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06th Jan 2016

Politician sparks controversy with nipple comment

HerFamily

Just a word of warning, chances are you will be very annoyed by the time you reach the end of this article.

A female politician who is opposed to a “sexist” bill received a shocking Facebook message from a male Republican New Hampshire state representative.

The proposed bill would make it illegal for a woman to “purposely expos(e) the areola or nipple of her breast or breast in a public place and in the presence of another person with reckless disregard for whether a reasonable person would be offended or alarmed by such act.”

At the moment it is legal in New Hampshire for both men and women to expose their nipples in public however this act would change that for women. The proposed legislation does make an exception for public breastfeeding.

Democrat Amanda Bouldin told Slate: “We shouldn’t be introducing new legislation that only applies to women… If we had any laws that started with the sentence ‘women should not,’ they should have been repealed by now.” She also took to her Facebook page, declaring her opposition and describing the bill as “sexist.” (This post has since been removed according to reports.)

However it was up long enough for Republican Josh Moore to respond. He wrote: “Who doesn’t support a mothers right to feed?… If it’s a woman’s natural inclination to pull her nipple out in public and you support that, than you should have no problem with a mans inclantion to stare at it and grab it. After all, it’s ALL relative and natural, right? [sic].” (This was also deleted but Bouldin screengrabbed it and shared it on Twitter.)

As you can see from the tweet, at first Moore appears to be in support of nursing mothers but then says that a man has right to stare at and grab a woman’s nipple if she chooses to expose it in public.

This week Moore announced that he is withdrawing his name from the bill, explaining in a statement on Facebook: “I fully support a mother’s right to breastfeed… My comment was misrepresented and was not a threat towards my colleague. … I emphatically denounce any man’s unwanted advances towards any woman under any circumstances.

“I have always defended family values and will continue to do so. I will be withdrawing my name from HB1525 due to the fact that I have brought negative attention to this bill.”