On male modesty, naked protests, etc.

Olivia Mora protests the unethical treatment of circus animals in downtown Greenville Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009. Photo by Cindy Hosea of the GREENVILLE NEWS. (The protest was against the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus, coming to Greenville the first week of February.)

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Wednesday, I wrote about PETA's penchant for employing naked women at their protests. In response I got this post, from "Lacey":

You folks might want to check the actual news: PETA uses men nearly as often as women and would use more except that women willing to get partially naked are easier to find.

This has been bugging me.

If appearance standards are more strict for women, why are men seemingly more modest?

Why are men so much less likely to get naked for a protest? Are men less likely to shed clothes in general?

Is this a way to make sure certain parts of the male anatomy remain mysterious and sacrosanct? Or are naked men also more likely to be arrested than women? (Since the PETA demonstrations are covered by the First Amendment, that doesn't seem to be the issue.)

In my post, I mentioned the readiness of male Yippies to get naked for protests. I was specifically recalling the infamous "streak for impeachment" back in the 70s, but there were several other such incidents.

Unfortunately, I found only one online mention of this fun chapter in radical history, focusing on the University of Wisconsin:

The UW's Daily Cardinal quoted various students who claimed explicit political meanings for the activity: fifteen students who chanted "Dicks against Dick" during their streak; a woman who planned to streak for women's rights; a male streaker who said, referring to Nixon, "We have to show that bastard we don't care about him and want him out. Streaking is an expression of freedom against his policies" [...] The paper also reported on "streak-ins" planned by the Yippies and ran an editorial by a leading African-American campus activist, Kwame Salter, calling for more political streaks [...]

It seems PETA is the only group left employing these tactics. Why has it largely fallen to animal-rights people to use this attention-getting tactic, and where are the guys?

Discuss!