Part 1: Nudism as a Cultural-Political Movement

Credit: Abernathy Family Photos | Wikimedia Commons
American Civil Rights Movement

While doing the research for my recent eBook I noticed something that I wanted to revisit after the book was published. I began writing this on Monday evening and before I knew it, the piece was nearing 1,800 words! So, out of compassion for my readers, I decided to break this discussion down into three, more easily digestible parts.

Usually I don't use Wikimedia articles as sources for the things I write, even when writing a blog post, but today I'm making an exception.

It isn't that I have the kind of disdain for Wikimedia that's common in academic circles. Quite the contrary I have read some excellent, scholarly Wikimedia articles where the quality of the research and references were impeccable by any standards. But since everyone from public school teachers to college professors to editors forbid the use of Wikimedia as a source, as a writer who writes sometimes for pay, I'm just not in the habit of citing from there myself.

The citation from Wikimedia that is pertinent to my topic today is, "Naturism or nudism is a cultural and political movement practicing, advocating and defending social nudity in private and in public." It is the opening sentence in the article, "Naturism" last modified on April 23, 2011. I chose to use it because even though I have read the exact sentence elsewhere in the past from a source that even the pickiest professor or editor would consider credible, I have been unable to find it again.

Whichever collaborator that supplied the sentence cited the 2002-2003 World Naturist Handbook, published by the International Naturist Federation as the source. If memory serves, I do believe that it was the International Naturist Federation website where I originally read it. But that isn't really material to the points of discussion today.

What I wanted to weigh in on was the question, "Is naturism and nudism a cultural and political movement?" While I completed fifteen semester hours of undergraduate Sociology courses that of course doesn't come close to qualifying me as an expert on the study of human social behavior. Yet human social behavior has always fascinated me and so I like to research it, read about it, and discuss it, especially when it comes to trying to define naturism and nudism within the framework of social behavior.

At various times, in various places I have seen naturism and nudism categorized in sociological terms as a lifestyle, a subculture, a deviant subculture, a counter-culture, a social movement and as a social, political movement. There is an argument I think for all of those classifications save cultural movement and cultural-political movement. And on Wednesday, I'll tell you why in Part 2: Nudism as a Cultural-Political Movement.

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Book Notes

Just a short note on American Nudist Culture. It is now on sale at Amazon in the Kindle edition. I'm heartened that in just a few days since publication several copies have already been sold and even more people have viewed the sample available at Smashwords. Since this was the first forum in which I shared information on the book I assume that the kind readers of TEN are responsible for the early sales and I am very grateful for that. I am eager to hear your opinions on the book be they good, bad, or indifferent.

March Poll Results

The March 2010 reader's poll asked for responses to the question, "I Was Introduced to Nudism By..." While albeit not a scientific poll and a limited sample, I do think the results were enlightening.



Poll Results

I was Introduced to Nudism By...

Reading Printed Material - 23%
Internet Information - 53%
Raised in a Nudist Family - 10%
A Friend or Partner - 13%

* Based on 30 total responses

Interpretations

Regardless of its limitations, I do think the poll shows how important the availability of sound, traditional nudist information on the web is to positively promoting nudist culture. It is the primary method that I have chosen to do my part in presenting nudism as a wholesome activity that produces some very positive benefits. I actually think many of the very excellent nudist blogs that are available today are an excellent source of information for people who may be curious about exploring nudism. I regularly read a number of blogs published by fellow nudists that I feel are great ambassadors for our lifestyle.

In addition to blogs, many of the national nudist organization websites contain lots of practical and useful information. Particularly, I think that The Naturist Society and the Federation of Canadian Naturists have excellent sites. Both very very helpful to me when I first became involved in nudism and the information I gleaned from those two organizations was pivotal in my decision to embrace nudism.

Interestingly only 13 percent of those that responded had been introduced to nudism by a friend or partner. This suggests that we might all do a better job talking up the benefits of traditional nudism to those we know. I admit I was a little uncomfortable doing this myself early on for a number of reasons. I wasn't sure how people I knew would receive the news that I was a nudist or how they would react to it. Yet steadily I have been able to speak up about nudism and my participation in the lifestyle more frequently. For one thing it is hard to keep something secret that you feel has been meaningful and valuable. You just naturally want to share it with others you know and care about. Not everyone I have talked with about nudism has been interested in giving it a try, yet I actually have not had a single bad experience thus far as a result of discussing nudism with others. Most nudists I think know at least one person that would likely be receptive to the idea of exploring nudism if they were just invited to do so. There are no hard figures on how many nudists there actually are in the country but if each one of us committed to introducing one other person to nudism this year, it would double the total number of nudists. Perhaps we will always be a minority, yet the more people who come to embrace the nudist lifestyle, the more acceptance we will find in general society.

Thanks to all who participated in the March poll and I hope a good number will also register their opinions in the April poll.

Back in the Saddle Again

On a personal note, a few days ago I happened to notice that the one year anniversary of The Emerging Nudist was fast approaching, as I began this web log in April 2009.

Much has changed for me personally during the intervening months. I have actually been on an extended hiatus for many months during which nothing new was written or posted here. What prompted me to return was that while researching an article a few days ago, this web log showed up on the first Google search page in response to the search term I had used. That is a fairly good indication that a significant number of people must still be landing here from time to time and hopefully reading what has been written and published previously.

While my writing horizons have expanded quite a bit since beginning TEN, I felt there was likely still some value to maintaining this web log and so am going to make the effort to resume writing and publishing here on a regular basis.

