The Cambridge Bi-hourly

Electronic News of today's moments
transcribed by IBM voicesetting/mainframe courtesy MIT Media Lab

Equal Rights for Human Bodies Demonstrate


In Cambridge today, questions were asked concerning the appearance of nude people at one of our finest restaraunts: the people represented a group calling themselves "Equal Rights for Human Bodies", and claimed to be making a statement about the inequities of America's indecency laws as they involve genetically engineered people.
"They don't have to wear clothes, so why should we?" asked Maria Linklater, the representative of the group. "We're not asking very much. The totemized people get away with a lot sometimes, and it bothers me. I was eating dinner here a few months ago, and I saw this cat-woman making an exhibition of herself over the wolf she was with. I thought they were going to do it right on the table!"
"Were they acting obscenely? Totemized people may not have to wear clothes, but there are still laws against lavascious behavior in public places. You know that male totemized people can avoid becoming publicly aroused. Was this wolf violating the law? Or violating the cat-woman?"
"No, he wasn't. I'll grant him that. He was a lot more dignified than she was."
"Then was she fondling him, or behaving in a lewd way?"
"Not exactly," said Miss Linklater, and sighed. "She was restraining herself, but not much, and it was extremely obvious what she wanted. Not just by her manner, either. Her nipples were standing up, very, very much. All eight of them..."
"An oversight in the law. Are you trying to block this, ah, loophole?"
"No, you don't understand." said Miss Linklater earnestly. "You don't understand what Equal Rights for Human Bodies is about. I admit that was my first reaction, too, but in our meetings we've been studying the morality question, and we decided that what really bothered us was that we didn't have equal rights. It was an amazing learning experience for us all. We even invited a totemized person to come to our meetings after the first few, when we started to realize we were getting caught up in the prejudice trap. He's become a very strong supporter of our cause: his name's David and he's a cat-man, and the first meeting he attended, he showed up in a three-piece suit. It was hysterical! I don't know how he managed to find it: it had a sort of sleeve for his tail..."
"So you're campaigning for the right to be naked?"
"Of course we are! There'll always be clothing. Even some totemized people wear it. The purpose of clothing is to make what's hidden more exciting, and to protect against weather. The problem with our antiquated obscenity laws is that they just don't work any more. The totemized people won against them because they generally have fur: now we have to fight them even though we don't have fur, and carry on what they started."
"Do you foresee a naked future?"
"Certainly not. Nothing much will really change. People of all kinds will wear clothes, for the reasons I already mentioned. You'll start seeing more nudity. Actually, as human bodies get nuder you'll probably see totemized people wearing clothes more often. David tells me that totemized people, particularly cat people, are already starting to experiment with clothing and jewelry, for various reasons."
"Such as?"
"Oh, there he is now! Ask him yourself!" said Miss Linklater, waving to a tall yellow cat-man in the crowd. He joined us, and when we had explained our interest, his comments were illuminating.
"Actually, I was wearing a pair of human blue-jeans just yesterday, believe it or not."
"Why wouldn't I believe that?" I asked.
"Well, look at my legs!" said David. He has cat-style legs, with the longer ankle joint. It was obvious that wearing blue-jeans designed for human-style legs would be a very uncomfortable experience for him.
"Okay, then why were you wearing them?"
"I was working, doing some welding in my garage. If a piece of hot metal dropped in my lap, I might not get burned because of the fur: actually, I didn't bother with protection for that reason for a while, but I learned pretty fast that, burns or no burns, frying fur smells incredibly bad and takes an awfully long time to grow back. You have to cut out the burned bits with scissors, and you end up looking like you have mange. The problem is, nobody makes pants for cats. I did cut a hole for my tail, but I couldn't do anything about the leg shape. Unless I sat with my legs sticking out stiffly, I cut off the circulation to my feet, and you would not believe how rumpled my fur got...."
