In The Wake Of The Boobquake

Monday, April 26 was the first official Boobquake This strangely viral event was first suggested by atheist feminist Jennifer McCreight on her blog Blag Hag. Jen’s suggestion was inspired by the nonsense spouted by an Islamic cleric suggesting that women’s immodesty caused earthquakes. Her original blog post reads:

This little bit of supernatural thinking has been floating around the blogosphere today:

“Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes,” Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Sedighi is Tehran’s acting Friday prayer leader.

I have a modest proposal.

Sedighi claims that not dressing modestly causes earthquakes. If so, we should be able to test this claim scientifically. You all remember the homeopathy overdose?

Time for a Boobquake.

On Monday, April 26th, I will wear the most cleavage-showing shirt I own. Yes, the one usually reserved for a night on the town. I encourage other female skeptics to join me and embrace the supposed supernatural power of their breasts. Or short shorts, if that’s your preferred form of immodesty.

Jen set up a Boobquake Facebook page which has since gone viral, with almost 70,000 fans. With the day finished, it seems to have been a success: there’s been no major earthquakes recorded there’s been one relatively big earthquake in Taiwan. But still, since earthquakes happen every single day, it’s neither here nor there. I prefer the way the Register put it: Boobquake fails to destroy planet.

Jen’s original idea was to send up the completely unscientific claims of a religious nutbag. She wanted to thumb her nose at the idea that “modesty” is the ultimate ideal for women and to deny the assertion that dressing “immodestly” causes men to rape.

Nonetheless, that idea seems to have been subsumed in the last week as a number of feminists have denounced the whole concept as against the sisterhood. The Boobquake, they claim, can’t possibly be a feminist event, especially because so many men have jumped on the bandwagon with cries of “show us your tits!” They say that Boobquake feeds into old ideas about judging women only by their appearance. Someone has suggested a “Brainquake” as an alternative.

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Showing off your boobs, it seems, is always a capitulation to the enemy. And the enemy is men, of course. Thus, Jen has been cast as a traitor to feminism for coming up with the idea of the Boobquake.

I’ve got no time for that kind of anti-sex feminism. When the main point is to give the middle finger to a religious dictatorship that bans women from wearing whatever they want, why are some feminists telling women to cover up?

Women’s rights are human rights. And women should be allowed to wear what they want – and that includes happily showing off their boobs on the internet. If that is her choice, it’s a feminist choice. She may be making a political statement or she may be doing it to make money or she may just be an exhibitionist. Whatever the case, it’s her choice.

What’s interesting here is that it’s the Boobquake participants who are considered to be betraying feminism. Why? Where is the criticism for the men who are making the “show us your tits!” comments? Surely that’s where our attention should go. If women want to show off their boobs to make a political statement, the guys should offer their support, not make inane and juvenile comments.

Yes, women’s bodies have been commercialised and objectified by Western society but condemning any overt display of sexuality is not the way to fight the problem. That’s simply replacing one form of oppression with another.

I’m happy that thousands of women are showing off their boobs as part of a political statement. It’s sending a message to the religious crazies of the world: we’re proud of our bodies and we refuse to be told what to do simply because your dusty old book says something misogynist. In short: fuck off.

Here’s another great post about the feminist response to Boobquake. I love this quote:

Don’t let ideological feminists shame you into covering yourself up, or pressure you into exposing yourself. Your body is YOURS. It is yours to show off however you like, whether physically, intellectually, or otherwise.

Jen also offered this clarification in her blog. She is amazed that what she considered to be a casual joke has gone so crazy.

Update: Here’s Jen’s official scientific analysis of Boobquake. What a shock: all that immodesty did not increase the average number of daily earthquakes.

I love that she has gone to so much effort to turn this into a proper science experiment. She’s a wonderful nerd!