Legalities around being topless and how that stands with trans…

[Newusernameaug]

My dsis was showing me the other day some trans protesters that were topless, one had long hair and make up on but chest wise was still male, the other has breasts.

I have a friend who campaigns for free the nipple, and for instance was police escorted out of a gym a few weeks back for being topless, her argument was why were the men allowed to sit in the sauna topless but she wasn’t?

So where does the law stand with trans people being topless? Is it only illegal if they have breasts?

Any thoughts around this would be interesting - is there a law that says women can’t be topless but men can? I’m honesty not sure of the legalities

I don't think the law covers moobs.

If you are talking about the protestors in New York, then it is legal in New York for men and women (no matter how they identify) to walk around topless.

It's not specifically illegal in the UK to be topless and female. You might be committing a crime if you were intending to alarm or distress, or harass others by doing so, but in reality the police don't charge women for being topless unless they become abusive or threatening.

The US will have different laws in different states, possibly even different between counties within a state. So, you'd have to do a comprehensive review of all of those to see if there is a specific issue with how male and female nudity is treated.

I think in general @WarriorN has it about right...

My dsis was showing me the other day some trans protesters that were topless, one had long hair and make up on but chest wise was still male, the other has breasts.

Apparently the long-haired, hairy-chested person at the NY demo is actually female.

It’s an interesting question though in places where women are not allowed to expose their breasts in public does this law no longer apply to them if they ID as men? I don’t even know what the law is in the uk. Are women allowed to go topless here?

There's no law around breastfeeding in public so I struggle to understand any law around breasts, if there is one.

I think anyone deemed breaching the peace due to nakedness is different somehow?

In a local sauna, when they had separate male and female days, women would go topless and even naked iirc. (City baths, Newcastle, anyone remember?) not been since refurb but I think they've lost the single sex sessions.

When surgeons touting for trade on social media post 'before' and 'after' pictures of trans 'FtoM' mastectomies, the nipples are blurred out in the 'before' photos and shown in the flat-chested 'after'. Same with celebrity transitioners. Same nipples, different rules.

Your friend was escorted from a gym for being topless?
What the hell did she expect would happen?

Every gym I have been to women and men have to wear tops.

A few years ago, around the time of the Man Friday protests about making the Hampstead women's swimming pond accessible to men (while retaining the men's pond as exclusively for males), Swim England issued guidelines on this issue to swimming pools. It said that males' choices of swimwear were to be respected, but that females' chest areas must be covered. This was regardless of their gender id, whether self-declared or presumed, and regardless of their choice of swimwear.

The police were called when female Man Friday members turned up to swim peacefully in the Men's Pond, some in one piece swimsuits, some in board shorts. They removed the female swimmers.

The law is the same for everyone regardless of gender.

Public nudity is only a crime if the intention is to cause distress.

Sorry just to clarify - they weee in the steam room and sauna area, the police came into the sauna and they were told to leave or be arrested

Which is what I feel is u clear around the trans issue - why men can be topless in public but women can’t (is there a law we are breaking if we do?) and therefore can we self ID as a man and therefore be allowed to?!

If you mean in the UK, there is no law preventing men or women from being topless in public. Or indeed, being completely undressed in public. There are crimes relating to exposing your genitals with the intent to alarm/distress/harass, and if you are totally undressed in public you might be at risk of being arrested for that, even if you are later not charged.

Since Radio 4 has made it clear this morning that they think some males are females, I'm not sure where this kind of regulation now stands.

Who the fuck knows with any of this? But it's going to blow a hole in the 'males can do whatever they want but females can't' - as they will now have to invent a term for females that doesn't make male people pout. And those male people will immediately grab that word too.

There are many topless young women on tiktok at the moment who say they are transmen so apparently it’s allowed, makes me very uncomfortable

My dsis was showing me the other day some trans protesters that were topless, one had long hair and make up on but chest wise was still male, the other has breasts.

I think I saw that footage - those were not women's breasts - they were enlarged areas of fat on men's chests. Same as with Jordan Grey, the transwoman "comic" who stripped naked on Channel 4 - the shape of their chest fat was really not the shape of a woman's breast, because obviously they don't have the complex network of tissues which produce milk and enable lactation, when stimulated by the hormonal changes during pregnancy. Most female breasts have the weight of tissue at the bottom of the breast, and are concave at the top - on profile, a sort of wave diagram turned 90 degrees - with the nipple at the tip of the wave (argh, silly analogy, but I hope YKWIM).

The law should be the same for men and women, regardless of what a person considers themselves to be. Which means men covering up in some places and circumstances where they don't necessarily do at present.

Going topless s legal in some US states, including New York where the TRAs were flashing their moobs, IIRC: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_Topless_Day

Most female breasts have the weight of tissue at the bottom of the breast, and are concave at the top - on profile, a sort of wave diagram turned 90 degrees - with the nipple at the tip of the wave (argh, silly analogy, but I hope YKWIM).. Seriously? Only if you are describing young or silicon breasts.

Yes. That description sounds like a size 10 shop-window mannequin rather than "most female breasts".

Oh well, of course women's breasts are in all shapes and sizes, but my point is that they're generally not the kind of conical shape visible in the video of the transidentified man spouting homophobic and misogynist bigotry, nor the video of Jordan Gray spouting homophobic and misogynist bigotry. Women's breasts have a different weight and shape.

Women’s breasts come in a variety of shapes, some are most definitely conical but I haven’t seen the pictures you are describing and I imagine you are trying to say you could tell they weren’t female. I think this is a fairly common reaction to men even if they have all the right bits the whole often retains maleness.

it's a tricky area of the law, turning on whether the nudity causes (or is it intends to cause?) offence.

I suppose the further you are into transition the likelier offence becomes? e.g. Dylan Mulvaney on 'day one of being a girl' was, at the risk of stating the obvious, indistinguishable from her 'day zero' previous self as a gay man. a few years of hormone treatment and/or a set of breast implants might one day change that.

The law should be the same for men and women, regardless of what a person considers themselves to be.

The law already is the same for everyone, and it doesn't forbid nudity, partial or complete, even if social customs aren't so relaxed. I don't know how blatant and annoying a woman would have to be about going topless before getting into legal trouble. It's just something very few women want to get involved in, although no doubt there are men hoping they will.