Organizers with the cheekily named “Equalititty” and GoTopless groups walked about with a simple proposition: In 2024, there isn’t a particularly good reason to bar women from taking their shirts off entirely in the summer heat wherever men are allowed to do the same.
This. Everyone is thirsty. Legalizing toplessness specifically does one thing: it says a woman’s breasts are not special. Not sexual. The same as a back, a leg, a hand. That will drastically effect sexual harassment cases and what defenses a woman has to someone being a scumbag. I can stare at a guy’s chest all meeting long and nothing will come of it. Flip that. “I’m just looking, it’s not illegal”. To me that seems so much worse. It doesn’t just affect women who want the freedom- it affects all women period.
I’m a guy, and women’s breasts will never not be sexual to me. They are the most arousing part of the female body to me. So the whole “they aren’t sexual” thing is never going to fly. I’m sure you could find women who admit to being sexually aroused by a man’s bare chest, so I don’t see what that has to do with anything anyway.
The simple fact is, women should be absolutely free to put their bare chest on public display as long as men are allowed to do so. I’ve been to a lot of places in the world where women going topless is legal, and have only ever seen publicly topless women in places where it is not. My experience tells me legalizing it isn’t going to cause hordes of loose women to roam the streets looking to corrupt little Johnny. But that’s what the prudes are worried about.
I don’t know man. Join a nudist colony for a week or two and tell me if you still get a boner every time you see a titty.
Hell, back in the 1700s girls could have their titties out anytime they wanted to it was no big deal but if they showed an ankle or a shoulder then she was a tramp making men squirt their pants left and right.
The things that are considered erotic are contextual, and once you are inside of the context it takes the power out of it.