Man Prayer

This is an extraordinary short video written by Eve Ensler, one of the brightest lights in the feminine galaxy.

This very engaging video has a lot to say, particularly to males of the species.  My gender has had its hand on the throttle and steering since people left caves for permanent settlements.  Often,  humanity has advanced, not because of  male dominance, but mostly in spite of the things men have done. Until very recently, women have been dominated by men and subjected to many forms of violence and mistreatment. They have been deprived of education, and in some societies, reduced to a form of property. 

In recent years, in the more developed nations of the world, woman have made great strides. In the U.S., women have fought for and, to a great extent,  attained  equality and access to education and opportunity.

That's not say the battle is won for women.  There are still conservative voices that want to limit women's reproductive choice and their right to be who they wish to be.  There are still too many lesser developed nations in the world where women's rights remain pretty much non-existent.

Eve Ensler is one of the world's most important voices on equality and women's issues. The group she founded, V-Day, has become a global force.  With V-day, the principle focus is on ending violence against women by men. V-day is everywhere these days, but its work in Africa and the Congo in particular, is particularly notable and inspiring.

Eve Ensler is a creative genius and a treasure to humanity.   This 'Man Prayer' video is a powerful reflection of V-Day's effort to engage men and encourage them to join with women to remake the world in a manner that is life affirming and sustainable.

In V-Day parlance,  I am a V-man.

You guys that are not already in the club, I have to ask, 'What are you waiting for?'   If a man wants women to appreciate him, it starts with treating them with compassion and respect. 

Here is a link to the V-day website...  http://www.vday.org/


 

Potty-Mouthed Princesses

This video is awesome. It's little girls dropping  F-bombs, talking about sexism, equality, respect, etc.  Cheeky and fun, and also right on with its message. 

We need a level playing field, where men and women are concerned. No gender discrimination. Equal access to education and opportunity. Equal pay for equal work. Equal rights in all ways.

Check this out. If you want the best for women, this will make your day...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqHYzYn3WZw

Antonio Banderas - A Man Who Cares About Women

 I just viewed a PSA done by the actor, Antonio Banderas for the United Nations 'Stop Violence Against Women Campaign'.  Well over half of the world's female population have been raped, beaten, murdered, or abused in some fashion. That is a shocking fact.   And, let's face it. The abusers are and always have been men.

Antonio Banderas

The paradigm of male dominance  entrenched itself about 10,000 years ago when humans began to live in permanent communities dependent on agriculture for survival.  The strongest males began to specialize as  warriors.  Culture evolved with women relegated to 'doormat' status. Religion reinforced the male dominant paradigm.  Christians, Muslims, Jews; whatever the brand, religion was shaped by men, for men.  Human history reflects endless conflict and bloodshed as one group of men worked for advantage over another. 

More recently, in western culture, women have made strides, but there is still a long way to go where equal opportunity and wage parity are concerned.  In the US, women still make about 20% less than men doing the same job, and there is still a problem with some men behaving abusively toward women.

In other cultures, it remains far worse. In too many places, women continue to be little more than the  property of men, abused, denied opportunity or access to education, oppressed in so many ways.  Cultural and religious dogma in Africa, the Middle East, and some parts of Asia and Latin America, work together to keep men dominant and women subservient. 

This must change. We must evolve our global human society to a place where women are equal to men in all ways.   Women are entitled to the same respect as men. They are entitled to live free of and without fear of violence. They are entitled to equal access to education and the same opportunity to achieve their full potential.  They are entitled to dream and experience joy, and to be all that they can be,

Every man should want such a world for women. They are our mothers, sisters, daughters, and friends.  I want that, and Antonio Banderas wants that.

I've been a fan of Antonio Banderas the actor ever since he became Zorro in the movies.   Now,   even more, I admire Antonio Banderas the man, and outspoken champion for women.

