Poll: Semi-nudity and different genders

[AlkalineGamer]

Hell i wouldn't mind it.

And that's the precise reason why it's not allowed.

 

[Therumancer]

Why is it that it's more acceptable for public displays of male semi-nudity (i.e. topless) than for females? You see it everywhere: ads for fragrances, at the beach, on a hot day, on TV, in movies, etc. Men can just walk around with their t-shirts off, bare chested, and nobody cares; if a woman did the same, parents would be averting their children's eyes, media companies would be barraged with complaints and she'd be made to put clothes on or, laws permitting, even arrested (Can the police do that? It sounds plausible.).

Obviously, there are plenty of nude woman in more adult films and on Page 3 of the Sun, but male toplessness is a lot more common and a lot less frowned upon - why is that? When it comes to below-the-belt nudity, it's a different story; fully naked males and females are both a bit "taboo", if you know what I mean. What's so different about the other half?

EDIT: Another point I'd like to make - if you see topless women in magazines (like candid celebrity photos or whatever), only the nipples will be censored, usually with little stars. Men have nipples too, right? So it's obviously not the fleshy, breast tissue that's the "problem", it's the nipples - this makes less sense because the breast tissue is the only thing different between men's and women's chests (please correct me if I'm wrong).

Well, actually your wrong here to a fairly large extent.

The thing is that as gamers are mostly lonely guys in a male dominated area of interest, we tend to "notice" the outcry about female nudity more often. A lot of gamers also feel the need to "adapt" to political correctness in the hopes that by doing so it makes their hobby, and by extension themselves more attractive to the opposite sex... permavirgins that the harcore gamers are.

The whole "beefcake" thing can have a similar prescence when your looking at things like the muscle and fitness subcultures. You see a lot of arguements about how all these beefy guys with arms the size of their heads is both exploitive, and encourages young boys to strive to reach an unrealistic ideal of what is "manly", turning towards 'roids, and hurting themselves through extreme workout method and the such in pursuit of the goal.

Arguements about how it's okay for guys to walk around without their shirts if they are buff enough, are very similar to how women with nice chests wandering around bare or with very little is also encouraged. You'll notice nobody wants to see a pasty, acne covered nerd chest, or some fat girl wandering around in the same condition. The standard is actually one that applies to attractive people wandering around "exposed", rather than something slanted towards one gender or the other when you actually choose to look at the issue as a whole.

... and yes, people WILL cover the eyes of children around naked or nearly naked men. It's just that as guys we tend to notice is when someone cover JR's eyes around a bare breasted or scantily clad model, but pay less attention to the same reaction when say kids are around a Chippendales promotion.

I'll also say that sensitivity enters into it as well, that breast tissue is soft and sensitive, which you probably noticed (lol), for guys it's less of a big deal comfort wise to go walking around without a shirt. For girls it can be, and if the behavior is encouraged your basically looking at an arguement "hey, you should be a masochist to be more appealing!" more so that we currently already see it. It's not a MAJOR factor, but you have to understand that guys and girls really are differant, with some very differant anatomical needs.

Such are my thoughts.

Also, you should never, ever, take political correcntess seriously. Generally speaking if something is part of a politically correct stance, that's probably a good reason to assume it's wrong. There are exceptions, but simply put it's one of the biggest poisons on society right now.

In the context of this issue, I think a big problem when discussing sex and gender is the politically correct promotion that girls either generally do not like sex, or are in some way victimized by it. That's HARDLY the case, girls are just like guys are in this respect, and just as perverted (and I think it can be argued they are worse, having looked at material produced by and for both genders), sexuality being a "human condition" rather than a situation where it's driven entirely by randy guys and endured by the women.

99% of the stuff you see about there about women being sexually victimized by the media, is political in nature. Keep an eye on the agendas involved (which are always obvious) rather than the message, and always remember that this is one of the areas where guys and girls actually aren't all that differant, when you start hearing all the "OMG, misogynistic exploitation!" garbage. It's really pretty well balanced overall.

 

[Davey Woo]

I've always wondered this as well. On a similar note. With film/game ratings for things, it will always say "nudity" or "scenes of a sexual nature" if any characters go topless or whatever.
However in Assassin's Creed (Mainly 2 and Brotherhood) there are a few renaissance-style pictures of nude men and women, yet there isn't anything on the box about nudity within the game.

Why is it not considered nudity if it's in the form of a painting by some hundred-years dead Italian?

 

[WrongSprite]

Men don't have boobs. I thought that would be pretty obvious...

What's so "awful and needs to be covered up" about boobs, eh?

May as well apply that to penises as well. Think about it.

