Sunday is GoTopless Day

By Art Gallagher

Not a transgender person

If a pre-op transgender person with boobs and male parts goes topless in public, is that person violating anti-nudity ordinances?

I’d ask Congressman Frank Pallone, but he couldn’t tell me if a woman with all the parts she was born with should have the right to go topless wherever a man does when I caught up with him three years ago.  Since then, the president of the GoTopless movement has publicly chastised the congressman and he runs the other way whenever he sees me.

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Boobie Trap: Will The Go Topless Movement Take Off?

Thursday is the 50th anniversary of the Martin Luther King Jr’s March on Washington and his landmark “I have a dream” speech.  Yesterday, thousands of people descended to Washington to commemorate the historic event and celebrate the progress we have made toward racial equality.

Tomorrow is the 42nd annual Women’s Equality Day, a designation created by a Joint Resolution of Congress in 1971 at the behest of Congresswoman Bella Abzug of New York to commemorate the ratification of the 19th amendment which gave women the right to vote.  The 19th Amendment was ratified on August 18, 1920.

GoTopless.org seeks to make a woman’s right to go topless part of the American Dream.  Since 2007, when their spiritual leader Rael founded the organization, GoTopless has held an International GoTopless Day on the Sunday closest to August 26.  That’s today this year. GoTopless is holding rallies in 51 cities around the world. In many of those cities, and in most states in the United States, going topless is already legal, according to the organization’s own map.

Today in New York City, where the right to go topless was degreed by a Court decision in 1996 and reaffirmed in 2007 when Phoenix Feeley won a $29,000 Judgment against the City for her wrongful 2005 arrest for going topless, Go Topless advocates are marching from Bryant Park to Times Square and back.  Street vendors should stock up on sunscreen and hydrocortisone.

Here in New Jersey, Feeley’s recent efforts fell, umm, flat.  She got herself arrested for going topless, twice in the same day, in Spring Lake in 2008, fought her conviction of violating Spring Lake’s anti-nudity ordinance up to the NJ Supreme Court and lost.  Rather than pay her $816 fine, Feeley went to Monmouth County Jail and staged a hunger strike.  A GoTopless organized protest drew two fully clothed women. Feeley was released early and healthy.

At the March on Washington celebration yesterday, women kept their tops on.

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Phoenix Feeley Released on Good Time Credit

Topless advocate Phoenix Feeley was released from the Monmouth County Correctional Institution, on good time credit, this morning at 9am, according to Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Cynthia Scott.

At no time during her incarceration was Feeley’s health in danger.  Despite her hunger strike, she was constantly monitored by the jail’s medical staff.  At all times her vital signs were good.

Bill Spadea’s Chasing Jersey reported last night that Feeley is willing to die in Monmouth County Jail for women’s right to go topless wherever men do.

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That was never going to happen.  A source in the Sheriff’s Office told MMM that if Feeley’s health was ever endangered, a Court Order would have been sought to force feed her intravenously.

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GoTopless President Schools Pallone On Women’s Rights

Nadine Gary, President, GoTopless.org

August 12, 2013

Dear Honorable Congressman Pallone,

My name is Nadine Gary, and I’m writing to you on behalf of GoTopless (www.gotopless.org), a U.S. women’s group devoted to obtaining our constitutional right to go topless in public wherever men have that right.

During Asbury Park’s Night Out last week, you were asked by reporter Art Gallagher about GoTopless activist Phoenix Feeley, who is currently into Day 8 of the hunger strike she has begun as an inmate at the Monmouth County Jail. This brave woman has not only gone to jail, serving a 16 day sentence but stopped eating to protest discriminatory topless laws in New Jersey.

Ms. Feeley went through the N.J. court system to fight for her constitutional rights and she is now appealing her case to the U.S. Supreme Court. We hope it will rule on this important gender equality issue that until now has been neglected at the federal level.

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Two Women Show Up At GoTopless Protest

Two women, one from Mercer County and one from Ocean County, showed up at the Monmouth County Correctional Institution this morning to protest hunger striking Phoenix Feeley’s incarceration and anti-toplessness laws.   They kept their tops on.

Sue Vliet, of Toms River, identified herself as an admin of One Million Vaginas, a feminist organization dedicated to empowering women to take their vagina’s back from invasive conservative politicians, was one of the two protestors.  Her sign said, “STOP THE DOUBLE STANDARD. FREE OUR BREASTS.” Vliet said she was protesting the “double standard and draconian laws” that allow men that to bare their chests in public, but not women.

Judith Sherwood of Mercer County read a letter from GoTopless.org in support of Feeley. You can hear that letter by viewing the video below.

Sherwood said she wasn’t raising money to pay Feeley’s $816 fine, which would end the incarceration, as a matter of principle.  Sherwood and Vliet both said they were not protesting topless and risking arrest themselves, because their protest was not about going topless.

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Go Topless Activists Say They Will Picket Monmouth County Jail This Morning

Somehow this event didn’t make it to Greg’s List.

GoTopless.org, the group that says laws that prohibit women from exposing their chests are discriminatory violations of the 14th Amendment, announced that they will be protesting Phoenix Feeley’s incarceration for going topless in Spring Lake in 2008 by picketing in front of the Monmouth County Correctional Institution this morning from 9am till noon.

GoTopless is making Feeley out to be a modern day Susan B. Anthony.  Nadine Gary, a spokeswoman for the organization, said in statement on their website, “Suffragette activists, like Phoenix Feeley and other topless activists today, willingly went to jail for claiming their rights.”

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