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