 

[jawakiller]

Because boobs are amazing... Duh! If you had those orbs of power just hanging out well, our society would grind to a halt and production would almost cease to exist.

Our modern "civilization" would probably explode.

Serious.

Boobs are that amazing.

Why is it not considered nudity if it's in the form of a painting by some hundred-years dead Italian?

Because... Boobs in real life have 4 times as much power. Its true. Thats why Italians only drew pictures of them, so they got to see boobs but didn't destroy production.

 

[BGH122]

I really think everyone who's making pseudo-intellectual feminist comments about it being a sign of 'women as property' is barking up the wrong tree. It's sex that's considered shocking, not female freedom. It would be equivalent to saying that the fact that men can't walk around with their penises hanging out is a sign of the evil gynocracy at work oppressing men's rights because they view us as property. If you want to see the world in terms of sexism then so be it, but other less dramatic explanations apply.

What we should be debating is why, in the 21st century and with religion rapidly dying, is sex still seen as taboo?

Also, you should never, ever, take political correcntess seriously. Generally speaking if something is part of a politically correct stance, that's probably a good reason to assume it's wrong. There are exceptions, but simply put it's one of the biggest poisons on society right now.

That might be a tad over-dramatic, but I largely agree. Case in point, I asked my epidemiology lecturer why funding for breast cancer eclipses prostate cancer funding to such a huge degree and he showed us charts tracking the rise of feminism and the rise of breast cancer funding. When men are literally dying because of political correctness it's a sign it's gone too far.

 

[VaudevillianVeteran]

Boobs are probably more distracting than a guy walking around without a shirt. Not to mention for the guys that are for this, if you've ever been to a beach that allows that, it's almost always the older women with sagging boobs that you'd see. Never have I seen a Megan Fox lookalike walking around with her tits out.
Yes, it's probably to do with the whole 'a woman being a sacred thing' and that a good preparation of people want women to look respectable.
...
Then again, this is the 21st century.

Spoiler: The horror...

...Give it a few years and I'm sure women will be given the option. Not sure that every woman will be jumping for joy, mainly as a good number are really not comfortable with their bodies. But yeah, give it time.

 

[matrix guardian]

Censorship in general has always been confusing to me. It's always inconsistent and hardly makes sense. As the OP said, when it comes to women's breast nudity, as long as you cover up the nipples it's ok? What would happen if a woman walked around outside topless, but she had opaque tape covering her nipples? Or even more interesting, what would happen if a woman was fully clothed head to toe, but she had holes cut out for just the nipples to show?

From what I have heard from people's responses, it seems that the degree to which something is arousing is a measure of how "bad" it is. Boobies should be covered because they give men boners, etc. So if this is the case, shouldn't sex icons like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt be forced to wear more clothes than the common (looking) folk? Shouldn't they be put under a higher amount of censorship, because they provide more arousal than most, and are therefore more taboo? Some people can be arousing whether their clothes are revealing or not. Should they have to wear burkas?

As for the below the torso gender bias, I have noticed something. In mainstream R rated movies, I have seen a penis many times, but I have never seen a vagina, that I can recall. Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Monty Python's Life of Brian, various locker room scenes from movies have all shown a penis. But I can't recall ever seeing a vagina in a movie (without a rating higher than R). I suppose, if I look at the arousal=bad discussion, this would make some more sense than I thought. Because most of the instances I can think of that show a penis, it is done for the purpose of comedy. That could even be another discussion topic, the trend of men's sexuality being portrayed as a joke.

As for the "THINK OF THE CHILDREN" argument. What a load of bullshit. If you REALLY think about the children you will realize that they start out their lives sucking on titties every day. Boobs are a natural part of their daily lives. Then at a certain point society TEACHES children that boobs are bad and must be hidden away (and not just boobs but all nudity). They LEARN that from the adults. If adults got out of the way and let children govern themselves (without teaching them all their judgements and shame) then kids would freely run around naked or wearing whatever the hell they felt like, or something in between. Toddlers run around in just diapers all the time. Then the grown ups intervene and say "No. You should be ashamed of yourself. The human body is ugly and shameful and should be covered up. Your body is shameful and should not be seen." In goes the poisonous shame. Children don't start out with body image problems. Those are LEARNED behaviours. They are TAUGHT to not be comfortable with their bodies. So when I "think of the children" I think that they are better off then we are, without all the bullshit judgements and shame about our bodies, and try to avoid imposing those judgments onto them.

 

[Lord Mountbatten Reborn]

have you not looked out the window the last 2 months, if i went to the beach every day there was sun id never get anything done, this spring has been properly lush.