I never really lost interest in TEN and have remained quite passionate about the nudist culture and lifestyle even though I was not writing much about it. At least in my opinion, there is really no end to the topics and perspectives that one might explore with respect to nudism. But during the summer of 2009 I had some personally significant nudism related disappointments which I feel might explain my departure from nudist writing.

Partly, those disappointments came about as a result of my own quite predicatable naivety as a newcomer to social nudity which produced for me some unrealsitic expectations. I expected everyone who identified with the nudist movement to be as excited about and committed to nudism as I was and was frankly more than a little disappointed to learn that was not the reality of things.

I am a year older and a year wiser and have since accepted that nudists are a rather independent lot which is one reason of course that people identifying themselves as nudists are attracted to a social counter-culture to begin with. People can be just as passionate about nudism as I but express it differently. Perhaps I am a bit more pragmatic these days than the idealistist that experienced the excitement that attends the discovery of something that seemed to fit so perfectly in his life when it was first discovered, yet the orginal passion, albiet perhaps tempered a bit by reality, still exists.

In the days ahead I hope to present some new topics and stimulate new discussions that people engaged in or perhaps merely exploring nudism will find worthy of considering.

Semantics: Nudism versus Naturism

Discerning observer that you are, you have likely noticed that I use the terms nudism and naturism; nudist and naturist interchangeably in my writings here. Is there a real difference in these terms? Does it matter which is used at any given time? I don't think so. In the United States, naturism and nudism have very similar meanings and people tend to use the two terms interchangeably. Nudism is perhaps used with a slight bit more frequency here and it is the older of the two terms used to describe the cultural lifestyle of a person who practices, advocates and defends social nudity in private and in public. In Europe, the term naturist is the most common. If you reference the Oxford English dictionary you will find that the two words are synonymous.

Still some feel quite adamant about this subject. Some nudists don't wish to be called naturists and some naturists don't like to be called nudists. Depending on whom you ask, some will say that the terms define two different philosophies which simply have nudity in common. Those who find a difference define naturists as closer to nature and more interested in practicing nudity in outdoor settings: forests, mountains and beaches while nudists are people who practice nudity more in urban and club settings.

Not all people who practice nudity like any label at all. They don't see themselves as different from anyone else and may not espouse or subscribe to any naturist/nudist philosophy.

As you can see the usage and definition of these terms varies geographically and historically. So while in the United States, naturism and nudism have very similar meanings, in Britain there is a clear distinction. Nudism is the act of being naked, while naturism is a lifestyle which embraces nudity in conjunction with nature, the environment, respect for others, self-respect, healthy eating, vegetarianism, teetotalism, non-smoking, yoga, physical exercise and pacifism as well as nudity.

Despite the distinctions that some like to draw, I think if you can see the elements: lifestyle, harmony with nature, social nudity, self-respect, respect for others and respect for the environment, you are really talking about the same thing regardless of which term is used. I don’t really have a preference for one term over the other perhaps because I can see myself easily moving between the two definitions when a distinction is made. While I do enjoy nudity in conjunction with nature, I also enjoy the social nudity practiced within urban and club settings.

An Introduction

Recently, for reasons I don’t completely understand, I have found myself interested in the exploration and experience of the clothing optional lifestyle. In this country generally it is known as Nudism and in Europe more frequently termed Naturism, but there is really no difference in meaning so in this blog I will use both terms interchangeably.

I’m actually a very ordinary, normal and as people often tell me a likeable guy. If you happen to have a negative view of nudists and you knew me personally, I would likely be the last person you would ever imagine being involved in it. Unfortunately, nudism often carries a stigma, born largely of ignorance of the truth. In the still pretty much puritanical society we live in, nudists are often thought of as swingers, hedonists, sex maniacs, perverts or worse – persons of generally low, immoral character. I understand why many non-nudists hold this view because for many people, the only time they are naked with another person is before, during and after a sexual experience. It's understandable that they would equate nudity with sex and have difficulty separating the two. But separate they are. Given that nudists are a product of society as a whole, I strongly suspect just like in any sample of the population it is entirely likely there is the odd sex maniac among us. The law of averages makes it likely that there are also several perverts, a healthy quota of gay men and lesbians, one or two celibates and a handful of swingers. There are probably also quite a few naturists who gain a sexual thrill from being seen naked or seeing others in the nude. But all of this ignores one very important point – Nudism has nothing to do with sex.

Nudity is the most natural thing in the world. There is nothing lewd, crude or distasteful about the naked human body. I like many people, am the product of a very conservative upbringing where I was conditioned and taught that exposing my nakedness in the presence of others was shameful and wrong. I was not born feeling ashamed of my nudity - it was systematically instilled in me by my parents. As a result I grew up feeling a deep sense of shame about my own nudity and with a good bit of sexual repression. I don’t of course hold this against my parents because as a parent myself, I fully understand the pressure parents feel to raise their children to follow the mores of society so that they don’t end up in trouble with the authorities. Still the result is that children are raised to become adults who predictably come to hold the opinion that whenever a person exposes his or her nakedness to another person or persons, he or she clearly intends to elicit sexual excitement and arousal and is an exhibitionist. Granted there are exhibitionists in our society who do expose themselves because they receive sexual gratification from doing so, but those individuals are not practicing nudism. They likely became the way they are as a result of the repressive conditioning they received during their “normal” rearing from childhood. Naturism isn't about looking at bodies - naturists are not exhibitionists. It's just about enjoying the freedom that a clothes optional atmosphere brings. Nudism is about accepting the human body for what it is - nothing to be ashamed of.