Tuesday, April 11, 2017

Last Minority Wants Equality

Life is an interesting thing. We are told "life goes on," but we see every day that life moves forward, life sometimes stands still, it can stumble about, fall down, fall over the edge, and more often than many of us would like, cease altogether. One thing life is not, however, at least in this writer's opinion, is boring. Some people may say they have a boring life, and indeed, there are those to whom their daily existence may not be the most exiting in nature, but for most of us, even if all we ever do is get up, got to work, grind away at whatever passes for the drudgery that pays (most of) our bills, go home, watch TV, go to sleep, rewind and start all over again, somewhere within all of that something exists that makes it all pretty darn interesting. Maybe we just have to spend a little extra time looking for it.

Take the following for example. It seems there is a group of people in our society, and when I say "our society," I mean the society of the entire world, because these people exist in every nation (well, perhaps not in Islamic nations where they might just get their heads cut off for practicing such a thing), but at least in every society within what is known as the western world and those that follow suit along with us. Who are they? These are commonly known as nudists and naturists, people who for whatever reason prefer to exist without a stitch of clothing on. Now, before you go calling these people "nutters," (yeah, I got that one from some of my British friends) please realize that everyone has the right to their opinion, so I would like to present the opinion of some of these naturists/nudists by including the complete text of something written by a group of them calling for equality. What type of equality? Well, read the following and you'll see:

Open Letter to Our Neighbors

We are those who live around you.
We have watched in silence as all other minorities have fought for and won the right to be equal with everyone else in all aspects of their lives.
Everyone except us.
We are those you might call nudists.
Although most of us prefer being called naturists, because more than simply wanting to remove our clothes and walk around naked, we truly desire to live our lives completely in tune with nature as much as possible and still exist in the society we live in today. As naturists we are born with an inner desire that has grown stronger as we have aged, and calls to us to live as we were born, as we were intended to be from the very beginning of our livesnude.
There’s a problem with that, however. If we go outside of our homes without covering our genitals, and for women in all but a few states in America, or other countries outside of America, their breasts, we will be arrested for, of all things, “indecent exposure,” as if the human body in its purest and most primal form can possibly be considered “indecent.”
Most of you might laugh at this and think of us as “kooks,” or call us “perverts,” but really all we want is to have the same right of equality that everyone else has to enjoy the freedom of expression of who we are without being told we are of lesser value than others.
At one time in America women weren’t even allowed to vote, and now we have women running for the office of President.
Black people once were nothing more than slaves, and even after slavery was abolished, for another century these same people were beaten and abused, told they were second-class citizens and kept from attaining anything of prominence, all because of the natural color of their birth, and yet now many of the most revered people in many nations are of African descent and several ran in the most recent Presidential election.
Until recently gays were afraid to “come out of the closet” for fear of being beaten or even killed for the way they were, and now they have marriage equality.
We who seek full body freedom are not looking for special privileges. We don’t want to be given extra treatment of any type. All we want is to do all the things everyone else does every day, all the time, but be able to do so the way that is ingrained within us to do exactly the way we were born, and no one can argue the fact that we were indeed born nude, even as anyone born with pigmentation in their skin is born with a difference in skin color.
To deny us this most basic right is the rankest of bigotry and discrimination. We do not want to “parade ourselves” in front of others or their children. We will not “fondle ourselves” in any way as we walk along the sidewalks of our communal cities or shop in the same stores we have shared with others for many decades. We are family people just like those we live alongside, but up until now we have been forced by hateful bigotry to keep our innermost desires bottled up, because others in this same society don’t know how to handle non-sexual nudity. Well, we do, and we suggest it’s time those who insist upon covering their bodies learn how to control their sexual urges the same as we do. Seeing nudity all the time does not bring on sexual urges – it makes nudity commonplace and causes those urges to die off in most people, or at least to subside to controllable levels. Only those with neurotic perversions deep down, those who have always felt them will feel anything at all, and that can’t be helped in any situation, with or without clothing covering a body.
We are here. We always have been. We are not going away. Right now we are asking politely to be granted our rights. It would be the polite and wise thing to grant them to us.
Thank you.

The Naturist and Nudist Coalition of Earth along with The Natural Creationists Organization

**end quote**

What do you think? It's an interesting concept, people without clothing living alongside people with clothing. It's the kind of concept that really has to be thought out for a while before it can be understood. The normal impulse in the society we live in is to reject it outright, but is the normal impulse necessarily the right one? When you get right down to it, why does mere nudity cause so many people to cringe and turn away? When you're watching a movie and it gets to that one scene where two people are starting to get all hot and heavy and the clothes come off, do you turn away in disgust or do you watch with prurient interest to see what happens next? When another movie shows young adults hiking in the woods and they come upon a lake and someone in the group gets the idea to go "skinny dipping," once more the clothes come off and if the rating of the movie is high enough, the bodies get bare and a LOT gets shown. Do you close your eyes or hope to catch sight of your favorite body parts?