I said there isn't often a day I consider going to the beach. Perhaps I should've added "no matter the weather".

I'm not a beach person.

 

[tomtom94]

As I say with all these double standards (I may be beginning to sound like a broken record), it's partly a biological thing.

Men are meant to impress women, ie by baring their manly chests in the same way a peacock would display his plumage. In this way, it's more acceptable.

Women are supposed to pick and choose, in such a way that the sight of female skin would be a reward only for a chosen mate. In this way, it's less acceptable.

That and it's far easier to pick on women for "corrupting" young men because...I actually have
no idea on that one. Maybe something to do with the idea of men carrying down the family line, and again the idea of not tempting young girls into doing the same - trying to hold down the biological stereotype of the girl choosing the man who will give the best genes.

 

[manythings]

Men don't have boobs. I thought that would be pretty obvious...

What's so "awful and needs to be covered up" about boobs, eh?

ask women, they seem to be the ones who hate boobs.

 

[Thespian]

A man's body isn't nearly as appealing as a woman's body.

Sexual preference regardless, everybody likes seeing an attractive female. Straight women, gay women, straight men and gay men all appreciate an attractive woman, but the same cannot be said for an attractive man.

Some call it gender bias, I call it "who the fuck cares, its the way things are".

According to you, gay men appreciate seeing an attractive woman, and as a badge-carrying member of the Bullshit Police I decided I should call you out on this. That is simply not true. I know myself, that I get nothing from seeing an attractive woman. Actually, seeing one naked would put me off my lunch a tad. Boobs are just not attractive to me at all. I don't get it. They just look like saggy man-pecs to me. Honestly. And I know a dozen other gay people who will say the same. Really, you would only have to briefly dip into a gay community to know that's the truth.
Whereas a man's body I find highly pleasing when I see it uncovered. Matter of fact, I don't even really care about how the downstairs looks (so long as, you know, it's there) so it's really all happening upstairs. This may be getting a tad personal, but point is;
Attractive women are not universally appreciated, topless women are not universally more appreciated than topless men.

What's so "awful and needs to be covered up" about boobs, eh?

May as well apply that to penises as well. Think about it.

Not really, seeing as boobs are seen as secondary sexual organs. Vaginas and penises could be subject to the same treatment, but not penises and boobs.


And since this next quote is a biggy, Ima just put my replies in boldskis.

Well, actually your wrong here to a fairly large extent.

The thing is that as gamers are mostly lonely guys in a male dominated area of interest, we tend to "notice" the outcry about female nudity more often. A lot of gamers also feel the need to "adapt" to political correctness in the hopes that by doing so it makes their hobby, and by extension themselves more attractive to the opposite sex... permavirgins that the harcore gamers are.

I fail to see how trying to have an open mind is a bad thing, nor why you need to label it with something like PC that's just been associated with negativity. And I'm not even going to mention how strongly you're generalizing here.

The whole "beefcake" thing can have a similar prescence when your looking at things like the muscle and fitness subcultures. You see a lot of arguements about how all these beefy guys with arms the size of their heads is both exploitive, and encourages young boys to strive to reach an unrealistic ideal of what is "manly", turning towards 'roids, and hurting themselves through extreme workout method and the such in pursuit of the goal.

Arguements about how it's okay for guys to walk around without their shirts if they are buff enough, are very similar to how women with nice chests wandering around bare or with very little is also encouraged. You'll notice nobody wants to see a pasty, acne covered nerd chest, or some fat girl wandering around in the same condition. The standard is actually one that applies to attractive people wandering around "exposed", rather than something slanted towards one gender or the other when you actually choose to look at the issue as a whole.

Can't help but feel you've missed the point here dude... It's not about who approves of it or not, granted I'm not enthusiastic about seeing some overweight octogenarian leaping about without a shirt on but it's not going to attract the attention of the law, now is it? That's essentially what the thread is discussing, because if a woman was to walk around with her chest totally uncovered she would probably be charged with indecent exposure.

... and yes, people WILL cover the eyes of children around naked or nearly naked men. It's just that as guys we tend to notice is when someone cover JR's eyes around a bare breasted or scantily clad model, but pay less attention to the same reaction when say kids are around a Chippendales promotion.

Really? You think parents would cover their children's eyes if there was an abercrombie poster or something up? Okay. Even so it's fairly irrelevant as nudity is pretty much different to what's being discussed is it not?

