Wednesday, August 26, 2015

What Will They Protest Next

Since MinnPost is moderating this one intensely, let's see what folks here have to say.  MinnPost Go Topless Day  This event apparently occurred on Sunday.  Here are my random thoughts:
  • Aren't their much more important things to protest?
  • If the freedom to show off their breasts is what they seek. Why is all the internet coverage so rated PG?  I am pretty sure they could flash them on some site.  Reference Rumor Willis' Stroll
  • How exactly does anyone envision converting American males to being indifferent to the breasts of American females?
  • If they succeed, what will all those poor big breasted strippers do for a living?
  • If women have the freedom to show them, do men get the freedom to gawk or take photos?
Being an American Male who either naturally and/or was conditioned to appreciate female physical attributes, I sincerely wish them luck in being successful...  :-)  Thoughts?

27 comments:

Anonymous said...

Aren't their much more important things to protest?

This argument always reminds me of my favorite lines from my favorite movie, "The Untouchables" Kevin Costner is talking to beat cop Sean Connery, Kevin asks, "don't you have other things to do", Sean says, "Yes, but I am not doing them now."

In this life, there are lots of things to do, but we don't do them all at once.

--Hiram

John said...

Atlantic Arguments

jerrye92002 said...

Reminds me of the old police dramas where a woman is raped and then claims a right to dress provocatively. Now don't try that where burkas are required, but is there a limit to HOW provocatively a woman can dress (or undress) without attracting "undesirable" attention? If I snap a pic of one of these ladies and post it online, am I trafficking in porn? What, exactly, are they trying to prove?

John said...

Maybe that male and female breasts are the same?

This could be very difficult to prove since they are physiologically so different.

John said...

I guess I think a naked woman should be safe from physical violation. However I find it annoying when men are chastised for looking at a woman on a beach who is wearing less than a Victoria Secrets model.

Anonymous said...

Covering women's breasts is obviously a cultural thing, not innate, so maybe they're simply being counter-cultural.

The problem, as I see it, is the sexualization of a part of the anatomy that is not a sex organ. Perhaps we could make it illegal or culturally impermissible for men to go topless?

Joel

John said...

I think this a gray zone given their sensitivity and the normal physiological response... "not a sex organ"

Wiki Sex Organ

"A more ambiguously defined term is erogenous zone, subjectively, any portion of the body that when stimulated produces erotic sensation, but always prominently including the genitalia."

John said...

I think you are correct though about the counter cultural aspect.

I was thinking about the usual arguments women have against stripping and legalizing prostitution... The fear that men will use it to victimize women.

Then I had a vision of a hot topless woman holding a "store closing" sign on the corner of a major intersection. Would she be being victimized? How many car accidents would occur? Maybe this actually is a public safety topic...

Anonymous said...

A more ambiguously defined term is erogenous zone, subjectively, any portion of the body that when stimulated produces erotic sensation, but always prominently including the genitalia."

But this also happens in men, so...we're back to square one.

Joel

John said...

I'll have to trust you on that one... Never done it for me.

Wiki Nipples
Reddit Nipples

Seems the parts may be similar but the hormones are different... I am sticking with there is a difference. I mean some like their toes stimulated...

jerrye92002 said...

I've been scratching my brain for exactly "what is the difference." Granted there are physiological differences between man-boobs and even a modest A-cup, but I don't see men getting excited by an exposed man-boob and I don't think it tickles any woman's fancy, either. Then I remembered that, in our evolution, humankind changed its sexual preferences to face-to-face mating. Therefore, to stimulate the male, women's breasts grew as an alternative, front-facing version of the buttocks as a sexual turn-on. THAT is the difference that matters. Yes, most of it is cultural, but some of it is innate and culture can only make it necessary to restrain oneself further. Hey, we don't demand burkas on the beach; can we at least ask for SOME modesty?

John said...

City Pages Pictorial

By the way, Faith the organizer is on slide 22. She is quite attractive but wouldn't piercing those HURT !!!

John said...

Jerry,
Did I just read you posting the words evolved and breasts moving / forming differently? I hope you were joking or you had better go talk to your pastor...

I was trying to find an article I read many years ago that discussed this Kate Moss Obsession Ad and the thought process that magazines went through to decide if they should run it. It was centered around the size of Kate's breasts. They deemed them small enough to not be offensive to most readers. Whereas Naomi Campbell's were too big for such ads...

Not sure where the line was... A vs B vs C...

jerrye92002 said...

And yet, those in the forefront of this movement are likely those most supporting evolution as a theory, while denying that men and women evolved in distinctly different ways. It's no joke. It's scientific fact.

Anonymous said...

"Therefore, to stimulate the male, women's breasts grew as an alternative, front-facing version of the buttocks as a sexual turn-on. THAT is the difference that matters."

