Amid Fierce Patriarchal Backlash and Surging Fascism, Does Freeing the Nipple Still Matter?
A transgender woman with “indecent” breasts makes the case that topless equality is still worth fighting for.
“Free the nipple!” exclaimed one of my favorite students—all educators have them, even if we say we don’t—as I lectured a section of my nineteenth-century European history class about gender norms in Victorian England.
“Free the ankle!” I teasingly quipped back, slightly hiking up my right pant leg in the dorkiest possible way.
In the summer of 2015, I’d moved from Moscow, Russia, to Tampa, Florida, to take a postdoctoral position in the History Department at the University of South Florida. I taught at USF for three years. At that time, topless protest and #FreeTheNipple advocacy were having a global moment, one that not coincidentally overlapped with the then vaunted but now largely memory-holed “transgender tipping point” in the United States. In retrospect, it was the end of a more hopeful era, an all-too-brief period when optimism about gender equality and full queer acceptance in the U.S. seemed warranted.
The goal of topless equality is still worth fighting for and aligns perfectly with other liberatory goals.