On “#freethenipple”

Instead of just talking to myself this morning, in response to a facebook post I was seeing (Challenge the Way We Sexualize Women's Breasts), I wrote this stuff down. Someone was asking about the agenda behind “freeing the nipple” and how it relates to rape culture, etc. 

Not sure how clear my logic is, but... here it is. 

On “#freethenipple” 

Acceptance of a part of the body, the nipple, is a move toward acceptance of the body in general. We in this culture have a horrible problem with our bodies. There’s still a very strong theme of “our bodies are bad and shameful” running through our culture. It’s very clearly connected to another concept – that sex is bad shameful and needs to be hidden. 

These things are whispered in our ears from infancy, when we can’t even understand the words yet, and they become so ingrained in us, that we don’t even see them. They’re simply threads in the tapestry of what we think it is to be a human and a society. When sex is bad and shameful and the body is bad and shameful it leads people to have very unhealthy relationships with their own bodies, and trouble dealing with other people’s bodies. 

Now, add to that another basic problem of our culture – inequality of women. There’s a strong tradition of women not being considered full participants in human society, of in public society. Men are political leaders, men run businesses, men create art. Women are off on the sidelines or in the background. When you mix in the “sex is bad and so are our bodies” it creates a situation in which women are seen not as people but as objects to be viewed &/or possessed. That’s sexual objectification. 

It’s easy to see in a culture that forces women to hide away, or to completely cover up their bodies in public and not interact with men. But it’s still pretty easy to see, if you’re looking, right here in our country. Men are largely judged on their action and achievements and the content of their character, while women are still largely judged on how hot they are. And while we are still saying that naked bodies are bad and shouldn’t be seen in public, we’ve become mildly addicted to highly sexualized naked or almost naked bodies – chiefly women’s bodies – in movies and TV, advertising, and (of course) pornography. 

If men are humans and women are sexual objects, and sex is bad and shameful and shouldn’t be discussed or even dealt with in an open and reasonable way, you get... rape culture. So, a move toward acceptance of the body is a move against rape culture.