A lot has been written about the "Open-Source Boob Project"--wherein female participants at a software/sci-fi convention were invited to wear either a green button (signifying "hey, mouth-breathing sci-fi nerd who has never been within 40 feet of a real woman--feel free to grab my tits") or a red one (signifying "sorry, boys, I have autonomy over my body and am not going to give it up by letting random dudes grope me")--so instead of responding myself, here's a brief roundup of blog posts about it.
From Feministing:
So apparently at a software convention called ConFusion, a bunch of guys were standing around and talking about how awesome the world would be if they could just reach out and grab any woman's boobs. And a woman near them piped up that they could touch her breasts, and they all proceeded to grope her. Then, according to a post by some dude who calls himself the Ferrett, pictured above [and here], they asked other women:
It was exciting, of course. I won't deny it was sexual. But it was a miraculous sexuality that didn't feel dirty, but clean.
Emboldened, we started asking other people. And lo, in the rarified atmosphere of the con, few were offended and many agreed. And they also felt that strange charge. We went around the con, asking those who we thought might be amenable - you didn't just ask anyone, but rather the ones who'd dressed to impress - and generally, people responded. They understood how this worked instinctively, and it worked.
Did you catch that? "The ones who'd dressed to impress"? Almost as if they were "asking for it"? That because they were wearing a tight shirt, their breasts were practically public property, anyway?
By the end of the evening, women were coming up to us. "My breasts," they asked shyly, having heard about the project. "Are they... are they good enough to be touched?" And lo, we showed them how beautiful their bodies were without turning it into something tawdry."
Because what could be more intoxicating than the approval of a room full of tech dudes?
We talked about this. It was an Open-Source Project, making breasts available to select folks. (Like any good project, you need access control, because there are loutish men and women who just Don't Get It.) And we wanted a signal to let people know that they were okay with being asked politely, so we turned it into a project: The Open-Source Boob Project.
For those of you not technologically inclined, "open-source" software means the code is available for anyone to use. All-access. Everyone has a right to it. Just like women's bodies! (Get it? They're so clever!)
Oh, but it doesn't stop there...
Apparently Ferrett and friends were so blown away by their ability to demand access to women's bodies that they decided to make buttons to distribute at an upcoming software and science fiction convention:
At Penguicon, we had buttons to give away. There were two small buttons, one for each camp: A green button that said, "YES, you may" and a red button that said "NO, you may not." And anyone who had those buttons on, whether you knew them or not, was someone you could approach and ask: "Excuse me, but may I touch your breasts?"
And if you weren't a total lout - the women retained their right to say no, of course - they would push their chests out, and you would be allowed into the sanctity of it. That exchange of happiness where one person are told with gropes and touches that they are desirable and the other is someone who's allowed to desire.
Understandably, this puke-worthy "project" was instantly denounced by many, many others in the open-source software and science fiction community. The Ferrett issued a sputtering "clarification" that was just as bad as the original post. (It included the defense that because women were among the gropers, it couldn't be that sexist, right? Nevermind the fact that only women were the gropees.)
From Jezebel:
When people first started imploring us to weigh in on the Open Source Boob Project we had this scary image of a website featuring a picture of a pair of fake tits that registered computer programmers could modify and reshape and manipulate with nanotechnology or whatever else until the resultant pair of tits reflected the internet's consensus of the ideal pair of boobs. (The consensus would, of course, change and grow over time, reflecting an anthropological study in the ever-changing depiction of breasts in the media, anime and videogames; that's how the project would get academic funding.) Anyway: why did I give the geeks so much credit? The Open Source Boob Project was actually just a consensual gropeathon that went down at PenguiCon, which is, naturally, a science fiction convention, though its genesis happened at ConFusion, another science fiction convention, when one geek, probably inspired by a booth babe, said to another geek:
I wish this was the kind of world where say, 'Wow, I'd like to touch your breasts,' and people would understand that it's not a way of reducing you to a set of nipples and ignoring the rest of you, but rather a way of saying that I may not yet know your mind, but your body is beautiful.
At which point — another "friend" spoke up. (Who is this friend? And will the blogosphere hear from her? One can only hope.
We were standing in the hallway of ConFusion, about nine of us, and we all nodded. Then another friend spoke up.
"You can touch my boobs," she said to all of us in the hallway. "It's no big deal."
Now, you have to understand the way she said that, because it's the key to the whole project. The spirit of everything was formed within those nine words - and if she'd said them shyly, as though having her breasts touched by people was something to be endured or afraid of, the Open-Source Boob Project would have died aborning. But she didn't. Her words were loud and clearly audible to anyone who walked by, an offer made to friends and acquaintances alike. [...]
We all reached out in the hallway, hands and fingers extended, to get a handful. And lo, we touched her breasts - taking turns to put our hands on the creamy tops exposed through the sheer top she wore, cupping our palms to touch the clothed swell underneath, exploring thoroughly but briefly lest we cross the line from 'touching" to "unwanted heavy petting." They were awesome breasts, worthy of being touched.
At which point the whole crew decided that an awesome tradition had been born, and next time, they would just print up buttons saying "Yes, you may!" or alternately "No, you may not."
From Misia, on LiveJournal
Like other Open Source projects, the Open Source Swift Kick to the Balls Project (OSSKBP) relies on a wide pool of volunteers working together for the common good.