I think that's a whole lot of b.s. Do you think the men in the tribes in Africa and elsewhere, where the women are always 'topless', feel the same way?

The problem with your argument is that you find this attribute attractive, and thus think it is innate for every male of the species to do the same, which is likely to be provably false.

Joel

jerrye92002 said...

OK, you can call scientific fact b.s. if you wish. Heck, you can even call evolution B.S. if you want; I won't mind. But then you have to explain why humans, where the females have larger mammaries, mate face-to-face, while our nearest relatives the great apes, without them, mate from the rear.

And it isn't necessary for every man to find this attractive, just enough so that the species is perpetuated. Thus insuring, essentially, that women with ample breasts are part of "survival of the fittest."

Anonymous said...

At best, your idea is just an immature hypothesis. I bet a scientist could come up with a great number of hypotheses for why human mammaries are larger than other primates'. Here's one: perhaps a larger mammary and the milk produced provided a better chance of survival for the offspring, thus perpetuating those genes down the line.

That was a simple task.

Let's see what other hypotheses this blog's readers can come up with, shall we?

Joel

Anonymous said...

And to address your hypothesis about mating face-to-face...perhaps that allowed for better insemination.

Hypotheses are easy, you see. So, are you right? Am I right? Is something entirely different the correct answer?

Joel

jerrye92002 said...

Joel, rather than trying to make your wild conjectures into something they are not, why don't we actually look at what the peer-reviewed science says on this subject? For that matter, you are not even following the proper definition of "hypothesis." That would be a reasonable explanation for an observed fact, subject to testing, at which point it becomes a "working theory." You are arriving a bit late to the role of skeptic when "97% of evolutionary scientists agree" on this explanation.

And why are you so anxious to discredit the obvious conclusion that men and women are different?

Anonymous said...

Men and women are obviously different. It has never been part of my argument to suggest otherwise.

Why would you assign an agenda to my argument?

jerrye92002 said...

Because the strenuous tenor of your argument, lacking scientific backing and almost defying common sense, might so indicate. Sorry to put words in your mouth, but I could find no other explanation.

Anonymous said...

Seeing as you have not supported your hypothesis with any scientific backing, what am I...or anyone else for that matter...to make of your argument? Why should I give you, someone who clearly distrusts climate science and evolutionary science, the benefit of the doubt?

Joel

John said...

Ok guys... This is something called a source, which may be right or wrong... Then again please feel free to keep strutting around like a couple of apes beating your chests... Insisting that your guess is the better one.

Breast Size: A Human Anomaly

John said...

And another.
Quora Breasts

I like this statement:
"One thing we should kill here is the view that I've heard from political feminists that the primary function of breasts is lactation. It would appear that the primary function of human breasts is to attract, and keep attracting, the male. If that were not the case, they could be much smaller except when lactating - remembering that large fatty organs are expensive on resources and get in the way."

Works for me...

jerrye92002 said...

With just a brief search, I see scientific reference to this hypothesis back to 1967. A little comparative zoology makes it almost common sense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_history_of_the_buttocks
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2460501?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Anonymous said...

Finally, something to support a claim. Imagine that.
Unfortunately, I dare not open these links while at work.
But remember, I have never claimed that any of my guesses were correct. Having never heard of jerry's hypothesis before, it struck me as very odd that it would be stated with such conviction.

Then comes the question; Does the persistence of a hypothesis make it correct?

We are also the only bipedal primate. Our brains are quite a bit larger than the other primates. We lost our fur over the millennia. Human females are fertile mostly continuously. The human penis is large among primates. In other words, there are a lot of things that set us apart from our cousins.

Remember, too, that there are cultures in which breasts are not sexualized like they are in Western culture. Perhaps they are an object of some obsession here because they are mostly kept hidden? Forbidden fruit, if you will.

Anyway, I appreciate the spirited debate. It keeps my mind on solving problems and considering other ideas, even when they seem like b.s.

Joel

jerrye92002 said...

"... it struck me as very odd that it would be stated with such conviction."

That's what bothers me most about this forum. I ALWAYS have sources for my statements, though I don't remember what they are most of the time. Sometimes it's just "common sense" and/or "common knowledge" and occasionally I get a fact wrong or a number a bit off, in which case I expect to be challenged, with sources. I am NOT in the habit of just "making stuff up" unless I post it as conjecture.

That said, as far as this debate goes, the existence of female sexual signals does not require that all men respond to them and, indeed, each culture prescribes the degree to which those signals may or must be ignored. I read long ago that surprising a Japanese woman in the bath would make her cover her feet, and an Arab woman would cover her face. True or not, they represent cultural overlays of the raw animal reactions. They are no less valid, and are not easily changed. These women are a curiousity, little more. Fortunately culture does not degrade that quickly. Unfortunately, culture does not improve that quickly, either (referencing the schools or BLM issues again).