Chelsea Handler: Instagram's sexist nipple policy

Idea: instagram account posts close up photos of nipples - invite people to guess in comments if they’re male or female, see how quickly it gets banned.

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Or, for those of you with a more … adventurous bent:

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Yay! Plumbing porn!

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Now that’s a pair of great tits.

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Another idea: show the nipples of trans people, before and after transitioning. Is one image obscene and the other OK? If so, when did that particular nipple cross the threshold?

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I think most people misunderstand this. To “sexualize” something is to somehow make a thing sexual when it wasn’t already so. It is used by sex-negative people to explain away other people’s very real sexuality.

What gets me is that nobody has ever been able to explain to me what is “sexual” about women’s breasts, but not men’s. And what is more sexual about the nipple than the rest of the breast? Breasts are not sex organs. People more often use their hands and/or mouths for sex, in my experience, than breasts. So even the explanation of hiding breasts and/or nipples “because of sex” doesn’t pass critical examination. And, as you point out, so what if they were?

How is it “reality”? Women’s breasts are not sex organs any more than men’s are. Amazingly, one of the popular reason for hiding these “sexy breasts” is so that children don’t see nudity, but breasts are the only human organ which exists specifically for feeding children! Many people seem to honestly not understand how this is neurotic. But, hey, if enough people are crazy, let’s enshrine it in law.

OTOH, if social reality is plainly sexist, laws can be a fine way to remedy this problem.

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I don’t mean that it is the reality of our human nature, I mean that it is the reality of American culture. I’m not necessarily trying to be a prude who supports these values, but I think it’s defensible that they are the values that Instagram is responding to. I mean they either (a) censor women’s breasts (their current policy), (b) censor men’s and women’s breasts (not going to happen, and I don’t think an option anyone’s actually advocating), or © open up to soft core porn. It looks like Chelsey Handler topless on a horse is the baby that’s getting thrown out with the bathwater.

I mean, I like boobs. I wouldn’t mind seeing more boobs and I’m into people having the freedom to do what they want, damn the children. But if I were a politician in charge of public policy, would I support legislation to allow women to walk around topless in public? This is a bit tougher of a question, one I would base more on practicality than ideology.

For example, take the recent viral video of a woman walking downtown in New York and the “street harassment” that she received. Now if she did that topless, because “If men’s nipples are OK… then women’s should be, too”… well, I suppose you can fill it in for yourselves what kind of reaction she would have been met with.

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One you’d answer based on what would get you re-elected, you mean?

It is legal, by the way.

I’m not sure I think that banning women from doing something men can do because other men are arseholes is really the way to go.

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It also seems to be aligned with reality? How? You make this claim but don’t explain it, let alone back it up with any sort of proof. What do you mean by “reality”, anyway?

I have a dream. I believe one day that everyone, everywhere, will know the wonders of my nipples.

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I don’t know if anyone has said this here but did anyone else notice that Putin’s boobs are saggier that Chelsea’s?

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Yeaaah, this has been examined before. Saying it’s awkward would be an atrocious understatement. One of those medical shows had to censor one half of the video and could leave the other half censored. From what I remember, the demarcating line in the censorship was the first incision.

If we’re going to have this line at all, I’d really rather it wasn’t based on censors’ opinions of GRS though. I suspect I’m not alone but won’t speak for all trans people. :worried:

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Or d) allow topless photos of both genders so long as that’s the extent of the nudity and there’s no other person touching (babies feeding excepted), a step far short of “soft core porn”.

The “but that’s the culture!” is never an excuse for discrimination in law, because it can be used to continue ANY injustice. Men can’t marry men (in some states, still)… “but that’s the culture!” some people will cry. “I don’t want my kid to see men making out with other men!” well, too bad. If you want your kid not to see people of the same sex making out in public, then you can try and forbid anybody from making out in public. If you want to not see boobs, you can forbid nipples of either gender.

Personally, if they make nipples okay, I’m cool with that. I’m also perfectly happy if they forbid all nipples, and one reason why is that I, being a male with body image issues, would never post a topless pic of myself. That makes it easy. If I’ve learned one thing in my life, it’s that it’s really easy to make compromises when you’re not the one who has to give up something! But I don’t have to tell you this, since you’re fine with making a compromise that requires somebody else to give up THEIR rights while you keep yours.

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But this treatment is precisely based upon ideology over practicality. Saying that it is ok to bother women, or that nudity equals porn are indeed ideological positions. That some people do this in practice is not the same as saying that it is practical, as in the sense of being in any way “pragmatic”. I think a practical approach to nudity would simply cover basic hygiene issues, such as needing to wear shoes in a store, or cover your ass when sitting on a park bench.

Hard to find a more blantant example of discriminatory censorship of self expression than using gender to decide which selfies are welcome.

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Now just wrap your fingers around that petcock…

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Oh, thank you for that. I got the close nipples right away, but I couldn’t figure out the valves.

Saved me from trying to make a very strange google query…

So naked side-boob is OK?