This is met with, well, you can probably imagine what it was met with. A handful of geek guys going, hey wow, great idea. A handful of girls going YOU CAN TOUCH MY BREAST! LOOK AT ME!! LOOK AT ME!!!! and then hundreds of ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? comments from everyone else.
Then a response is posted. Pretty much everyone goes YES. THIS. A handful of people can't understand that asking to touch someone's breasts might be considered a violation. After all, women like having their breasts touched, right? It's a compliment.
In my opinion, it is NOT OK to ask a woman if you can touch her breasts. It's not ok to ask women if it's ok to ask them if it's ok to touch her breasts.
Her breast are HER BREASTS and if she wants you to touch them, she'll let you know in an appropriate time, an appropriate place, and an appropriate context.
It's NOT a compliment. It's CREEPY. It's not a compliment when people whistle at me in the street, slap my arse when I'm cycling, yell 'OI DARLING' as I'm walking home, try to chat me up on the night bus.
It's CERTAINLY not a compliment to be verbally abused when I'm 'ungrateful' for the above.
If you're the sort of guy that feels he is unlikely to ever touch breasts legitimately, then the way to go about it is NOT to dress up some puerile lech-fest and dress it up as female empowerment. The way to go about it, to be honest, is to stop being the sort of guy that thinks it's ok to ask a total stranger if you can touch her breasts. That's a start anyway. If you need more help, allow me to direct you to this handy guide to talking to women you don't know.
Women are not going to throw off the shackles of media-influenced low self-esteem, body issues and centuries of sexual repression by having a bunch of desperate geeks ask to grab their knockers.
[1] The original 'proposal' is underneath the large edit which is a potent mix of back-pedalling, some desperate justification and claims of being 'misunderstood' with a dash of self-pity
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emmelinemay- The Dread Pirate May
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And following that, they thought it might be a good idea to make it an organised/regular thing, and make badges for girls to wear that would show that it would be ok to go up to her and ask to see her breasts.
Edited at 2008-04-23 02:24 pm (UTC)
But why? Why would anyone subscribe to that model of behaviour?
Gah. I'm amazed that they didn't get beaten up. And slightly disappointed. No, make that a LOT disappointed.
Or perhaps there's a peer pressure thing to it, being part of an elite 'gang'.
Or maybe there were women that really bought the throw of the shackles of gender crap.
I don't know. But the very fact there are people over thee trying to JUSTIFY asking a woman if you can touch her breasts? Words fail me.
Just yesterday I had a guy in a car wind down his window so he could say 'alright babe' as I was cycling past. This is NOT OK. It's NOT OK to treat women as things for you to look at and poke and grope and hassle.
It's CERTAINLY not ok to dress it up as some sort of empowerment issue - as if a women says no, there's something wrong with her :/
(We call them gorgeous x 5s due to a stat you can buy.)
At US conventions it's fairly common to have women behaving in a way that demands male validation. That isn't the problem though, the problem is the men, as a result, expect it and think everyone is out for the same.
I've dealt with some serious harassment at conventions before.
That just makes it worse though, as the implication is that the breasts being groped have some sort of dual ownership - SHE was ok with it and DO WAS HE!
That pisses me off just as much.
Seriously, why would he ever have even considered thinking that that was a good idea that should be shared? WHY? gah!
I'd like to say something clever like "I'm not interested in seeing the sort of boobs that get shown off in public" but nobody would believe me!
have you seen
Yay! I'm Freeee!
Yay! I'm Freeee!
That makes me laugh everytime I think about it!!!
It was the women who were for it who confused me the most. Just how low does your self esteem have to be to regard random geekboys grabbing your boobs as in some way validating?