New Hampshire state representatives are suggesting that society may collapse if lawmakers don’t make it illegal for women to expose their breasts in public. New Hampshire state Reps. Brian Gallagher and Peter Spanos, both Republicans, are co-sponsors of a bill that would slap women with a misdemeanor charges for showing their breasts and nipples with “reckless disregard” for those around them. At a public hearing on Monday, they warned that allowing women to go topless at beaches would quickly escalate, and they would soon be bare-chested at public libraries and Little League baseball games, The Associated Press reports…. “It’s a shame that some folks are more concerned with exposing their breasts in public places than they are concerned about how families and children may be impacted by being forced to experience this evolving societal behavior,” Gallagher told a legislative committee, according to the AP. “This is about a movement to change the values of New Hampshire society.”
It must lighten the hearts of New Hampshire residents to know that, since their legislature has evidently solved all other pressing problems facing the Granite State, it can now FINALLY turn its attention to the real issue facing them: women exposing their breasts in public.
To call this bill ridiculous wouldn’t begin to adequately do justice to the waste of time, energy, and tax dollars it represents. For Republicans, who still proclaim “small government” to be a core value, it seems counterintuitive that they wish to extend the power of the state to dictating which parts of women’s bodies may legally see the light of day.
The human body is, among many other things, a sexual object. Though sexuality is a very small aspect of the totality of a human body, Reps. Gallagher and Spanos- those brave, thoughtful protectors of all that’s good and moral- have decided to criminalize the female breast. Instead of working to allow equal treatment under the law and allow both men and women to go topless in public, Gallagher and Spanos have decided that the moral fiber of good, God-fearing, patriotic New Hampshire residents (read: “men”) is simply too delicate to handle being confronted with a naked female breast. As is true with most culture warriors, they seem to have NO problem with men going topless.
What double standard??
This is what happens when legislators whose stunted maturity never evolved past their junior high school days default to sexualizing women’s bodies. An exposed female breast can only be seen as “lewd” or “lascivious” if an individual chooses to see it as such…which is the path Gallagher and Spanos have chose. That they’d determine it appropriate to use their tender sensibilities to curtails the rights of women speaks to a level of sexual repression and overcooked morality they have no business forcing on women.
Then again, perhaps they understand that men are troglodytes who just can’t control their urges. Because men mustn’t be held accountable for behavior beyond their feeble power to control, such inappropriate behavior is ipso facto the fault of women. BEWARE THE AWESOME POWER OF THE FEMALE BREAST!!
Now there’s some prescient, principled leadership, eh?
Exposed nipples would also harm the state’s tourism industry, they argued.
The proposed legislation has sparked criticism, probably not helped by comments from Republican state Rep. Josh Moore, who suggested in December that women who went partially nude in public should expect to be accosted.
“If it’s a woman’s natural inclination to pull her nipple out in public and you support that,” Moore wrote in a Facebook post, “than you should have no problem with a mans inclantion [sic] to stare at it and grab it. After all… It’s ALL relative and natural, right?”
It would seem the underlying message here is that men’s bodies are benign, but women’s are sexually charged entities that left unchecked may well cause me to behave inappropriately. This school of thought holds women responsible for a man’s inability behave in a manner which shows respect for a woman’s rights. Surely men can’t be expected to control their sexual urges when a naked female breast is within reach?
Sometimes I find myself wondering what it is about female sexuality that so terrifies Republicans they feel the need to legislate against it. How does this sort of poorly camouflaged attempt to legislate morality dovetail with the Republican desire for “small government?” Perhaps it’s really just about creating government small enough to enforce a narrow “family values” agenda that defines women as second class citizens and thus unworthy of controlling their own bodies?
Or could it be that Conservative men like Gallagher and Spanos fear that if they don’t legally define women as the rightful property of men they’ll discover they don’t need immature Penis-Americans like them after all?
