I live in a state that has a rule that essentially all 'outdated' laws that use gender are updated to be gender neutral.

A couple years ago, someone pointed out this caused a bit of a problem in our beachside town, as technically the town bylaw that prevented women from sunbathing/ swimming topless, now read 'All people are banned from having exposed breasts and ripples in public, with a 75$ minimum fine. (Including men)

The two women who brought this to town meaning proposed a simple update, strike the old rule, and replace without everyone can be topless around the beach, but must be covered up down town. After all, its was 2023, and the Puritans had gone extinct as a religion 280 years ago.

This sparked a hilarious 2 hours of public comments.

My favorite was one lady getting up and being apoplectic about the thought of having to explain breasts to her grandsons and appealing to everyones sense of modesty. Her friend then got up, and was just like 'didnt I run into you on <whatever foreign vacation resort laazt winter? Not only were you topless, your bikini was so small your hoohah was falling out all over the place!'

People kept forgetting the 'no gender words' thing, so theyd propose a rule to sneak around the gender issue, that read something like 'no person may expose female nipples', and the town councilor would very dryly read that back to them as "in practice that law would read "no person my expose human nipples". All you've done is shift liability if someone helps another take their shirt off.

At one point, someone got smart with, "no Non-Dormant human sexual reproductive organs may be exposed in public" (meaning men's breasts were okay)

Town council thought about it for a minute, and just said "that sounds an awful lot like 'youre allowed to sit on a bench down town, fully naked, as long as you dont get an erection." "More seriously though, while that law doesnt fail the test outright, it is most guaranteed to get hit lawsuit and struck down before we ever get to beach season. "

On bro got up and claimed if the town took away his right to hop into his topless jeep, shirtless, to go on a beer run, he'd 'take the law into his own hands, every day it was sunny out.' Madame Moderator, as she prefers to be called, countered with "well then..." and "I believe i spea k for the entire town, when say I sincerely hope you never grasp any part of the law!"

Eventually we settled with "all people may be topless on public property within except where prohibited for reasons of sanitation or saftey" boring, but a win. I still have yet to see anyone topless outside of the nude beach. Well, Besides a coue female friends who lgo skinny-dipping whenever we have a night-time beach party, but the old laws werent exactly stopping them before, either.