Topless Topics Newsletter #6

The Kavanaugh protest (link above) happened to end at a Farmer’s Market, where some of the women I had been marching with encouraged me to continue the Kavanaugh/GoTopless fight by walking through the stalls. I did so (and filmed it, but nothing too interesting was caught on camera so I decided it’s not worth putting up) however I did stop to buy some honey, and the vendor did an amazing job engaging with me as a person and not simply gawking at me, despite me being “almost naked” by patriarchal standards! I wanted to thank him for his respect by putting the video up, so we can all learn some more about where honey comes from and what threats that organic manufacturers are facing!

Recorded on the fly, mostly just to vent some frustrations over what it’s like trying to be a creative vlogger and parent to small children at the same time. The TL;DR is I’m definitely not ignoring any of you on purpose (well, unless you’re an asshole), I just keep having to take care of parenting stuff when I’d rather be filming videos or fixing up the website!

So as I mentioned in my post-hiatus “Topless Topics Returns! But Things Will Be Different” video ( https://www.toplesstopics.org/topless-topics-returns-things-will-different/ ) I continue to use Vimeo as my main video repository, but given that Vimeo has an exponentially smaller user base and less friendly UI, I also upload most of my videos to Youtube still, albeit heavily edited with a comically-huge censor bar in front of my chest (which still isn’t enough on some videos apparently, wow Youtube really hates me). And for the most part, I leave comments alone, rarely if ever reading them, as 99% of them are pure insulting trash so why bother? However, I thought it might be fun to make reading those comments into a semi-weekly livestream event, both to help me get through them with your moral support, and so legitimate supporters of #freethenipple can see just a small part of the utter vitriol and violent language I get to deal with as an outspoken feminist (yay)!. It’s been difficult trying to schedule something like this with how unpredictable everyone’s health has been (can’t ask my mom to watch Aeden if she’s bedridden, for instance), but I’m gonna try to make it happen this Tuesday, 11AM-2PM PST. I was going to use Youtube to livestream it, but apparently Youtube disabled my account from livestreaming, and now Twitch allows non-gaming content anyway, so we’ll try using them instead (I assume I’ll get banned eventually just for having the word “topless” in my channel name though. As we’ve proven over and over, social media hates nothing more than women trying to exercise the same right as men.). Anyway, if you wanna see some truly horrendous comments and to help me get through them all, subscribe to my Twitch channel and/or keep an eye on my Twitter (https://twitter.com/ToplessTopics) and I’ll send out the link again. (I’ll send another message if my Twitch does get banned and I have to find another alt account. Fingers crossed we can stay under the radar a little longer, and continue to hope that someday women aren’t specifically punished by social media for the same sh!t that men get away with scott-free).

So one repeated concern/comment I hear a lot is that many of you would like to see me return to more “lighthearted” fare, instead of just angry rant videos and protest marches. Hey, I hear you, and I would like to do more fun videos as well. While I don’t have the time or actors right now to do the more intensive kinds of videos I’ve long dreamed of (I have so many parody scripts already written out that I just need other people to act in with me, you don’t even wanna know how many), but I figure I can start with something a little more casual–off-the-cuff reviews of the various types of media I’ve been consuming, such as comics I recently read from the library or movies I checked out from Redbox. These reviews are unlikely to be for anything brand-new, and I’m not gonna go out of my way to review something I have no interest in, but if there’s a game, movie, etc. you always wanted to know my opinions about for some reason, feel free to email those suggestions to toplesstopicstv@gmail.com with the subject “Movie (or Game, etc.) Review Request” and I’ll add ’em to the list! For an example of what I mean by off-the-cuff review, here’s one I did a while ago of the cult classic Soylent Green, which I had never seen until that point: https://vimeo.com/153031261 (Ironically, this is the vimeo reupload of the original Youtube version, which was banned, reinstated, banned again, reinstated again, age restricted, then finally banned a third time just the other month. Make up your goddamn mind, Youtube)

So one of the new reward tiers I rolled out awhile back was access to my patron-only snapchat, mostly because you all kept asking what it was and I got tired of saying “I don’t have one.” While I’m sure the majority of those who asked were hoping for pornography (for the millionth time, that will never happen so stop asking), some I’m sure were just hoping for more lighthearted content than I’m allowed to post to social media like Instagram, which of course keeps taking my posts down if they even hint at female nipple (only female though. Always only female.) However I’m really not experienced at an app like snapchat, and I’m really struggling with what to post to it (that I don’t already post to the above-linked Instagram). Then the other day I had the sudden idea of trying out something like “daily artist prompts,” but for snapchat. So say I have a list of themes/ideas/topics/inspiration, and I try to come up with a picture inspired by that term that day. So one day might be “Halloween” so I’ll take a picture of myself in a witch’s hat, another might be “cats” and it’ll be a picture of me posing with my cats. It feels silly even typing that out, but I’m hoping this can be fun and inspiring, so if you know of any similar prompts or just want to toss words at me, you can email them to toplesstopicstv@gmail.comwith the subject “snapchat theme ideas.” BTW I shouldn’t need to say this, but terms like “sexy” “vagina” etc. are just gonna get tossed, so I suggest you resist the urge to troll, unless you want me to block you.

Okay I think that’s about it for this time; I had other stuff I wanted to mention I’m sure, but Aeden is screaming and it’s time for me to pick Link up from daycare so I better get out of here! Thanks for reading and I hope to see you either in the Slutwalk video or at the Youtube Hatemail livestream! Talk to you next time!