Moral Turpitude : or the Legal Hazards of Maintaining Physical Fitness

When working out outdoors during the warm season, two things are important: health and safety. I live in a region where summer temperatures allow intense cardio workouts outdoors - such as jogging and cycling - only during the early-morning hours. However, it can be warm and muggy even then. For my health, I need to make sure I stay cool by wearing breezy, short clothes, and due to low light conditions, these clothes need to make me highly visible, so I don't get run over by a car.

Women have no problems finding clothes fulfilling these basic criteria, for instance semi-sheer tank-tops and skimpy shorts in flamboyant colors and patterns.

But I am a man, and I refuse to commit suicide by wearing what U.S. society expects me to wear: drab, dark-colored clothes, and shorts that don't rise higher than a little over me knees.

My survival during those early morning hours outdoors absolutely depends on wearing clothes that many people don't tolerate on a man. They irrationally associate colors with sexual orientation or even perversion. They call the police who in turn press trumped-up charges of "open lewdness" and "indecent exposure", because they don't want males with short, neon-colored clothes working out outdoors in their neighborhood.

In the U.S., women can wear sexy, vibrantly colored clothes. Men can do so only at the risk of being harassed, persecuted and prosecuted. Here is my case.