The Open Source Boob Project was totally unsurprising.

It was unsurprising because men have this habit of framing sexual liberation as ‘I wants more sexual availability from the women around me’. So in that regard it was not the least bit shocking that some dude would bring boob-grabbing under the banner of open source software and ideaology.

The merry-go-round of people being shocked that women’s bodies were considered open spaces for grazing groping was also entirely expected.

Needless to say, the guy magically discovered after that original post that chicks started the whole thing, and that more than boobs got groped, and that therefore these two things made it all ok and please would you stop judging him loudly like dirty sex-prudes or something.

When bisexual porn actresses who make themselves sexually available to many feel you’re being rude and invasive, you are pretty definitely advocating something risky at best and downright cruel at worst.

I will actually not dissect the objections themselves, though in some respects the same ideology that has people being bisexual porn actors is responsible for BoobGate, but I will make some space for my concerns about the women.

White people, and very especially white geek people like to have this notion that social pressure doesn’t exist or is not exerted in their environments. So the idea that women might suggest the idea, or agree to it at all is never questioned. Motivations are never inquired after. And when you’re dealing with geek-girls, motivation is everything.

If you are not conventionally attractive, but have still been told that a woman’s worth is in how many men (and to a lesser, very specifically policed extent, women) validate her as hot/sexy/pretty, then this whole situation is pretty different than Dude was presenting. You are pretty likely to have women making themselves physically and sexually accessible because the non-geek world won’t validate those women, but the geek world sure will. That desperation is sometimes so horribly subtle, and you aren’t going to have socially awkward men complaining about Women With Issues dressing skimpily and nervously saying ‘OMG PLEEZ TUCH MAH BOOBZ’, with that giggle that is not a sign she thought it was all funny. But of course, geek-men hide behind their inability to read body language and quite easily dismiss all the discomfort of the women assenting to acquire the precious validation that both geek and non-geek society claim is all we can have as women.

That whole involved paragraph up there was my main beef with the whole deal. Dude wanting to justify getting his perv on at a con, and women enacting the subtle coercions of, uh, the patriarchy, and very few people wondering why guys never seem to wonder aloud ‘why can’t sex be more sacred? i wish more people would be celibate until marriage. where’s the “celibate until marriage” buttons?’

Bad example, but you get the gist. I wasn’t surprised at the perving, but I was saddened at the tens or dozens of women who probably felt they had to wear the ‘yes you can ask to touch me’ button, when the whole button system was absurd and nobody should be asking that of any woman other than their SO. And saddened at the white geeks who are so sure they don’t pressure anyone to do anything, since they’re all socially inept or whatever. Sigh.

ETA: This chick is at least consistent regarding some of the logical outcomes of sex-positive idealogy. Although one wonders how it’s empowering to let guys have unfettered access to female bodies, to the point of women having to accept men regularly asking to touch them intimately (when that was not regular, at least for the subset of white women being spoken of here). But the tone of her post/comments kinda illustrates my point up there about geek-girls being desperate to prove their worth through male validation in a venue where they can be considered appealing enough to be lust objects.

And while this whole post is pretty much about McWhitey and problematic aspects of the whole thing for McWhiteyChicks, I could fill this blog with like eighty posts on how completely different this would all be if it had involved MOC touching white chicks (especially black guys) or WOC being touched by white guys (especially Asian women). I can assure you the internets would not have blown up in anywhere near the same ways or quantities.

Just look at BlackAmazon. White women scrabbling over her mind as invasively as anything, and no firestorms from Feministe/Feministing/Pandagon about how disrespectful and rude that is. Since re:BoobGate, some are making the argument that it’s no different than wanting to know more about someone’s mind. Well, not any different in creepy factor.

And tangentially, nobody’s mentioned how it played out if a woman let Guy A touch her boobs but not Guys B or C (or only let women touch but not dudes, etc, all the permutations of refusal). In fact, there’s been an implication through all the defensiveness that women who allowed groping allowed ANYONE to grope and did not exercise any selective refusal. That’s a VERY interesting implication, if so, and further bolsters my original points about social pressure and coercion. Because the creepy dude was whining that it was wrong, WRONG, WROOONNNNGGG for women to be choicy about who touched thar bewbz, so I am pretty curious about how selective refusal was handled, and if it even happened. But not enough to read 1300 comments.