I am going to start by saying, the following happened at the beginning of the semester.

I (21F) am a young, liberally minded activist and feminist. I major in general studies and am the lead in a recruitment organization at my college. I live in a rather conservative part of the US and every so often we get people that come on campus to tell us how we are living our lives in sin. There are a few likeminded people in my organization that I was able to influence into protesting these conservatives from spreading their message of hate. The night before, I have everyone come over to my dorm to make our protest signs. As an example, we glued images of Donald Trump and plastered flames consuming him to suggest he was going to hell.

On campus, my group has been getting a lot of hate for our outward disapproval of the white, patriarchal establishment. And I’ll be honest, it hasn’t all exactly been rainbows and butterflies in adulthood for me. So, when I have someone coming on campus, which is supposed to be a place of LEARNING, I get really fired up. They are preaching these outdated messages of reap what you sow, wait until marriage, etc. This does nothing but say if you are underprivileged you deserve to be underprivileged. It felt like they were coming from such a monolithic, closed-minded perspective that I needed to physically demonstrate progressive politics.

So, I took off my shirt. Yes, I am a woman with sizeable breasts. No, I was not wearing a bra. Unfortunately, I was the only one that did this. No one else from my organization followed suit with me. Now, I did not get arrested and the university has not followed through on any legal action. If they did, guaranteed I will be reaching out to my parents to sue them for discrimination against females. However, as an unintended consequence, most of the girls from my organization have been treating me differently. They are almost being cold to me. Some have stopped showing up to our meetings all together. This is causing me to question, am I an asshole for influencing other students into attending this political event?