From Bitch Ph.d, I’ve learned about the interesting case of Diana Blaine, who teaches gender studies at nearby USC.
I ought to have heard of her before; we’re about the same age, we both have doctorates from UCLA, and we both teach gender studies. But the feminist community is both busy and parochial, and I am always learning about new and fascinating folks in our world. What’s got Blaine noticed these days is that a few of her students discovered that from her blog, she links to her Flickr photo site where she has a couple of topless pictures of herself. The story got picked up by Channel 4, the Los Angeles NBCTV affiliate, and it’s landed Professor Blaine in a bit of hot water.
Even though Blaine is untenured,the university, I am happy to say, seems to be backing her to the hilt; the blog is her personal web page and not maintained on USC’s servers. Both her academic and personal freedom mean that her job is not in jeopardy. (And may I say that I am, reluctantly, greatly admiring of the growing progressive majority at the University of Southern California. A school once thought of as a mecca for the suntanned, the privileged, the vapid, and the reactionary has become renowned for its commitment to diversity and its particularly strong program in gender studies. Almost makes me want to say "Fight On for old ‘SC!" Of course, being married to an alumna who bleeds cardinal and gold helps.)
Here’s a lengthy excerpt from one of Blaine’s posts about her decision to post semi-nude pictures of herself (note, her blog is worksafe):
The couple of conservative USC students who have dedicated themselves to attacking me clearly grew frustrated at my refusal to react to them, so they upped the ante and contacted the media about my nudie pics. One station bit, and voila, we have a scandal. It was fun watching the broadcasts about me throughout the day as I do what I am trained to do as a gender scholar, interpret media representations; it’s just in this case I was the subject…
Anywho, first we can see the obvious puritanical dynamic that the United States has had since, well, the Puritans came over from England where their particular brand of fanatical Christianity proved too much even for the fanatical Protestants breaking away from the Catholic Church in the Reformation. The Puritans loathed the body and tried to exert strict controls on sexuality, particularly female–read The Scarlet Letter for all you’ll ever need to know about this. We continue to have their reactionary discomfort with the body, and so we too find it an object of obsessive fascination. Basically, by making nudity taboo, we’ve guaranteed its centrality. As Feminist Scholar Susan Griffin notes, the priest and the pornographer operate on the same value system–both mark human sexuality as disgusting, and then one says "turn your eyes away," while the other says, "look here, look here!"
So these kids were hoping to capitalize on our Puritanical sense that we should be ashamed of something as banal as our own bodies, trying in effect to mark me with the Scarlet Letter. "Ummmm, let’s tell on her," is in effect their motivation (which my husband has aptly branded "juvenile"), and that way we can get her in trouble with patriarchal authority, in this case the administration at USC. That will show her for disagreeing with us! Put her in her place!
Now we need to take responsibility for our part in this. These young people were raised by us, and we are the ones who have taught them that they should have revulsion for nudity and sexuality. We have also taught them that it’s appropriate to police women’s sexual behavior, that they have the privilege to interfere in female self-determination. As Americans, we have failed them, and I hope that we can continue to evolve as a culture in a direction that is more life-affirming and less fear-based. I have dedicated my life’s work to this type of education, one that shows the history of and contexts for our current beliefs and actions and therefore gives us the power to change, should we so choose.
There’s a lot to digest there from a feminist perspective. First off, the historian in me feels compelled to shriek at the notion that The Scarlet Letter offers an accurate portrayal of Puritan life! Hawthorne wrote in 1850, some two centuries after the zenith of American Puritanism — and he was, to put it mildly, no historian. Want to understand Puritan sexuality in all of its contradictions and complexity? My good buddy Richard Godbeer (formally at Riverside, now at Miami) has the book on the subject: Sexual Revolution in Early America. Read it, and you’ll see how wrong Hawthorne was.
But I’m not here to quibble with Blaine’s reference to Puritanism, even if it is a bit inaccurate. In the main, she’s right that we live in a culture that is extraordinarily ambivalent about nudity and sexuality. She’s right too that the young (apparently male) students who "turned her in" for her topless pictures were trying to "police her sexuality" in a way that is fundamentally very traditional.
Clearly, Diana Blaine is doing her best to "match her language and her life". In line with many "sex-positive" feminists, she argues for a radical revisioning of sexuality and gender. She is highly critical of traditional sexual mores, perhaps particularly because those mores have alternately repressed and exploited women. And on her eponymous blog, she’s going to make it clear — in her words and pictures — that she lives a life that is fully congruent with her expressed personal and intellectual values. In that sense, she’s doing what all good feminist teachers do: she’s inviting her students to look at her as a role model for a particular way to live out one’s ideological commitments. Her topless photos are, it seems, clear evidence that Diana Blaine will not be bound by a traditional understanding of what is appropriate for a woman, a scholar, and a teacher. I’m sure she hopes to give inspiration and encouragement to her students; judging from the laudatory reviews she’s received, she’s clearly succeeded.
If you hunt around in my photo albums, you’ll find a pic or two of me showing as much skin as Diana Blaine does. I’ve put up a few pictures of me running (or collapsed after a run). My male privilege allows me to put "topless" pics of myself on my blog without significant criticism. Diana Blaine and I are a lot alike: two married UCLA Ph.Ds who teach gender studies and maintain blogs that mix the personal and the professional. We both have pictures of our naked chests on display. But for any number of reasons — most of which are rooted in the very sort of traditional mores that Blaine finds so troublesome — my bare chest is unremarkable while hers attracts calls from the Oprah show. That is sexism at its most absurd.
Of course, I’ve made it clear on my blog that I am trying to do something fairly difficult: I’m trying to match a passionate commitment to the traditional goals of secular feminism with an even more passionate commitment to evangelical Christian faith. On issues like abortion, for example, this has left me tied into knots of nuance where I end up alienating everyone with my tortured and self-indulgent ambivalence. On other issues, such as pornography, my feminism and my faith lead me to precisely the same conclusion, and I can speak clearly. On this blog (and sometimes in the classroom) I also talk about my own experiences with abortion and pornography. My students deserve to know that I do match my language and my life — they need to know, too, that my theories are rooted both in intellectual inquiry and in personal experience.
One of the classic battle-cries of feminism is that "the personal is political". In different ways, with differing views of feminism, Diana Blaine and I are both living that out in the conscious decision to blur the line between the public and the private self. While I sense that she and I would differ on many issues, she has my full and complete support in her decision to reveal so much of herself — literally and figuratively — in her very public blog.