"Any suggestions for future clothing designers?"
"Velcro. Zippers catch in your fur, and sleeves and pullovers totally mess up your fur. That I don't mind so much, since I'm always pretty rumpled anyway..."
"David likes to pretend he's a slob." said Miss Linklater, giving him an affectionate hug.
"But some of our women," continued the cat-man, "spend a lot of effort on their fur, and won't wear clothes that mess it up. It's understandable. Imagine brushing your hair for an hour every day!"
"So, Velcro fasteners, and not messing up the fur. Anything else?"
"I'd be buying clothes for the reason I told you, protection. It's not just for things like welding, either. Cat people are big on ponchos, for when it rains. It's not just hating to get our fur wet. If you're a wet totemized person, and you walk into a restaraunt or whatever, I guarantee that somebody's gonna look at you like you smell, whether you do or not. Dog and wolf-people have an even worse time with that than cat-people. God help you if you shake the water off inside, too. You have to remember to shake outside. And, when you sit down in a chair, that chair's going to get soaked. I've been told I couldn't sit down in a nice restaraunt, even when regular people were coming in out of the rain and being seated with no problems."
I felt the transcript was getting too far from the subject, so I asked David how other totemized people felt about the Equal Rights for Human Bodies movement.
"Well, there's some concern that it's going to foster prejudice against totemized people, and we've had more than enough of that by now... I've been spending some time trying to educate the people I know about it, and I've been getting pretty good results. Many of us are touchy about anything that looks like prejudice. One friend of mine told me he'd believe they were sincere if they were ready to let him have a hard-on in public..."
"That's pretty extreme, isn't it?"
Miss Linklater interrupted. "We decided we were, and told him so. He turned out to be as embarrassed as we were about it, and he's working with us today."
"Don't be so shocked!" said David. "It was bound to come up someday..."
Miss Linklater burst out laughing at the double-entendre. The cat-man stammered for a moment: he apparently hadn't meant it that way. He hastily began to explain.
"What I meant was, if human bodies go nude in public, then eventually some guy is going to get an erection in public. He won't be able to help it, because human bodies have no control over that. Totemized bodies do, and if a totemized guy gets an erection in public he could go to jail or pay a fine. Obscenity laws. Now, you couldn't possibly fine the human guy for what he does, so then you've got discrimination against the totemized again. You can't make every human get modified to put their private parts under conscious control, so the only thing to do is get rid of the law..."
"Are the streets of Cambridge going to become an X-rated movie?" I asked.
Miss Linklater answered. "I sincerely doubt it. It might seem like we're trying to legislate indecency, but we're sure that things won't change much..."
"But didn't the Equal Rights for Human Bodies movement start when you, yourself, were offended by a cat-woman's public immodesty?"
"The most powerful lesson we learned about that was from David's wolf-man friend. You know, the one who wanted to get a hard-on in public, as he put it? Well, we argued about it, and when we gave up and admitted he was right we told him so, at one of our meetings. It was a real eye-opener!"
This time David burst out laughing.
"David! In case you hadn't noticed, we have to keep a sense of humor about all this, or we just blush ourselves to death. David is being foolish: his reaction was not to take advantage of his new freedom, and we would have been shocked if he had. Instead, he got embarrassed. God, he got so embarrassed! His tail was between his legs, and he had this woebegone expression on his face, and it was so obvious that he wasn't about to make a spectacle of himself in public, no matter what. And this was the guy who'd shocked us by insisting on the right to a public erection! We knew, then, that we didn't have to worry about lots of public lewdness everywhere. Those obscenity laws are just the expression of people's embarrassment. Take away the laws because they're unfair, and the embarrassment remains."

