Do women deserve the right to go topless in public, like men?

[Mikey]

www.Gotopless.org claims the constitutional right of women to go topless in public in the name of gender equality.

Rael, spiritual leader and founder of goTopless.org states: "as long as men can be topless, constitutionally women should have the same right, or men should also be forced to wear something hiding their chest."

[Incognito]

It's just a factor of prudeness and culture's view of women and how we want to keep them beautiful but ladylike. But yes, more exposed tits; you have to take the bad with the good.

[picard102]

I think it's a little silly to equate male breasts to female breast as if they were the same thing. But I have no problem with chicks going topless. Legal here.

[jnilsson]

its legal and quite normal here in spain! you get kind of used to it and its a nice view on from the train when im going home after work

[Sparrow]

Goddamn feminists. Men and women are different; what's good for the gander isn't always appropriate for the goose.

[BrownEyedBtch]

It's not a constitutional right - the Supreme Court has already ruled it to be indecent and therefore not protected. Anyhoo....on the one hand, I do think women should be as free as they wish to show their boobs. On the other hand, some boobs should stay covered. Then again, I could say the same for men's bodies. I do think the fact that we are so prudish about such things is ridiculous and way behind the times. But I wonder if it's the higher-ups who remain prudish and not the people in general. When I look around, I see a lot of random body parts put out there as fashion statements, and the generation gap is only growing. It makes sense that the old white men in the government are the ones who think women need to remain ladies. I would be interested to see how perceptions change as those old white men move out, and more colorful individuals start making the decisions.

[Junkenstein]

Wait a second. Where is it that women are not allowed to go topless?

On every beach i've been (Spain, Italy, Greece, etc) there always have been topless women, since when i was a kid....

[picard102]

Originally Posted by Junkenstein

Wait a second. Where is it that women are not allowed to go topless?

The continent that matters, North America.

[Lanfear]

I wouldn't run around town topless (but very few guys do that either right?) cause that would be weird and also uncomfortable (yeah big boobs) but on the beach/swimmingpool - hell yeah.

The only countries where I wasn't allowed to so far were the US and Egypt - even Tunesia was cool about it and in Spain/Italy/France its quite normal to be topless on the beach.

[Rhian]

I remember when this passed here, it was mostly the hookers that flaunted it, and we spent alot of money on new signs at the centre I worked at, had them made to say "Women over 10 years old must wear a top while swimming".

I don't think men and women's are the same at all. It's more if men can walk around free willy.

********
In Ontario, Some Bare Breasts, Some Beat Them
In Ontario, Some Bare Breasts, Some Beat Them - The New York Times

Finally, the bony fingers of winter have left central Canada and with the first warm days of summer have come the first encounters with the province's new judicial ruling that allows women to go topless anywhere they please.

Well, not quite anywhere. As quickly as it took Ontario's notoriously brief spring to come and go, the question of where and when a woman has the right to bare her breasts has turned into a legal and moral tango about sexuality, equality and Canadian character.

For example: a woman who swims without the top of a two-piece bathing suit in Ottawa can be arrested at an indoor municipal pool, but not at an outdoor pool or at a beach. Whether that new municipal ordinance violates the judge's ruling is not clear, but it has dismayed Norma Murray of Westport, south of Ottawa, so much that she wrote a letter of complaint to The Ottawa Citizen.

''Since we women are at last emancipated,'' wrote Mrs. Murray, 76, ''a busload of older girls from the senior citizens home here in Westport had planned to visit a heated Ottawa pool to experience the exquisite pleasure of swimming topless. Now the rules have been changed, alas!''

While cities in the United States continue to debate whether to allow breast-feeding in public places, here in London, a working-class city about 120 miles southwest of Toronto, a topless car wash opened this spring. (It closed a few weeks later, because it violated water pollution standards, not because of the attire of the attendants.)

And when the Brass Cafe, a restaurant and bar not far from London City Hall, challenged customers to ''dare to be bare,'' a woman who took off her top made it onto the local television news.

There are some in Canada who say all these incidents are just a case of spring fever. Others see them as the nervous adjustments of a society adapting to changing times.

''This puts women's equality back several steps,'' said Mayor Dianne Haskett of London, who thought the judicial ruling violated her community's standards of decency. ''This is a very misplaced area for political activism by the feminist community.''

It is not the law that creates problems, but the way it is interpreted, said Joan Grant Cummings, president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women in Toronto.

''The point of this is the desexualizing of women's bodies,'' Ms. Cummings said. ''But what has been happening since the court ruled really demonstrates the way society tends to view women as objects.''

It all started last December when an Ontario appeals court overturned the conviction of Gwen Jacob, who as a university student in 1991 tried to make a point about equality on a steamy July day by taking off her shirt and going for a walk in downtown Guelph, Ontario.

She was convicted of indecency and fined the equivalent of $58. She appealed and, last December, a provincial judge overturned the ruling, saying that the federal criminal code on indecency did not prevent any woman from taking off her top in public, so long as it was not done for commercial or sexual reasons.

The ruling set a precedent but nothing much happened for months because it was simply too cold to think about anything but putting on extra layers of clothing. Then two weeks ago, temperatures rose in central Canada.

Many Canadians seemed surprised by the number of Canadian women, often stereotyped as shy and conservative, who went topless. Neighbors gawked when Roxane Reid of Welland decided to mow her lawn without a shirt. She said she was hot, and that she had seen plenty of men do the same thing.

In Toronto, a topless young woman got on stage at a picnic for the elderly. And young women who make money washing windshields at busy intersections realized that by going topless they could increase their incomes.

That was too much for Mike Harris, Ontario's Premier. ''I don't think that is acceptable,'' he told reporters, ''and I don't think my view is far off society's views.''

Pamela Robinson, 15, who washes windshields in Toronto, said a policeman came by and told her to put her shirt back on when she tried working topless. She kept her shirt off, and put down her squeegee instead.

''Women have this right,'' Miss Robinson said. ''It shouldn't have been illegal, and if they make it illegal again, I'm going to do it anyway.''

Ms. Jacob, the woman who started all this, declined requests for interviews about the current situation, but her lawyer, Margaret Buist of London, said the young woman was dismayed by the commercial exploitation as well as the ways in which municipalities have tried to restrict the application of the new ruling because of their own interpretation of what is indecent.

''What the municipalities are attempting to do through the back door is infringe on women's equality rights,'' said Ms. Buist, ''but they're just wasting taxpayers' money.''

There has been no shortage of wisecracks and comments about top lessness since lawn mowers replaced snow blowers. But Paul Cress, a semi-retired software developer from Ottawa, thinks the whole thing has got out of hand because officials have forgotten a basic tenet of Canadian political life.

''You know the old joke about Canadians crossing the road to get to the middle,'' Mr. Cress said. He thinks Ontario's city councils should have passed bylaws ''stating that females must, in all public places, wear attire that covers at least one breast.''

''If you take the middle road, as we usually do in Canada,'' he said, ''nobody's really satisfied but nobody's completely unhappy either.''