Alas, not all feminists are as approving of the personal decisions of their allies. In the comments section below Bitch Ph.D’s post on the subject of Diana’s blog, a "dr. igloo" writes:
…I personally find her feminist street cred slightly tarnished by the fact that she has apparently taken her husband’s last name. Is there really a credible feminist defense of this practice?
Aha. So when Diana Blaine makes the CHOICE to put topless pictures of herself on her public blog, she’s a "good" feminist, but when she makes the CHOICE to create unity with her spouse by sharing the same last name, she’s a bad one? Lordy, I hate the feminism police.
UPDATE: I cross-posted at Cliopatria, and Diana Blaine responds there. Inside Higher Ed weighs in here, and Margaret Soltan here. The last is rather nasty, I think; it’s easy to be snarky when faced with the mixture of brazenness and sincerity that Blaine offers on her blog. (I’m happy to say that at one time, I was Soltan’s darling.)
It’s funny how protective I am of academics who are provocateurs, even when I try for the exact opposite effect. If I’m trying to present any kind of an image here, it’s of a man who tries desperately to reconcile a number of contradictory impulses, and who longs to inspire rather than to inflame. I’d rather be irenic than ironic, and rather reconcile than provoke. But I stick up for my colleagues, almost regardless of their offense. (Heck, I stuck up for Jacques Pluss — how could I not stand with Diana Blaine?)
Here’s my answer to the feminism police.
I had my father’s last name. I was born with it. I had no choice. I would rather choose the last name of my husband, a man I love, over a name from a man I don’t respect. Of course I could choose my own new last name, but that feels hokey to me. This is the name I chose.
Also, I highly recommend checking out what the sex police at the CDC have been up to - it’s on my blog today.
ssppssssst: I’m pretty sure the “Dr. Igloo” is, in fact, not a feminist, but a troll, or a feminist employing sarcasm. No one who is a feminist says “feminist credentials” without an appropriate eye roll and exaggerated sigh.
Q Grrl, it’s possible I’m touchy because I got tremendous flack when I announced that my wife had taken my last name after we were married last year.
Faith:
That’s a crappy answer.
Because a)it’s not your father’s name, it’s *your* name. Men don’t go around saying they have someone else’s name, it’s just their last name.
b) you can change your name at any point in your life to almost anything you want to. There is no reason at all to wait until you’re married and then just happen to change it to your husband’s name.
Anyway, Hugo, really?? Taking one comment and complaining about ‘feminist police’? Are you bitter about something?
I would agree that there’s no credible feminist defense of the practice of taking your husband’s last name, but I don’t see the leap from feminist/non-feminist decision to good/bad feminist.
I don’t see the leap from feminist/non-feminist decision to good/bad feminist.
How else is one supposed to interpret a comment which says taking her husband’s name tarnishes her feminist street cred? She’s can’t be an authentic feminist if she’s doing something as patriarchial as changing her name! Sounds like the feminism police to me.
Ooops, that last comment is me. I will resist the urge to make bad jokes about name changes now…
“Anyway, Hugo, really?? Taking one comment and complaining about ‘feminist police’? Are you bitter about something?”
Though he hasn’t always been kind to us MRAs, I can say that, yes, he has something to be bitter about, and that is how those to whom he is always nice use his kindness as a weapon against him (as he mentioned above with regard to his wife’s taking his last name). I hope he’s had enough and is willing to stick up for himself when apropos.
Tara -
a) Whether men go around saying they have someone else’s name or not, they do. They have their father’s names.
b) of course I could have changed my name at any point in my life to almost anything I wanted. I could have changed my name to Bettie Raincloud had I wanted. I *chose* my husband’s name for multiple reasons including, I liked the sound of it and it is more ethnically identifiable than my father’s.
c) I’m a lesbian, my husband is a gay man. My relationship is complicated and non-traditional and confuses the hell out of most people. Having the same last name whether my father’s or his father’s is a semantic identification of bonding that nothing else replaces.
It isn’t a feminist choice, though. It doesn’t someone not a feminist — everyone makes non-feminist choices sometimes, we live in an imperfect world, we’re all imperfect. A single non-feminist choice does not “tarnish feminist cred”. It doesn’t make it a wrong or bad choice. It’s just not a feminist choice. Arguing that because it’s a choice it’s feminist is a really poor argument.
If I thought the great institution of feminism would crumble under husband’s last names, I’d have hung up my labrys long ago. :)
Okay, folks, I’ve made an error here — the point was to discuss the blog and the pictures that Blaine put up, not her last name decision. It’s a separate issue, and I’m at fault for raising it. But let’s get back on track for this thread, and I’ll blog soon about the name change issue (something I’ve done before and will do again) and we can discuss it there.
Thanks for the post, Hugo.
Your insights are powerful. Many of us need to be reminded to let our lives be the outpouring of our philosophies - we seem to live in a culture of people who suffer from multiple personalities, and, oh, the drama it causes! I applaud you, and Dr. Blaine, for choosing to live in a way which is consistant with what you teach others.
And here I thought feminism was all about expanding choices (Be they names, flasing boobage, or what-have-you), and being puritanical was in policing such choices and deciding which ones were good and defensible, and which ones were not.
Or is it just the pejoritive term is used when the “other guy” does it, and “different” for us?
I think the most important point for me is the concept of “policing the body” which implies not only the “the public” have some sort of duty to monitor and censor the acts of women, particularly women of a percieved class (as class moderation of behavoir is as important, particularly when applied to women) but also the assumption that the collective public, if it were to have a gender, would be male. This is a male point of view, a male dilemma - whether you want to tie it to America’s particularly twisted Christian tradition or simply the implication that women’s bodies are commodities, and that views of them, belong to some male, somewhere, and thus need restricting.
I’ve got to say that I did get a little taken aback when I saw your photo with your naked upper body :) not because of the sight itself, but because you know your students frequent your site and just like you said once that you didn’t want to have the scantily clad image of your ‘kids’ from the youth group in your mind, and hence withdrew from MySpace, I wouldn’t have thought you’d want that image of you in their heads either. I know I’m dead careful to avoid dressing in a way that would show my body much and distract my students on the days that I’m teaching, and it made me more careful about wearing e.g. miniskirts when I’m in the parts of town where I may bump into them, even when I’m not teaching (I’m a very junior academic, so I haven’t phased miniskirts out just yet :)). Perhaps that’s an extreme, I just feel the need both to project a professional image, and to protect them from the image of me as a sexual being being thrust upon them (my normal attitude is that people should deal with it, but with my students I feel the responsibility to avoid putting them into that situation!).