There's the point in seeing nudity in person - we are so programmed to think of nudity only in terms of sex that we don't know how to think of it in any other terms. That means that when someone like these naturists come along and tell us they want to live alongside us openly nude, we gasp in horror and scream our lungs out to the cops, the mayor of our city, the governor, our congressman, whoever will listen to our cries of angst about being forced to view this totally non-sexual nudity where people who don't fit the mold of perfectly trim and beautifully young bodies engaging in illicit sex for our enjoyment are doing the most natural things in the world by shopping in our grocery stores, walking down our city streets, buying tickets to see movies at our movie theaters, going in to eat dinner at our restaurants. Will the horrors never end?!?

There exists the problem - the perversion is within the minds of the people wearing the clothes, not the ones who are not wearing clothes. The ones with coverings over their bodies are the ones who are imagining the disgusting situations and seeing the nude people as disgusting perverts, not the other way around, though I would have to imagine that the nudists must see clothed people in just that way, and yet they have forced themselves for all the years of their lives to push past their own views in order to live in peace amongst those who would hate them if they only knew how they preferred living their lives. Don't you think it's time this final minority deserved the chance to come out of the closet and experience what it is like to have equality of rights just like everyone else? What if tomorrow you discovered something you enjoyed was suddenly illegal? Wouldn't you raise a fuss about it? Back in 1920 that very thing happened all across America. Laws were passed making the sale of all alcoholic beverages illegal and this continued until 1933, but the American public simply bought illegally made alcohol, even though much of what they consumed caused many people to get sick and some even died. The idea here is that people get what people want and if nudists can't get full body freedom by asking politely, well, I would not like to think of the alternative, naked groups of people throwing Molotov cocktails can't be a pretty sight in anyone's book, so let's not go there, all right?

Seriously though, if you had your family in the car and drove down the street only to see an elderly couple walking nude down that same street and they smiled and waved cheerily at you, would it really be so bad? I mean, if you ran off the road and struck a tree or hit the neighbor's car, whose fault would it be? I think you should learn to keep your eyes on the road, just the same as if in the same situation you spotted the shapely seventeen year old girl down the block out washing her car on a hot summer day wearing nothing but a tight bikini. Yeah, now who's got the wrong thoughts in his head, eh? And to think it had nothing at all to do with anyone being nude.



Tell me the truth - which is sexier and turns you on - the top picture of the two girls in skimpy bikinis washing the car or the bottom picture of the naked guy riding his bike? Does the lack of clothing induce more sexual desire or less? About the nude guy riding his bike, how exactly does his nudity cause offense to you? What is it about his body, his lack of clothing that repulses you? Why should you feel repulsed, or do you? Does this picture actually just leave you feeling, blah, like he's just another guy on a bike? Like any other geek you've seen anywhere else? His lack of clothing doesn't really make any difference, does it?

Full body freedom in a typically clothed society. maybe it's a right that's finally come.

If you have an opinion about this post or any of the others on this blog, please leave a not on this page, but please, keep it clean. Thanks...;)

13 comments:

  1. Wow this is interesting. I think it would be great to be nude anywhere I wanted to be. I've always been this way my whole life but never thought it could be a reality. You really think it could? I'm all in favor of it.

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    1. It's a dream many people have. There many like my wife and who live nude at home but are burdened to dress to go run a simple errand. The freedom to be nude anywhere appropriate would be awesome.

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  2. Great article. I've been gay all my life and although I've gone to nudist clubs a few times with friends living my life this way isn't something I'd want to do all the time. Still, I know too well the struggles involved with fighting for equality. It isn't easy and is something everyone should have, no matter who they are or what it is they want equality for. I understand the naturist dilemma. Hiding beneath clothes when what you really want is to stand on the street, strip yourself bare and scream at the world, "I'm a NATURIST and THIS is how I will live my life!" is exactly the same as a gay man (or lesbian) living quietly within society pretending to be heterosexual, when what you really want is just to be accepted for who you really are and live your life as YOU! Anyone who has ever believed in women's rights, African American rights, gay rights, marriage equality, or anything else fighting for the rights of others, who doesn't agree that naturists should be able to live their lives with full body freedom (I love that phrase - it rolls off my tongue) doesn't truly believe in tolerance for all and is a hypocrite to the highest degree.

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  3. Nice thoughts. Something for me to think about. I'm not a nudist but I don't think I'd care if people wanted to live nude in the same world where I live clothed. Why would I? I don't think of myself as a bigot so I should be able to accept nudity as much as I accept people of different races or gender preferences and I vote conservative, not democrat. Anyone without clothes wants to sit next to me in a crowded movie theater, well I'm going to be watching the movie. I've always thought shapely girls with the right clothes hiding what they've got to show was more sexy than total nudity, so why not allow people who really feel this way to live nude? How do we get this passed into law?

