Well, hmmm. I mentioned the whole Top Freedom Fest thing a while ago. I should probably mention how it went.It didn't. I guess the organizers didn't manage to raise enough money for some of the performers, so they decided to settle for a march along the route that Gwen Jacob took when she was arrested.
Forgive me for chuckling at the fact that they walked past "Second Cup" during their march. I'm so easily amused.
I don't know how to feel about the whole topless festival. In theory, I shouldn't care about it, and I should support it, har har I said support. It is stupid that a dude can walk around with his shirt off even if he's sporting a set of man boobs, but if women do it, eeewwww. It would be cool if we could get over that double standard, and that probably can only happen with more exposure, har har har these puns just keep falling on my head don't they?
But at the same time, these things never just bring out the folks who care about gender equality. You always get the creeps. So, a festival designed to make people feel safe taking off their shirts actually does the exact opposite. But as I write this, I find my own mind taking my own voice, and superimposing it on some old woman's voice from some point in the past saying "Oh, it's just not a good idea for women to vote. They're just asking for trouble." Doesn't that sound ridiculous now? If she was transported into current times, and expressed her concerns about giving women the right to vote, she would be laughed at for sounding positively backward.
It's at this point I have to question what my problem is with the festival. Why is it that I feel the need to warn others that if they decide to go down to the park when it's on, there will be people without shirts. Why is it that I giggle when the topic comes up, and when encouraged to go down there, emphatically say no I won't be there?
I guess we'll have to see if they try this again next year.
3 weeks ago
3 comments:
I think it's because the guy they quoted in the story is right. Society is slow to change. In your voting example, it wasn't like somebody said "hey, it's really kinda stupid and sucky of us as a people that we don't let half of us vote even though that half is just as human minus the penis," and everyone else said "yeah, that is pretty lame" and women were voting by the next Friday. It took a lot of time and a lot of protesting and a lot of advocating and fighting and whatever to get to that point and when we got there, I'm sure everybody who wasn't totally sold on the idea didn't just take it lying down. History is filled with examples of that exact thing. Black people don't have separate fountains and building entrances anymore either, but now and then you still run into the odd person who would gladly send us right back to those days if he could. He's on the fringes now, but it took time to put him there. Nothing about disabilities used to be considered in anything, but that's slowly starting to change. Yet people, our own government among them, are still doing their best in spite of their claims to fight against it. It's going to take more than a few bands and a couple of chicks walking up the Gordon hill to make toplessness seem normal, but it's bound to happen. It'll just take time.
So of all people, I should be ahead of the curve in realizing that they're visionary. But I'm not. I'm as bad as the guy we had to push to the fringes.
I wouldn't say so. You're not pushing against what they're doing, you're more of an I'm not sure if I'm into this myself, but you folks go right on aboob and make your statement. You can agree with the spirit of a demonstration without joining in.
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