Should Women be Permitted to Appear Topless in Public?

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This is a silly thread, but i still think women should be able to be topless in public (only in segregated places of course).

I feel that way about topless men. I don't want to look at a bunch of other men walking around without tops.

Well, there are places that require you to wear a shirt anyways. As for the people saying they don't want to see topless women, well, I don't want to see fat chicks wearing revealing clothing either, but can I tell them to wear more clothes they either don't have or refuse to wear? Yet, no one says fat people have to cover up. If you don't like seeing particular sights, then simply don't stare at them. Go read your porn mag or something.

As for women going topless, if they were allowed to, then this would be a choice--if some women don't want to go around topless at a swimming pool, then they don't have to, it's their choice. If they want to, they shouldn't be bothered about it either. I guess this also goes back to the argument about skimpy clothing--if you know it's going to attract attention, either don't do it or be prepared for it.

Because I'm not much of a woman, can someone tell me if seeing a guy topless might "arouse" them?

well, it is my view, a theory I have, that if women would be allowed to go topless just as men do, then the lust about breasts would be reduced, everyone would be so used to that, that it would be taken as something very natural, so it won't necessarily be a lustful thing anymore and inmoral.

That is quite possible. Do you know if there have been any sociological studies on this?

There is nothing wrong with lust. It's a natural feeling and it's quite normal for men to want to go to bed with women and vice versa. It's nature's way of making children and great fun if the participants are willing. If women's breasts were normally exposed they would become less motivating for sex. I assume that in countries where the culture demands that women are totally covered noses and mouths become very sexually attractive.

I agree that lust is not inherently wrong. It is the context of the lust that makes it moral or immoral. For instance a man having lust for his wife is moral and a man having lust for a small child is immoral in most people's books.

A small child is just not a proper sexual object as it is harmful to the child but lust is a basic instinct and cannot be controlled by law. But law can control the actions motivated by lust. If a man is lustful for a hole in a watermelon that's OK even if the watermelon is an improper sexual object as watermelons rarely suffer psychological damage from copulation. It might be useful to have a law requiring raped watermelons to be labeled so unsuspecting eaters are warned.

So would it be OK, in your opinion, for a person to lust after small children as long as they don't act on that feeling?

I wouldn't enjoy eating a raped watermelon, well, I guess it would depend on who raped them

Gotta love those Kiwis: Boobs on Bikes

You cannot punish someone for their thoughts. It's like punishing someone for being schizophrenic. Naturally, children should be protected from anyone who would hurt them. If pedophiles could be persuaded to transfer their sexual instincts to more appropriate subjects that would benefit everybody. So far nobody seems to know how to do this.

I was never suggesting that a person should be punished for their thoughts. You seem to be saying that if you can't take legal action against something, it cannot be considered wrong. However, the point of the whole debate, of which my lust comment was a part before you seemed to take it out of context, was that morality and legality are not equivalent, that there are some things that are very legal but at the same time immoral. Our thoughts are not something that can be regulated by the legal system. That doesn't mean that they are not sometimes immoral or should not be self regulated.

The concept of someone regulating his/her thoughts strikes me as weird. Thoughts just come with me and I can discard any action prompted by the thought but not the thought. I don't have bad thoughts. They are all just thoughts. But perhaps your mind works differently.

I guess it comes down to what I mean by self regulating thoughts. I don't think it means that I can control every thought that occurs to me, but I can control my actions which can put me in an environment where my good thoughts can thrive and my bad thoughts will not. I do not agree that thoughts are morally neutral.

What do you make of people being arrested for intending to kill someone without actually killing anyone.

I don't see how it's possible to arrest people for thinking about killing someone unless actual preparations are made for the accomplishment of the act. The thought that the world would be better off if someone is killed probably occurs to many people but it should not be illegal to think about it. How do you prove it unless an open threat is made?