The Equal Rights for Human Bodies movement is growing daily, and I found them refreshingly sincere: if their theories are correct, our everyday lives will not change significantly as a result of their lobbying. The problems they are addressing are real: police in the Cambridge area now spend 12% of their time handling complaints of indecent exposure. 83% of these complaints are made against totemized people, and only 14% result in an arrest or citation. Almost half of the complaints against totemized people are made against totemized women, although there is no law governing indecent exposure of totemized women for anything short of public copulation or lavascious behavior, the last of which is almost impossible to define or prove.

I spoke with Sgt. Martyn Commons of the Cambridge Police, who elaborated further.
"Basically, the indecent behavior complaints are a complete waste of time, time we can't spare anymore, but we have to respond by law. We've divided them into two classes. Are you sure you want to print this? It's pretty suggestive."
"So's the whole subject."
"Okay... We call 'em Lipstick and All of 'em complaints. With Lipstick, some lady calls in a terrible state, and when the officer gets there, the lady points to some totemized guy and says in this shaky voice, "His lipstick was showing!". Half the time she was imagining it, and other people testify that it wasn't showing at all: the other half, the guy got distracted, didn't pay attention, and caught himself a second too late. With those, the other people testify his lipstick was showing very little, and not for long, besides which the guy is usually horribly embarassed and his friends are trying to reassure him. We have to consider intent, even though that's more the court's line, because the courts are just as busy as us and also we don't like to come down hard on some poor guy who let his attention wander and didn't mean any harm."
"All of 'em is about totemized women, and the complaints come fifty-fifty from old ladies and pompous old farts like politicians and retirees..."
"Do you want to rephrase that, for the record?"
"No, I don't. A cop is a public servant, but we have our work cut out for us these days, and I personally have no patience with people who call us for stupid things. All of 'em is a call from some old crock like that: they always sound totally outraged, like it's something serious, and they never go into any detail, just 'Get over here right away!'. When the officer gets there, the old crock pulls him or her aside and says, that cat-woman's nipples were standing up... All of them!"
"So the All of 'em complaint is mainly cat-women? Or is it other types as well?"
"Actually, no. You'd think it would be more evenly distributed, but it's invariably cat-women when you get an All of 'em. I think it's because cat-women tend to be more seductive: by that I mean that their gait with cat legs has an automatic slink to it, and many of them seem to wear their sexuality like a badge of office. The old crocks who make All of 'em complaints usually seem offended at the very existence of the cat-woman, and they want the officer to take her away. When it's an old lady, half the time her husband is there, and you find out that the trouble started when she noticed him checking the cat-woman out with great interest..."
"And when it's an old man?"
"It's a bachelor nine times out of ten. They can't handle having a cat-woman around: it's either ask her for her phone number or call the police. I will grant them this, when it's an old man making an All of 'em, frequently all of 'em are still standing up when the officer gets there and the cat-woman turns out to be either drinking or extremely horny, or both. Then, if she's not totally over-the-top, you have the delightful task of explaining to the old crock that being a sexually excited cat-woman is not against the law."
"But being a sexually excited male is?"
"Like I said before, we put a lot of weight on intent. Frankly, we have better things to do than guard people from dicks and nipples, like guard people from drugs and guns and bombs. I recently managed to cut down the indecency complaints a little, when word got around that I was always sending Officer Wilson on them, or Officer Johannsen."
"How did that help?"
Sergeant Commons chuckled.
"Well, Wilson is a beautiful brunette, and Johannsen is a devastating blonde. They wouldn't mind my saying that, it's part of their value to the Department. I use them on sting operations sometimes, but they like going out on indecency complaints better than impersonating prostitutes. They feel the same way about the complainers that I do."
"So, you send Officer Johannsen out, and when she finds out the complaint is a waste of time, she gives the complainer a piece of her mind?"
"And," added Sergeant Commons, "lashes her tail."

Togs for Dogs - Spats for Cats

The Cambridge Bi-hourly, to learn more about the new challenges posed to the garment industry by totemized people, set up a tele-conference with three world-famous clothing designers: Jean Fredrik LeVoile, Robert Lewis-Burne, and Micque. Here it is...

