I will refer you to the first volume for an explanation of this series, rather than waste space here repeating myself. On to the tweets!
---
It's the value judgment that gets to me. If you choose to express yourself sexually, it's not just a matter of, "I don't like this, I'm gonna turn my head." It's "you're being a poor role model." But we need to model a confident and healthy sexuality, too.
Grappling with the contradiction between the belief that "all bodies are beautiful" and my own human compulsion to view some bodies as being exceptional. Is it not possible to honor the relative splendor of beauty without causing individual or societal harm?
It's hard to draw attention to issues like gender equality and body acceptance when your town is dealing with arguably more serious problems like drug addiction. And then you look kind of insensitive, because it's like, "THESE are the things you're concerned about?" But honestly, it frustrates me that we're still wasting time with things like sexism and racism that should be behind us. And drugs are a thorny problem, but moralism isn't helping. These aren't realities for me, because I'm above drug abuse, racism, and sexism. What IS a reality is being discriminated against for expressing myself in a gender-nonconforming way, and my belief that nudity is normal & natural. I'm not insensitive to bigger problems in the world, I just think y'all are idiots because you're STILL grappling with them!
The true test of character is how a person behaves towards his enemies. Yes, there is scum in this world. No, it is not dignified to hurl epithets and invent new modes of torture that would shame the Devil. Some people can't be helped. But what do we become if we don't try?
I'm not gonna lie. One of the advantages of nudism is - occasionally - getting to see someone you're attracted to completely naked. The cost of that reward is acting civilized and respectful. You must pay the cost. But if you can afford it, then you're free to reap the reward.
I know a thing or two about deviant sexual fantasy. And it doesn't necessarily correlate with criminal behavior. A criminal might be likely to have deviant fantasies, but it's not fair to assume a person with an active imagination would be willing to commit a crime. #thoughtcrime
There are two kinds of people in this world: those for whom nudity represents their most vulnerable state, and those who feel most confident when stripped naked. But listen, it's never too late to start working towards being comfortable in your skin.
Exploitation is sharing your girlfriend's nudes without her permission. Masturbating on camera to satisfy the desires of a paying audience is entrepreneurial spirit.
I guess some people feel victimized by the sexual thoughts of themselves or others. I've never experienced that. My life has been a journey of overcoming shame and embarrassment and accepting my sexual feelings as positive and natural. So it seems weird to me to interact with a community that seems to think that there is too much sexuality in the world, and that we need to pull back. I respect those who feel that way. But I don't want that attitude to be synonymous with nudism.
It's okay to say that certain behaviors don't accurately reflect nudism, and to remind people what nudism is about. It's when you start "doubting people's motives", or saying they're not "true" nudists because they also have a sex drive, that I become concerned. It either betrays a sex-negative attitude, which is worth calling out, or else it represents the point where one's dedication to public image crosses the line where it becomes justifiable to shame people's sexual feelings. Which is also worth calling out.
Maybe this says more about me, but I find it surprising that there are people who haven't had, shall we say, "creative" sexual fantasies, and realized that this doesn't automatically make them immoral degenerates who should be locked away to protect the rest of society. By the way, this is part of the destructive, antisocial, inhumane thinking that develops from sex-negativity, and that I want to change.
I consider social media a platform for self-expression: a stage, but where everyone gets their own booth, like at a convention. You can avoid the booths you don't like, and call security on anyone that harasses you, but I'm not going to control who gets to listen at my booth.
I don't feel good saying that I don't think everybody is beautiful, but that's my perception. Beauty is as relative as it is subjective. Does that make me insensitive? We don't get to say "everybody is smart/athletic/funny" just because those are desirable traits, too. Saying "everyone is beautiful" actually reinforces the importance of beauty, leaving out those who're unconvinced. I think a more honest approach is to emphasize the limitations of beauty. Beauty isn't everything. It's only something. And there're a lot of somethings to focus on.
I'm not even a very competitive person, but "more" and "less" are realities, not fictions. You don't get a trophy just for showing up. You do the work, balancing your skills against your interests, and your accomplishments are weighed against others'. That's life.
Honestly, some people seem surprised that a species whose continued existence beyond the life of any one individual depends on an enthusiastic interest in sex spends a lot of time thinking about sex. In this culture, it amazes me that we can still manage to be over-populated. For ages, civilization has counter-intuitively been defined by the repression of our sexual natures. As a sex-positive, I want to see a model for civilization that incorporates sex into our lives in a healthy, natural, pro-social and non-disruptive way. Can we do better in how we express our sexual feelings to each other? Of course. That should be part of the education curriculum. But insulting people essentially for thinking about sex isn't productive. "Keep it in the bedroom and pretend it doesn't happen" is dishonest.
