Taboos surrounding Nudity

[John]

Posting for Julie, so I’ll leave the introduction to her. A subject I’m interested in, so I hope I can make a sensible contribution.

Ed likes this

[Julie]

I’m interested in how England has got to the point that we have signs up in saunas and changing areas stating that swimming costumes must be worn. In contrast, some nationalities would find a swimming costume in a sauna unhygienic. Often the sessions are already single sex, but the taboo is still there.
Then there’s the difference between what you wear on the beach and what is acceptable elsewhere. Also, is nudity more acceptable if you are deemed attractive?

Then there’s the difference between nudity in a naturist or nudist sense, and exhibitionism. I don’t do this regularly, it’s not a way of life and it’s something that is giving me a thrill, so I would feel a fraud in a naturist space — but I’m not ready to flaunt conventions, just question them and push a bit.

I joined in on the beach in Fuerteventura, and was naked on the beach with 2 older men that I don’t know. I felt safe. It’s accepted on that stretch of beach, but no one was taking photos and selfies to prove they did a dare!

There’s also a worry about stumbling on a more sexual situation such as a sauna/massage parlour thats really a sex club.

Arthur and John like this

[Arthur]

@Julie

“Then there’s the difference between what you wear on the beach and what is acceptable elsewhere. Also, is nudity more acceptable if you are deemed attractive?”

I definitely think that there is truth to that because people are only offended by nudity if they deem it to be unattractive, like the average guy thing probably wouldn’t bat an eye about a woman walking around naked if she was attractive even if it was in a place where nudity wasn’t allowed, meanwhile if you have like a fat elderly 300 pound guy walking around naked the responses obviously going to be very different. I think these days there’s a lot of policing of people’s bodies in which bodies are okay, you can see this in the bigotry towards transgender people, where there is still very puritanical ideas about sexuality and the human body. You mentioned that England was going down that direction in another thread and I think unfortunately right now the entire world is moving in the direction of more repression and authoritarianism in this new prudishness is just one aspect of it. I kind of wonder one day if we are going all wake up and find ourselves in some kind of situation similar to Iran and Afghanistan, but that’s another topic altogether that the verges from the topic simply of nudity.

“Then there’s the difference between nudity in a naturist or nudist sense, and exhibitionism. I don’t do this regularly, it’s not a way of life and it’s something that is giving me a thrill, so I would feel a fraud in a naturist space — but I’m not ready to flaunt conventions, just question them and push a bit.”

I can understand that as well as I would not consider myself a nudist or exhibitionist because I would not be comfortable being naked, particularly if others are getting to remain dressed, but to me that is what makes the whole situation rather titillating, because you’re being put in that vulnerable and uncomfortable position, you are being made to be uncomfortable with your body and to be exposed especially when maybe others are not, I think that’s where a lot of the excitement of it comes from.

I think the main reason why nudity is taboo is that for the vast majority of the population the only time they are naked particularly with a member of the opposite sex is during sexual relations so for most people nudity and sex go hand-in-hand. Naturalists and nudists generally do not consider that to be in the same Association but they are not the majority of people, which is why the majority of people are probably not naturalists, I think that most people cannot divorce sex  and sexuality from nudity because if you are naked and if you are around and attractive person that is also naked it’s naturally going to bring up sexual feelings which are generally frowned upon in public, and again with the increasing puritanical movement in the world people react to human bodies and human vulnerability like that is sort of a sign of weakness, deviancy or even something outright offensive, which once again goes back to the fact that most people end up trying to police people’s bodies.

And I think that that’s what is sort of the root taboo of nudity, it’s like you generally don’t see anybody when they are not wearing their clothing in mainstream society, so when a person is nude it’s something out of the ordinary, something abnormal,  to be naked when virtually everybody in the world prefers to be naked only in private and always wears clothing means you’re really transgressing a major social norm. Even in a place where nudity is permitted it’s interesting that you very rarely see people partaking and the one person who might be naked in front of a group of people staying dressed stand out and become the focus of everybody’s attention, and if that person is physically attractive they end up being titillating to the people around them and I think most people don’t know how to deal with that outside of a very private setting and I think that that is the root of why nudity is a taboo, it’s just part of a larger taboo about open expression of human sexuality.

And many of these taboos are also rooted in religion many of which or a majority of which in the Western religions such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam have sort of a creation story that showed that nudity was like the first act of wrongness that humanity committed that led to the downfall of civilization, so yeah that’s a pretty big taboo, the idea that something as simple as realizing you are naked being made into a belief that that was the downfall of civilization just shows how deeply ingrained this discomfort with naked bodies is in society. I do think it is rather interesting when you see that the countries with the most repression are the countries with the most sexual violence and authoritarianism in general, in societies where people feel safer nudity is less of a taboo, where is when people find something threatening or fearful it tends to make them more conservative and authoritarian. And there are major cultural differences from society to society where in Scandinavian countries sauna culture and being naked is sort of commonly accepted where is in the Middle East in most societies you would actually be stoned to death for being naked in public. So there is a lot of fear and hostility connected to the idea of naked human bodies.

[Julie]

Also to add that I breastfed 2 children (it’s possible to be pretty discreet feeding a baby in public) and I resented, rather than welcomed the offer of a private room, if I chose to nurse in a doctor’s waiting area or a shop.
I’ve had to disable some adult content filters in order to post here, it reminded me that “The Leaky Boob” was a breastfeeding support page which kept getting flagged on Facebook for using “naughty words” like breast!

[Julie]

I live in a very Muslim area of England and work regularly with muslim men. This might also affect how I feel about being careful to dress modestly.

I’m white, British, and with a church background.
In my 50s and married for more than 25 years to someone who doesn’t yet know I’m dabbling here!

