Critical Boobies

[GrumpyOldBastard]

ok here goes:

why, oh why do women put themselves on view like that? CT has evolved into a dirty old man gawkers convention! this i will never understand. in all the years i have attended BM, i have never agreed with CT. female friends have defended it as "freedom of expression" "empowering" ect, but i only see it as degrading. this year a friend drug me along to view the CT ride. i was there along the side of the road between the man and center camp, and then we moved to the 3 o'clock area where it ended.

HOLY CRAP!!!!!


if i were a woman i would have bitch slapped, knee'd, punched and otherwise injured some of the giant assholes with cameras. not to mention the cat calls, and miriad nasty comments that were made about some of the not so pretty women. i simply could not believe that *this* was burningman. i saw women pinched, groped, grabed, and touched in very inappropriate manners. (in the meley of the end) i was ashamed to be a part of that. (as a person in the crowd) a virgin female friend was desperate to go on the ride, and her bike got a flat at the last minute. she borrowed a bike and took off. when we got back to camp, she told us of her harrowing ride. her breasts were touched several times... she was yelled at, insulted, pinched, poked and otherwise invaded. because of the flat tire incident, she only made the end of the ride. she will never do it again, if she decides to come back. someone actually said to her "your tits are ugly! show us your pussy!"

so i say stop the CT ride! as high minded as the origional intent was, it has devolved into nothing more than a grope fest for assholes.

[Lecter]

why, oh why do women put themselves on view like that?Because they wish to radically express themselves. And I think they should continue CT as long as even one woman wishes to do it.

No one is forcing the women to ride. Many choose not to, precisely for the reasons you mentioned. But others love it. This is their thing. Let them have it. Let them express, empower, whatever it means to each participant.

Let the women themselves make their own choice. If the issues outweigh the benefits, then CT will cease to exist. But it will be on their terms, not from the outside.

I only have a nickle. Can I have change for my two cents? :)

L

[GrumpyOldBastard]

No one is forcing the women to ride. Many choose not to, precisely for the reasons you mentioned. But others love it. This is their thing. Let them have it. Let them express, empower, whatever it means to each participant.

Let the women themselves make their own choice. If the issues outweigh the benefits, then CT will cease to exist. But it will be on their terms, not from the outside.

I only have a nickle. Can I have change for my two cents? :)

L

i feal that CT has disinigrated into a dirty-old-man-oggling-spectating-degrading-shaming-thing. i feal sorry for the women who participate in it.


oh and i'm keeping your nickle. heh

[run.w.xcors]

Funny, I was having this same sort of conversation with one of my sexier campmates last night. She loves going topless at BM and says she hates CT as well, much for the reasons 'old Grumpster here talked about. This was my first burn and everyone told me I had to see CT. "DON'T MISS IT!" Well, I missed it and those who went said I didn't really miss anything.

Now, as Lecter mentioned, it's really up to the participants to decide if the event is worth having again. It's not like you have to ride in it if you have a pair.

As for the behavior of the participants, if you see something totally out of line, say something. The beauty of a community like this is that it's self regulating. Tell one of these dumbasses (as diplomatically possible of course) that what they're doing isn't cool...or walk up and hit on them. Nothing scares creepy hetro guys faster than having their own game thrown back at them, and what better place than at Burning Man.

[Lovemonkey]

I agree with Lecter. Believe it or not, plenty of the women who ride enjoy the attention. Different strokes, right? But I hear ya, Grumpy. It's too bad CT has devolved into this. Even sadder is that these same Yahoos accost women all over BRC with the same catcalls, groping and asinine behavior. Cancelling CT wouldn't be curing the disease.

[GrumpyOldBastard]

LM; it may be possible to hold hte ride earlier in the week, like wednesday, to avoid a majority of the "weekend warriors" and yahoo's. regardless, i still think it degrades women, no matter how noble the origional thought was.

[Flamingo]

In every thing in life there will be 2 types of people. Those who love doing something and those who hate doing it and don't. Doesn't matter what it is because we, as a species, are individuals.

You may thing CT is degrading and so do many others but it really doesn't matter. So long as someone enjoys it then that is enough reason for it to continue.

[Editrixstar]

I rode in the Critical Tits ride this year. While there were yahoos ogling us, I didn't witness any of the other negative things such as groping and insults. I found it overall to be a positive experience. I am sorry to hear that wasn't the case for others. Maybe I was just lucky?

I agree that as long as women participate, the ride should continue. If you see someone behaving innapropriately, call them on their action. If the yahoo contingent gets too proportionally high, then I imagine women will lose interest in participating and the ride will end. But until then, CT lives.

