NYPD No Longer Arresting Topless Women

Found this through a link on a buddy's Facebook.

Article is here: Topless Women in Public Not Breaking the Law, Says NYPD

On a personal level, this is another example of my "an harm ye none, do what ye will" lifestyle philosophy that I try to abide by. So a woman wants to take her shirt off in public? Let her. Should be her right to do so if she chooses to without being seen as 'lewd' or 'indecent.' I mean, a guy can do the same thing, why can't a girl?
Plus, boobs. What's not to like?

One of the comments says "another fact to consider...what about kids???!!!(sic)" For me, this can be taken in two ways.
1) What if the kids see?
2) What about children and teens going topless?

The first should be irrelevant. If they grow up around it, they'll see it as a normal thing and won't think a thing about it. It's the same way that most nudist colonies embrace nudity and don't think it's weird, awkward, or indecent; they've grown up around it so they're comfortable with it.
The second point is a little bit more weird, mostly because of pedophiles and child pornographers who would jump on this shit in a second. My best idea for that is to have some sort of age restriction for people who are underage according to that state's age of consent/majority. Another perk to becoming an adult, maybe? Not sure. It could kind of be a sticky situation no matter what way they decide to go.

I'm really curious to hear TFP's thoughts on this change. What do you guys think?

 

So you'd wind up with little girls going topless until ~11ish when people start getting wierd, then having to wear a shirt for the next seven years, then being allowed to go topless again?

 

If I understand correctly, some people start getting weird long before 11. Ugh.
Besides, I think that this should be a situation where adults are allowed to decide for themselves. I mean, there's a reason why children and teens under 18 aren't allowed to vote, or drink, or use tobacco, right? I think this is the same kind of deal. Let them become adults, let their brains mature a bit, and then let them decide what they want from there.

Underagers aside, I still think the NYPD's decision is an excellent one, both for the boobs (obviously), but also for the idea of gender equality. After all, boobs are just flabs of muscle and fat, right?

 

I get what you are saying, and I agree with your stance overall, but by most accounts pedophilia is under reported. What is happening often is that pedophiles will offend many times, sometimes hundreds of times, before they are caught and most cases go unreported. Particularly when it happens within the family. From which you might infer that it's not the numbers of pedophiles that we should be concerned about, but their success rate.

Of course, that has fuckall to do with public nudity. Particularly when you take into account that a significant proportion of children who are sexually abused are young males.

 

Perhaps. I think it's just as reasonable to infer that you just weren't hearing about it. Ironically, even though public perception is greatly increased, i'd suspect that reportage has not increased proportionately.

 

Interesting point you bring up about going topless and what happens with teens. If this is all about gender equality then there needs to be no law that prevents say 11 to 17 year old girls from going topless since boys can do it. However, the whole concept of pedophilia creeps me out and I had never thought about the whole women topless issue in that context. I think how it would have to be handled is with the parents. Just like the little kids that run around around the back yard naked at 1 or 2 and stop doing that when they get older because parents tell them it is not appropriate, parents would have to teach kids when it is appropriate to do things like that. Having some sort of law against it would mean police having to id everyone that looks from probably 14 to 24 and that would just be a waste of time.

As a whole though I think this is a step forward. I think the focus on sexuality here in North America hurts more than it does any good. Like for instance the major networks having to blur out side boob and butt cracks (on reality shows) but allowing a visual of a gruesome murder (CSI, etc). What would I rather have my kids see? The natural body or the hacked apart body? Hmm....not a tough choice if you think about it.

 

Martian is actually spot on here. The actual rate of sex offenses, and all violent crimes, has in fact gone down so much that it screwed up my scale, the graph wound up looking like a nearly vertical line. On top of that Martian's also right in that the idea of the Dangerous Stranger is pretty close to being a statistical anomaly rather than any real threat, it's almost certain that sexual assaults of any kind will be committed by a close and usually trusted associate of the victim.