A tip on art and beauty. So you see a still life and want to imitate it. You have a bowl of fruit at home! And a camera. But that doesn't mean you can produce a work of art. You must arrange the fruit, and know how to shoot it properly. This requires talent and experience. The same is true of nude and erotic photography. Just because you have a camera and a body doesn't mean you can create beautiful art. Of course, that doesn't mean you shouldn't try. But it may take several years before you really get a knack for it. Of course, with nudity and eroticism, there are always hungry fans who will devour any picture, no matter how ill-composed. But don't let this discourage you from improving your craft. There are those, like me, who have developed more sophisticated tastes.
My social platform for nudism is "responsible nudity in reasonable contexts," but it occurs to me that I live in a culture where people will complain about encountering nudity even in locker rooms, where people are expected to shower and change clothes... How do you reconcile freedom of choice in a hypersensitive culture where tolerance comes in the form of an authoritarian impulse to censor anything that might offend somebody? In a free society, what one encounters in the public square ought to be challenging, not comforting.
Nude, naked, au naturel, in the altogether, in my birthday suit, bare, undressed, unclothed, disrobed, stripped, buck naked, in the buff, nekkid, starkers, nakey, wearing nothing but a smile, skyclad, air-bathing, skinny dipping, exposed, without a stitch, naked as a jaybird...
Here's a wild and unverified hypothesis. What if sex crime and maladjusted, antisocial sexual behaviors aren't the result of perversion and obsession, but actually a symptom of making people feel scared and ashamed of their prime, biological directive from an early age? What if we're approaching this from the wrong direction? What if we're asking all the wrong questions? I can only hope that someday, in the course of human history, we'll look back and recognize how utterly cruel and inhumane we were being.
You can write me off as a naive idealist if you want, but I don't think sexual desire creates monsters. Loneliness and resentment, fear and shame - these things create monsters. And sometimes those with violent and antisocial tendencies express them in sexual ways. But this paranoia about sex? That it has some kind of magical ability to corrupt and destroy people's lives? That's not sex. That's just people. And some people are bad. But sex? Sex isn't bad. It's something to enjoy, not fear. That's what it means to be sex-positive. And sure, most people would say, "I enjoy sex - when I'm having it." But start thinking about other people's sexual feelings, and they become terrified. We're all just looking for pleasure. That doesn't excuse crime, it just means we shouldn't freak out about it so much. Also worth noting is how individual sexual tastes are. We all like different things. Someone else's turn-ons may seem disgusting to you, but yours aren't special either. Don't assume someone else's desires are odious; imagine them feeling the same way you do about yours.
In the 2000 movie The Cell - about tracking a serial killer from inside his mind - after learning that the killer has endured a lifetime of abuse, the lead detective on the case, after stating that the killer's history doesn't justify his crimes, stops just short of admitting his reasoning - that he too has endured abuse, but that this hasn't made him a killer. Character is defined by what you do, not what happens to you. Or, as Dumbledore said, it is our choices, not our abilities, that show what we truly are. Why do people assume that sympathizing with the hardships that contribute to antisocial tendencies is incompatible with the doctrine of personal responsibility? Because it absolves them of any responsibility for the way they treat others? In a way, justifying abuse. Acknowledging the seed of humanity that lies dormant underneath layers of monstrosity doesn't negate the monstrosity. It just means we can start looking at what contributed to the monstrosity's development, so that maybe we can figure out ways to prevent it. This doesn't absolve personal responsibility. It's a way we can maybe reduce the amount of tragedies that occur, instead of washing our hands of it, believing in pure evil, and using that as a justification for our own feelings of anger and vengeance. This was largely the theme of the first season of Mindhunter, which documents the birth of criminal profiling, which - although not without flaw - seeks to understand criminal psychology, to better find and stop (and maybe prevent) monsters before they do more damage. Some people, though, would rather bury their heads in the sand, and persist in believing in a black-and-white, good-versus-evil philosophy, for their own comfort, no matter what cost this belief has on us as individuals and a society. Let's not humor these people.
Correcting people who make some kind of misplaced association between nudism and sex - ok. Repeatedly bringing up, apparently without instigation, the fact that nudism is not related to sex? You're just demonstrating that nudists are people who can't stop thinking about sex. And if people ever do stop mistakenly associating nudism with sex, would you notice? Or would the only associations that still exist between nudism and sex be from nudists suspiciously bringing the topic up over and over again?
Sometimes it seems to me that the most prudish people in society are the tight-collared religious zealots and the nudists. And that's not a good look for nudism.
Any feminism that allies itself with religious conservatism is not true feminism in my mind. On that note, why is trans-exclusionary feminism called "radical"? I associate that word with positive change - ideas so far from the mainstream that they might just be able to improve the sorry state of society. Trans-exclusionism isn't radical, it's just conservatism.
I hate to be a buzzkill, because I know that it's important to maintain hope. But it's also important to stay grounded in reality, and I just don't see this happening any time soon. Being out of touch is one of those stereotypes nudists need to shake off. Yes, we must continue to fight for our civil rights. But we should have realistic expectations. We're a long way from public nudity being "normal". Let's focus on things like awareness (tell people you're a nudist!) and standing up to discriminating judges and employers. And yeah, I advocate for lots of sweeping changes to society, some many would describe as "radical". I'm not saying stop doing that. But I don't harbor any delusions that it's only a matter of months or a few years before, say, the crime of "obscenity" is stricken from the books.
