MATTERS OF OPINION
Topless is now legal but we get morons
going pantless
Brian Caldwell
Thursday 23 July 1998
This could have been a great summer for a wave of public nudity, a little fresh
air to relieve the heat and humidity.
But while we wait for something interesting to happen, like young women upholding
their equality, all we get are dirty old men dropping their drawers.
What a bore they are.
I yawn for all the victims who'd do it themselves if only they could lift their
chins off their chests.
It's got to be disturbing to meet up with some guy waving his wares in a park or
between the stacks at the local library.
After the flat-out shock of it, there must also be fear he'll do more than betray
the sad size of his brain.
But from this safe distance, with the benefit of both time and perspective, I'd
like to issue a news flash to the flashers who've been popping up in Kitchener-Waterloo
these last few weeks.
Nobody thinks you're sexy, fellas -- or cute, amusing, brave or anything else that
could possibly be construed as a positive comment on your manhood.
Young or old, big or small, the best that can be said is you're tiresome, pathetic
bullies.
It'd be bad enough if the men behind at least half a dozen recent incidents of indecent
exposure could be written off as sick individuals.
But I can't help seeing them, in addition, as extreme evidence of a depressing,
persistent difference between the sexes.
Think about it.
We're well into the second summer since the Ontario Court of Appeal gave women the
right to bare breasts in the name of gender equality.
So how do the beneficiaries of that controversial ruling behave?
They keep their tops on in droves -- sensibly and considerately recognizing that
their neighborhoods aren't quite the same as courtrooms.
Part of me says that's a shame.
Legal arguments that led to the decision were compelling because they challenged
the basic way men and women look at themselves and each other.
Still, it was just a start.
A practical, meaningful change in attitudes won't happen unless the law is used
with some regularity in the real world.
That'll take volunteers and this summer would have been perfect since some of the
initial fuss had died down.
Needless to say, there's hardly been a rush to the head of the line.
After they'd made their point, even women who fought for the ruling apparently didn't
have to prove it to leering bozos.
The right to define their own sexuality was important. The need to parade it, to
impose it, was not.
That's true of most men, too, fortunately.
But out there on the fringes, lurking behind bushes and hardcover books, there are
more than enough male volunteers to give the rest of us a bad name.
Equality isn't enough for them.
They get their kicks making women squirm, wielding the naughty bits of their bodies
to get a passing rush of power.
And if it's clearly a crime, being a pig is just that much more satisfying.
Maybe it was already obvious, but it says something about the sexes when sightings
of bottomless men far outstrip sightings of topless women.
We've got a long way to go yet, I'm afraid.