Free the Nipple Movement Shows the Banality of Modern Feminism

The civil rights issues of our time? Please.

Nothing demonstrates the banality of the modern feminist movement more than its confusion over boobs—as in women's breasts, not Republicans. On one hand, a Democratic lawmaker wants to force airports to provide special lactating rooms for nursing mothers, presumably so that they don't have to violate their modesty and breastfeed in public. On the other hand, they have launched the "free the nipple movement" because, apparently, women need to have the same equality as men to go topless in public. Some have even called this the "civil rights issue" of our time.

But, I note in my column at The Week:

Free the Nipple activists accuse society of a double standard for allowing men to show their breasts but not women. "Why are we more offended and outraged by female nipples than male nipples?" one demands to know.

But the fact is that their movement itself is based on a double standard. Indeed, if they were interested in genuine sexual equality, they wouldn't just fight for the right to go topless, but all laws against indecent exposure. So why don't they? Maybe because they realize that allowing strange men to swing their schlongs in streets would be neither comfortable nor safe for women…

One of the (many) problems with the modern feminist movement is that it constantly negates its own arguments because it can't decide what serves its cause better: Victorian prudishness or Bacchanalian libertinism.

Go here to read the whole column.