Censoring Nipples

I'm a guy, but I don't think I need to explain to anyone the potential complications from going around topless as a woman... Whether trans or not.

It's normal and fairly mundane for men to go topless in virtually all societies, however, there are a good number of cultures where it is also normal for women to be topless. If it is normal and mundane for women to be topless, then it becomes a non-issue eventually. It's only racy because we're trained in our culture to find it racy.

To many in alt right groups, trans men don't exist.

I mean, cis dudes would work in that context too, no?

For real, this is such a great move. Oh sure, the government could just ban nipples in general, but good luck enforcing that when it gets mildly warm and every scottish man rips their shirt off

Yeah. That seems sexist.

Free the nipple.

Conservatives need a demographic to hate. This one is perfect because they will never be Conservatives, and most hardcore Conservatives can't stand to see homosexual PDA.

There's nothing to understand. It's about hate and fear. Conservatives, specifically the alt-right, uses pre-existing prejudices to whip fear into their followers so that they get distracted.

"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

You can change this to whatever out-group they have chosen:

• Trans-people
• autistic people specifically
• LGBT people
• neurodivergent people
• gay people specifically
• muslims
• non-white people
• black people specifically
• Catholics (if you're protestant)
• Protestant (if your Catholic)
• left handed people

The list literally goes on. All so that their followers get distracted from the people who are picking their pockets.

When gay marriage was being debated here in Australia my sister (who is gay) was super upset the whole time. She talked about how much the fight affected her and wished that people who were against would just understand.

I told her I was a complete supporter of gay marriage for a whole bunch of reasons including:

• human decency
• equality
• people who don't like gay marriage can just... Not get married to another person of the same gender.
• people should just mind their own fucking business

However I did also point out that a lot of the loudest voices against gay marriage literally did not give a flying fuck about the issue, it was a convenient wedge and distraction for them, the people who need a group to vilify for political reasons would have to find another target for persecution as soon as they lost this particular convenient red rag to a bull.

Today in Australia, I believe, the usual suspects who use fear and hatred as the bedrock of their politics have been able to tap into a deeper vein of ignorance to make Trans people that target.

Lol it's because when you start digging in intellectually/philosophically, it starts raising some pretty serious questions about the state of society and free will and rights and autonomy and capitalism and slavery copyrights and gender and biology and religion and stuff.

We, quite literally, are their antichrist.

When I was in pre-K, on a really hot day, I remember asking why the boys got to take off their shirts but I couldn’t.

Now that I’ve had top surgery, I can be the fat hairy bearded guy that mows lawns shirtless. It’s nice.

In other parts of the world nudity isn't seen as a big deal or in some cases even unusual in certain settings. Americans are so afraid of seeing a titty or penis or whatever else.

Everyone can choose to have their tits out!

Unfortunately, in these cases, people make the mistake of thinking the law works like computer code. In reality, it doesn't.

People have this idea that law is just like computer code. You make one single definition and then build laws, like a mathematical edifice, around that definition. They think that if the law uses one definition in one place, it must use that definition in all places. They think the law works like a computer program or a physics equation. Change the constant and changes cascade through.

The law however is not a computer code. It is not a physics equation. The law has not, does not, and will likely never use consistent definitions throughout all contexts. Laws can be written with the same term defined multiple ways in different contexts. A tomato can be a vegetable in some legal contexts and a fruit in others. Someone can be legally male in some contexts but legally female in others.

Traditionally how this works with trans folks is, "your legal sex will be defined as whatever hurts you the most in the moment." Does a trans woman want to use a women's restroom? She will be defined as legally male and thrown out. Does she show her breasts in public as protest? Her chest will be considered legally female breasts. She will then be arrested and thrown in a male prison.

The law is not internally consistent. Don't make the mistake of thinking it is. Usually individual laws have their own definitions written into them. These definitions define what terms mean for the sake of applying that and only that law. And the definitions used can differ between different laws.

I don't think this the own people think it is. Drawings and sculptures are often censored. Implanted brests can be seen as similar works of art and still censored by transfobes.

Transfobes don't operate on logic or facts.

It's the UK supreme court, not a Scottish court, that decided to stomp over all the progress we had made with trans rights.

The Scottish Parliament tends to be considerably more left wing than the UK Parliament. Left to their own devices they would probably be much more like a Scandinavian country.

But actually, yes, the Scottish people are indeed awesome.

I had a look further into this, because I wanted to better understand what factors might cause an act to be considered indecent exposure (or outraging public decency). This led me to some guidance on naturism and other non-sexual nudity, from the crown prosecution service.^1 It appears that having an "intention to cause alarm or distress" may be relevant for protests like this — arguably the entire point of the protest is to use the shock value of the nudity as a protest.

That being said, I think it's a bold move and possibly an effective protest. Even if public indecency laws are gender neutral, it would still be a strong message if any of these women got arrested for this — the reason why these women are capable of causing alarm or distress by going topless is because these are "female presenting nipples" (to use a heavily-memed phrase from the Tumblr porn ban era)

I assume totons is boobies.

That's part of what their protest is getting at — as you highlight, even "biological sex" is pretty complex (In science, I have heard that the "three G's" (Gonads, genetics, genitals) model is the standard definition, but scientists who research biological sex seem to consider this an extreme oversimplification). Fuzzy definitions like this are fine in science, but things get much messier when we try to write these things into law. One of my problems with the recent Supreme Court ruling on transgender rights is how they use the phrase "biological woman", as if it is a simple matter.

I find this especially striking because I'm a cis woman who has plenty of experience of being treated poorly due to being a woman, and I feel like my "biological sex" (as in gonads, genetics and genitals) don't factor into it much; far more significant is whether I am perceived as a woman, and this is why "gender" can be far more useful than "biological sex" in these discussions.

They have three categories: "biological woman," which is a fertile cis woman with XX chromosomes and a vulva; "biological man," which is a fertile or formerly fertile cis man with XY chromosomes; and undesirables, who are everyone else and are referred to by whichever terminology is convenient for them at any given point.

Depends entirely on the language of the law, not what right wing people think. The UK isn't like the USA in this regard, or at least Scotland isn't ...yet.

Yes. Or treat trans women as women. Because that's what they are. Name a situation where you think this would be problematic and I'll show you why it's patently absurd.