There’s the big question of how to mix private and public life… I have photos on my Flickr page from some modelling that I have done, which are fairly revealing, but I’ve set them all on ‘private’-'accessible to friends only’ to avoid others stumbling across them.
All this not to criticise you for putting up your photo, or to contest that the attacks on Diana Blaine were not likely to be motivated by the concerns you list; but to say that there is a separate question here about how it is appropriate for a teacher to present themselves in fora that are likely to be accessed by their students, and I think that this question applies to men and women equally.
But call me an overanxious freak if you like:)
yes, another thread about the Great Name Debate could end up being your mosted commented upon…everyone’s got a story and an opinion on that one.
i wonder about the circumstances of her students finding her blog (i admittedly haven’t clicked through the links yet, so maybe it’s answered there)…does she give it out freely to students? did they hunt it out? not that it makes a huge difference, but i just get curious.
i don’t necessarily align myself with the general tenets of sex positive feminists (though as i well know, the term means different things to different people), but i’m happy to see how Blaine uses this whole uproar to foster a dialogue about broader issues, and is making an attempt not to let the whole thing get mired in “teacher! tits! shock! horror!” mode.
“mosted commented upon”? gosh, i need some caffeine.
“mosted commented upon”? gosh, i need some caffeine.
Anna, context is everything. If I put up a picture of myself posing shirtless around the house, that would be one thing.
But I am a runner, and I generally run shirtless — like a great many other male runners in temperate climates. My photos illustrate my life, and I run so rarely with a shirt on that it would be nigh on impossible to get a good picture of it happening. If I played football, I’d put up pics of me in a helmet. Shirtlessness is a runner’s uniform round these parts.
I run shirtless around the Rose Bowl — where I frequently run into current and former students. I would never be shirtless in the classroom, but I’m not going to be uncomfortable while working out merely out of fear of my students or youth group kids catching a glimpse of my very pale torso!
My blog, like Diana Blaine’s blog, is not required reading for my students. But I will not present a false image of myself in order to keep my students in the dark about how I live (or work out.) If they have trouble taking me seriously (or Blaine seriously) after seeing our chests exposed, then that’s a great teaching moment — we get to ask why we must be concealed i order to be taken seriously?
Hugo, I could remark on your bare chest if you’d like then both UCLA PhD’s could claim to have remarkable chests . . .
In a more serious vein, male and female bodies are treated very differently in our society. “He” is almost non-sexual, “she” is nothing but sex.
Displays of the male body (i.e. Hugo’s topless photos) are perceived as functional not sexual or erotic; in our society the perception is “Oh, he was too warm so he took his shirt off.” Hence, Hugo’s shirtless photos on this site are perceived very differently by most persons simply because of gender. The male form is not eroticized or fetishized as is the female form. Even among gay men, the variety of fetishes seems relatively limited to constructs of various “ideal” male bodies and images. Male fetishization of the female comes in a wide variety of constructs about behavior, function and ideal. The discomfort with a woman showing her breasts arises from the belief that no woman would show her body without a sexual agenda.
A woman is viewed as being explicitly sexual if she takes her shirt off, often even if she’s wearing a bra underneath. It is becoming more acceptable in our society for women to wear sports bras in certain public settings – much the same spaces in which it is acceptable for men to be shirtless, but generally speaking, a woman in her bra or topless is perceived as sexual not functional. These are outdated notions of female sexuality which in essence hold that men are powerless in the face of female sexuality.
By contrast, shirtless Hugo is perceived as primarily sexual within settings such as gay bars where the male form is objectified and sexualized, where men are cruising other men for sex. Within a gay bar, a shirtless Hugo would be an object of sexual desire for other men and therefore his shirtless state would be perceived as a sexual invitation – a deliberate display of his body to attract sexual attention. The implications about female sexuality are interesting – a female who displays her body is understood to be inviting sexual attention, to be asking for sexual attention. But our society is deeply uncomfortable with female sexual desire. The (admittedly minimal) discussion I heard about the Duke rape case suggests to me the idea that the stripped in that case displayed her body and was therefore making a sexual invitation and was therefore accountable if others “took her up” on that invitation. The desire was to exonerate “good boys” for rape, to suggest that the victim is “bad woman.” If men are largely nonsexual and women entirely sexual, then all sexuality is the responsibility of women. Women are held accountable in ways men never would be for display of their bodies.
Our society remains unsure about identifying the male body as a sex object. Much of the discomfort around gay male sexuality is the perception of the male body as sexually desirable. I could be rude and suggest that many of the men who promulgate such attitudes have bodies no one would desire and so they’re jealous (Has anyone seen Jerry Falwell lately? Puh-leeze!). Even Hugo, who is very self aware, seems to be resisting the idea that being seen shirtless could be an invitation of a sexual nature. The suggestion that a man would and could be sexually inviting is outside our normal discourse about sexuality.
The idea that a man could be sexually desirable is very controlled in our society. I believe the wild abandon by women at male strip shows makes sense when seen that light – there is only one forum for open and honest expression of such desire. The screaming and shouting and wildness comes because there is only one safety valve for releasing female in a socially acceptable way.
Strangely, I have seen little mention in blogs or comments that the boobs are on display with reference to the paintings of nude women that occupy the walls of the house where she’s staying. (The TV station cropped the equally boob-filled picture out, showing just topless Diana.) The painting in question may even be a reference to Manet’s Olympia, itself a very pointed, critical intervention in the art-historical practice of subjecting female models to the male gaze. So it’s strange to see this blogfest about “professor’s nudie pics” when she seems to be making an eminently legible visual remark that fits into a long tradition of questioning the role of female nudity is visual culture. Anybody with me?
Glen, I hadn’t thought about it, but reading your comment reminds me that in my response to Anna, I was insisting that my body was being displayed in a purely functional manner — the body of the tired athlete. If I’m honest about my motives, I can say with certainty that I don’t intend to arouse sexual desire, but I do want to represent something valuable, which is the very real benefits of working out. I’ve worked hard to be fit, and among other things, the photos validate that effort.