Here is Antonio Banderas speaking out for the world's women...ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3fyoHFuFgQ

Jackson Katz on Gender Bias and Violence

I never heard of this guy, but I like what he says.  I found a link to his TED talk on Facebook.  Turns out his work is focused on training men in the military, on sports teams, in business, and in other venues to become leaders in standing up to gender bias and violence. His paradigm is simple, but also formidable.  He wants men in positions of power and influence to take the lead in calling out instances where women, or any other ethnic or gender category persons, are subjected to verbal abuse or violent behavior. 

Acting like a clueless prick doesn't take balls. The courage lies with those who stand up to that brand of mindless misanthropy. Let's face it, some women are jerks, but most jerks are male, and those jerks need to be called out when the step over the line. That's how the line gets redrawn.

Jackson Katz

Here is Jackson Katz's TED talk on gender bias and violence... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTvSfeCRxe8

One Third of All Women Are Victims of Violence

One out of three women are victims of violence, according to a new study by the World Health Organization. That is an astonishing number, a truly astonishing number; shameful and entirely unacceptable.

In many traditional cultures,  women are still treated like chattel,  denied education, considered valuable only for the work they can do and the children they can birth. 

Attention cavemen for whom misogyny is the norm.  Get real dudes. Loving women, nurturing them, giving them the respect and the access to opportunities they are entitled to is a whole lot more satisfying than hurting them, degrading them, or causing them to suffer in any way.    

 ______________________

WHO report highlights violence against women as a ‘global health problem of epidemic proportions’

New clinical and policy guidelines launched to guide health sector response

News release

20 June 2013 | Geneva - Physical or sexual violence is a public health problem that affects more than one third of all women globally, according to a new report released by WHO in partnership with the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the South African Medical Research Council.
The report, Global and regional estimates of violence against women: Prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence, represents the first systematic study of global data on the prevalence of violence against women – both by partners and non-partners. Some 35% of all women will experience either intimate partner or non-partner violence. The study finds that intimate partner violence is the most common type of violence against women, affecting 30% of women worldwide.
The study highlights the need for all sectors to engage in eliminating tolerance for violence against women and better support for women who experience it. New WHO guidelines, launched with the report, aim to help countries improve their health sector’s capacity to respond to violence against women.

Impact on physical and mental health

The report details the impact of violence on the physical and mental health of women and girls. This can range from broken bones to pregnancy-related complications, mental problems and impaired social functioning.
“These findings send a powerful message that violence against women is a global health problem of epidemic proportions,” said Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General, WHO. “We also see that the world’s health systems can and must do more for women who experience violence.”
The report’s key findings on the health impacts of violence by an intimate partner were:

• Death and injury – The study found that globally, 38% of all women who were murdered were murdered by their intimate partners, and 42% of women who have experienced physical or sexual violence at the hands of a partner had experienced injuries as a result.
• Depression – Partner violence is a major contributor to women’s mental health problems, with women who have experienced partner violence being almost twice as likely to experience depression compared to women who have not experienced any violence.
• Alcohol use problems – Women experiencing intimate partner violence are almost twice as likely as other women to have alcohol-use problems.
• Sexually transmitted infections – Women who experience physical and/or sexual partner violence are 1.5 times more likely to acquire syphilis infection, chlamydia, or gonorrhoea. In some regions (including sub-Saharan Africa), they are 1.5 times more likely to acquire HIV.
• Unwanted pregnancy and abortion – Both partner violence and non-partner sexual violence are associated with unwanted pregnancy; the report found that women experiencing physical and/or sexual partner violence are twice as likely to have an abortion than women who do not experience this violence.
• Low birth-weight babies – Women who experience partner violence have a 16% greater chance of having a low birth-weight baby.

