In the military, maneuver is simply the positioning of forces to subject an adversary to either the actual or threatened use of weapons and tactics relative to your adversary to place him at a distinct disadvantage at a particular time and place on the battlefield. It is a manipulation of a situation in order to gain some advantage. Correctly understood and applied, maneuver can contribute to defeating any enemy in any type of conflict. While it is possible to identify a whole myriad of effects that maneuver may create, I will focus on the four I consider primary: Surprise, shock, suppression and isolation.I believe there is much work to do in the naturists and nudist community to sharpen our understanding and application of the important concept of maneuver. Again let me refer to the Civil Rights movement (1955 – 1968) and the Gay Rights movement (1965 – 1996) as an illustration for dominant maneuver. I include the dates that are generally accepted as the zeniths of these particular movements to show just how relatively brief a period it took, in comparison to our own history as naturists and nudists, for racial groups, gays and lesbians to forge their own currently held mainstream positions in our culture.
Prior to the Civil Rights and Gay Rights eras, it was not only acceptable to hold racist and homophobic views, it was also perfectly acceptable in polite society to openly articulate those views, use disparaging racial, ethnic and sexual orientation terms and the like. It was even acceptable in some circles to use physical aggression and violence directed at racial groups and homosexuals. Thankfully, my friends, those dark days of history are now long past yet even today, having lived through both of those eras, I am stunned at the rapidity with which both of these movements were able to foster such sweeping changes in our society.
One of the strategies I think both movements employed most effectively was to render it unfashionable and socially unacceptable to openly be a racist or openly hostile to gays and lesbians or to discriminate against people on the basis of race, color or sexual orientation. Certainly needed changes in law occurred doing those periods that helped to alter our culture in dramatic fashion, but it was the changing of the public perception of a racist or sexist from something once acceptable to something not only unacceptable but something most of us now find reprehensible and despicable. I allow that there are still likely some people and some groups that are still embracing racist or anti-gay views, but in this day and age at least they are no longer free to spew their venomous beliefs with impunity in the public forums. To do so would invite ridicule, opposition and even legal action. Certainly these two movements have effectively employed the concept of dominant maneuver and were able to successfully surprise, shock, suppress and isolate their adversaries.
This is yet another tactic that naturists and nudists need to learn to exploit. We need to render anti-nudist actions and rhetoric despicable and repulsive and completely unacceptable in society after the same fashion that was achieved by racial groups, gays and lesbians. Very accurately, we are just another in a long line of minorities who have suffered discrimination at the hands of a majority and we can’t expect that will ever change until we stand up like those groups before us and say, “I’m not taking it anymore!” How do we do this? We do it the same way they did it in the Civil Rights and Gay Rights movements. We need to start pointing out at every opportunity that anti-nudism is just another unacceptable –ism that is discriminatory, harassing, a violation of civil rights and therefore inherently unlawful and just plain wrong. And then we need to keep up a steady drumbeat of that message until it starts to sink in with people. We need to keep it up until that day in the future when it is no longer socially acceptable to openly espouse anti-nudist rhetoric or in cavalier fashion, pass discriminatory laws and policies designed to restrict suppress or deny access by nudists to public beaches and other public lands.
Another part of it is that we must resolve ourselves to the inevitability that we will have to be willing to utilize the courts just as racial groups and homosexuals did to overturn discriminatory laws and policies and to gain repeal of the archaic laws that criminalize mere nudity. This is not only going to take collective will but it will take financial will as well. We will have to be willing in large numbers to put our money where our mouth is. These are the elements of appropriating the concept of dominant maneuver to surprise, shock, suppress and eventually isolate our anti-nudism adversaries.
Next...the Final Installment - Shock and Awe Part 5: Spectacular Displays of Force
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