In my teaching, I want to avoid being an object of desire. I want to arouse passion, yes — but for the subject I am teaching and the ideas I want to convey. Do I want approval? OF course. Do I want to arouse sexual desire? Absolutely not, but largely for reasons of faith. (As well as my commitment to my marriage.) As a Christian, I’m anxious not to “cause others to stumble.” If I were to be convinced that lots of folks were struggling with lust as a result of what I wore (or my running pictures) I would rethink my decisions, my wardrobe, and my photos.
But I get to claim my body as functional rather than sexual in a way that women don’t — you’re absolutely right about that.
W Shore, you’re right — Diana hints at herself when she captions the photo (NWS) “I’m competing with the picture.”
In the lobby of the law library at school there’s a stylized painting of a nude woman. I guess it’s different and more controversial when they expect you to *listen* to them too!
w.shore, that’s an interesting point. i’m not sure how much of a stretch an olympia reference in particular might be here, but she’s definitely referencing that fraught tradition of the female nude in art. it seems very tongue in cheek, which is great, because i think there’s a danger of any woman posing for topless photos starting to take herself too seriously!
(oh, and i really didn’t click the ‘post’ button twice on my last comment. really! i swear! freaking typepad…)
Well, the topless photos themselves (as displayed at MSNBC with enough fuzziness added that you can’t really see the breasts) don’t look as if she’s taking herself too seriously. They look more as if she was having fun with the camera.
Hi, Hugo- I have a question for you.
Earlier this year, Janice Erlbaum, contributor to BUST magazine, recently made a post on her blog in which she referred to male feminists as being morons, as you can see: http://girlbomb.typepad.com/blog/2006/01/feminist_men_ox.html
So, I’m very curious: Is she a ‘good’ feminist for choosing to call you a moron? Or is she a ‘bad’ feminist for choosing to not call you something worse than a moron?
Because I’m really confused. If you were to deny being a moron, then you’d really be no better than the feminism police.
A female feminist can’t be wrong, can she? Aren’t her opinions worth exactly as much as yours or even more?
Hugo, The University is not the Church. In the latter, presumeably, all sinners are welcome. In the University, all fools are not welcome, particularly in teaching positions. I think you are wrong about Blaine, Churchill, and Pluss. Blaine is way self-absorbed, does not write well (and puts that handicap on very public display), and isn’t _nearly_ so interesting as she keeps telling her readers that she is.
“Question”
1) It’s perfectly clear from reading the post that you link to that she’s talking about a specific subset of (male) creeps calling themselves feminists, so your characterization of her post is well off.
2) More on point, those of us who are critical of “the feminism police” are not saying feminists, female or otherwise, should never be criticized or called onto the carpet for the things they say or do. It’s perfectly possible to criticize the argument, tactic, or decision of another feminist without calling her (or his) feminist “credentials” into question.
No, I can see exactly what you mean.
I just find it interesting that the feminism police doesn’t seem to be on duty when a female feminist delights in calling all the male feminists she’s met “morons” when the feminism police would react pretty swiftly if a prominent male feminist were to ever be so rude as to remark that most of the female feminists that he’s met have been “morons”.
Unless, of course, the feminism police deems that respect should flow through a mainly one-way valve, ardently towards one sex and not quite so much towards the other. But we all know that can’t possibly be the case because that would contradict feminism’s supposed core principles of equal treatment pretty darned brazenly.
Thanks for helping me to clear that up, djw. I think I have a much better understanding of how the unwritten law gets enforced.
In the University, all fools are not welcome, particularly in teaching positions
Very true. And in the University, we also do not judge a professor’s foolishness by the presence or existence of her breasts, or their visibility outside the classroom.
just find it interesting that the feminism police doesn’t seem to be on duty when
You will find that this is because, pace your martyred sighs, the feminism police doesn’t exist.
Of course, this would be the week where Hugo isn’t around moderating some of the comments… *sheesh*
1) It’s perfectly clear from reading the post that you link to that she’s talking about a specific subset of (male) creeps calling themselves feminists, so your characterization of her post is well off.
Well, not really. The last line of her entry reads:
I’m sure there are some wonderful male feminists out there; I can’t wait to meet them, myself. Because the ones I know are just bitches.
She clearly says that the ones she knows are BITCHES. Just imagine if Hugo said that the feminists he knows are bitches. He would be skewered very quickly. Somehow she gets a pass? lmao! The more time goes on the more feminism will be seen as a shadow reflection of their initial negative projections onto men. They have become what they first despised. Power and control.
Dr E: don’t be silly. If a female feminist were to say anything even slightly sexist, I’m sure the other feminists would come down on her pretty harshly.
Right?
Right?
*crickets chirping*
Funny, I don’t see that line about male feminists anywhere…
http://girlbomb.typepad.com/blog/2006/01/feminist_men_ox.html
Last two sentences of the first post.
Which is completely and totally irrelevant to the point at hand…
Hmmm, I thought you said you couldn’t find it? No we are changing tunes to it’s being irrelevant? Someone has lost their fizz.
ooops. “No” should be “Now.”
Dr E: isn’t it fascinating to watch how the true-believer feminists act whenever an example of the blatant hypocrisy of their own team is pointed-out?
They quibble over semantics, nit-pick over definitions and try to change the subject. Just don’t expect them to confront the issue directly.
It’s like pointing to a burning building yelling “FIRE!” and they stand there, staring at your finger.
“Well I understand you’re trying to point at something, and what does ‘fire’ mean? Wood-paper fires or chemical fires or electrical fires? And if it weren’t for men, there wouldn’t be any fires anyway-”
“No, look! FIRE!”
“Fire is such a Patriarchal concept. I don’t see the point of such an issue while women are only making 73 cents etc etc etc…”
It’s simply amazing to watch. The pattern is pretty constant.
Yes. What we have here is a female feminist who is willing to label all of the male feminists she knows as bitches and morons. Now I ask you, does that statement sound like something Martin Luther King would say? Probably not. Does it sound like something Archie Bunker would say? Yup. Easy to see how much she sounds like a bigot and yet her harsh judgement and global negatives get only a yawn from other female or even male feminists. She is protected. Just like Archie’s buddies protected him. They wouldn’t say a word to him about his bigotry would they? Nope. Same deal with feminism.
Bigotry on parade.
Hugo wrote: “my bare chest is unremarkable while hers attracts calls from the Oprah show. That is sexism at its most absurd.”
Indeed, it is sexist for you not to be on Oprah.