“This new data shows that violence against women is extremely common. We urgently need to invest in prevention to address the underlying causes of this global women’s health problem.” said Professor Charlotte Watts, from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

Need for better reporting and more attention to prevention

Fear of stigma prevents many women from reporting non-partner sexual violence. Other barriers to data collection include the fact that fewer countries collect this data than information about intimate partner violence, and that many surveys of this type of violence employ less sophisticated measurement approaches than those used in monitoring intimate partner violence.
“The review brings to light the lack of data on sexual violence by perpetrators other than partners, including in conflict-affected settings,” said Dr Naeemah Abrahams from the SAMRC. “We need more countries to measure sexual violence and to use the best survey instruments available.”
In spite of these obstacles, the review found that 7.2% of women globally had reported non-partner sexual violence. As a result of this violence, they were 2.3 times more likely to have alcohol disorders and 2.6 times more likely to suffer depression or anxiety – slightly more than women experiencing intimate partner violence.
The report calls for a major scaling up of global efforts to prevent all kinds of violence against women by addressing the social and cultural factors behind it.

Recommendations to the health sector

The report also emphasizes the urgent need for better care for women who have experienced violence. These women often seek health-care, without necessarily disclosing the cause of their injuries or ill-health.
“The report findings show that violence greatly increases women’s vulnerability to a range of short- and long-term health problems; it highlights the need for the health sector to take violence against women more seriously,” said Dr Claudia Garcia-Moreno of WHO. “In many cases this is because health workers simply do not know how to respond.”
New WHO clinical and policy guidelines released today aim to address this lack of knowledge. They stress the importance of training all levels of health workers to recognize when women may be at risk of partner violence and to know how to provide an appropriate response.
They also point out that some health-care settings, such as antenatal services and HIV testing, may provide opportunities to support survivors of violence, provided certain minimum requirements are met.

• Health providers have been trained how to ask about violence.
• Standard operating procedures are in place.
• Consultation takes place in a private setting.
• Confidentiality is guaranteed.
• A referral system is in place to ensure that women can access related services.
• In the case of sexual assault, health care settings must be equipped to provide the comprehensive response women need – to address both physical and mental health consequences.

The report’s authors stress the importance of using these guidelines to incorporate issues of violence into the medical and nursing curricula as well as during in-service training.
WHO will begin to work with countries in South-East Asia to implement the new recommendations at the end of June. The Organization will partner with ministries of health, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and sister United Nations agencies to disseminate the guidelines, and support their adaptation and use.

Notes to Editors:

In March 2013, Dr Chan joined the UN Secretary General and the heads of other UN entities in a call for zero tolerance for violence against women at the Commission on the Status of Women in New York. During the Sixty-sixth World Health Assembly in May 2013, seven governments - Belgium, India, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, United States of America, and Zambia - declared violence against women and girls "a major global public health, gender equality and human rights challenge, touching every country and every part of society" and proposed the issue should appear on the agenda of the Sixty-seventh World Health Assembly.

For more information please contact:

Fadéla Chaib
WHO
Telephone: +41 22 791 3228
Mobile: +41 79 475 5556
E-mail: chaibf@who.int
Jenny Orton/Katie Steels
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7927 2802
E-mail: press@lshtm.ac.uk
Keletso Ratsela
South African Medical Research Council
Telephone: +27 12 339 8500, +27 82 804 8883
E-mail: Keletso.Ratsela@mrc.ac.za

About the report

The report was developed by WHO, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the South African Medical Research Council. It is the first systematic review and synthesis of the body of scientific data on the prevalence of two forms of violence against women – violence by an intimate partner and sexual violence by someone other than an intimate partner. It shows for the first time, aggregated global and regional prevalence estimates of these two forms of violence, generated using population data from all over the world that have been compiled in a systematic way. The report documents the effects of violence on women’s physical, mental, sexual and reproductive health. This was based on systematic reviews looking at data on the association between the different forms of violence considered and specific health outcomes.

Shaqtin' a Fool Meets Congress

I am constantly amazed by the dysfunctional swirl of arrogance and ignorance we know as the U.S. House of Representatives.   Not all of them. But out of 435 elected members,  the majority in this term are Republicans., and the majority of Republicans in the House are tea party types,  who all seem to be arrogant, ignorant, and sociopathic to a radical extreme.    No one should be surprised given this reality that our government is suffering a colossal case of brain freeze.

