A queer and transgender performance artist, on Aug. 24, filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Chicago and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, maintaining that the city's policy prohibiting women from baring their breasts in venues with liquor licenses is discriminatory.
Bea Sullivan-Knoff said at an Aug. 24 press conference at City Hall that the rule has impeded her ability to earn a living.
"This is a constitutional challenge to a law that should be off the books," said Sullivan-Knoff's attorney, Mary Grieb.
Sullivan-Knoff said her performances frequently address the human body. According to the complaint, one such performance features Sullivan-Knoff wearing only a sheet and a brown-paper bag over her head. The bag is marked "Touch Me" on all four sides, and audience members are then invited to touch Sullivan-Knoff's body. She has not been able to perform that piece in certain venues, she said.
Sullivan-Knoff's suit challenges the city's ordinance on multiple grounds, among them the First and Fourteenth Amendments and the state of Illinois' Human Rights Ordinance, which prohibits gender discrimination.
The city's law as it stands "reflects 19th-century ideas about gender and sex, and gender and identification," added Grieb.
Sullivan-Knoff explained that her act is meant to counter misunderstandings and misrepresentations of trans bodies, and the current law gets in the way of that. She is asking for compensatory and punitive damages as well as a declaratory judgement that the city statutes are unconstitutional.
"Since there are I restrictions on male performers, there should not be restrictions on any gender," she said.