Berkeley City Council naked protest – free the nipple from Gypsy Taub on Vimeo.
(See media coverage for this protest at the end of the post)
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by Gypsy Taub
I found out about Council member Kris Worthington’s attempt to legalize female breasts in Berkeley.
You can find out more about the history of the nudity ban in Berkeley from this KQED interfview (clikc on the video or read):
https://ww2.kqed.org/news/2017/08/24/the-history-of-nudity-in-san-francisco-uncovered/
I went to the Berkeley City Council meeting with my kids Inti and Nebo Gonzalez.
We made public comment. (Our speeches are attached at the end.)
I was appalled by the reaction of some of the female Council members to the proposed legislation and to our comments.
Sophie Hahn completely disregarded the will of the people. 8 people made public comment. Every single one of them was in favor of the legislation, in favor of letting women decide for themselves whether to wear a bra or not. But Sophie Hahn didn’t give a damn about the public. She steamrolled over everything that was said in the public comment and spent a good 10 minutes spewing unrelated incoherent nonsense into our ears. Once she was done Susan Wengraf joined her and said that “we can’t waist time on this” and then the legislation was tabled.
It seemed like Councilwoman Sophie Hahn had thoroughly prepared her degrading diatribe in advance of the meeting expecting the public comment to focus on equality. She was pretty much talking to herself because in her response she was contradicting most of what the public comment was about. She said: “If this is about equality then what about men?” My speech, for instance, did include men and focused on the damage of body shame in general, so did my kids’ speeches. Hahn completely disregarded what most of the public comment was about as if she wasn’t even present in the chambers. Instead she kept attacking an imaginary enemy like some sort of a blind animal infected with rabies. In the end she suggested that we should make men cover up their nipples to make it fair.
I was furious at Sophie Hahn’s and Susan Wengraf’s hateful attack on my rights.
I got topless and then naked, and then I got on top of the tables of the Council members. I expressed my disappointment and my rage at the power-tripping bureaucrats who had no regard for the will of the people.
OUR SPEECHES DURING PUBLIC COMMENT:
Gypsy Taub:
My name is Gypsy Taub. I live in Berkeley I have organized about 40 protests against the nudity ban in San Francisco in the past 5 years.
Body freedom is one of the most basic human rights.
Body shame has plagued the human race for thousands of years if not more.
Nothing is more perverse than the idea that the most natural state of the human body is shameful and obscene. These ideas have been shoved down our throats by religious tyrants who have been widely exposed for child rape, torture, genocide and mass murder.
How much longer will we continue paying lip service to this lunacy, this tyranny, this nastiness that now permeates our minds, our souls, our sexual relationships, our families, our whole society in its every aspect?
How much longer will children be taught that their bodies are disgusting? How much longer will young people be tormented by body shame, unable to date, unable to express themselves sexually?
If you believe that your body is obscene then how will you ever be able to undress in front of someone you are in love with? How will you ever be able to make love with that body?
So many families fall apart because of body shame. So many men and women are petrified with fear and insecurity, unable to communicate their desires to their partners, unable to enjoy a loving touch of their lover.
More than 300,000 teens and women in the U.S. decide to get breast implants every year. Men get penis enlargement surgeries, all because in our society no one is ever allowed to see the real human body.
Our young people grow up seeing breasts only in advertisements and porn. Most of those breasts are not even real.
If public nudity was an every-day occurrence we would all know what real bodies look like. We would all be so much more at peace with ourselves and with each other.
Furthermore, scientist have proven that bras and other constricting clothes block the blood flow and increase women’s chances of getting breast cancer.
For the sake of our daughters, our mothers and the future generations please give us body freedom!
Inti Gonzalez:
Hi, My name is Inti Gonzalez . I am 16 years old.
I believe that all women should have the right to be topl free.
Women’s breast are seen as obscene while men’s breasts are not. Women have no right to take off their shirt on a hot day or at a beach. However men do have that right.
We have had this meaningless law that shames women for something that does absolutely no harm, since the beginning of history.
We teach our daughters that their breast are shameful, something that should not be seen. How can you teach people that a part of their body is gross? Our body is something that they were born with, something that will always be there.
Many people act as if the world would fall apart if women had the right to show their breasts. These people have had this shame drilled into their heads, they do not realize that once women are allowed to go top-free the world will be much freer.
Woman’s breast are seen as sexual but it’s only seen that way because no one gets to see nor reveal breasts, just as women’s hair or men’s arms are seen as sexual in some countries because it is always hidden.
It’s just a public delusion that will change once woman’s hair or breast become a normal everyday occurrence. It’s nothing to obsess over.
The world will not end nor become a sex party if we give women the right to show their breasts.
Our body is ours and no one else’s. We have the right to do whatever we wan’t with it, how can you put laws on someone else’s body? I grew up in a family free from body shame. Look at me, do i look traumatized? Even though i grew up in such a family i was still influenced by the shameful society outside of my home, so i still ended up having some shame about my body, and I must say i don’t like that feeling.
I hope to make a change to Berkeley’s body shame as well as mine and i hope that one day the world will see the absurdity of putting body shaming laws on the most natural form of you, your body.
Nebosvod Gonzalez:
Hello, my name is Nebosvod Gonzalez. I am 14 years old. I live in Berkeley.
Women’s right to be top free may not seem that important but it is a basic human right.
If you look at each of our rights separately they don’t seem to matter that much by themselves.
So many of our rights have already been stripped away.
But if we don’t value our human rights we will lose them one by one and our whole world will become a holocaust.
Sexual oppression is one of the tools the Nazis used. It is a tool of tyranny that leads to fascism.
Nudity doesn’t hurt anyone.
Please give us body freedom! It is our basic human right.
Thank you
MEDIA COVERAGE:
http://www.newsweek.com/naked-protester-slams-berkeley-council-meeting-over-decision-not-free-nipple-664610
http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Berkeley-Ordinance-Designed-to-Free-The-Nipple-Stalls-Naked-Protest-Ensues-444286823.html
http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Gypsy-Taub-Berkeley-City-Council-naked-ordinance-12194775.php
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/09/13/berkeley-topless-ordinance-debate-ends-with-nude-protester-rant.html
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/latest-news/644919/naked-Free-the-nipple-protest-Gypsy-Taub-boob-ban-Berkeley-Council-video
http://sfist.com/2017/09/14/berkeley_city_council_tables_vote_o.php
http://www.berkeleyside.com/2017/09/13/naked-activist-slams-berkeley-officials-nipple-liberation-proposal-dies/
http://www.univision.com/los-angeles/kmex/noticias/leyes-y-prohibiciones/en-protesta-por-la-represion-de-los-pezones-una-mujer-se-desnuda-en-oficina-de-gobierno