Well, seeing as how the topic at hand is the way in which this woman is being treated for daring to take a topless picture of herself, and you’d like to talk about unrelated posts which have said something you find offensive (and use that as a jumping off point to criticize feminism), yes, it damn well is off topic. Quit being smug and find a forum in which you’re welcome, because it’s not here.
Actually Fizz I was responding to a previous post on this thread that made a claim about Question’s question. Do you find it difficult to hear criticism of feminism? Sounds like it.
Sorry to hear you don’t think I am welcome here. Could that be because you and I disagree? I don’t think I have broken any rules eh? Feminism seems to have a history of not being able to tolerate dissent and you are giving us a good example I suppose.
Dude, that’s not critcism of feminism. It’s criticism of one line in a random blog post you’ve decided represents feminism. Entirely different matter. (You also seem to have missed the fact that the line in question is *sarcastic*.)
You’re not welcome here to bash feminism as a movement or to engage in flagant thread drift. You can disagree all you like, but announcing that because you’re not getting immediate feedback on one completely tangential sentence and using that to announce that bigotry is on parade? Not so much.
You’re not welcome here to bash feminism as a movement
How about critcise feminism? Would that be okay with you?
or to engage in flagant thread drift.
You can disagree all you like, but announcing that because you’re not getting immediate feedback on one completely tangential sentence and using that to announce that bigotry is on parade? Not so much.”
What on earth are you talking about? Now it seems you are just making things up. Where was I upset about not getting immediate feedback? Please explain.
Folks, you’re all heading into thread drift. I’ve been away from the computer for days, and could not police this until now. Stay on the topic, which is Diana Blaine’s choice to put her breasts on the blog — NOT her other positions. Dr. E, you in particular seem to be encouraging this drift — please stay on topic or I will delete your subsequent posts.
Hugo - Will you be responding to Question’s question? That was the source of my interest. I would be curious to hear your response.
This leaves me wondering just how strictly you want to govern thread drift. Can you give me some idea of that? While my posts were not on the original topic they were related to the thread as it evolved. It’s a bit odd that you would single me out for this considering the history of this thread and my posts were related to the posts prior to my own.
I haven’t read this blog since Wednesday night, and I have only read the last few comments, so I may be targetting you unfairly — but regardless, know that I hold all equally responsible. I will read through the comments tomorrow.
Hugo, far be it from me to suggest how to moderate this thread, but I think you could safely delete all the posts after Lynn’s and let the conversation go from there.
Hugo, far be it from me to suggest how to moderate this thread
Not so far actually… since about a third of your posts seem to call into this catagory..
Yes, it was “Question” who sidetracked everything, I see that now. Let’s get back to the subject at hand or I can close the thread down.
Not so far actually… since about a third of your posts seem to call into this catagory..
Very much a function of being the oldest child…although I suspect a recount is in order.
[/threaddrift]
My male privilege allows me to put “topless” pics of myself on my blog without significant criticism
Hugo, do you ever go completely naked in public? Why not? What stops you? The law? I guess, using your own victim-logic, I can state that all humans are oppressed by clothing since we can’t reveal what’s between our legs. LOL.
DK:
Men can show their chests in public, and it is not considered vulgar and sexual.
Women cannot show their chests in public, or it is considered vulgar and sexual.
This double standard is sexist, because seperate = inheirently unequal.
This has nothing to do with the oppression of clothing (although, as a nudist as heart, I don’t understand why we should completely sexualize our bodies anyway).
Any questions?
Antigone, you completely ignored my point, and repeated Hugo’s.
If it’s oppression to not be able to take your top off, then it’s also oppression to keep forced to cover up your bottom half - an oppression both men and women face.
Unless you have some a la carte system of what you decide is oppressive and what isn’t.
So is your argument, DK, that it’s OK to arbitrarily assign different standards to men and women, as long as the standards aren’t onerous?
In general, challenging public standards about acceptable nudity isn’t at the top of my list of things to do, given that both men and women can wear clothes we can see and move in. It’s unequal, but there are other inequalities I care about more. But I can think of one situation where the insistence that women always conceal their breasts actually is burdensome, and where the people insisting on it should get a life and cut it out. And that is people who get the vapors over public breastfeeding.
Oh, second example: sometimes when men and women both do more or less the same thing (e.g. wearing shorts on a college campus on a hot day in the summer), people will single out the women as being improper. I remember hearing this kind of thing when I was in college, and it really annoyed me. In this case, both sexes were following the rules about public nudity, and the situation was casual, but someone the women’s T-shirts and shorts were more offensive than the men’s bare chests and shorts.
DK, the oppression is not in the clothing but in the fear of being judged.
If one group is free to act as they choose without suffering consequences and another is subject to severe criticism that goes far beyond their act, that is oppressive.
If everyone is subject to the same suppression, the standard may feel oppressive to some but it is not sexist.
My favorite example of this particular double standard:
Each spring at the Christian college I went to, a male and/or female student would write an article decrying the rampant female immodesty and the irresponsibility of “leading their brothers astray.” I saw very little that I would call immodest - a few miniskirts or a short sundress, perhaps, but they were complaining about tank tops. On the other hand, I’d hear the football players in the stairway talking about taking their shirts off to walk past girls on the quad. Obviously, there is a big difference between wearing a tank top on a hot day and stripping off your shirt as you walk past someone to draw attention to your body. There were never any editorials about the male atheletes, though, because few people were afraid of the bad effects fo male sexual expression on “their sisters.”
When people feel free to judge women’s character, respectability, morality, etc. etc. based soley on their perception of her clothing (or lack thereof) the effect is oppressive because it puts a certain amount of fear into a very simple everyday choice.
Obviously we all need to know how to dress “appropriately” for our given context because we will all be judged by it to some extent. Many are judged by the color of their skin in addition (and above) their clothing choices. We can’t really avoid making some assumptions based on visual clues because we are all trained to do that. It is problematic for everyone, but especially so for people whose competence and dignity are easily dismissed if they don’t match up to the arbitrary standards of those around them.
whoops, Lynn and I overlapped - we even have the same example!
So far nobody has explained to me why Hugo doesn’t mind the fact he can’t walk around naked, but he minds the fact that women can’t go topless. Both are connected to the same list of rules of dress standards our society/laws dictate. Either none of these rules are oppressive/unfair/unnecessary or all of them are. Unless, as I’ve stated, you pick-and-choose which ones are oppressive/unfair/unnecessary and which ones aren’t.
