Welcome to the Harlan Ellison Memorial Personal Boundaries Club

[james_davis_nicoll]

Sad male fan capitalizes on way to be even more creepy to female fans.

As seen on a wide variety of LJ accounts. I have to say there's a clear consensus on the idea of treating women's bodies as public commons and it's not heading in the direction of commutarian touching. Who could have predicted that outcome?

Comments

[randallsquared.livejournal.com]

"[..] my breasts belong to me and me alone."

We agree on that part, at least. Clearly, if someone beat you up and burned down your, er, shed, that would fall far from a discussion of norms in society and move into "and what happened to them in jail?", one would hope.

[winterknight.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you'd think so, wouldn't you? But when I was eleven and going around with bruises all over my breasts from young men -- some as old as 21* -- feeling free to grab me, that certainly wasn't the case. Nor has it been, ever, in my experience, since I hit puberty.

Being objectified, touched without permission, asked for access (however nicely), groped, and ogled, has been my unrelenting experience since I hit puberty (and before, if you count old women handling my hips to remark on how I'd have an easy time delivering babies). That includes people, male and female, touching my pregnant belly, and men asking if they could taste my breast milk or looking under the feeding blanket as I was nursing my child. It includes a barrage of "I'm fucking you in my head." from, stunningly, multiple sources over the years. It includes my daughter being physically inspected by her teachers to make sure she's not showing too much of herself because she can't be trusted to determine whether or not she's covered herself up.

Women's bodies ARE open-access to much of the world. Women's breasts do not belong to them by default, according to the norms of most societies, neither do their uteruses, or the rest of their bodies. Trying to make it seem like I'm an isolated case will only make me laugh at you, since I'm well aware that I'm not. Women tell each other things that they do not tell men.

*But you LOOK 18!

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

Oh YES indeed. How naive - purposefully naive, as enlightenment on the subject is easy to come by - are people/men talking about asking politely and women having the right to say No (and they'd never, never violate that right, of course), as if women aren't continually, wearily saying No to sexual comments and sexual touching from puberty (at the latest) to grave.

[khym-chanur.livejournal.com]

But when I was eleven and going around with bruises all over my breasts from young men -- some as old as 21

Holy shit! Some of the stuff I'm hearing because of this "Open Source Boobs" debacle makes me really glad I was born male.