My favorite spectator sport is NBA basketball.  I watch 'Inside the NBA'  on TNT religiously during the season.  I get a kick out of watching Ernie, Kenny, and Charles.  It got even better when 'The Big Aristotle', Shaquille O'Neal joined the crew.  Shaq is 7' plus tall and around 300 lbs.  Remarkably, his  personality is as big as the oversized custom suits he wears.  Since Shaq came aboard, a regular feature of the broadcast has been a segment called,  Shaqtin' a Fool .   It's a series of video clips of NBA players being clumsy, funny, or foolish.  It's hilarious stuff, especially when narrated by Shaq Diesel himself.    

Here's what I'm wishing. I wish there was a  Shaqtin' a Fool  for congress.   Every day,  members of this very important part of our elected government say and do some of the stupidest things imaginable.  Some members have achieved superstar status in the art of contemptible foolishness and stupidity. Members of this club of big league jerks include Congressman Michelle Bachman,  Congressmen Louie Gohmert,  Congressman Steve King,  Congressman Trent Franks, Senator Ted Cruz, and Senator James Imhoff.   There are a whole lot more in the halls of congress that regularly have the kind of odious brain farts that warrant public ridicule.  

My latest nomination for congressional fool is Texas Republican Representative Michael Burgess.  Here's a guy, who happens to be a medical doctor, an ob-gyn no less - who claims that 15 week old fetus's masturbate while passing time in the uterus.  Burgess, a teaparty anti-abortion extremist, says that this womb wanking is evidence that a fetus is a real person.   Never mind that there is no scientific evidence that suggests that fetus's are doing any such thing.

It's a disgrace that our political system, seriously corrupted as it is, enables the election of ideological numbskulls like Michael Burgess.   It's no wonder our government is dysfunctional. As long as we keep electing arrogant boneheads to high political office, we as a nation, will get what we deserve.



 

One Billion Rising

On Thursday, February 14th, women and men around the world will make their voices heard. One Billion Rising, an initiative launched by the global non-profit V-Day will celebrate women and call for an end to violence against women and girls everywhere.  This effort, led by Eve Ensler, founder of  V-Day, will showcase people on every continent demanding full rights and equality for women.

My wife and I enthusiastically support V-Day and One Billion Rising.   Full equality for women and an end to misogynistic behavior toward them is an absolute requirement for evolving a human society that is fair and sustainable over the long term.  On Valentine's Day, February 14th,  we will stand firmly with the one billion souls around the world who are rising.

Here is a link to the One Billion Rising website...http://onebillionrising.org/

Here is a link to a brief video about the event...http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gl2AO-7Vlzk

Sarah Silverman's Bro Rules

Sarah Silverman is a piece of work: smart, caring, committed, and fun.   This wonderful PSA she just did makes me laugh.  I really like Sarah Silverman, and I really like and admire what she says...

Sarah Silverman

Here is a link to Sarah's Bro Rules PSA...
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/entertainment/video-sarah-silverman-tells-men-be-bro-choice

Why Men Like Breasts

It's biology. Men, and women too, are hard-wired to have more than a passing interest in female mammary. 

I just ran across the article below by a couple of neuro-scientists who have studied the physiology of  the brain and how it is pre-disposed to be attracted to the sight of female breasts. It really is biology. There is no shame in a healthy interest in a lovely cleavage.   Sometimes that natural instinct gets muddled with the whole idea of 'objectifying' women.   The harm comes with seeing and valuing only the anatomy and not the person that comes with it. Appreciation is one thing, obsession is another.


Breasts: The Real Reason Men Love Them

by Larry Young, PhD, and Brian Alexander   

Posted: 09/25/2012 10:22 am

Jokes about breasts, and men looking at breasts, are such a comedy staple they've become a kind of go-to cliché. How many times have we seen a man talking to a curvaceous woman only to have her point to her own eyes and say "Hey, buddy, up here!"?

It's funny -- or, at least, it was funny the first dozen times we saw it -- because it's true. The male eye does have a way of drifting south. But why? Why are heterosexual men so fascinated by women's breasts that we sometimes act as if the breasts are the seat of the soul?