Personally I find it more oppressive/unfair/unnecessary to be told to wear a shirt and tie if I was working in an office being a man. I don’t see this as being necessary and it’s physically uncomfortable. Yet women can wear rugby shirts and jeans. I would want to wear that kind of comfortable clothing. For me, that kind of rule is arbitrarily drawn down the gender line for no good reason.
Regarding being publicly judged, a man cannot wear a skirt, or make-up without being judged in some way; perhaps he would be judged to be gay, or a ‘transvestite’ yet he simply wants to wear a skirt without making such a public statement. He is judged this way by both men and women.
I am all for total nudity. It is not in the least bit sexual in that context - it’s a real leveler. It’s the clothes themselves that distract the eye more than the flesh they reveal. A naked women looks less sexy than a woman in a short-skirt and revealing top.
DK, the issue is one of parity. We don’t recognize men’s chests as objects of desire that need to be covered (even though some women and other men are aroused by a man’s exposed pecs) while we do insist that women cover exactly the same area because of the fear of arousal. None of us are allowed to walk around without something covering our genitalia — that’s parity. Only some of us are allowed to walk around without shirts — that’s the problem.
We could ban men from going shirtless in public. That could would have a devastating impact on my running, however…
“Each spring at the Christian college I went to, a male and/or female student would write an article decrying the rampant female immodesty and the irresponsibility of ‘leading their brothers astray.’”
Lynn, there’s a strange parallel-universe sort of thing. The phenomenon you describe certainly exists, and their double standard is frustrating, but then in certain environments, it’s the exact opposite. Take the Academy Awards or things like that. You’ll see a starlet walk up the red carpet in an outfit that exposes her knees, calves, belly button, shoulders, and part of her waist, and everyone will talk about how good she looks. Can you picture Denzel Washington doing that?
BTW, I ALWAYS have a shirt on in public, and it’s not because I’m ashamed of how I look. I think that part of it is, yes, how females have to, so males should have to. But that’s just me.
bmmg39
DK, the issue is one of parity. We don’t recognize men’s chests as objects of desire that need to be covered (even though some women and other men are aroused by a man’s exposed pecs) while we do insist that women cover exactly the same area because of the fear of arousal.
You’ve hit on the reason for the disparity in legal/societal dress codes here - a disparity in arousal/reaction. Do you suggest a deprogramming exercise to make men not desire women’s breasts? Or, to be fair, have men been programmed/socially engineered to desire women’s breasts?
For me, full nudity in a normal setting is non-sexual and non-arousing. Social norms associate nudity with sexual acts because we remain fully clothed all day and are normally only naked with the opposite sex when engaging in some kind of sexual act - hence the connection between nudity and sex. I find the social norms/laws about humans not being able to be completely naked as Draconian as you find a woman not being able to be naked until her waist in public (but only until her waist).
If you want parity for the sake of parity, you should be equally zealous about making sure men don’t have to wear a shirt and tie at work, and also that men can wear skirts and make-up at a job interview or social function without facing prejudice from male or female interviewers/guests. Parity is a concept that is all-inclusive.
Take the Academy Awards or things like that. You’ll see a starlet walk up the red carpet in an outfit that exposes her knees, calves, belly button, shoulders, and part of her waist, and everyone will talk about how good she looks. Can you picture Denzel Washington doing that?
Well, I sure wouldn’t object to Denzel Washington doing that. I’m all in favor of Denzel Washington, in particular, appearing in exactly as revealing attire as any actress :-) :-).
Seriously, though, you’re right, bmmg39. The funny thing about double standards for dress is the way they reverse themselves. College women will get way more flack than college men for the clothes they wear during the summer, but at the same time, female nudity and skimpy clothing are much more acceptable in the entertainment business than comparable nudity and skimpy clothing for men.
DK
The nudity taboos are not sexist (although, I will agree, they are stupid.) It’s the disparity that is sexist.
Guys with their shirt off are considered non-sexual, even though many females find them arousing.
Girls’ chests are equally non-sexual, but because men find them arousing, they are considered taboo.
Same thing with wearing skirts: That’s sexist. If anyone wants to wear them, there shouldn’t be a taboo.
It’s not the clothing themselves: it’s the different standards where it is unnecessary that make it sexist.
“Seriously, though, you’re right, bmmg39. The funny thing about double standards for dress is the way they reverse themselves. College women will get way more flack than college men for the clothes they wear during the summer, but at the same time, female nudity and skimpy clothing are much more acceptable in the entertainment business than comparable nudity and skimpy clothing for men.”
I neglected to mention another reason I always leave my shirt on: simply put, I’m modest. (Not ashamed, but modest. There’s a big difference.) I’m the same way, believe it or not, with shoes. I always have on pants or shorts, a shirt, socks, and sneakers. I feel naked without shoes on and marvel that people walk around without them even in front of people they don’t know. I guess it’s from when I was much younger and didn’t know the various reasons you wear things, so that not wearing shoes felt the same as not wearing pants…
Guys with their shirt off are considered non-sexual, even though many females find them arousing.
Girls’ chests are equally non-sexual, but because men find them arousing, they are considered taboo.
How can it be non-sexual, but arousing to men? What kind of arousal are you talking about, if not the sexual kind?
Let’s assume you are right though - that women find men’s chests as arousing as men find women’s breasts:-
My own experience is that men strip off their tops very rarely (I mean, the weather has to be hot for a start!). Given that it’s not a normal everyday occurrance for men to show off their chests (especially winter where you’d have to be pretty stupid to do that), where is the online porn industry for women to ogle men’s chests, the way there is an industry for men to ogle women’s breasts? I guess if it really is true what you say about women being sexually turned on by men’s chests to the same degree that men are to women’s breasts, surely hitting the swimming pool must be a big turn on for most ladies? I think not. I think you are being intellectually dishonest here.
Rightly or wrongly, for whatever reason, women’s breasts are far more sexually arousing to men than men’s chests are to women. This is a fact. Look at the online porn industry as evidence. And this is why there is a disparity in dress-code and law. It is the same reason why the law dicates we cannot show our genitals in public (for fear of sexual arousal). If the law was truly sexist, it would allow men to walk around naked, while women had to cover up.
Even though I understand the reasons for these dress-codes and laws - I believe the law is wrong (as I stated) - the fully naked body isn’t sexually arousing in most everyday contexts. The fashion industries play on the idea that the (mostly female)naked body is a highly sexual object so they use clothing to titilate the (male) mind. The porn industry works because it always uses sexual contexts when displaying flesh, or it appeals to fetishes - fetishes which I believe are largely created by puritanical laws (but there’s another thread!).
