Women should "get their tits out" in order to be taken seriously?

[DirkGently]

170. I'll bite, even though this is a call-out OP, which isn't cool.

First off, I have to agree with everyone who's said that if you take issue with a specific poster's OP or post, the place to address that is in the thread itself.

This thing where people start a whole new thread to characterize what other people supposedly said elsewhere as being outrageous or wrong is a kind of a cheap shot. In this case, the quoted headline is used to imply the exact opposite tone of that OP, which I just read, which supports women activists doing something they've chosen to do to make a statement they've chosen to make.

As for the substance of the thing, context does matter. I'm struck by the quote, "My body belongs to me, and is not the source of anyone's honor."

Sounds to me like a direct challenge to one of the oldest, most core sources of gender oppression, which is that female sexuality and the female body are male possessions and a source of shame. Something we all must control, lest it somehow run amok. Which is of course incredibly noxious bullshit. And, as we regularly note in horror, in some Middle East cultures, this is taken to literal extremes, where fathers and brothers and uncles claim the right to kill their daughters and sisters and nieces for crimes like talking to men without permission or wearing the wrong clothes.

I don't see any way to get incensed about the impropriety of this form of protest unless you are, in some way, in agreement with the misogynistic principle that women's bodies ARE subject to everyone else's control and ownership. Looks to me like we've even got a disturbing dollop of "men can't be responsible for how crazy they'll get if they see something (like a breast) that might stimulate them."

Allow me to suggest that the moral issue is that men need to take a different view of women's bodies, rather than that women need to carefully cover themselves at all times.

Isn't demystifying breasts pretty much a cultural no-brainer? Why on Earth is it even possible for people to get worked up, sexually, morally, aesthetically, or otherwise, about a human chest, with or without mammary glands? Is it possible that the fact that breasts are such an easy a way to generate shock and controversy illustrative of the precise problem Amina & Co. are trying to address?

Maybe if we didn't jump up and down and squeal every time we saw a few breasts, we'd get that there are people attached to them.

Maybe that's part of Amina and Femen's point.

I support this, and past that, I get out of its way.