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- Men are just as sacred as women. We are not more sacred.
And so we should all either cover up or go bare chested.
(intense music playing)
- I'm Alexa, I'm pro-Free the Nipple
and I think that covering up the nipple
is rooted in a lot of outdated concepts.
- I wanna ask the opposing side
beyond a biological perspective.
What is the major difference between
a man and a woman's nipple that makes it so drastic?
- I'm August, I'm pro-Free the Nipple,
because I want to have the freedom to go bare chested.
Just like men can.
- I'm anti-Free the Nipple movement,
because I think it adds to the objectification of women.
- I'm against this movement because
I think that the answer to our problem of sexualization
is more than just allowing women to be topless.
- [Interviewer] Step forward if you agree.
Nobody should be allowed to be shirtless in public.
(footsteps)
- I don't like telling people what to do,
but I don't think it's necessary
for anyone to be shirtless in public.
I think there's a time and place
for when you take off your clothes in public.
Just out of respect for other people.
Like, I don't wanna see a guy shirtless.
- Yeah, no. I agree.
I remember, I would sometimes walk to school growing up
and all the track people would be running
and the guys would always be running with their shirt off
and I would get so annoyed.
I don't really see a point in someone
just walking around without their shirt
or going into a store without their shirt, a guy or girl.
- [Interviewer] Can the disagreers step forward?
- I mean, like,
I don't think there's a need to go topless at any point.
I think it's just more about convenience
especially if it's like really hot out.
I don't really wanna be a wearing shirt,
especially in New York where I live.
It's really humid and stuff. I don't know.
Shirts are kind of uncomfortable in that context.
- Like a man walking around shirtless
in a grocery store is gonna be weird regardless,
and I think a woman doing that would be weird as well.
But if a man goes with a shirt off
on a beach and a woman were to do that,
I think that should both be fine.
- The context does matter but as a whole,
even if we do change society to be more free in that aspect,
the core of these issues isn't going to change because
like in other countries when they, you know,
they have a different mindset than we do,
and the issues are still prevalent.
Like the core of how crappy humans are or can be
doesn't really change whether or not
you allow people to be free or not.
- It will.
I absolutely believe that it will.
And I think it's a very simple matter of
obliterating misogynists and that's not just men
but women who uphold misogyny,
which comes from conservative thinking.
- Why do you think that is?
What makes you think that having that freedom is the answer?
- Abrahamic religions
have so much influence over the way we all have grown up
and our parents and their parents
and I'm going through my own cleansing process
of things in my upbringing that came from my parents,
raising them, that trickled down into my raising my kids
that is harmful, absolutely harmful
and disgusting and pathetic.
- [Interviewer] Breasts are inherently sexual.
- Breasts are inherently sexual
if the whole entire body is inherently sexual.
A shoulder, the tip of a nose, even eyelashes,
everything can be become erogenous.
- I totally agree with you of everything you said,
but I think inherently they're not sexual.
I do doula work and so I care deeply about women's bodies
and the nature of child-rearing and childbirth.
Like when we're born,
hopefully people don't sexualize babies
and actually when I work with parents,
I make sure that they don't objectify their child.
I'm like, this is your child.
They're not your mini-me.
They're not yours to play with.
They're not your doll. They're not your toy.
They're their own person
and we should treat them with respect.
I just don't think that inherently bodies
are supposed to be sexualized at society
and people who have sexualized the body.
- I was in dance for a long time.
And I was like also in sports,
so I just can't imagine not being able
to wear a sports bra when playing soccer.
I just feel like that'll just cause a lot of discomfort.
When it comes to running and stuff,
I feel like it would be harder
to do those things without a sports bra.
- Oh yeah, 'cause you're gonna be bouncing everywhere.
(laughter)
- Can I say something?
I think that the answer isn't freeing the nipple
and just letting everyone be liberated,
I think the answer is that in your home,
teach your child how to respect someone's body,
how to respect themselves
and my mom might get mad at me for saying this,
but in my home, she was almost never dressed.
She's super, super Christian,
but at the same time that should be in my home.
- I guess more as appearance wise,
if we're talking Free the Nipple,
I don't see the difference.
I mean, I'll be candid.
I've seen both male and female nipples before in my life
and I couldn't really tell a difference.
- I will say on that though, I'm a transgender woman,
so when I started transitioning, my nipples changed a lot.
They became a lot more puffy,
they became bigger, bigger areolas
and they became a lot more sensitive.
I think part of the sexualization of female nipples
is because of that, it's like an erogenous zone as well.
That's like one aspect of it.
So I will say, they are a bit different.
- I think that women's bodies are really sacred
and I don't feel like I need to take off my shirt
to feel like equal to a man, if that makes sense.
A biological male.
- But I think it goes beyond even being equal to a man,
because we're now more than just men and women.
I have a child who is recently identifying as non-binary
and just yesterday I met a biological woman who was-
she's had her breasts removed.
I am augmented and lopsided.
I want all of us, including you to be able to just be free.
Men are just as sacred as women. We are not more sacred.
And so we should all either cover up or go bare chested.
- [Interviewer] This movement will lead to
more sexual attacks against women.
- I hesitate a lot because, I think part of this movement
for me is to change that culture
and to change the desexualization of the bodies
and I think with that increased desexualization,
less attacks will happen.
In New York where I am,
it's legal to be topless since 1992.
So I take advantage of that quite often,
but because of the sexualization of my nipples,
I've been like harassed, been masturbated at,
I've been like assaulted in other contexts.
I'm not gonna be ignorant and say
that's not because of my nipples,
but I'm also not gonna victim blame and say,
I deserve that because I'm showing my breasts.