[dr.placebo]

As with the rest of BM there are lots of different experiences around CT. Some women like it, some dislike it. I don't know of any women who like the yahoos, but I know some who can ignore them and enjoy CT. And I know other who stay clear of the whole thing.

In 2005 I stayed away, and did some volunteer work at a camp far from the ride. In 2004 I encountered the ride by chance, and I had a frame drum with me so I stood at the side and drummed as they rode past. I've seen parts of it at least two other years. Mostly I've happy women having a good time with not too many yahoos (and several of those were being jeered by the rest of the standing crowd). But that's my experience, not to be confused with the absolute truth.

The whole photography thing is a mess. The gawkers shooting tits are pretty obnoxious, but then there are some women who want to have their pictures taken by their friends, and there can be misunderstandings there, too. The best suggestion I've seen was to have two routes, one where pictures were OK and one where they are not. I have no idea how that would work. It probably would not keep the gawkers from trying to shoot the wrong route.

I suspect that it will continue to happen as long as there are enough women who want to make it happen. I'm not offended, and it's not my call anyway.

[GrumpyOldBastard]

i can understand women wanting to express themselves in such a way as this. all of the touching-grabbing-catcalling-boobiegrabing stuff happenened in the clusterfuck at the end. i withnessed some of this and called a few guys on it. i still feel they should move it up to wednesday evening to cut down on the extreem yahoo factor.

[dr.placebo]

Yeah, the yahoos are a pain. At least the CT ride is in daylight. Some of the creeps cruise at night. I do think that the right response is to educate those who can be taught, and tho oppose those who insist on being clueless. I don't like the idea of giving up our space.

[Editrixstar]

That sucks that women were getting mauled at the end of the ride. Maybe because I was towards the front I got into the party before the yahoos arrived outside the gates. Anyway, bravo to GoB for doing his part to try to stop this sort of behavior. It is unfortunate that as BM grows, the yahoo contingent grows too.

[Chai Guy]

You know for years I thought that Critical Tits was some kind of "Women's Empowerment" thing. Recently I read about the real origins of the event here's an excerpt:

"Critical Tits, women biking en masse withbare breasts has become an annual event inBlack Rock City. Pam Seidenman, aka Space Z Cowgirl was the ringleader of the first Critical Tits on the playa in 1996. She and four accomplices were requested to "do something wild and crazy" for a friend who could not be in attendance that year. So on the last Friday of that month, coin-ciding with Critical Mass in San Francisco, they rode bare-chested and painted, shouting “Critical Tits!" to the surprise and adoration of onlookers. By the next year, the ride had taken on mythic significance and grew accordingly.Pam is happy that the event has grown organically. It stands as one of the few strictly female spaces at Burning Man and is empower-ing perhaps because of its boldness."

So basically CT started as a spectacle, is it that much different now than when it originally happened in 1996? I can't say, I can say that it's not that much different from 1998 when I first saw it, to last year (2005). In fact, the only difference I could see was the number of people, which seemed to increase in porportion to the overall attendance at the event.

Of course I take issue with the above author's comment that CT "Stands as one of the few strictly female spaces at Burning Man". If you've ever witnessed the parade, then you've seen the hordes of men following the women on bikes and on foot with cameras, and video tape rolling. I've even seen my male friends riding with their girlfriends, buh!

Now if I had to point to one thing that was wrong with CT, it would undoubtebly be the "After Party". Why are men following women in the parade? - To get to the Party!, Who organizes the party? MEN!, who "serves" at the pary? MEN!, who fundraises for the party? MEN!

For an event that's supposed to be a stictly female space, MEN sure have weasled their way into the thing pretty good.

[water_bear]

Boobies are great. We are all born naked.
People just need to grow up and be respectfull.

Hey, where are the pictures in this thread?????


Bear

[Scout]

I always skipped CT until one of or campmates chose to participate in it. Our entire camp went and cheered her and the others on. My favorite participant in CT was a naked woman that was painted head to toe in silver. She was flipping off the crowd as she rode. While she went by I looked around and saw why she was flipping off the crowd. The crowd was full of creeps that were taking pictures, making rude commits about the women as they passed by. I was a guy standing in that same being flipped off crowd, which means I too was a creep by default. On this realization I left.

Later once our campmate came back to our camp she told me she enjoyed the CT experience because has always had a bad self image of her body and it was nice to be naked riding by people who were clapping and cheering for her, except for all those CREEPS.