Once @genderless_nipples ends sexism, then what?
Updated
One small step for nipple equality, one giant leap into the great unknown. We should think twice before donating our nipples in the name of gender equality, writes Ben Pobjie.
The latest sign of the modern world's agile ability to shift paradigms and break down taboos and push envelopes and shatter comfortable silences and so forth is @genderless_nipples, a wildly popular Instagram account that posts photos of male and female nipples taken from so close up that it is impossible to tell to which sex the nipple-owner belongs.
The account, like most great historical innovations, was created by three advertising students, who seek to force Instagram to change its strict "no nudity" policy.
These guidelines currently see it vigilantly remove images of bare female breasts, but allow the showcasing of naked male torsos in all their glory.
After Instagram removed an image of a male nipple for violating community standards in December, for example, the account protested: "Instagram, you can't even tell the difference between male and female nipples; who could!? So why even bother banning female nipples if they can be so similar?"
Account receiving 90 nipple donations a day
And, in a clear sign that we are living in a genuine age of wonders, any social-justice-loving internet social media denizen can now say, "I am making a nipple donation".
For nipple donations are what genderless_nipples is after, and nipple donations is what they are getting — about 90 a day, apparently.
The account calls for sharp, well, lit photos, taken from a "Coke can distance" — I assume this means a distance equivalent to the height of a Coke can, not the distance that the user can throw a Coke can — of nipples that are hairless and hard.
This is purportedly in order to make it more difficult for Instagram to distinguish between male and female nipples, although you can't deny it's a bit of a bonus that hairless and hard nipples are also the best kind to look at.
Yet there is a niggling fear at the back of my mind. For I know that, as harmlessly erotic as I might find the account, the creators of genderless_nipples had drawn up grander designs when they founded it.
They sought to smash the double standards that see public nipplage segregated by gender, much in the vein of the long-running #FreeTheNipple campaign, which has achieved more progress, in real terms, than any previous nipple-freeing project in recorded history.
Genderless_nipples is much more than a diversion for idle devotees of the mammalian protuberance: it is a calculated attempt to upend gender norms and create a new world order of equality and justice.
And this scares the hell out of me.
Nipple activism is a slippery slope
With great power, as Spider-Man memorably ignored resulting in the death of his uncle, comes great responsibility, and I'm not sure any of us are prepared for the sheer power that has been unleashed by the advent of the age of online indeterminate nipple galleries.
Already genderless_nipples has whipped the general populace into a frenzy of partial nudity, feminist activism, and amateur photography.
But nipple activism is like a caged baboon: as beautiful as it might be, once you let it out of the box you're not getting it back in without some severe facial wounds.
Where will it end? Once we have achieved equality for nipples — which will be happening any day now — the next step is equality for other body parts, which could include buttocks, pubic hair, feet and uteruses.
And the troubling thing is, having lived for millennia in a deeply unequal society, we have no idea how humanity will cope with the sudden, accelerated transition to total gender equality.
Psychologically, are we ready for it?
It's all very well to say, "let us disrupt the social order with our nipples and thereby build a better tomorrow", but just how are you going to do that?
I fear massed troops of genderless_nipples sweeping through the battlefields of structural discrimination with no clear alternative regime: if our nipples will soon end sexism permanently, what are we going to replace it with?
A sexism-free utopia requires a well-thought-out strategy
Love them or hate them, the brutally oppressive systems of civilisation have thus far been excellent at keeping order and providing us all with a firm sense of our proper place in the social strata. Without the restraining influence of gender norms, will we descend into anarchy?
Which is why I cannot endorse this short-sighted exercise in universal revolution.
The effects of unrestricted nipples are simply too unpredictable, too seismic. How can a gender equal society benefit us if that society lays in ruins?
If we are to proceed to a sexism-free utopia, we must do it with a properly-thought-out plan — not by rushing helter-skelter into a maelstrom of teatian chaos wherefrom we know not our safe exit.
Of course, I don't expect my warnings to have much effect — I am sure that, in a month or two, genderless_nipples will have done its work and men and women will be living together in peace and harmony and a terrible gnawing uncertainty about what to do next.
It will be a bittersweet time.
But though seemingly futile, I make this plea: think before being led astray by the unmatched beauty of the human nipple.
If social order matters to you, reflect deeply on the future, lest we find where once flowed milk, there now flows anarchy.
Topics: feminism, youth, offbeat, internet-culture, social-media
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