Topless Uprising Against Sexism

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/20/opinion/topless-uprising-against-sexism.html

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Buenos Aires — Last month, three women in a coastal Argentine town decided to sunbathe sans bikini tops. It could have been inconsequential, but a tourist complaint drew 20 police officers and six patrol cars to the beach to threaten the women with arrest unless they covered up. The episode quickly incited a national debate leading to demonstrations called “tetazos,” or “boob uprisings.” In early February, nearly 2,000 women gathered in different places around the country — topless or covered — to demand their right to bare their breasts.

If the very debate seems provincial, reactions were excessive. Demonstrators with glitter-painted nipples seem to lack the dignity and transcendence of the Freedom Riders silently defying racial segregation in the American South. But the women I spoke with, some of the approximately 600 gathered on Feb. 7 under the Buenos Aires Obelisk, demanded much more than the freedom to go topless.

Their provocative protest challenged the views of the many Argentine men who believe they own women’s bodies, which they routinely abuse and too often assault with intent to kill. Many of the demonstrators linked social repression of female bodies to gender violence in messages written on their own bare chests.

“Equality” appeared on several of these human billboards. “We’re not going to ask permission” underlined one woman’s breasts. “I decide,” framed another’s. “What’s obscene is that we are harassed, threatened, sexually assaulted, impaled, set on fire, tortured, murdered” proclaimed a handwritten poster.

Social norms that seek to control women’s appearance or actions devalue them as equal members of society. They make the female body — attached to real women who cannot hope to match misogynistic submission ideals — a consolation prize for men on the edge.

One woman is killed every 30 hours in my country, just for being a woman. The same day as the protest, news of a femicidal massacre captured headlines: Three women and two men had been murdered by a man with a police record of gender violence. A 42-year-old woman was killed with a hammer this month in her bedroom. And these are just some of the most recent cases. Argentina isn’t even the most dangerous country for women in a region increasingly concerned with gender-motivated murders. An average of 12 Latin American and Caribbean women per day fall victim. But hundreds of much-reported deaths in recent years have stirred up a wave of activism here and helped galvanize the #NiUnaMenos — Not One Less — movement since 2015.

Femicides were traditionally considered crimes of passion. In Latin America, perpetrators often blame fits of rage or jealousy, or suspicions of or actual infidelity — essentially, women’s attempts to escape male control — for their actions. Such responses form part of a broader machista context. The myth that a woman enjoys catcalls, even when they are vulgar, was widely accepted until very recently. We seem unable to escape the old excuse that a miniskirt justifies rape. We live in a country where breasts are a consumer item, and thus something to be possessed, and punished, by men.

“The only breast that is offensive is the one that can’t be bought,” according to tetazo organizers.

Activists in Argentina argue that a cultural change is necessary to fight gender violence. They point to the hypocrisy of a society that is bombarded by images of nearly nude women in the media, but that also prohibits women from showing their bodies at will. The Buenos Aires tetazo’s protagonists, perhaps inadvertently, showed what the battle for such a shift might look like. For a few hours, in the chaotic downtown, their flesh-and-blood examples of normal female bodies countered the hypersexualized media images we’ve come to accept as real.

Women of all shapes and sizes gathered under the Obelisk: gray-haired, with children in tow, teenagers with their hair dyed rainbow colors. A father cared for six boys while their mother protested. Mabel Silva, who came alone, told me she wanted to set an example for her granddaughter and daughters. She assured me, in the midst of the crowd, that she wants to change the patriarchal culture. Groups of friends dared to bare themselves, thanks to the protection of other women and abundant paint used to provide a last vestige of modesty. They laughed, at first nervous, then joyful.

“Violence against women’s bodies has become normal,” said Lola Jufra, a member of the feminist group Nosotras Humanistas. “If they can’t tolerate this, they can’t tolerate anything,” she added, bare-breasted.

Demonstrators faced off against the hostile, stalking stares of male spectators flooding the area. “Out macho, out,” chanted women as they forced men to the sidelines and shoved away intrusive photographers. Embittered, many men rationalized their rejection by calling the protesters lesbians (only deviants wouldn’t appreciate such salacious ogling). They disparaged the women’s aesthetic appeal. Perhaps they expected a Playboy poolside party instead of real torsos on parade. More reasonable observers noted an apparent contradiction between the women’s provocative protest and their anger at the predictable type of attention it garnered. But that misses the point: The women want off the pedestal that elevates them as targets.

“We didn’t come to show our breasts, we came to show we are free,” read one demonstrator’s sign.

Of course, a group of combative women forced to cover up at an Argentine beach is not the same as the gory murders that have caused regional commotion. That both things form part of a continuum does not imply that prohibiting bare breasts in public automatically leads to femicide.

Nonetheless, there is a connection between a culture of violence against women and a breast-obsessed society that is scandalized when women’s breasts escape the control of the screen, Photoshop manipulation or artfully exaggerated cleavage to breast-feed in a public space or participate in a relaxed afternoon at the beach. Such fraught symbolism attached to real bodies has proved to be dangerously combustible.

Toplessness is unlikely to become a dominant fashion on our streets. Yet the tetazos’ freedom allowed us to glimpse what a society that rejects the recurring violence of machismo and sexism might look like. I can’t help wishing that such breaths of fresh air could become more frequent.