CBH: The first question that comes to mind is, how will you persuade totemized people to wear clothes? They have already chosen their body and fur color, length, texture, and so on. Isn't it a bit like gilding the lily?
LeVoile: What a foolish question! Sacre bleu!
Lewis-Burne: I'll field that one, Jean. My dear, naive reporter. Gilding the lily is exactly what we do for a living. We do it exceedingly well. Each one of us is wealthy, and we earned our money by gilding the lily better than the ordinary, common tailors and factories...
LeVoile: Are you making a clever remark, Robert?
Lewis-Burne: Not at all! Jean is referring to his new factory in Marseille.
LeVoile: I have been the artisan for years. I now choose to make my work available to more people.
CBH: Including totemized people?
Micque: Ah, back to the point again!
LeVoile: Yes indeed totemized people.Totemized people must be fashionable, just as normal people are. Totemized people cannot expect to get new bodies every week...
Lewis-Burne: Exactly! You must understand that totemized people have to have clothing of some sort, to be in fashion. To wear the same old fur all the time would be like wearing the same old dress all the time! People would sneer, laugh at you!
Micque: I saw a stunning cat-girl the other day. She was decorated with some sort of dye, I think, big splashy colors like patches of body-paint covering her. Too exciting...
(pause)
LeVoile: We are designers, monsieur, not painters. The question becomes, how does one make this cat-girl even more exciting?
Lewis-Burne: Capes. The cat-girl wears a cape, and under it nothing! The cape draws attention to her lack of other clothing. She draws it close, and then billows it out or throws it off in her grand entrance, and all eyes are drawn to her...
LeVoile: ...naked body.
Lewis-Burne: She has fur!
LeVoile: But you did not sell it to her. No, Robert, it is not enough. I will say a sash! Wound around her body, say from one paw, up her leg, around her body, perhaps down one arm.
Micque: And a tin can tied to her tail. Why not just make more of the fur? I'm going to dress a lovely young cat-girl, a silver one, in thin streamers of Mylar...
Lewis-Burne: Oh, Micque! Tinsel again?
Micque: You wait. It'll be stunning. Fringes of silvery Mylar from her arms, her legs, and an especially long fringe from her tail. That's what I missed the last time, not having a tail to wave. And body paint, too. I see her as a sort of flashing, war-painted feline beast, catching the eye irresistibly!
LeVoile: And wounding it for life. What about a more natural, blending look? Perhaps still more fur! This cat-girl, say a lovely gold one, wears a vest, leggings, like cowboys, only made of different shades of fur! Layers, contrasts...
Micque: Oh, Jean, don't! The poor creature! She'll get heat stroke, the poor thing will literally die! You know how hot the lights get at the shows...
LeVoile: So no shows, then, so it is a look for cold winters...
Lewis-Burne: Leather.
Micque: Later, dear.
Lewis-Burne: Smartass! How about leather? Say, a leather vest matching the color of her fur. The contrast isn't about color: the contrast is about soft, silky fur under smooth, tough leather...
Micque: I like it. All in black. With silver buttons, silver bangles, even silver eyeliner.
LeVoile: And silver ear-liner as well?
Micque: Jean! What a fetching notion! I hadn't thought of that!
Lewis-Burne: Next you'll be painting her nose silver as well, then her nipples.
Micque: Don't make fun! I think I'll do it just to spite you. And shiny silver claws!
LeVoile: Do they have claws, really?
Lewis-Burne: Some do.
LeVoile: How do you know, Robert? You have experienced them?
Lewis-Burne: Mind your own business, Jean. Ears are an interesting viewpoint, though. Have you done much work on ears?
LeVoile: I admit, I had not given them a thought until now. Perhaps one could tease them to points...
Micque: They already are.
Levole: So all right. Wrapping gauzy veils around them, or perhaps something as audacious as putting a top hat over them...
Lewis-Burne: No, Jean, never hide something that can be used in the concept.
LeVoile: That is the concept! A incongruous top hat on this luscious little kitten!
Lewis-Burne: No, no. Have you ever seen one of those straw hats, such as you'd put on a donkey? With holes for the ears? How about that?
LeVoile: Ah, Robert! I forgive you! Lovely! Perhaps worn by a lovely gold-colored cat-girl, innocent-looking...
Micque: With strands of flowers twined around her body!
Lewis-Burne: Marvellous!
LeVoile: What flowers are these?
Micque: Oh, lilies perhaps, or morning-glories: whites or pastels, with not-too-big blossoms. A sort of springish effect, nothing too striking. A delicate beauty.
Lewis-Burne: Micque, are you well? These are lovely, lovely ideas, but coming from you?
Micque: Oh, very well. And chrome-plated claws and war-paint. And neon nipples.
(laughter)
CBH: You've spoken only of cat-women so far. Why is this?
(pause)
LeVoile: Cats are far more elegant than any other creature.
Micque: The feline body is the essence of beauty, and the feline attitude is the essence of fashion and style. I've always had a fascination with cats, and it colors my work a great deal.
CBH: Certainly. But I'm sure you can come up with ideas for more than just one body style. For instance, Micque, what would you do with a hulking wolf-man?
Lewis-Burne: Don't answer that!
Micque: Robert! He'll never forgive me for being straight, you know. What would you do, Mr. Lewis-Burne, with a hulking wolf-man? We're all dying to know...
