Letters

Regarding the allegation by municipal governments that they are constitutionally prohibited from legislatively addressing behavior (to wit, public nudism) that has been addressed in the Criminal Code of Canada:

After an Ontario judge ruled in February of 1994 that lap dancing was not a legally indecent act, municipal governments throughout this province enacted bylaws prohibiting it.

How, then, is it that the Ontario Court of Appeal's ruling last December that women's public exposure of their breasts for certain reasons is not a legally indecent act effectively prevents these governments from enacting bylaws - or, for that matter, the provincial government from enacting a law - prohibiting women from publicly exposing their breasts for these reasons?

(During the 1995 Ontario election campaign, Mike Harris promised that, as premier of this province, he would legally prohibit lap dancing if the ruling legalizing it were not overturned on appeal.)

Already, at least one woman in Ontario has been assaulted as a (direct) result of her baring her breasts in public. Women's public exposure of their breasts is as serious as a public safety and health hazard as lap dancing is. If the aforementioned municipal governments do not enact bylaws prohibiting women from baring their breasts in public, it is because they do not want to legally prohibit women from doing this.

Incidentally, do feminists consider it to be sexually discriminatory that the Criminal Code of Canada prohibits female strippers from choosing to allow their customers to touch their breasts, whereas it does not prohibit male strippers from doing this?

Helen St. Claire
Erin