Well, we happen to be heterosexual men. We also happen to be men interested in biology -- one of us, Larry, is one of the world's leading experts in the neuroscience of social bonding. So we've been thinking about this, and, in our new book, The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex, and the Science of Attraction, we propose an answer.

Biologically speaking, this human male breast obsession is pretty weird. Men are the only male mammals fascinated by breasts in a sexual context. Women are the only female mammals whose breasts become enlarged at puberty, independent of pregnancy. We are also the only species in which males caress, massage and even orally stimulate the female breasts during foreplay and sex.

Women do seem to enjoy the attention, at least at the right moments. When Roy Levin, of the University of Sheffield, and Cindy Meston, of the University of Texas, polled 301 people -- including 153 women -- they found that stimulating the breasts or nipples enhanced sexual arousal in about 82 percent of the women. Nearly 60 percent explicitly asked to have their nipples touched.

Men are generally pretty happy to oblige. As the success of Hooters, "men's" magazines, a kajillion websites, and about 10,000 years of art tell us, men are extremely drawn to breasts, and not because boys learn on the playground that breasts are something that they should be interested in. It's biological and deeply engrained in our brain. In fact, research indicates that when we're confronted with breasts, or even breast-related stimuli, like bras, we'll start making bad decisions (and not just to eat at Hooters).

For example, in one study, men were offered money payouts. They could have a few Euros right away, or, if they agreed to wait a few days, more Euros later. In this version of a classic "delayed gratification" (also called intertemporal choice by behavioral economists) experiment, some men watched videos of pastoral scenes while others watched videos of attractive women with lots of skin exposed running in slo-mo, "Baywatch" style. The men who watched the women's breasts doing what women's breasts do opted for the smaller-sooner payouts significantly more often then men who watched the pastoral scene.

This likely indicates that parts of their brains associated with "reward," the pleasure centers, and the sites of goal-directed motivation, were shouting down the reasoning centers of their brains, primarily the pre-frontal cortex. Neurochemicals were activating those reward and motivational circuits to drive men toward taking the short money.

So breasts are mighty tempting. But what purpose could this possibly serve?

Some evolutionary biologists have suggested that full breasts store needed fat, which, in turn, signals to a man that a woman is in good health and therefore a top-notch prospect to bear and raise children. But men aren't known for being particularly choosy about sex partners. After all, sperm is cheap. Since we don't get pregnant, and bear children, it doesn't cost us much to spread it around. If the main goal of sex -- evolutionarily speaking -- is to pass along one's genes, it would make more sense to have sex with as many women as possible, regardless of whether or not they looked like last month's Playmate.

Another hypothesis is based on the idea that most primates have sex with the male entering from behind. This may explain why some female monkeys display elaborate rear-end advertising. In humans, goes the argument, breasts became larger to mimic the contours of a woman's rear.

We think both of these explanations are bunk! Rather, there's only one neurological explanation, and it has to do with brain mechanisms that promote the powerful bond of a mother to her infant.

When a woman gives birth, her newborn will engage in some pretty elaborate manipulations of its mother's breasts. This stimulation sends signals along nerves and into the brain. There, the signals trigger the release of a neurochemical called oxytocin from the brain's hypothalamus. This oxytocin release eventually stimulates smooth muscles in a woman's breasts to eject milk, making it available to her nursing baby.

But oxytocin release has other effects, too. When released at the baby's instigation, the attention of the mother focuses on her baby. The infant becomes the most important thing in the world. Oxytocin, acting in concert with dopamine, also helps imprint the newborn's face, smell and sounds in the mother's reward circuitry, making nursing and nurturing a feel-good experience, motivating her to keep doing it and forging the mother-infant bond. This bond is not only the most beautiful of all social bonds, it can also be the most enduring, lasting a lifetime.

Another human oddity is that we're among the very rare animals that have sex face-to-face, looking into each other's eyes. We believe this quirk of human sexuality has evolved to exploit the ancient mother-infant bonding brain circuitry as a way to help form bonds between lovers.

