ONTARİO SİSTERS TO PROTEST
Ontario Sisters To Protest After Being Stopped By Police During Topless Bike Ride
Alysha Brilla,left, and Tameera Mohamed — along with a third sister, Nadia — say they never intended to cause a stir when they rode topless for 20-25 minutes through residential streets on a hot day.
In a case that highlights the clash between the pursuit of equal rights and social expectations of decency, three Ontario sisters are filing a complaint against their local police force, alleging an officer stopped them during an evening bike ride because they were topless.
It has been legal since the mid-1990s for women to go topless in Ontario
— a fact of which Tameera, Nadia and Alysha Mohamed were keenly aware when they decided to shed their shirts and sports bras after three hours of biking in the region of Kitchener-Waterloo in Friday’s 26 C heat, with a humidex of 31. Before long, they were stopped by a police officer who, they say, told them to put their shirts back on, that it was the law. The girls refused.
The incident is building on an ongoing conversation about the sexualization of women’s bodies and the way they are “policed” and “shamed”
— terms commonly used by feminist activists.
In B.C.,
Kelowna sunbather Susan Rowbottom complained publicly after a police officer told her to put her top back on at a local beach last week despite the fact it’s legal to go topless.
Scores of Alexi Halket's classmates protested in crop tops in
May after her Toronto school said her wardrobe was inappropriate.
Last month, an eight-year-old girl in Guelph, Ont., was told by a lifeguard to cover up because she was splashing around in a wading pool topless. May marked a number of Crop Top Day protests in Canadian high schools in opposition to dress codes that require girls to cover their legs, chests and midriffs. In the past year a Free the Nipple campaign, meant to target the “double standard” faced by women expected to cover their breasts — and charged with public indecency if they go bare — while the same isn’t expected of men, has drawn considerable attention.
But the Mohamed sisters say they never intended to cause a stir when they rode topless for 20-25 minutes through residential streets and even past a female officer who waved them through a construction zone.
Just after 9 p.m.,
a Waterloo Regional Police SUV pulled them over.
“He said ‘Ladies, you’re going to need to put on some shirts,'” Tameera recalled Tuesday. When they refused, citing their rights, the officer allegedly disagreed with them, saying there had been complaints and noting there were children in the area.
When Alysha, a Juno-nominated musician who goes by the surname Brilla, pulled out her cellphone camera and asked him to repeat why he pulled the girls over, the officer allegedly then asked if their bikes were properly equipped with bells and lights.
“We’re all feminists and we’re all already aware of our rights and are pretty opinionated in that regard and so we definitely thought ‘That was ridiculous, he had no reason to be stopping us,'” Tameera said. “Either he lied or he doesn’t know [what the law says], and both of those are problems, so we need to go to the police station and report this.”
The Waterloo Police İs Reviewing Their Complaint.
Linda Meyer, who challenged topless laws and won a court case in 2000, sunbathes topless at a public park in Maple Ridge, B.C., last month.
“It might seem like it’s just toplessness and it might seem like it’s one law or one incident, but all of these issues are connected,” Tameera said. “If women cannot be topless in public, if we are so against the desexualization of women’s breasts, then we cannot solve problems like street harassment and sexual assault and all of these things that are connected to the idea that women’s bodies belong to men.”
The sisters are organizing a Bare With Us “top freedom rally” for Saturday in Waterloo.
Attendees do not have to doff their tops in order to show support, Brilla said. In fact, she doesn’t plan to herself.
Fighting sexualization of women’s bodies by baring all may not be the answer, critics say.
“Showing private areas in public and calling for “normalizing” our response to flashing — I think that’s really fighting the wrong battle,” Wendy Shalit, the U.S. author of A Return to Modesty: Discovering the Lost Virtue — which argues modesty may actually help fight misogyny — wrote in an email.
“Let’s face it, we’re living in a society in which the majority of young people are getting their sex-ed from Internet porn, which is often violent, and even a brand like Bugaboo feels the need to promote their new stroller with a model wearing a sexy bikini (not exactly the way most moms dress when pushing their babes). So fighting over-sexualization by giving strangers more access to women’s bodies? To me that doesn’t make much sense. It’s like protesting low wages by working for free. Instead I’d love to see a higher standard of decency, for both men and women.”
To others, the girls raise a crucial point about the freedom to choose whether or not to exercise a right.
“I think the question is less about nudity and more about ownership,” said recent McGill University graduate Lily Chapnik, who wrote a blog post this spring about her feminist choice to dress modestly. “It’s about who gets to make decisions about people’s bodies.”
Related
BİSİKLETÇİ KIZLARA ÜSTSÜZ DESTEK
Kanada’nın Ontario eyaletinde üstsüz bir şekilde bisiklet sürdükleri için polis tarafından durdurulan üç kız kardeşe destek gösterisi yapıldı.
“Bizimle çıplak” isimli gösteriye katılanlar, 1996 yılından bu güne Ontario eyaletinde yaşayan kadınların üstsüz bir şekilde toplum içerisinde bulunma hakkına sahip olduğunu vurguladı.
Göstericiler üzerinde “Onlar sadece göğüs ucu, bomba değil” ve “Çıplaklık seksi değildir” yazılı pankartlar taşıdılar.
 
Polisin kanuna aykırı bir şekilde uygulama yaptığını iddia eden göstericiler polisin tutumuna karşı şikayet dilekçesi doldurdu.
Polisin durdurduğu kardeşler ise havanın sıcak olması nedeniyle tişörtlerini çıkararak bisiklet sürdüklerini açıklamıştı.
Ökkeş Bölükbaşı, İstanbul –Ağustos.2015 – okkesb61@gmail.com,
http://www.medyagunebakis.com/ -okkesb@turkfreezone.com,
https://www.facebook.com/okkes.bolukbasi,- okkesb@gmail.com,
Ökkeş Bölükbaşı, İstanbul –Ağustos.2015 – okkesb61@gmail.com,
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