If public nudity in Vancouver is illegal... is this annual naked bike ride breaking the law?
Some locals may have been caught off guard by a horde of nude cyclists riding through the city's West End and downtown over the weekend.
The World Naked Bike Race, which originated in Vancouver and has since spread to other global cities like Portland, London, and Amsterdam, is positioned as a protest targeting fossil fuels, body images, and war. It takes place every summer; this year's Vancouver ride was on July 8.
While it is a criminal offence to be naked in public, that only counts when a person's genitals are exposed, especially in places where there might be children or vulnerable people, according to local criminal lawyer Kyla Lee.
Being topless, on the other hand, isn't considered a criminal offence. "It used to be that women who went topless would be prosecuted for indecent exposure, but then people starting saying 'Hold on, that's discriminatory because men can be topless,'" explains Lee.
After some back and forth on the issue, the law settled on not prosecuting either men or women for being topless in public. "Unless you're doing something beyond just being topless, like making obscene gestures," clarifies Lee.
"Riding your bike topless as a woman would not be unlawful."
Is the World Naked Bike Race legal?
"It's very technically illegal in the sense that it is unlawful to ride your bike down the streets naked," observes Lee.
But that doesn't actually mean all the naked cyclists at the event are breaking the law.
The annual nude bike ride is an exception to the law for several reasons, explains the Vancouver lawyer.
The first is that because of the act of cycling and the bicycle itself not much can actually be seen in regards to genitals – which is what counts as a criminal offence.
The second reason is that the bike ride is billed as a "protest" and not a leisure activity, which allows it the same pass as other types of protests in terms of illegality. "There's a tolerance for it, where we all look the other way and pretend it's not illegal just to let it happen," says Lee.
With a file from Brendan Kergin