The Project has very simple parameters and it basically works like this:
Men who are open to being given a swift kick in the balls need do nothing. Women will simply assume that any man not clearly indicating his position vis-a-vis being kicked in the balls with an approved OSSKBP badge or pin is open to being kicked in the balls, as any progressive, free-thinking, feminist man ought to be, by any woman who wishes to do so.
However, we also recognize and affirm that not all men will be so willing to serve. Therefore the OSSKBP provides two other options.
1. Men who would like to be asked for permission before a woman administers one or more swift kicks to their balls shall wear the offical OSSKBP "Ask First Pin" at all times. This is a black lapel pin with a lavender question mark on it.
Because of the serious and comprehensive respect with which women's desires vis-a-vis having their bodies touched by others are uniformly greeted in our culture, women will sometimes abide by any given Ask First Pin wearer's stated preference about getting a kick in the balls at the time that he is asked. At other times, however, women may make their own decisions as to whether or not to give him a quick kick in the nuts regardless of the male's expressed preference. Fair's fair.
2. Men who do not wish to be kicked in the balls at all must wear a large visible official "No Kicks, Thanks" badge at all times, including when swimming, showering, and sleeping. They may also wish to avoid areas where large numbers of women are present, particularly at night. Some men may also wish to invest in assertiveness training, sympathetic female bodyguards, body armor, or sessions with a personal self-defense trainer to increase their ability to resist undesired kicks. As these methods have long been considered completely adequate for women who wish to avoid sexual predation we feel that they are all that is necessary here.
From Machineplay (via Hoyden About Town):
I'm tired of the assertion that this is opt-in, because it's NOT. Not fundamentally. Everyone is participating because everyone there has a body. I can't opt out of my boobs. I can't opt out of people making a value judgment about me when they see I'm not wearing a button, even if I never knew about it when I got there. Having your breasts touched is optional -- WHAT A NOVEL IDEA. Being ranked as 'unwilling to play along' is not optional. I wear a red button every day, basically, and not only am I not PROUD of it, I'm really fucking tired of having to put it on and living in a world full of the colour-blind. [...]
Why would you even need to make a button for "Don't ask me if you can grab my breasts."? It shows a silent acknowledgment that the default is not the woman having the right not to be addressed as simply a bearer of a pair of tits. If you want to go around wearing a button that says, "Ask me if you can grab my breasts!" that's one thing. But to even dream up a RED LETTER for 'non-participating' women is completely ludicrous.
From coffeeandink:
Women spend THEIR ENTIRE LIVES IN SEXUALIZED SPACES. All of us. Ugly, pretty, fat, thin. Women are by default assumed to be sexual objects for the enjoyment of the men we encounter, and our pleasure has nothing to do with it. All spaces. Streets, houses, bedrooms. Either we are pretty/dressed provocatively/flirt, in which case we're asking for it, or we are plain/dressed in concealing clothes/don't flirt, in which case we're repressed prudes unable to enjoy sex because of damaged psyches.
What you're suggesting, repeatedly, is taking a public space whose boundaries are often and already transgressed to sexualize us when we want to be whole persons including but not limited to bodies and saying that these already-permeable boundaries are too solid. What you're suggesting is that instead of the default being "No, you may not touch my body", you want to turn cons -- large public spaces -- into spaces where women have to repeatedly and loudly say no in order to be heard. And you keep insisting on equating "No, you may not touch me" and "No, you may not act like my body exists for the sole purpose of your enjoyment or edification" with "You are bad and wrong for having sexual desires." You're not bad and wrong for having sexual desires. You're bad and wrong for arguing that your sexual desires are the most important criteria under consideration.
And from
Punkassblog:
Obviously, the solution to our sexually repressed, sexually confused culture where women are objectified and reduced to a collection of body parts is to instigate a con-wide gropefest. Being geeks, the guys in charge of this project decided that the gropefest needed to be perfected and streamlined, so by Penguicon, they had two sets of buttons that could be issued to women, advertising the availability status of their ta-tas.
I can only assume from reading the post that an empowered, post-patriarchal utopia ensued.
Oh, it didn’t? I wonder why. Springheel_jack has an excellent smackdown:
The ferrett wonders why a man’s asking, out of the blue, if he can feel up a woman’s boobs shouldn’t be understood as “a way of saying that I may not yet know your mind, but your body is beautiful.” But this is simply to ask why he shouldn’t be able to continue to treat women as they have always been treated. Body first, sexual delectation to men first, as object first, “mind” - i.e. as a human subject - very firmly second. It’s simply to intensify the condition of patriarchal gender relations that already existed - or, to put it more simply, it’s a frustrated man’s fantasy of putting women back in their place.
And here we have the usual libertarian solution to everything - in the name of a false individuality, itself the product of an illegitimate reification and universalization of the social conditions of propertied white men - we have a retreat into the worst of the dark days of gender relations before feminism, offered as a so-called “advance” into a “more honest” and “freer” world. This is pernicious masculine ideology at its most pure and most insufferable. In the name of “empowering” women, we have…more of the same poison that women have been trying to free themselves of for all this time.
Look, I have a nice set of boobs. Really nice, according to some. Ever since I got them, I’ve been fending off assholes who think they have the right to grab them, whether I want it or not. I don’t need a button to advertise whether my boobs are touchable or not—if they are, gentlemen, you’ll know about it.