Assets, are they?

[elettaria]

If you haven't heard about the Open Source Boob Project scandal yet, go to the_red_shoes' post here, where you can catch up. Many people have said much of the stuff I'd have said myself and phrased it beautifully - and may I mention in passing how delightful it is to see good quality feminist crit coming from a straight man - so I thought I'd add a few

Comments

[garpu]

One of the saddest images in the whole OSBP thing was theferrett's description of the woman who thought her breasts weren't good enough to be groped. What the hell are we teaching women about self-esteem and body image?

[elettaria]

Yes, I jumped at that part as well. sabotabby talks about what might be going on with such women here.

[catnip_junkie]

1) That post (theferret's post, not yours) actually made me feel physically sick. In the 'I think I might throw up' kind of way. It was appalling, and made all the more so by the fact that he thinks that he is so enlightened. The fact that a straight man could object so eloquently, however, gives me some hope.

2) If cooking dinner for someone were always a come-on, I would find myself rather worried... *laughs*

3) That story will never stop making me giggle. Ever. It was the totally absent minded way you did it, and then paused, and I could feel the shock that you'd just done that coming off you in waves, while I was just trying not to laugh, before we both gave up and collapsed. I think I almost sporfled myself to death that day.

4) "Shall I have you up against the wall, dear?" counts as outrageous flirtation, yes? *grins*

5) That was one of the main reasons I loved Erin Brockovich. She was a strong, intelligent woman, who dressed in revealing clothes because they made her feel good, not because she was trying to attract a man (or woman

[elettaria]

Oh dear, so he thought that if he said, "No, you don't get it, it was a really skimpy outfit!" that would make it better?

There's a passage in an Emma Donoghue novel where a woman reports back from a group holiday in Greece or somewhere, all friends, all lesbians, where they all ended up comparing breasts one day. The description is so many miles away from the way theferrett talks that I don't think they're on the same planet. I could dig it out if you like.

[elettaria]

It would, of course, be half-way through the book, which I've just skimmed starting from the back. I'm adding an amusing bit from further up the same paragraph.

Strange how it was more respectable to show the distinct outline of a bra than the smooth surface of a back. Presumably true feminists all had small breasts and so could afford to burn them. The bras, I meant, not the breasts. [...] Last summer when Cara went to the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival - I was invited to go along, but didn't think it my sort of thing - she came back singing the praises of breasts. The sheer difference of them: the nipples that simply shaded in, the ones like raspberries perched on top, the fiercely pointy ones, on all the long and flat and globelike bosoms. Watching thousands of women walk around naked in the woods, what had struck her was not the naturalness of breasts in the human body shape, but the opposite; how, after the logical lines of hips and ribcages and limbs, breasts seemed completely gratuitous.

- Emma Donoghue, Hood, pp.132-3

[nadyezhda]

yes, I was thinking about this situation and trying to decide whether I would let a female friend touch my breasts if she were hetero vs. homosexual--because the implicit sexualness of a man touching my breasts (even if he were gay, I think) would make me very uncomfortable, and so would, I think, a lesbian. But when the nurse at the hospital (mostly gently) grabbed my breast and nipple to show me how to nurse Danny right, it didn't bother me at all I think because it was a very much non-sexual situation. I dunno. More thinking to be done.

[elettaria]

Well, as a bisexual woman, I wouldn't let anyone touch my breasts in that way, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation. It's definitely sexual, and it's a weird thing to suggest. Any woman who wants to try feeling another woman's breasts for the first time can go and pick someone up at a lesbian club. I've actually known a case of sexual assault where a gay man felt up a lesbian (stuck his hand between her legs, as I recall), now you mention it. She was dreadfully distressed. Heaven only knows why he did it, but it shows that weird stuff like this is not necessarily related to whether you're attracted to the gender of the person you're groping.

If someone touches my breasts for medical reasons, that's something entirely different, and the sexual orientation of the person doing so is irrelevent (though I'd rather it was a woman for reasons of personal comfort).

[altglas]

bleeeerrrgggg
I know someone who just gropes boobs in a 'non sexual way' as he puts it. I made it pretty clear that my knee was going to acquaint itself with his groin in a friendly, albeit fast and hard, way if that was to continue. they're MINE and I decide who gropes them.

[elettaria]

Ah, so *he* decides that it's non-sexual, and anyone who disagrees (say, as a wildly random example, the owner of the bosom in question) is Just Not Getting The Point? I'm surprised he doesn't get kneed on a regular basis.

catnip_junkie and yhtomit have a running joke about his devotion to her breasts (he's gay, by the way), and he will do things like stick his head up her jumper and come up with names for her bras. The difference is that I don't think he does it with anyone else, and in this case there is the small thing of mutual consent.