Bill of Rights: Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. Obscenity: It shall be a felony to express speech of a sufficiently low moral character and social value, determined by arbitrary "community standards", even if shared only between consenting adults.
Sick to death of people talking about things they don't understand and have no personal experience with. Especially when they end up talking to someone who does have that experience, only to find that their reality is being dictated to in the form of ignorant stereotypes.
I submit that most (if not all) pornographers that exploit nudism are probably NOT nudists, and that this does not prove an incompatibility between porn and nudism, because those pornographers who ARE nudists are not the ones engaging in this exploitative behavior.
When a sexual desire/behavior is stigmatized in society, those who experience it will be incentivized to hide it. Anyone who is moderately bright and well-adjusted will do just that, and the only ones we see with it will be the dumb, impulsive, antisocial, or even criminal. This feeds into a stereotype, whereby people will fallaciously infer an association between the stigmatized desire and these qualities of social impairment; one usually being cast as a symptom of the other. This is a selection bias resulting from a failure of visibility.
Censorship isn't removing disruptive individuals from a venue, or punishing speech that constitutes abuse or harassment. Censorship is the belief that there are some ideas that are simply too dangerous to express, no matter how politely or impersonally they may be expressed. The true test for censorship is whether you are silencing a person for their behavior, or for their ideas. (Also, private citizens and companies are capable of censorship; just because it isn't against the law doesn't mean it's not an infringement of freedom and speech).
I understand that nudists face discrimination as a result of misunderstandings about the lifestyle, and I respect nudism's need to emphasize non-sexuality when describing/advertising the lifestyle. That is not the time to remind people that nudists still have sex. What irritates me is when nudists suggest to general audiences, or amongst themselves, that certain tenets of the lifestyle are incompatible with living as an erotic being. That you can't, e.g., watch porn, make erotic art, find nudity sexy, while still being a nudist. There's an antagonism between nudism and sexuality, because they are not only distinct, but often get confused, and sexuality brings with it enormous stigma. This is unfortunate, and many nudists resent sex for that. But we are still fundamentally sexual beings. I am not asking nudism to embrace sexuality - I never have, and never will. I am just asking it to permit the existence of nudists who do not crusade against sex. To campaign for the non-sexuality of nudism without tacking on a "sex-negative" clause. Educate, don't denigrate.
When we teach girls to cover up, instead of teaching boys to be respectful, we harm ourselves twice over.
We are a sexual species. We procreate through sexual reproduction. Because this activity is so important to our continued survival beyond any one individual, it's not a mystery why we've developed such a heightened interest in sex and all forms of sexual stimulation. Moreover, given how complex the human brain is, we have the psychological ability to associate just about anything with sex. One of the least surprising of these triggers is the shape of the human body, which may be more or less apparent whether clothed or unclothed. In a textile society with a nudity taboo, where people undress in front of others primarily to engage in sex, it is also unsurprising that many people will develop an association between nudity and sex. This isn't a malfunction, it's just a limited perspective. I applaud nudists' efforts to give nudity meaning beyond its sexual implications, because - although I, like most humans, enjoy sexual stimulation - I have also learned that nudity is both practical and enjoyable for other reasons, and to miss out on these is a shame. But it would also be a shame to "desexualize" nudity to the point that either nobody ever appreciates its sexual potential, or else those that do are considered diseased or impaired. We don't need to change the purpose of nudity, we just need to expand its possibilities.
I enjoy watching attractive people perform mundane activities in the nude - without sex involved. I don't think that's strange at all, even if people are willing to pay for that privilege. Should this be counted as an erotic desire, or is it merely an aesthetic appreciation? It seems to me that nudists are perfectly poised to indulge demand in this form of entertainment. Some of us who don't mind being seen also don't mind being admired, and it promotes the vision that nudity is beautiful. But does it violate some of the precepts of nudism? Does acknowledging that people are attracted differently to different bodies undermine the goal of body acceptance? If somebody has sexual feelings towards non-sexual nudity, does that "taint" the nudity in some way? Does charging for some nudity make all nudity less freeing? And if so - if we are to draw a firm line between perversity and monasticism - what happens to everything in between? What about the people who are neither comfortable in whorehouses nor in monasteries? Where do they belong? Should they be forsaken for insufficient piety?
Absence of illegality is not evidence of legality (contrary to what the Constitution would suggest). A freedom not practiced (or practiced surreptitiously), and rescinded the moment it starts being practiced (or that practice is discovered) is no freedom at all.
What if clarity isn't a matter of gaining focus, but rather becoming, through familiarity, selectively blind to the fuzzy spots?
(Volume 3)
No comments:
Post a Comment