Lewis-Burne: Leather, of course. What else?
Micque: No, I mean...
Lewis-Burne: Of course you do, and so do I. Leather is the essential material for rugged, virile fashion for men. I see no reason why this would change for wolf-men. In fact, the fur makes things a lot simpler, because you can get away with a much sparser layout without making the man look like a striptease artist. Give this hulking wolf-man a leather vest and leather pants, only with great gaping holes pocking them everywhere so the fur sticks out. Perhaps even sparser, a sort of ammo-belt arrangement...
Micque: Black leather?
Lewis-Burne: Or brown.
Micque: How about chrome chainmail?
Lewis-Burne: If you must. Jean? You're being quiet, thought of anything?
LeVoile: Ah, Robert! My heart is not in this making-wolves-look-rugged, monsieur. It does nothing for me. Monsieur Micque, the unfortunate wolf-man's fur might get tangled up in the links of chainmail, a thing he might not thank you for. Monsieur Lewis-Burne, men's fashion does not begin and end with leather, as you know perfectly well...
Lewis-Burne: So give us an idea, Jean, or stay out of it. The reporter asked us for ideas, not nitpicking. Honestly, I'm sure you can think of something.
LeVoile: Oh, yes, I have. Give him a nice, gray suit, of very angular lines and broad shoulders. Or... and you will laugh at me... a ragged old sweater and a beret! Make him a French wolf!
Micque: I like that! It's terribly casual, very nice. Does he wear pants?
LeVoile: He is a wolf. He does not need pants.
Lewis-Burne: Not bad! I knew you'd come through for us, Jean.
LeVoile: Ah, but I tire of this, Robert. Can we go back to the cats again?
Micque: I'm running out of ideas.
Lewis-Burne: Really? You're not going to chrome-plate his teeth, or paint his bollocks neon colors?
LeVoile: Robert! Do not be cruel to Micque, he has done well. Monsieur Reporter, we begin to quarrel and bicker. We are running dry. Have we done enough for your article?
CBH: Of course you have. Would you like to share a few last thoughts with our readers?
Lewis-Burne: People who have fur will make fashion more revealing, but it will be easy for the general public to accept this because they can never seem naked. Think of all fashion for fur-bearing people as outerwear, over existing clothing, like the fur was a sort of jumpsuit.
Micque: Don't overlook the fur itself as a statement! You can color it, bleach it, perm it, do whatever you want with it, even shave parts of it off so the person does seem naked, for shock value. Fur is like hair. It's not some permanent thing you work around. You can do anything you could imagine to it. I'm still waiting to see my first seriously punk cat, with Super Glue spikes all over in bright colors and a big safety-pin through the tip of the ear...
LeVoile: Ah, Micque! I will stay safely away from such extremes, for myself. I will instead experiment with different themes, such as the cowboy look I mentioned. This would suit the wolf, actually. I also note certain difficulties we have not mentioned: How does one make stylish pants for cat legs, or dog legs? What does one do, try to disguise them or exaggerate them somehow?
Lewis-Burns: Very good point, Jean. I hadn't thought of that at all.
LeVoile: I imagine the low-cut dress will appear again. The question is, how will the legs appear under it? The knee part is higher than one expects it to be. Would it appear like very short legs, walking on stilts? Would it seem too odd?
Micque: So? Try it anyway!
LeVoile: Thank you, my friend: I can depend on you to never be shocked. One pleasant touch about the dress is that one would see the cat-girl's little paws peeking out from under the dress as she walks: I have observed that their walk is more delicate and attractive than a regular person's. Such things can be magnified, by the design of clothing.
Lewis-Burns: Their bottoms rotate like they were wearing high heels, only more so. Even the men.
LeVoile: Which gives us two goals to achieve, exaggerating this for the women, and trying to hide it for the men.
Lewis-Burns: Oh, you're no fun anymore!
LeVoile: Monsieur Reporter, we are finished. I am sure you will see some of the things we have discussed very soon: each of us has developed a new insight into this interesting problem. I myself am more excited than I have been in years by this discussion.
Lewis-Burns: I was already thinking about clothing for totemized people, but now I've got a lot of fresh ideas to play with. You'll be seeing some new designs from me, as soon as I can get them out.
Micque: I was tickled pink to be called for this discussion, since I just got totemized last week!
Lewis-Burns: Why, Micque!
LeVoile: Ah, Micque! How delightful! What are you now?
Micque: I'm a cat, with silver fur, and cat legs. So is Lissa: we got totemized together, and we're a matching pair of silver cats! It's marvellous, really delightful!
Lewis-Burns: Will you be punking out your fur, like you've always done with your hair?
Micque: Of course I will. So far, I've just been enjoying it, though. Also, I can't decide whether I want to try the warpaint look or Super Glue spikes first. I love spiky hair, but having it all over might be a problem... Lissa refuses to let me spike certain areas, for obvious reasons!
LeVoile: Goodbye, Monsieur Reporter, we are going to have a regular conversation now.
Micque: Say hello to the totemized people in America for me!
CBH: Thank you, gentlemen.

Chris Johnson can be reached at jinx6568@sover.net