A pornographer (and atheist) explains why the science guy’s shirt crash-landed

[True Blue Door]

38. You're conflating far too many unrelated or nebulously-related concepts.

Germany: Pervasive sexualization of the female form; led by a woman whose body is no one's fantasy. Strong feminist representation in politics.
Egypt: Women are forced to wear bulky clothing to hide their form, their bodies treated like crimes, and are frequently assaulted or raped if they deviate from these norms.

Clearly sexualizationhas no relationship whatsoever with misogyny. This is why I call this kind of reaction "fauxminism." It prefers to focus on symbolism and get inside people's minds instead of focusing on real-world, practical equality.

What does this imagery have to do with your being called names and assaulted? Nothing. It has nothing to do with women not getting equal pay; nothing to do with sexual harassment or assault; nothing to do with reproductive freedom; nothing to do even with the dismissive attitudes of sexist men; it's simply men liking the female form and expressing their pleasure in it.

Any public display of pleasure can cause displeasure in others. The smell of the food you order in a restaurant might make me nauseous - that doesn't make you a repulsive and insensitive human being. When you have fun with your children in a park might disturb someone reading a book on a nearby bench, but that doesn't make your family life anti-intellectual.

Equating that shirt to a racist caricature would be like comparing the happy family making noise in a park near a reader to someone deliberately walking up to the reader and banging cymbals next to their head. The displeasure in one is incidental; the displeasure in the other is the purpose of the exercise.

The rare real-life troll notwithstanding, if a man wears a shirt with naked women on it, it's because he likes naked women, that's it. So only in contexts where the reaction of others has to trump individual autonomy - e.g., a professional circumstance - is it inappropriate. Otherwise it is as morally neutral as someone else's choice to eat pungent cheese.