At the same time the perception of the rate of victimization is very nearly the exact opposite of reality. The problem here is a combination of political opportunism and 24/7 media sensationalism breaking our brains. Literally, as in this is an outright flaw in our neurology that is being exploited. Think about it this way: No reasonable person fears being struck by lightning when they're going about their day normally, the chances of it happening are practically nonexistant. If lightning strikes across the nation were reported in the same way as sexual assaults however we would all be terrified of ever setting foot outside for fear of lightning. That's the kind of reality/perception gap we have right now.

The rate of reporting has increased, but the overall rate of crimes has gone down so much that even with vastly improved reporting rates there are still less crimes being reported than before.What's interesting is that people's belief in underreporting has been steadily growing inversely proportional to the actual rate of victimization... essentially they believe things are worse than they really are so strongly that to satisfy that belief they claim ever increasing rates of underreporting. I've personally argued as recently as the last month with people who claimed rates of underreporting so high that it would require an extra seven hundred thousand people at my university just to be physically possible.


Sexual assault, be it of children or adults, is just another in the long line of "breasts are evil!!!" arguments that have been soundly disproven by the continued existence of almost every other first world country all of which have a far lower rate of victimization than we do. It's nothing more than the age old Burqa argument: Women will be raped in the streets if they don't wear a burqa, if they can wear pants, if they can wear shorts, if they can wear tank tops, if they can go topless...

 

You are grossly misrepresenting what I actually said. I really don't have a lot of respect for that. I'm just not in the fighting mood lately, so I'll leave it at that.

 

I made no claims about your post nor did I make any representations as to what you meant, all I did was quote the entire thing unaltered as a segue to talking about the same perception/reality dichotomy you'd mentioned.

You can just as easily interpret my post as backing up and agreeing with yours, which is why I think it's pretty obvious the problem isn't what was said but rather that I was the one who said it.

 

It's funny because I don't think it's easy to interpret your post as agreeing with mine. The only problem I have with you is that sometimes I feel like you twist what I say in order to pick a fight. I feel like I am being manipulated and it don't fly with me. Perhaps that is not what you are doing or perhaps that is not what you are consciously doing, but it doesn't change the fact that it irks me and makes me not want to talk to you.

 

Is it really more plausible that I'm going that far out of my way to try and troll you, or is it more likely that you're just taking my posts increasingly personally because of a a problem with me you've had ever since the Unwanted Sexual Attraction thread?

I didn't represent your post as being either of the obvious interpretations or anything else for that matter, I simply quoted it since it was on the topic and went on to lay out the facts objectively. You'll notice I even went out of my way to say that Martian was right instead of saying you were wrong since that would've meant representing your post in a certain way.

I don't think I could possibly have gone further out of my way to avoid offending or contradicting you while still participating in the discussion, and yet you still got riled up enough to accuse me of "grossly misrepresenting" your post, which as I've pointed out is patently ridiculous.

 

A good portion of the growth in reporting of sexual assault lies with the changing definition... elementary boys touching girls chests or kissing them; teen boys snapping girls' bra straps; men urinating in public (disgusting, but not a sex crime); just turned 17-year olds having sex with their almost 16-year old partner - these are, depressingly, now included in the litany of sex crimes that never existed before. When pared down to actual proven cases of similar crimes, the estimates of under-reporting remains close to the levels of 20 years ago. I'm trying to chase down the report I read on this, but as I recall, it showed little difference in estimates of under-reporting of stranger assault/rape, unwanted sexual touching by a bf/gf, familial sexual assault, and several other sexual offenses where today's much wider definitions were restricted to that used 20 years ago.

 

I can barely even remember what went on on the Unwanted Sexual Attraction thread. I don't hold onto 'forum feelings' for that long. I do remember a recent instance of you taking what I wrote and twisting it to make it sound worse than it was. Just like here you quoted my post and then wrote something about 'people's belief in increasing underreporting' which is not what I said. So why even quote me? I think that would have been the furthest out of your way you could have gone to avoid offending me. Your protestations are duly noted and filed away with all of my other critically important internet concerns.