“It belongs to them, it’s their right, go ahead,” said Minister responsible for the Status of Women, Isabelle Charest, on Wednesday to young women who plan to demonstrate for the right to walk in public with the topless, Sunday June 19 in Montreal.
The rally, named “Manifestation Subtile Liberez les Seins”, is scheduled for 10 a.m. in Mount Royal Park. This is the extension of a case that has been causing a stir in Quebec for more than a week. On May 29, a young woman named Éloÿse Paquet Poisson was arrested by five police officers while she was doing topless macrame in the Jean-Paul-L’Allier garden in Quebec City.
In the province, however, it is legal to have the torso uncovered in a public place, for both a man and a woman. Wrathful, the 21-year-old young woman then issued a Facebook post that quickly went viral to denounce the situation.
At the protest, women are asked to undress in order to claim their right to be topless in public. “Because gender equality is far from being achieved. Because it bothers when we take [sic] control of our body. Because a single woman can be accosted by 5 policemen to do the same thing as fifty men around her… FREE THE BREASTS!!! “, can we read in the Facebook description of the event.
Asked about this during a press briefing, Minister Charest declared that she had “no problem” with being topless in public. “What concerns me more is when there are constraints that are given to mothers who are breastfeeding, that, I find that particularly regrettable”, she added, in reference to a mother who had banned from breastfeeding at the Eaton’s shopping center in Montreal in March. A demonstration had also been organized in support of this woman, and several dozen mothers had come to the mall to breastfeed their infants.
With Florence Morin-Martel