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    1. There are a couple of ways to get laws passed allowing people to appear nude in public.
      1) Write or talk to your senators, congressmen, legislators, even your city mayor, council members, state governor, whoever you can think of to change the laws.
      2) The Constitution guarantees us the right to peaceful civil disobedience when necessary, so demonstrate out in the street the way some have recently done in California. Get others together and get naked outside with signs. You might get arrested, but that's how revolutions start and laws get changed.

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  4. That's a right brave bunch of people to want to be bare out in front of those what might want to do them harm. Me I might think thrice before skinning me knickers in public but it might be just what this world needs. Go for it I say. Stand straight and bare it all. You got the right and let no man - or woman - tell you otherwise.

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  5. Being the pastor of a church I find differences in all my parishioners and love every one of them. Several of my current parishioners are nudists and naturists, as am I, and I admit to being intrigued over reading about the concept of this Natural Creationist creed. If you can put me in touch with these people I would be mush appreciative. On the concept of the body freedom movement itself, it does sound a bit scary, but at the same time it sounds a welcoming note within me that says perhaps it's time we naturists as a whole came out of the closet and took our rightful place alongside everyone else in society. Why should we be the only people left who are shut away in our homes when everyone else is out in public, allowed to freely being open to who they truly are? I'm completely in favor of not having to wear clothing in public if I don't want to.

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  6. Being a Nudist has made me a better person. I think I always was a nudist. I remember enjoying being nude even in early childhood, and when I could go outside and play by myself. I first went to a Nudist Park in 1967 when I was 19. I never looked back, and have embraced the nude life since then. Similar to the experience of the LGTBQ community, when I "came out" to my family and friends, I experienced their scorn and lack of understanding. As I became aware of the struggles of the LGTBQ communities to gain equality, the parallels to my feelings and anxieties as a Nudist were undeniable. Without hesitation I supported my gay brothers and sisters because I knew their struggle was my struggle. Those feelings broadened my understanding of the world and I consequently began to support those with different color skins because I understood their struggle for rights and equality. Now at age 68, I still fight for the right to be nude in and around my home and neighborhood, and I hope to live to see a world where simply being nude is not a sexual crime. Fortunately I live in a state (Oregon) where simple non-sexual nudity is not a crime against the state. Alas, it is still considered a moral crime by most societal standards and mores.

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    1. That's great that you are the way you are, Mike, as well that you live in a state like Oregon. But can you walk around nude in the city you live in? That's the big picture here and we need to keep working until every one of us can do exactly that. As long as there exists one city in America that still arrests people for being nude in public our fight is not over and every one of us needs to keep pressing forward. Thanks for your effort and comments, Mike.

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  7. I've always dreamt of being accepted as a naturist. Being teased and taunted by co-workers and friends gets annoying. They wouldn't dare do that if I was any other minority. Thanks for you're outstanding post.

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    1. No, David, they wouldn't tease and taunt you if you were any other minority and that's the point we are working to make, that naturists/nudists ARE a minority exactly like any other and deserve to have the same equalities and protections as all other minorities. Then if you are bullied in any way for being a nudist it is a hate crime and those bullying you can be prosecuted for doing so. Start contacting your state representatives, senators, congressmen, etc., and urge them to understand that nudists ARE a minority and we need to be taken seriously. Get others to join you. Write emails. Tweet to them on Twitter. Follow me Bare Naked Nudist on Twitter and use my tweets if you like, but send them to your state reps. Let's make changes in this nation, David.

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  8. Public nudity is outlawed because we nudists are too timid to admit we enjoy clothes-free living. We are afraid we will be ostracized by family, friends, neighbors, colleagues or whoever simply because sometimes we prefer to shed our clothes and enjoy the freedom of being nude. We allow what is probably a relatively small number of bigots to frighten us enough that we refuse to admit that skinny dipping, nude sun bathing, or just plain relaxing while nude are enjoyable activities. If the general public were better informed about what nudism is there wouldn't be much reason to fear what others might think or do if they discovered someone they knew was a nudist. Nudism is a lifestyle that is worthy of respect.

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    1. You hit that one dead-center, Bill. I discovered that same thing back in the early 90s when I first became a Body Freedom activist and started my own plan of educating the public as to what social nudism truly was and was not. I went on TV using the public access station available to all residents of every community - check in your area - there should be one - and started producing TV shows where I and everyone on these shows were completely nude while we discussed nudism and issues surrounding them. I had a hard time getting nudists to appear on my shows, because of the reasons you mentioned. They were afraid. I hadn't realized until then that most nudists were so afraid, because I wasn't. I couldn't wait to tell people about nudism and how freeing it was and how they should give it a try, but most were fearful and just wanted to stick with visiting their clubs on the weekends. Now there seems to be a little different climate and just MAYBE we can get enough nudists together to make a change. If we all work on this together, Bill, we might stand a chance.

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Learning From the Old Ways

My people are known as the Lenni Lenape , which translates as the True People . This is how we thought of ourselves, since back then ...