When a partner touches, massages or nibbles a woman's breasts, it sparks the same series of brain events as nursing. Oxytocin focuses the brain's attention to the partner's face, smell, and voice. The combination of oxytocin release from breast stimulation, and the surge of dopamine from the excitement of foreplay and face-to-face sex, help create an association of the lover's face and eyes with the pleasurable feelings, building a bond in the women's brain.

So joke all you want, but our fascination with your breasts, far from being creepy, is an unconscious evolutionary drive prompting us to activate powerful bonding circuits that help create a loving, nurturing bond.

For more, including the male side of this equation, see our book, "The Chemistry Between Us."



Here's another take on boobs.

Boobs Are Great -- Now, Can We All Stop Freaking Out Any Time They're Exposed?

by Lindy West

 

October 16, 2012 |

The following story firs appeared on Jezebel.com. [3]

I assume, if you're reading this, that you are most likely a human being with eyeballs in a head on top of a torso with nipples on it sitting on a butt attached to some genitals and legs and feet. Or some approximation thereof, give or take a few limbs/eyeballs/genitals as needed. In that case, congratulations! You have a body. And your body is—truth!—naked under your clothes right now. Look to your left. Look to your right. Literally 100% of the people within your line of sight are also naked under their clothes! And if, for some reason, some of those clothes happened to come off, or go invisible, or get burned off by acid rain or the erotic ray-gun of a lecherous sex-doctor, you might accidentally behold your neighbors' nakedness. And do you know what would happen then? Literally nothing. Nothing would happen to anyone. (Except for that sex-doctor. We gotta get that dude off the streets.)

And that's why our culture's nudity taboo is STUPID. And it's not stupid because I'm some latent nudist who wants to go out and run around flapping my bunz all over town. Iprofoundly don't. Nor do I particularly want to drink in the sight of grampa's freshly buffed testes while standing in line at Starbucks or whatever. I'm fine with people keeping their clothes on in public 99% of the time. But the issue here is twofold: 1) When people's clothes come off—in public or private, whether by accident (Janet Jackson) or on purpose (Kate Middleton)—we react like fucking maniacs; and 2) This taboo is gendered and unfair, and women bear the brunt of it.
In the wake of Amanda Todd's suicide (after schoolmates distributed photos of her naked chest), Conor Friedersdorf has a super-smart take-down [4] of the English-speaking world's nudity taboo over at the Atlantic today.

The stigma against female nudity is nevertheless something that costs women the world over very dearly. And it benefits none of the places where it prevails. Think of earth as a great natural experiment, where certain parts of Scandinavia think nothing of co-ed naked saunas, and certain parts of the Middle East require women to cover themselves in head-to-toe burkas on the street. How many Americans, Canadians, or Brits believe societies that enforce female modesty are better off? Or that countries where immodesty is most stigmatized are more moral or functional?
Yet we stigmatize the human body.

The idea that free speech—abstract notions that we create with our bodies, our brains and mouths and fingers— is protected, but accidentally letting people see those same bodies is stigmatized and criminalized, is so counterintuitive it's a joke. Our bodies exist. You can tell, just by looking at almost any human being, what they probably look like under their clothes. But when our suspicions are confirmed (there ARE boobz under there!) we lose our shit.

The boobs taboo is completely insane. You can tell it's insane because it's insane. You can show 90% of a breast and everyone's fine—I could go on Fox & Friends right now with just band-aids over the middle part (AND MAYBE I WILL) and the FCC would be all, "No big! Now show me some more surprising household chores I can do with lemons, Gretchen Carlson!!" It's cool. Put Ice Loves Coco on in primetime. But if you reveal the remaining 10% of your breast (or 5% or 20%, depending on aereola-size—another perfectly sensical distinction, obv), you transform, suddenly, into some sort of creeping cultural blight who must be shamed 4 life and fined a one-million-billion-dollar Scarlet Woman Tax. This fact is unacceptable. And it hurts women in the following ways:

