Social Movement Theory Ideas Free the Nipple

 Idea- 

The FTNM calls itself a campaign, which is organized actions by groups of people to achieve a common goal, which in this case is to obtain a non-sexual perception of the female nipple by enforcing the normalcy of exposed female breasts/toplessness, promoting and normalizing breastfeeding and eliminating rape culture and the fallacy that a woman is “asking for it” depending on her clothing/nudity. The campaign accomplishes this by using protests to it’s advantage, using social media to promote it’s ideas and using signs to protest as well. So we can conclude that this is a organized idea, and even though it is a young movement, it has been successful in achieving a high status in social movements, promoted the change of laws and more.

Radicality-

In itself, the movement is not exactly radical. There is an absence of violence, but power in the protest groups. There have been arrests, and in many cases this movement has been accused of violation of the law and civil disobedience, but this is intentional. This is because it is promoting the movement in a way that shows that these gatherings aren’t causing violence, just disruption of law and order from nudity.

Organization-

The organization of this movement i think relies heavily on it’s social media presence. There is a tag for the movement, #freethenipple, that is an effective and known promoter of the campaign. The organization of the protests are much different though. In many cases there are leaders among the groups of people who organize and speak on behalf of the protests, but the people involved in the protests have no less power. Overall, the organization is not tyranny. There aren’t any revolutionists or leaders for the entire campaign, moreover there lies a power within the people involved that is inflated by their presence on social media.

Demands-

The goals of this movement are demanding non-sexual perception of the female nipple by enforcing the normalcy of exposed female breasts/toplessness, equality between men and women, promoting public breastfeeding and eliminating rape culture and the fallacy that a woman is “asking for it” depending on her clothing/nudity. These demands get lost behind assumptions of people not knowledgeable of the movements goals, because assumptions are mainly that all these people want is to walk around topless. This is a shallow and negative perspective of the movement and its goals, because it is using the ideograph “free the nipple” to base any opinion about the campaign on those three words. Other ideas and assumptions lie within religion or ‘scientific facts’ . Religious believing that it is sinful to expose female breasts, and people claiming that breasts are in fact sexual organs.