I'll also say that sensitivity enters into it as well, that breast tissue is soft and sensitive, which you probably noticed (lol), for guys it's less of a big deal comfort wise to go walking around without a shirt. For girls it can be, and if the behavior is encouraged your basically looking at an arguement "hey, you should be a masochist to be more appealing!" more so that we currently already see it. It's not a MAJOR factor, but you have to understand that guys and girls really are differant, with some very differant anatomical needs.

It's not about whether women should or not, but rather whether they should be able to. Maybe nothing would change if women were quite able to go topless, but at least the choice would be there.

Such are my thoughts.

Also, you should never, ever, take political correcntess seriously. Generally speaking if something is part of a politically correct stance, that's probably a good reason to assume it's wrong. There are exceptions, but simply put it's one of the biggest poisons on society right now.

Okay, fair enough that Political Correctness is too strong in many cases, but it's one of the biggest poisons on society? What, it's up there with racial discrimination and rape, is it? And are you seriously going to write of 90% of issues dealing with PC just because they are trying to be PC? That's fairly close minded.

 

[noobium]

Look if women walked around topless then I wouldn't get anything done

i agree

 

[DrOswald]

Why is it that it's more acceptable for public displays of male semi-nudity (i.e. topless) than for females? You see it everywhere: ads for fragrances, at the beach, on a hot day, on TV, in movies, etc. Men can just walk around with their t-shirts off, bare chested, and nobody cares; if a woman did the same, parents would be averting their children's eyes, media companies would be barraged with complaints and she'd be made to put clothes on or, laws permitting, even arrested (Can the police do that? It sounds plausible.).

Obviously, there are plenty of nude woman in more adult films and on Page 3 of the Sun, but male toplessness is a lot more common and a lot less frowned upon - why is that? When it comes to below-the-belt nudity, it's a different story; fully naked males and females are both a bit "taboo", if you know what I mean. What's so different about the other half?

EDIT: Another point I'd like to make - if you see topless women in magazines (like candid celebrity photos or whatever), only the nipples will be censored, usually with little stars. Men have nipples too, right? So it's obviously not the fleshy, breast tissue that's the "problem", it's the nipples - this makes less sense because the breast tissue is the only thing different between men's and women's chests (please correct me if I'm wrong).

From a stand point of biology and human instinct, female breasts, especially female nipples, are sexual. We cover breasts in public for the same reason we cover genitals.

I personally don't really think it is a double standard. A double standard implies that the two parties are similar in all important respects; that there are only unimportant differences. I think breasts are actually a fairly significant anatomic feature. After all, would our culture be so obsessed with breasts if they were not worth noticing?

Perhaps in the future no one will care about breasts. In that case it would be a double standard.

 

[DrOswald]

because everyone should keep their clothes on, clothes are sexy.

This. This forever.

The only thing better than breasts is the promise of breasts.

 

[Shanecooper]

I think male nudity should be outlawed, while female nudity is keenly encouraged.
You may call that a double standard, I call it beauty.

Your idea of beauty is a double standard. Your are so flamingly heterosexual it's not even funny. If you don't find anything even remotely aesthetically appealing besides the object of your sexual interest, you have issues.

I think a more practical approach to wearing clothing, one that would not feature nudity as taboo is in order. Also, yes, being stricter on female toplessness is a double standard, and just cultural baggage.

I was jokeing. Sorry if I offended you. I don't really think that men should be forbidden from being shirtless. I could go either way with topless women though.

 

[superbatranger]

Men don't have boobs. I thought that would be pretty obvious...

We do have breasts. They're just not as developed as that of a woman's. Yes, that does also mean we have mammary glands, IIRC.

What? No we d... WHAT?!?!

Well, that's what my anatomy teacher said.

 

[le picklez]

Oh this discussion. I've tried to have this conversation with women pointing out sexualized men but it's refuted by something like "Muscles don't make a guy sexy", which is fairly close to total horseshit. Humans are, as a whole, superficial and just because you may believe that men can't possibly be visually sexualized yourself doesn't mean they can't. It means you are straight (or a lesbian), or in denial.

 

[MisterM2402]

-snip for gigantic post-

Thanks for replying to him - good counter arguments that I'd have been too tired to think of haha

because everyone should keep their clothes on, clothes are sexy.

This. This forever.

The only thing better than breasts is the promise of breasts.

I also agree with this (while I was arguing for equality, it wasn't so that I could ogle a nice rack; it was get guys to cover up, just in case you thought this was a contradictory opinion ).

 

[topless geordie]

Well I enjoy being topless, it's a great feeling to walk about in the park or on the coast bare chested, It's also a great feeling to see girls looking at my body and even better if they comment on it, also if out in the garden I like the feeling of neighbours seeing me bare chested and I don't consider myself to be interbred chavvy scum.