To be annoyed about the guy who took his top off in a roomful of women?

Because in our society the prohibition on showing parts of the body normally applies to primary or secondary sexual characteristics. The top half of men's bodies doesn't come within that category.

What an idiotic thing your friend said. Even the 'word' femcel is nonsensical. Incel is a contraction of 'involuntarily celibate' (with the further implication that women owe such men sex - this is a term used by some men to self-describe, it's not controversial!). What would 'femcel' mean? 😂

MN is one of the last public forums in the UK where women are apparently allowed to stand up for women's rights. Imagine that - letting women vocalise and advocate for their own safety and dignity! Shocking. I think your journalist friend has got that confused with unwarranted misandry. Hope this helps.

No, it was posted before.

I agree OP, unnecessary for this man to stand around like that. It’s not a beach, not a fitting room, not a changing room at the gym or pool, it is a room to store everyone’s items for the choir, a hobby which I assume is a clothes-on activity. He should change in a bathroom.

We don't know that, do we? She says she was only in a very crowded room for a few minutes, during which she was busy getting her own stuff.

This.

I don't know why people are falling over themselves to ridicule you for being irritated about a creep.

A middle aged man (my age) did this standing next to my daughter (I was on the other side of her) at a concert recently! Between opening band and main act he came and stood at the back where wecwere, pulled off t-shirt and jumper, got another t-shirt out of a shopping bag and stood looking around - he then tried to engage her in conversation before finishing putting his fresh t-shirt back on. No it wasn't "frightening" or "threatening" but it was creepy and low level exhibitionism. She told him she didn't want to talk to him and he was quite put put, so obviously we swapped places and I angled my back to him.

YANBU to find this man's behaviour socially inappropriate, boundary testing and and irritating. Decent men wouldn't do it and would think it weird, given the context.

Um, a choir isn't a beach. Everyone else managed to remain clothed.

When someone exhibits certain behaviour that we notice, it's often all about the context. It's hard to express in writing anyway when there's a gut feeling that something is 'off', but your ability to pattern match is saying that something was off. We are taught to ignore or dismiss this intelligence, often to be proved right later when more comes out into the open.

You said he was in the corner. Now you say the middle. You have no credibility in asserting it was an act of male dominance when you have to change the story to create the fuss you want.

Whether you like it or not, there are different social norms for men and women. He did nothing wrong.

Why not? It's not a part of the body normally considered indecent. Do you take the same attitude to women in backless dresses?

When we start policing inoffensive parts of the body, we get perilously close to demanding that everyone wear a niqab, or that women stop breastfeeding.

If he stood in the middle of the room, yes. But if he was in the corner of a fully packed room* I doubt you'd even see him.

*this is how Op has described the room.

I would expect to see people possibly changing clothes in a cloakroom.

You are not the dress police. It is not to your and your daughter's taste so don't dress like that and leave other people alone. Fashions change.

Two things can be true in the same time.

For me it is ok to quickly change one's top in that settings and I would do it as well (I'm chosing my bras to feel clothed enough in them) if I needed to.

It sounds he considers himself a gift to women and is overdoing everything - making you feel uneasy about him. Hugging younger women, getting distracted from putting the top on, small ways to show that he is there.

Observe him and potentially have a word about his overall behaviour. If you phrase the issue as removing his top, it won't be understood.

What a shitty thing to say to the OP, Horserider5678, especially given it was AFTER she'd actually commented to say that she has indeed suffered abuse in her past. Hope you feel proud of yourself?

If you could try putting yourself into someone else's shoes for a few minutes ... THIS is why we need to preserve a few social niceties or considerations. If we want to live in a pleasant civil society that means behaving in a way that tries to be considerate. It would be impossible to go about your daily life without upsetting SOMEONE obviously, but I think it's an entirely reasonable 'adjustment' not to strip off for no reason in front of other people in an inappropriate context (eg when you're not on the beach/pool/park/unisex changing area).

Living in a community means just that - it isn't all about you and your personal comfort. So people who listen to stuff on their phones at full blast on a train without earphones are being selfish. Dog-owners who allow their pets to bother other people and can't be arsed to train them are selfish. People who allow their kids to go into their back gardens at 6.30 am and scream are selfish. Men who strip off in front of everyone else in an inappropriate context are being boundary-pushing arseholes.

I’m a woman and I don’t feel anxious about topless men (bit grim if they’re wearing budgie smugglers), but I’m not concerned about a man seeing my middle aged body in a bikini. I might put in a cover-up to walk about in though round a pool.

Why is topless men perfectly acceptable behaviour? When did that happen?

But that "extended length of time" was just a few minutes, according to OP. Can you really not envisage a situation where someone cannot immediately find what they are changing into, or gets distracted by something or someone? If it was as crowded as OP says, he can't really have been showing off because he would be well aware most people couldn't see him.

And what OP thinks he felt is really irrelevant. She has no means of knowing, particularly as on her own admission she was busy getting her own stuff and leaving.

I took my top off/changed in an area that wasn’t that private - if anyone saw my bra then I hope they weren’t traumatised (changed in to a concert t - shirt). Ignore and move on. If he was bottomless that’s different but I can’t get too upset about a man’s torso. What do you do at the beach?

Wouldn’t bother me in the slightest.

A man being bare chested is not the same as a person wearing a sleeveless top in our culture. Otherwise we'd see bare chested men in the board room, good restaurants and theatres during heatwaves. The closest comparator would be a woman standing around for a prolonged period wearing just her bra in a mixed sex space used by a choir.
Something doesn't need to cross into 'indecency' for it to be socially unacceptable in a particular context.

How does a few minutes in a crowded cloakroom become "all the time"? This is getting ridiculous.

As the seemingly ever growing MN cliche goes - Disagreeing with someone is not being rude. It's just disagreeing.

This seems to be trying to create a drama where one does not really exist. Given it's a time of year where, people have more dramas than usual this looks particularly odd, jarring and massively innocent.

Genuinely I wish this was my great problem in life.

I'm really left going 'huh, what?!' It's the type of thread that goes viral for it's bonkersness.

How do you know his motivation, especially if you didn't hang around watching? You can't even have been able to see him that easily in such a crowded room, and for all you know he just got distracted talking to someone, or felt a bit hot, or even unwell.

How is that relevant? Why would you feel more delicate about the awful prospect of seeing the upper half of men's bodies in the winter? I do hope you don't watch Strictly, you must really suffer.