity,” as if anything described as a “trapping” should not obviously be abandoned immediately.

      If gender neutral clothes are only made for and marketed to the parents of little girls, it is less a sign of gender equality and more an indication of the misogyny that is so ambient in our culture. There is such a devaluing of anything traditionally feminine that we’d rather chuck it out triumphantly than ever demean our boys with it.

      ...

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      Erik Lonnrotfortheloveofbeets
      4/20/16 6:32pm

      Ding ding ding. Since masculinity is regarded as superior to femininity, things like women wearing pants or playing hockey or whatever are seen as harmless (by most), while men or boys displaying stereotypically feminine behaviours are seen as much more problematic.

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    PsonicPsunspotEllie Shechet
    4/20/16 5:49pm

    I have a buddy on Facebook who posted something the other day along the lines of: “I just don’t get why people can’t use the bathroom that corresponds with the junk they were born with.”

    So I posted this picture and this question: “This is Janet Mock. She was born biologically male. In what weird, messed up universe would you force her to use the men’s room?!”

    I think he gets it now.

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      Sunshine is my Spirit AnimalPsonicPsunspot
      4/20/16 5:55pm

      also, imagine the conservatives and dealing with the thought of trans men sharing the bathroom with their beloved, pure, virginal daughters.

      On another note, I read this ridiculous facebook argument between a trans support community where a trans woman was flipping the fuck out about another person standing and peeing in the stall next to her who had come in “wearing a dress”

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      Manon Lescaut is good to goPsonicPsunspot
      4/20/16 6:16pm

      I don’t understand these people who go around staring at strangers in public bathrooms to the degree that they might be able to identify that their junk doesn’t align with the symbol on the door.

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    mollymlf05Ellie Shechet
    4/20/16 5:45pm

    The harassment is obviously terrible, but I think the worst part about this is that topless sunbathing is LEGAL in New York. It is literally fundamental to these officers’ jobs to know the law, but why should a pesky thing like that distract a law enforcement officer from bugging citizens?

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      whskygirlmollymlf05
      4/20/16 6:02pm

      Yeah, that’s what got me too. It literally makes no difference under the law what gender the person was. It’s legal either way. I could kind of sympathize with the officers if the law said women cannot be topless, and maybe they truly have a difficult time determining whether the law is applicable to that person, but that was not the situation here. Also, another reason why it should not be illegal for women to be topless. Apparently it’s too damn hard for people to figure out how to apply such a law anyway.

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      RainbowFritemollymlf05
      4/20/16 6:26pm

      Couldn’t they be... I don’t know, protecting people? Like that young girl who was actually being gang raped in that park? Honestly, it’s so fucking disappointing when you notice how often police choose to occupy themselves doing easy things that benefit no one as opposed to protecting and serving their people. If you wanted to do something easy 100% you shouldn’t have become a police officer.

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    The Noble RenardEllie Shechet
    4/20/16 5:45pm

    Police departments should really know by now that it's legal in New York State. Has been for decades!

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      MalloryKnocksThe Noble Renard
      4/20/16 6:20pm

      The police stated it was prohibited by city law, not state. Cities can still ban things within the limits that may be legal by the state law.

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      The Noble RenardMalloryKnocks
      4/20/16 6:35pm

      Actually, not in New York. Toplessness is legal in New York thanks to 1992 Court of Appeals decision, not simply because the State has made it legal. While the decision did not explicitly reach the question of whether it was actually an Equal Protection violation to ban toplessness for women and not for men, it has essentially worked that way and pretty much everyone agrees that toplessness is fully legal in the entire state of New York.

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    deerlady83Ellie Shechet
    4/20/16 5:57pm

    I saw a video on Facebook recently where security forced an androgynous looking woman out of the women’s bathroom. She kept insisted she was a woman but because she didn’t have an ID she had to leave. Women who knew her were shouting she was a girl and they were recording. I was wondering if anyone knew any more about this incident and where it happened. I wonder who complained about her.

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      MajorBurndeerlady83
      4/20/16 8:42pm

      There was a case in Chicago with a (rather proudly butch) lesbian woman who was escorted out of a restaurant (rib joint I think). I believe she’s suing since they manhandled her and threw her out of her sex and gender corresponding bathroom. Apparently we sometimes have to abuse and harass women to keep women safe from women. :/

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    DarkchyyldeEllie Shechet
    4/20/16 5:44pm

    “Because of our rapidly changing culture we need to ensure respectful treatment of transgender, androgynous and people...”

    This isn’t even the problem! It is legal for anyone to be topless in the state, so this shouldn’t have ever gotten even as far as him asking that person’s gender. And it’s not like this is a new law, it’s been on the books for several years. He, as a police officer, should know this.

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      ToscaEllie Shechet
      4/21/16 1:46am

      Putting aside the issue of whether toplessness for women is actually allowed in this particular park...if you have to ask if someone is male or female, there’s probably not enough boob to raise the pearliest of pearl clutcher eyebrows.

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        BlakeBortlesandJaymesEllie Shechet
        4/20/16 5:53pm

        Awful situation. The argument could be made that the androgynous party is technically both male and female, and regarding topless nudity laws, could have faced a citation.

        The campus security officer was in the wrong from jump with the way the question was framed.

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          Writer4003BlakeBortlesandJaymes
          4/20/16 8:03pm

          Except anyone can go topless under New York State law.

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          BlakeBortlesandJaymesWriter4003
          4/20/16 8:14pm

          I didn’t know that and I didn’t bother to look it up at the time of my posting. It actually took me a long time to write that without disrespect for gender identification in writing.

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        EleniRPGEllie Shechet
        4/20/16 6:50pm

        At the point you find yourself asking someone, “Are you a boy or a girl?” outside in public in order to decide whether what they’re doing is legal or not, it’s time to change the law.

        Oh right, New York already changed that law, so it didn’t matter if the person was a “boy or girl,” anyway. Good for NY, now how about elsewhere?

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