- I agree. I think in some way, it might be as a matter
of getting worse before it gets better,
but we can't know that until we implement it more places.
I have also been masturbated at,
by a neighbor.
(heavily sighs)
He did it twice.
I would go out in my yard, dressed from head to toe,
in what I call "grubbies" to do yard work.
I was not looking cute.
And yet my neighbor, he took a liking to it.
A little too much of a liking
and so I lived in fear for a really long time.
I was yelled at for breastfeeding also.
Many, many years ago and it shocked me
and it made my infant cry.
- Yeah.
- And the man who got caught looking
decided that he was mad that he got caught
and said that I was disgusting
and I was foul for showing my breasts public.
- I disagreed because,
if a regular person is walking by and some woman's topless,
I don't think that someone who is not intending to do that,
I don't think they're gonna just change their mind
and go and attack someone but,
I just thought about all the women who have been assaulted,
who have been fully clothed.
- I definitely noticed that when I am topless in New York,
it's like people pay attention to me more.
So I guess like, me having my nipples showing
is not going to lead to me being assaulted,
but it will be to more people paying attention to me
and attracting all people, including those bad people.
- We can't really say that anything more is gonna happen,
'cause I think no matter what rules are in place,
people are still gonna be really horrible.
But I do think it's gonna take away
the sacredness of the body.
- I'm curious as to what your response to me would be
when I say people paying attention to me more
because I'm topless and perceived as a woman.
- Being topless does draw attention
and takes away from someone really getting to focus on
who you are as a person
and what you're able to offer besides your body
and that's not to say that like in my past,
I definitely wore suggestive clothing
or I would be intentional about how I dress
because I wanted certain attention.
- Did you guys see the Billie Eilish commercial
when she was, it was like a Calvin Klein commercial
and she was like fully covered,
I think she's wearing like a tracksuit
and she talked about like objectifying
and how she found it more empowering
not to do like the stereotypical Calvin Klein commercial.
The Free the Nipple and going topless is empowering but,
I think also it can be empowering not to do that
and to wear like a t-shirt or a tracksuit.
- I think to me,
the Free the Nipple movement comes down to choice
rather than inherently showing that this is liberating,
'cause it is liberating for some people,
it's really not liberating for other people.
- I like to look at things from a historical perspective
because this has been done before.
I think Circa, 1937 before then,
men couldn't even show their nipples in public.
- [August] Yes!
- They would protest on the beaches
and they got arrested a bunch of times.
It took a very long time until
some judge was like, yeah, that's fine
and then here we are today.
- It hasn't even been quite a hundred years since then,
so I was born in 1976, so in my 45 years on this planet,
all I know is that I have not been able to be bare chested
and have even been yelled at for breastfeeding.
But men always have been able to.
- [Interviewer] Children should not
be exposed to nipples.
(footsteps)
- Someone who maybe grew up in a very,
in a household where no one walked around shirtless
and then someone walks around shirtless in public,
I feel like that might create a really big shock factor
for the kid, or it might make the kid feel uncomfortable.
I guess that's my apprehension.
- You say about like shock factor and stuff,
I think to focus on that
and to prevent children from seeing nipples is to say,
to educate the children that oh, this is something bad,
This is something I should not look at.
And that only just perpetuates the sexualization again,
of nipples that I believe is not necessarily helpful.
If a kid were to see a nipple in public,
it's not the end of the world
and it's actually helpful to encourage that
and to me, seeing a male nipple versus a female nipple
in public, shouldn't make a difference
of how a child sees that.
- I remember the first time I saw a breast,
was in a book about African tribes
and there were women that were feeding their babies
and I was just like, what is this?
And people did not explain to me what that was
and if I did see a nipple or I did see a naked body.
What is unfortunate is that some people do push that down.
They're just like, oh, look we don't talk about that.
- Just to-
I guess I wanna ask you guys a question regarding children.
If we could find like some way to incorporate
this Free the Nipple movement into sex education,
especially at the elementary level about consent
and what the body is, when it's okay to sexualize
and when it's probably not okay,
how would you feel about that, I guess?
- I think sexual education should be in the home,
and I understand that some people don't have great parents.
So from my private school experience,
they did not talk about sex education in a healthy way.
And so I think there is a problem that does need to be
developmentally appropriate conversation,
but I really believe that that should be up to the parents.
- [Interviewer] Women's bodies
are entitled to the same rights as men's bodies.
(footsteps)
- Yeah so, I think the notion of
a female body versus a male body, as a transgender woman
is very interesting.
You know, for 18 years of my life basically,
I could take off my shirt
and be totally fine with that from the world,
and I started hormones when I was in the closet.
So I was passing as male and I had breasts, right?
But I could still take my shirt off,
and it's only once I started being gendered as female,
that that wasn't the case.
And to me, that's very ambiguous
of where I started passing as female because
passing and people perceiving this female
is such an individual experience.
- So I disagreed only because
I don't like the wording of entitled.
We're a very spoiled country.
Yes, we should all have equal opportunity,
but like, no one's entitled to show anything
or do anything that they don't wanna do.
- [August] Right.
- So I just didn't like that phrasing.
- Let's say that we're getting closer to a point where
seeing all people able to just walk around bare chested,
if that's gonna be so weird
that we go in the opposite direction
and it's like, okay guys, you can't go shirtless anymore.
Imagine the shock.
They're gonna be like, no way you can't do that to me.
- I've heard a lot in this conversation about stuff
being fair and the entitlement just really bothered me.
Life isn't fair, society isn't fair, people aren't fair,
but as a whole, I just don't think that the movement
is the answer to the issue we have
with this whole society crap.
- [Interviewer] I think that's a wrap.
(all clapping)
(bass music plays)