Clothing in public does more work than modesty, and removing the rule shifts the burden onto others

The argument

A second argument holds that the convention is load-bearing rather than decorative. Clothing in shared space marks off the contexts in which bodies are relevant from those in which they are not, and opponents argue that this is part of how strangers transact ordinary business without sexual attention entering into it. The distinction is useful to everybody and most useful to those who receive attention they did not want, since it gives them a setting in which the question does not arise. Opponents then press the practical consequence. On a mixed street, a person who is undressed becomes the thing everyone else has to decide how to respond to, and the work of managing the encounter falls on those who did not initiate it: the parent deciding what to say, the person who feels unsafe deciding whether to turn back, the shop worker deciding whether to intervene, the passer-by deciding where to look. None of them sought the decision, and all of them have to make it. Opponents accept that this harm is diffuse and social rather than sharp and individual, and argue that most rules of public order are exactly like that. Prohibitions on amplified noise at night, on blocking a pavement, on drinking in particular places, all address costs spread thinly across many people rather than injuries to one. The diffuseness of a cost, on this view, is a reason to regulate carefully rather than a reason to place the whole of it on everyone except the person who created it.

Premises

Counter-arguments

Proponents answer that the burden described is produced by the convention rather than by the body: where nakedness is ordinary, nobody has to manage anything, which suggests the difficulty is a product of unfamiliarity and would fade. They add that the reasoning would justify prohibiting much that merely requires bystanders to decide how to react, including unusual dress, public affection and loud disagreement, and that the argument offers no principle for stopping short of that.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Clothing marks many things, but the claim that it is what keeps sexual attention out of ordinary dealings is asserted rather than shown, and unwanted attention is not notably absent in societies that dress formally. [Rejecting P2] The work of managing the encounter is a product of the convention rather than of the body, and in settings where nakedness is unremarkable there is nothing to manage. [Rejecting P3] That public order rules address diffuse costs is true and too permissive. Without a threshold the premise licenses prohibiting unusual dress, public affection and loud disagreement alike. [Rejecting C] The conclusion needs the cost to be attributable to the person undressed, but on the argument's own account it arises from how everyone else has been taught to react.