The law is not sexist - it’s puritanical.
that women find men’s chests as arousing as men find women’s breasts
I’m not sure how you’d measure equality, unless someone’s hooked everyone up to plethysmographs and shown them photos of people of both sexes with bare chests. But women, do, in fact, find men’s bare chests arousing, and have preferences as to how much hair they like on them (some prefer more hair, some less).
where is the online porn industry for women to ogle men’s chests
At a level comparable to the online porn catering to men? So far as I know, most visually oriented porn is oriented toward men. But women do, in fact, circulate the occasional calendar of bare-chested men (I’ve gotten such a calendar from a female acquaintance in email). And I suspect that Hunk a Day has straight women as well as gay men among its fans.
surely hitting the swimming pool must be a big turn on for most ladies?
Depends how good looking the guys are who happen to be around the pool. If you’re suggesting that Brad Pitt at the local swimming pool wouldn’t get a lot of appreciative looks, I think you’re underestimating women’s visual response to men. If you’re suggesting that a topless woman at a regular, non-nude US beach would get a lot more attention than a normal, non-movie-star topless man, I’m sure you’re right. If you’re suggesting that, at those European beaches where it’s normal and customary for people of both sexes to go topless, the men are inevitably more turned on than the women, I have no way of knowing (I just know that, where it’s the custom, both sexes are able to manage whatever turned on feelings they have).
the fully naked body isn’t sexually arousing in most everyday contexts
I’m inclined to agree with you about this.
I’m not sure how you’d measure equality, unless someone’s hooked everyone up to plethysmographs and shown them photos of people of both sexes with bare chests.
No, it’s far easier than that. You look at supply and demand markets. Where’s the demand for porn for female customers? Nope, not really registering on my scale. OK, how about the demand for porn for male customers? Every fetish covered, including several dedicated to the female breast.
Lynn, it’s a matter of degree here.
You’re either trying to delude yourself or you’re being dishonest. It’s been established that women’s breasts are part of the ’sexual anatomy’ - rightly or wrongly - and that is why the laws and social dress codes require they are covered. You are denying this is the case - which I find weird.
So why do you think the reason is that there are laws that prevent women from being topless in public if it isn’t to do with arousing male desire?
There’s some kind of Patriarchal conspiracy going on here?
That men just want to spoil it for women and not allow them to show their breasts?
The reason is to do with a social ‘code of decency’ (puritanical) and not some arbitary, sexist law (a law that has no reason other than to be sexist).
As I say, if the law was truly sexist, men could walk around naked while women could not. That fact that both men and women have to cover their genitals points to puritanical reasons, not some sexist conspiracy.
No, it’s far easier than that. You look at supply and demand markets. Where’s the demand for porn for female customers? Nope, not really registering on my scale. OK, how about the demand for porn for male customers? Every fetish covered, including several dedicated to the female breast.
a) You’re assuming that porn markets correlate fully to natural physical desire. They might, and women might indeed be naturally, on average, less visually sexually responsive than men (I’m certainly less interested in sexy pictures than a lot of men I know). But it could also be that porn, like superhero comics, is written mostly to male tastes.
b) Where’s the demand from female customers to consume lots of close up shots of erect male penises? It’s not obvious to me that such demand is larger than the female demand for photos of hunky men with naked chests.
You’re either trying to delude yourself or you’re being dishonest.
You know, it would be much easier for you to hold rational conversations with people who disagree with you if you don’t assume they’re all dishonest. In fact, assuming that everyone who has a different perception of sexual matters than you is dishonest strikes me as pretty weird.
It’s been established that women’s breasts are part of the ’sexual anatomy’ - rightly or wrongly - and that is why the laws and social dress codes require they are covered. You are denying this is the case - which I find weird.
On the contrary. I agree that women’s breasts are sexually appealing to many men (and, for that matter, to me as a bisexual woman). I simply assert that men’s chests are also sexually appealing.
So why do you think the reason is that there are laws that prevent women from being topless in public if it isn’t to do with arousing male desire?
Actually, I care less about the fact that laws allow men to go topless while women can’t (sure, it’s unequal, but it’s a trivial inequality, not on the order of making women wear burkahs) than about the fact that, even when both men and women are within those standards, women’s shorts, tank tops, and mini skirts are perceived as sexual and slutty, while men’s shorts and bare chests don’t attract such judgments (that and the parallel inequality that bmmg39 mentions, where women providing entertainment are supposed to dress skimpily, while men in a similar position are expected to be more covered up).
And I actually don’t think all the parts being covered up are being covered up because it’s presumed they’ll arouse sexual desire. I think the assumption is that strange women baring their breasts will arouse desire in men, while strange men removing their pants will arouse fear in women.
One last point, before I leave this issue alone. If you’re going to take the current market share of various varieties of porn as some kind of eternal verity for what turns women on (which already seems weird to me), then at least you’ve got to include the romance novel market. And romance novels routinely have heroes with rippling, muscular chests, who are featured on the book covers with their shirts partly open, and who usually proceed to have hot sex with the heroine somewhere in the course of the novel. Go look at a few romance novels, and tell me again how I’m lying when I say that women find men’s chests attractive.
But it could also be that porn, like superhero comics, is written mostly to male tastes.
So…..let’s see if I’m reading you right here - you’re saying porn is a supply-lead market? I **know** you are 100% wrong here. Porn is very much demand-lead - the nature of the internet is such that you simply cannot create supply-lead markets here to any great success. Men **find** porn - they are seeking it - they are demanding it. They even **make** porn when it can’t be found (witness the multitude of amateur sites).
Now, where is the large porn industry that caters for women’s desire for men’s chests? Certainly not to the same degree as there is an industry catering men’s desire of women’s breasts. It’s just silly to deny this. Even if you’re right, then it’s men who are the victims of sexism here since they can’t get a free eyeful of that which they desire like women can. ;)
You know, it would be much easier for you to hold rational conversations with people who disagree with you if you don’t assume they’re all dishonest. In fact, assuming that everyone who has a different perception of sexual matters than you is dishonest strikes me as pretty weird.
It’s nothing new to me to hear somebody resorting to dishonesty to support their arguments - it’s easier for them to be dishonest than to admit their view is absurd - so they bend reality to reflect their own perception of ‘truth’.
