Re: the ongoing controversy over the fact that women's public exposure of their
breasts for certain reasons is no longer a legally indecent act in Ontario:
If the so-called "topless protests" in Ontario in recent times have been
expressions of support for the principle of equality, why haven't the demonstrators
demanded that women be accorded the legal right to publicly expose their breasts
for a sexual or commercial purpose, since men have this legal right? If these protests
have been expressions of support for the principle of body autonomy, and/or of opposition
to the embodiment of puritanism in law, why haven't the demonstrators demanded that
every individual be accorded both the aforementioned legal right, and the legal
right to publicly expose his/her genitals? It appears that the demonstrators want
Canada's public indecency laws to be based not on a philosophy of justice, but rather,
on their whims; it also appears that their denunciations of the standards employed
by these laws outside of Ontario as being puritanical, sexist violations of the
individual right to body autonomy are hypocritical.
Incidentally, if women's breasts are no more sexual than men's beards - as "topless
protest" initiator Gwen Jacob has alleged - then from a sexual perspective,
a woman having a mastectomy is equivalent to a man shaving his beard. Does anyone
honestly believe that from such a perspective, these two phenomena are equivalent?
Helen St. Claire
Sunderland