To think that it is sexist to not allow women to go topless?

[Bookmonster345]

AIBU to think it is a bit sexist to not allow women to go topless at places like a beach and swimming pool, when men are allowed to? After all, the only difference is that we have excess fat underneath our nipples, FFs some men have that fat to!

YANBU (although technically, we have more than just fat, we have mammary tissue)

I wonder whether, if topless women were as common a sight as topless men, the boob obsession might reduce a bit.

You can go topless if you want. No one's stopping you.

Yes they are.

I would be thrown out of my local leisure centre if I swam topless. If I removed my top while sunbathing in my local park, the park Police would tell me to put my top back on. If I sunbathed topless on my local beach, the life guards would tell me to put my top on or leave.

None of those things would happen to a man.

I would prefer that no one went topless.

Well you know, with the whole "bearded male lesbian" thing, you could just say you are actually a man, worra?

One look at my tiny boobs and I would indeed pass for a man...bearded or not

I guess I'm playing devil's advocate here, but I wonder how many posters thinking it's unfair that men can do this and women can't, would actually do it if they were told "yeah it's fine, go ahead."

I don't want to see anybody going topless, thanks very much.

None of those things would happen to a man.

Because it's a societal norm. It's what has been decided is inappropriate, not my opinion, just the way it is. If women are genuinely bothered by it and feel inhibited, then write to your MP, campaign for it, or something.
Personally I don't want to do it, so I don't care that I can't.

Sorry for the three posts in a row, but it got me thinking... if women going topless was allowed, you'd have to allow for men to walk about without underwear on, surely. If we're saying women's "private" parts shouldn't be viewed as unacceptable, that would then pose the question of why the same shouldn't be applied to men.

I think it is allowed. Just a convention that women don't. And I guess private pools have own rules.

And we don't because men would stare/comment too.

I've seen lots of women sunbathing in the park topless in Germany.
I don't think that breasts can be equated with a man's sexual organs. The breasts are not a woman's sexual organs.

The breasts are not a woman's sexual organs.

They're near as dammit though.

If a bouncer stopped you from entering a club by pushing on your breast instead of your shoulder I'm pretty sure you'd have him up for sexual assault.

A man staring at your breasts at work could be done for Sexual Harassment, staring at your ear would not lead to this....

Like it or not, they are classed as "sexual" for the purposes of most of the rules we have!!

If I sunbathed topless on my local beach, the life guards would tell me to put my top on or leave.
Where was this?
If it's a public beach in the UK they have no right to say so. It is entirely legal to be naked in a public place, providing you are not acting in a way to cause offence - and that doesn't include quietly sitting or laying there.
I always take my top off on the beach, and if sunbathing in a quiet area I am completely unclothed. I've done so since I was a child, on beaches all round the country. I refuse to wear silly little scraps of cloth to cover tiny parts of my body to suit someone else's ideas of propriety.