Naked Activities in Europe
see also EZF (the English E-Book)Soapbox for Nudity, Society and Hypocrisy
...If Man were Meant to be Naked, he would have been Born NakedNewt Newt 2005 Newt 2006 Newt 2007 Newt 2008 Newt 2009
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It's interesting that there is so much popular misconception about nudism, or naturism, in general, whether public or private. On the one hand you have a bunch of people who engage in taking their clothes off and say that it is ok, and on the other you have the people who never try it and profess to know that it is wrong - in some way. When pressed, the majority of textiles, if I may be permitted a bit of jargon, (to descibe people who have never tried nudism), are mostly to be heard saying things like:
Nudists are perverts.It is clear that nudists are human by definition, (whoever heard of a nudist grasshopper?), so of course any group of humans, statistically speaking, includes a number perverts. The question of whether any particular group of nudists include a greater number of perverts than any other (otherwise non-selective) group of people, is another question entirely. Personally I would suggest the opposite is the case, and that exposure to nakedness actually encourages a healthy, and expressly non-perverted, character. One could use a group of typically naked south-sea islanders as a sort of control group, perhaps, where nudity is a common enough state still to be useful. These could be contrasted with a similar number of clothed New Yorkers, (clearly the height of civilised society ;-), let's say 1,000 people for no particular reason. Which group would have the most thieves, child molesters, drunks, drug addicts, flashers, rapists and murderers? I know what I suspect, in this case, but perhaps if someone has a particularly strong opinion on this point, they might have some figures to back up their position...?Well, of course it's wrong, it's not right, anyone can see that!What exactly is not right about being naked? There is no such thing as a decree from on high, or low or anywhere inbetween, as to whether nudity is good or bad, there is only ever human interpretations of whether nakedness is ok or not, in one situation or another.Pacific Islanders innocently went topless until the arrival of European civilization. Julius Caesar noted that the Germans bathed together completely naked, 2,000 years ago. The modern Germans, at the beginning of the 20th century, were still at the forefront of nudism as a natural part of family and social life. The scandinavians often share mixed saunas au naturelle - why would they not? Are there more rape cases in Scandinavia per head of population - where the people see each other naked on a regular basis, than in the USA - where nudity is firmly maintained behind pornography and commercial advertising barriers? For many years certain Indian tribes have been enjoying an ancient tradition of the womenfolk bathing in their river before walking naked to a local temple to complete their ritual, until the western media got a hold of the story, of course, and made a festival of gawking out of it. Children should not be allowed to see nudity.Why not? Since when have children ever been bothered about nudity? This is similar to the ridiculous belief that children are unable to learn a foreign language. Children are only ever bothered by nudity when they have been taught by their tutors/parents that they should be. Children of all ages are only concerned by what they are taught to be concerned about, and if they are taught to be scared of nakedness, then they will become scared purely from social pressure just as they learn other social norms.Women must be protected from seeing naked men for their own sake.Oh, please! What a patronising and facile attitude. Women are perfectly capable of seeing nudity without feeling the need to engage in spontaneous sex, just as men are. The more you hide the body, however, the more exciting it becomes, and this applies for males as well as for females. The porn industry is a prime example of how people can be encouraged to pay for a glimpse of something which they will otherwise not see, and which they then think is even more exciting (just as in prohibition in the USA in the 1920s). I guess nudists must be fairly unpopular with the porn industry, loan sharks, banks and bankers et al, because we say it is not necessary to pay to see a naked body, you can just take your clothes off, and be free - for free. No cost, no tax, no profit - ah - do we detect an economic reason for hiding the naked body..?Seeing naked people together reduces respect and leads to moral decline.This was the position taken by Adolf Hitler and the German National Socialists (the Nazis) at the height of their power. Need more be said?Naked men are dangerous.Now, I don't know about you, but I have never once heard of anyone being threatened, abused or raped by a naked person. On the other hand, in every single rape case I have ever heard of - ever, every kidnapping, every hooligans gang fight or aggressive confrontation, every burglary or bank break-in, and every other criminal activity I can think of, the perpetrators have always been clothed. Even flashers are clothed, usually only exposing their erect genitals, not something you see in a nudist environment. Armies are expressly clothed, usually more clothed than the average citizen, and clothed in such a way that you know they are all part of the same gang - sorry, army. A nudist army doesn't sound so frightening, unless you remember the Spartans.Public nudity is illegal.Most of the time, this tacit assumption is completely wrong. In the law courts of many lands, nudity may be dealt with in as many different ways as their are counties, or even judges, in each country. Take the modern example of Steve Gough, striding naked the length of Britain, being arrested a number of times, and in almost every case the charges were dropped because it was seen there was no charge to answer. It is the knee-jerk response which makes people think or assume that nudity is illegal. Most of the time, the law is abused and the fact of nudity is not even tested, rather the more usual case of 'a breach of the peace', whatever that might be, is used as a sweeping 'catch-all' in a particular prosecution or arrest.In Barcelona, a Spanish city on the mediteranean coast of Europe, with a strongly Catholic population, it has (in 2004) been made explictly legal to be naked in public in the middle of the city!. In Germany I have been personally informed by the police (in 2005) that it is not illegal to be naked out of doors, in forests and the mountains, (in public), and they have no reason to intervene in any case unless there is some form of aggravation involved. The Bavarian police explicitly told me they were not in the slightest interested in whether I was wandering about naked in the woods, across the mountains, wherever. Their job is to uphold the law, not to write it, and they are quite correct to recognise this - all credit to them for not being suckered in by the prurient majority. On the subject of the law - I find it interesting that the majority of objectors to nudity, (public or private), are often rather inconsistent on this point. There are many people who think it ok to pirate music CDs, DVDs and Videos, sneak a free trip on a train or bus by not paying the correct fare, dangerously exceed speed limits through small towns and villages, walk out of a shop without paying for something (perhaps accidentaly). There are large numbers of people who think it ok to get drunk and beat people up at football games, yet more people who think it is ok to kill others because they worship at a different lump of wood or want to pay taxes to a different higher authority. There are yet more millions of people who believe it is ok to con their fellow citizens, clients and customers, of various sums of money, or goods, or to manipulate friend- and relation-ships in any number of devious ways for the purpose of improving their own station or for their own good.
Almost all of these people will believe simple nudity to be a bad thing. In
direct contrast - nudists are mostly peaceful, law-abiding and tolerant people,
who mind their own business and don't stick their nose into anyone else's.
Where now the moral decline?
Being naked is not illegal, in private or in public, and it never has been.
Naked males are exhibitionistsThere may be some exhibitionists among naked male people, I suspect the same could be said about naked females, though you don't often hear the complaint...Clothes maketh the man.Men and women, the world over, hide behind their clothes.I'm going to resist the temptation here of a tirade against 'men of the cloth', whatever that might mean, I think that would be a deceptive digression. Simply ponder: never mind what the first word was, let the last words be: if you think about clothing for a small moment it becomes clear that if man only thinks of himself as the sum of his clothes, then that is a very, very, poor man, or woman, indeed.
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