Actually, I care less about the fact that laws allow men to go topless while women can’t (sure, it’s unequal, but it’s a trivial inequality, not on the order of making women wear burkahs) than about the fact that, even when both men and women are within those standards, women’s shorts, tank tops, and mini skirts are perceived as sexual and slutty, while men’s shorts and bare chests don’t attract such judgments (that and the parallel inequality that bmmg39 mentions, where women providing entertainment are supposed to dress skimpily, while men in a similar position are expected to be more covered up).
You never think to yourself WHY men go topless or women wear mini-skirts? The intention is the most important thing. A naked man is harmless on a nudist beach, but in a kindergarten, you’d have to wonder what he was up to. Context and intentions are everything. You never think about this? A women wearing a very short mini-skirt - she isn’t aware of the attention this will bring, unwanted or not? The builder in the yard isn’t caring because he’s likely not near any women and probably has a beer belly only other builders would be proud of. I suppose you could get some buffed-up young guys deliberatly posing for women in a park. But what impression do they give? In my experience, it’s usually - ‘check out those boneheads’ followed by laughter. Imagine 3 or 4 beautiful women doing the same kind of deliberate posing, albeit with say bikini-tops on - the reaction is of stunned silence with a palpable buzz of male desire in the air - you can practically see guy’s tongue’s hanging out.
A women wearing next to nothing normally is doing so for a certain kind of attention, because if that attention is unwanted, she’s seriously going to be feeling uncomfortable. Whether it’s her fault for the reaction of the viewer is debatable, but what is not debateable is the fact that any women NOT wanting such a response would feel very uncomfortable.
And back to guys wearing no tops. Are they deliberately attracting the opposite sex? If they are, well this is a new one for me. Normally attraction is about faces, body shapes, and clothes - clothes reveals status and earns kudos (if the ‘right’ clothes, fashionable in the eye of the beholder). Women’s clothing is also about this, as well as what the clothes are revealing too. It’s called ‘titilation’ - playing with the imagination of the beholder. Many fashion lines are designed for this very reaction. It’s one of the reasons why nudism is a great leveller - clothes can make many women look sexy when without clothes they would be anything but.
I’m obviously sure you are tied to your argument though - and no amount of common sense is going to persuade you to any other possibility other than the ‘fact’ that women are oppressed because they can’t go topless. Well, if you are right - I’m oppressed too - I’m a man and I can’t be naked in public! (in fact, I’d likely be arrested for being topless in many public places where I live - the UK).
It’s nothing new to me to hear somebody resorting to dishonesty to support their arguments - it’s easier for them to be dishonest than to admit their view is absurd - so they bend reality to reflect their own perception of ‘truth’.
That’s it. I am so out of this discussion. If you’re going to keep accusing me of dishonesty, I’m not giving you any more of my time; obviously I’ve been wasting my time with you, already.
And not only are you persisting in accusing me of dishonesty, you’re doing it while mischaracterizing my argument. Heck, I’m fine with continuing to get the opportunity to see hot naked male chests while men are forbidden to see mine. Suits me just fine :-).
Sorry I haven’t been monitoring this discussion. DK, accusing others of dishonesty is an unacceptable tactic on this blog. Lynn, Vacula, and others have been very civil, but your last two comments are crossing a line here.
Whatever you believe in your heart, in order to comment on this blog you need to at least pretend that your fellow commenters are thoughtful, rational, attractive and interesting people who are always commenting in good faith.
I am pretty sure that stating that the male chest (to women) is as sexually desired as female breasts (to men) is a very dodgy argument, given the opposing evidence. No matter how you present that argument, you’re going to have to really stretch and bend the truth to defend that point of view. Am I wrong? If I am wrong and ‘out of line’, I apologise, sincerely - 100% - no question. I agree - it’s not a nice thing to say when you think somebody is being (perhaps subconsciously?) dishonest. But sometimes there are greater principles than offending somebody - and that’s telling the truth. What do you say Hugo? Do you think the truth is more important than offending somebody? If not, hey - it’s your board, and I apologise to all I offended - let’s sideline the truth and be nice to each other.
DK, there IS no clear evidence that women are less visual than men; such evidence that is usually trotted forth in support of that claim is usually met by counter-evidence, and then, by anecdotes. (Which are, of course, not evidence).
But even if there were evidence, it is possible to read evidence differently and to respect how one’s fellow commenters interpret what it is that they see. I ask you to do that here.
Ultimately, I don’t think anyone is going to get anywhere by arguing about whose naked chests are more arousing.
DK, there IS no clear evidence that women are less visual than men; such evidence that is usually trotted forth in support of that claim is usually met by counter-evidence, and then, by anecdotes. (Which are, of course, not evidence).
There is a wealth of evidence. Cosmetic surgery for women to increase the size of their breasts - the numbers are much MUCH greater than men having their chests ‘done’ (I don’t even know the name of the op, but it’s rare). Women’s magazines, clothing, cars, and all sorts of other accessries use women’s breasts to sell their merchandise. The porn industry as I’ve already mentioned. Strip bars. I’m not seeing men’s chest use in anything like the degree women’s breasts are used (for whatever purpose).
Somebody else has summed up the truth here:-
http://www.kstatecollegian.com/article.php?a=1356
She hits the nail on the head when she says:-
The real reason men can appear in public shirtless while women cannot is because our society has sexualized the female breasts.
I don’t agree with much of her article, but at least she’s honest with the fact that female breasts are very much part of the sexual ‘anatomy’ whereas male chests are NOT (therefore there’s no ‘indecency’ when a male chest is exposed, hence men are allowed to show their chests).
She also states, regarding women being allowed to be topless:-
While there might be some initial distraction, eventually men would simply get over it.
I agree with this (as I’ve alluded to before). When it comes to the human body and sexuality, something hidden is of more value than something that is shown. This is the basic psychology of desire. Many women have to be aware that the ‘mystique’ of the female body would be of less value the more they can reveal of it. I am all for this, because I think the ‘mystique’ card has been over-played by advertising, the fashion industry etc. and is actually abusing men’s own desires and attempts to associate the desire impulse with the product they’re shilling - a very shabby way to use pychology against men in order for them to spend money.
For heaven’s sake, my lad, cosmetic surgery is not “evidence.” Evidence is proof — what cosmetic surgery does is provide argument, and argument and evidence are too different things.
No one is saying that men aren’t interested in breasts. But women are also very interested in men’s chests, and neither you nor I possess the data to compare the two levels of interest.
Let’s close this thread out here.