1. The topless taboo only applies to women. Downstairs-genitals, fine. Whatever. Cover 'em up. I mean, it's not the most logical thing in the world (kids also have genitals! NOT THAT I'VE CHECKED), but at least penises are just as stigmatized as crimson lady-orchids, so there's no double-standard. But when it comes to chests, this is a woman's burden. Women's chests are so stigmatized that even women without breasts have to cover up in the pool [5]. A dude, meanwhile, could probably get fucking breast implants and still go swimming topless (as long as he otherwise presented as masculine). As the great Caitlin Moran says:

"You can tell whether some misogynistic societal pressure is being exerted on women by calmly enquiring, ‘And are the men doing this, as well?' If they aren't, chances are you're dealing with what we strident feminists refer to as ‘some total fucking bullshit'."

Yes. Some total fucking bullshit. Because a naked woman = porn. Clothe those things! Put cloth on them! [6]

2. Since this taboo is a woman's burden, women are the ones punished for it [7]. Taboos around nudity are deeply tied to problematic objectification and exploitation. If a woman shows her breasts to an intimate partner in a consensual encounter, and that partner non-consensually photographs and distributes that woman's breasts to the public, the woman is still blamed and shamed. Sure, she might be pitied too, but the implication still echoes around more conservative circles: Well, she shouldn't have been doing that if she didn't want to face the consequences. Women shouldn't go around having bodies all willy-nilly if they don't want those bodies to be exploited!

3. By associating women's bodies inordinately with lewdness, sexuality, and shame, we associate women themselves with lewdness, sexuality, and shame. Here's Friedersdorf again, on Janet Jackson's Super Bowl nip-slip:

What boggles my mind is that most people never would've been upset if it weren't for the nipple slip. They were perfectly content sitting through five minutes of sexually suggestive content with their kids, only to freak out at a nipple, as if the exposed body part itself was the problem.

Bodies are not inherently sexual. Women's chests are just chests—like men's chests but floppier! If anything, lady-chests should be more familiar and less shocking than dude-chests, seeing as most of us spent our first year or so with our mouths literally latched on to one. In fact, that makes the determination to sexualize and stigmatize boobs at all costextremely creepy. You're basically calling your own baby-self a pervert. Stop it, weirdo.

4. All of this trickles down to the kids. Attention, stupid people who are outraged at the sight of a nipple: You have nipples. "But but but what about my children? My children shouldn't have to see nipples!!!" Yes, they should and they do and they have. Because last time I checked, YOUR CHILDREN HAVE NIPPLES. (Not that I've checked your children's nipples, specifically. That would be inappropriate.) This whole system raises girl-children to believe their bodies are shameful, and boy-children to think that girl-children are sluts for showing their shameful bodies. Children cannot, objectively, be scandalized by naked bodies, becausechildren are naked bodies.
I don't have any puritanical notions about censorship—I don't particularly care about sexual content on TV (and I certainly don't think it's worse than violent content), as long as kids have access to open, honest information about what they're seeing. (Sex education in school would be a good place for that! Or...no? Just abstinence? 'Kay.) But conflating nudity with shame and dirtiness makes no sense and helps no one.

Friedersdorf lays out a beautiful fantasy for how Kate Middleton might have responded to her topless photo "nightmare," if we lived in a sane and civilized utopia:

What I couldn't help but imagine is how awesome it would've been had Middleton called a press conference on a nude beach, arrived topless with a thousand women, and told the assembled press, "The photographer who invaded my privacy had no right to capture those images, but I face that nightmare on a daily basis. And no one gives a damn until one of them photographs me topless? Grow up. I am unashamed of my body. In fact, I rather love it, as all these woman love their bodies. That makes some immature people uncomfortable. And it is their problem, not mine. If you're sitting at home obsessing over photos of me topless, or giggling and pointing on the streets, it's you who should feel embarrassment and shame, not me. I refuse to do it anymore."

Well said, Imaginary Kate Middleton. Well said.