Sunday August 24, 1997

Letters

Topless update

 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: Gwen Jacob, Anne Hansen, and other "topless protesters" have demonstrated against C.C.C. Section 173(1)(a) - which concerns public indecency - because they falsely believe that it acts on a sexist double standard; they have not demonstrated against it because it acts on a puritanical value system, or because it violates women's (and men's) body autonomy per se. They conspicuously have not argued that the state should not keep (some of) its (obscenity) laws off of the clitoris; that the clitoris is not obscene; that it is - to borrow a quote from Ms. Hansen about breasts - "sexual, but only when a woman chooses to present [it] as such"; or that men have sexualized it.
 How can the concept "tolerance" be defined in Canadian law such that it can truthfully be stated that a woman exposing her breasts in public does not exceed the "community standard of tolerance," but a woman exposing her (or a man his) genitals in public does?

Sheldon Warnock
Shelburne


1