Letters

Topless concerns

RE: The ongoing controversy over the fact that women publicly exposing 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 principal 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 her/his genitals?
It appears that the demonstrators want Canada's public indecency laws to be based not on a philosophy of justice, but rather on 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.

Helen St. Claire
Erin