Look, I’m in complete agreement with the theory that women’s breasts should not be objectified or made mythic, and that a great many gender inequities and social problems could be reduced if men could be conditioned to get past the bodily fixation and maintain eye contact.

I’m just pretty sure that this laudable goal is not best accomplished by encouraging Sci-Fi convention attendees to ask women for permission to grope them.

John Scalzi tells the tale of the “Open Source Boob” program at Penguicon, a recent Sci-Fi and Open-Source convention.

But the gist of it is that at Penguicon women who were wearing buttons that said “Yes You May” were allowing folks of both sexes to touch their breasts (edit: the button apparently meant you could ask to touch, to which the answer could be “yes, you may” or not). The idea there, as I understand it, was to reinforce the idea that breasts were not these sacred and yet bizarre objects designed to attract attention to themselves and away from the person they are part of (there were also “No You May Not” buttons, although of course my understanding is that “Don’t Touch” was the implied default all weekend long, so these buttons were redundant).

As The Ferrett explains, the effect was not ultimately positive, apparently leaving many women feeling threatened and/or demeaned. Plus, while Scalzi (at least as I understand him) seemed to be describing it as a de-sexualization of breasts, The Ferret pretty clearly envisioned it as a sort of open-source sexual experience, which is an entirely different thing than undermining objectification.

Even if you assumed the purpose was non-sexual, as opposed to “let’s encourage people to break down sexual norms about groping strangers in the hallway of a convention center,” it’s an ill-conceived notion. The Ferret makes the good point that such things work or don’t work based largely on context. I could see a context in which people explore the de-sexualization of the body in a non-threatening manner. Many nudists, for instance, regard nudity as not inherently sexual (even when in company) and try to promote that concept by group nudity. But i think you could hardly pick a worse context to explore de-sexualization of the female body than a Sci-Fi convention. Sci-Fi art tends to feature highly sexualized women, mainstream Sci-Fi tends towards standard media sexualization of women, and conventions — with all respect to the people there — do not attract a more-mature-than-average segment of the population. Plus, feminists would argue that the culture already makes women’s bodies open-source, and that this is merely reinforcing that concept, not undermining or transgressing anything.

Personally, I share the distaste Scalzi expresses for touching or being touched by strangers. The concept of asking strangers if I can grope them at a convention creeps me out. And I can only imagine what it was like for female convention-goers walking through crowds of fanboys scanning their chests for an “ask me” button.

More discussion here.

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