Although from the picture on the left, I appear to be a pigeon.
I felt the need to keep my face out of it (but, embarrassingly, all but the face is now on view in the MDL!)

Arthur and John like this

[Julie]

Copying my post from another thread:

I’m here for philosophical discussion about what makes nudity a taboo. What is or isn’t sexual about it? How it can be a thrill yet not a sex act? Where society’s boundaries are?

How to get a thrill without breaking my principles as a straight (possibly asexual if all told) woman in a monogamous relationship (and I’m under a pseudonym because my partner doesn’t know about all of this).

I’m not here to see pics of nude men.

[John]

I think we are naturally a slightly reserved race, but school/church enforces taboos about the body and sex from an early age.

My personal opinion is that is exactly why women get objectified. If artificial taboos weren’t introduced, and men and women were comfortable with nudity, as young children are before they are indoctrinated with religion, women would not be the subject of as much unwanted attention if they dare to wear skimpy clothes on a night out.

It works the other way as well. It annoys me that it’s fine that women can wear skintight swimwear but there is now a taboo around blokes wearing Speedos, and this stupid baggy shorts thing has become acceptable. If I have to wear something at the baths or the beach, it will be Speedos.

It is strange, because we are one of the least religious nations, but we are very prurient in Britain. It’s possibly media driven, nudity is always portrayed as with sexual intent, I think it’s a patriarchal thing. Absolving men for lack of self control when they see a naked woman.

I could spend time with a naked woman and they would be perfectly safe if they wanted to be. I’m not sure that would be the case with a lot of men, or even me when I was younger.

Saying that, if there weren’t taboos that we were interested in breaking, none of us would be here, and this website wouldn’t exist, so we are where we are.

If there’s have been dom/sub events in my real life, I’ve been the Dom, but I do find the embarrassment/shame thing exciting, that anyone could read this, then immediately look at pictures or videos of me naked. I just don’t want that to get too close to home. I refused a video call from my female workmate yesterday as I was naked at the time, and called her back when I was dressed. She’d never have known apart from that I was at least topless, but I didn’t think it was right or appropriate.

Saying that, I will share a story soon about some comedy type videos I made recently that involved nudity.

I do think it’s good that we have a community where we sort of know people, but don’t know them in real life, yet share intimate pictures, and know what we look like naked. I also like that it’s non sexual, men aren’t erect, and women are not sending pictures between their legs.

Media does make nudity more acceptable based on physical attraction, but personally I find that very shallow. The older you get, the more that personality becomes important. I am not that interested in eds strip dare posts, more so in the arty ones, though some are too pretentious. I would find a naked person who I know I could have a serious conversation with more interesting than an 18 year old with a good body but zero in common.

I don’t think you would come across a sexual situation here or in British Naturists, but if you have a female friend that you could confide in and you went to an event, I would arrange some sort of safety contact system with them.

I’m struggling myself with the naturist/exhibition element to this, I try and separate the two.
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Arthur and Julie like this

[Julie]

I get you on the naturist/exhibitionist dilemma.
Also, how something can be non-sexual, yet also titillating and giving a rush or thrill. I’ve recently been diagnosed as ADHD and people with ADHD are often described as dopamine deficient and searching for things to give them a rush of dopamine.
I’m boring in so many ways: teetotal, never smoked or tried drugs, don’t even buy lottery tickets or charity raffles because I don’t like gambling, yet here I am, posting naked photos of myself (although I have asked Ed to obscure my face, and my full name remains hidden).

John likes this

[Arthur]

@Julie
“Also to add that I breastfed 2 children (it’s possible to be pretty discreet feeding a baby in public) and I resented, rather than welcomed the offer of a private room, if I chose to nurse in a doctor’s waiting area or a shop.
I’ve had to disable some adult content filters in order to post here, it reminded me that “The Leaky Boob” was a breastfeeding support page which kept getting flagged on Facebook for using “naughty words” like breast!”

I definitely think that that is one very prevail and double standard really because I know that a lot of places or basically in my almost every place it’s okay for men to go topless but not for women, although it definitely does vary on a city by city state-by-state country by country basis. I know here in New York where I live supposedly women are able to legally go topless but that might just be in New York City and I have never witnessed it myself.
But I do remember that when I met my cousin’s wife for the first time she needed to breast-feed her baby so she didn’t really want to go into the ladies room and end up hogging it like that and she was just sort of like down in this little room by herself and this was sort of at a funeral parlor and a wake, it’s kind of crazy that a woman breast-feeding would be seen as somehow obscene, because again I think that most people can’t view breasts in a nonsexual way even though breast-feeding is actually the purpose they have, and I think a lot of people don’t like to remember that breasts actually have a practical application, that they are not just there to titillate people.

“I live in a very Muslim area of England and work regularly with muslim men. This might also affect how I feel about being careful to dress modestly.”

I can see once again how this is very much a regional thing. But I know that again in most religious cultures are conservative religious cultures there is a major taboo against contact with women like I know him like the Bible and the Koran and all that it’s like menstruating women is somehow considered unclean or not supposed to touch anything holy. And I remember that like back in the Iraq war when they had the Abu Ghraib torture scandal one of the thing I think I remember US soldiers were like putting menstrual blood on the prisoners which was like a huge taboo in Muslim culture so it was seen as an extreme violation. I mean I think for any culture I think taking prisoners and hitting them with menstrual blood is pretty messed up obviously, but they did it specifically because that culture had a strong taboo around the female body and female bodily fluids.

“I get you on the naturist/exhibitionist dilemma.
Also, how something can be non-sexual, yet also titillating and giving a rush or thrill. I’ve recently been diagnosed as ADHD and people with ADHD are often described as dopamine deficient and searching for things to give them a rush of dopamine.
I’m boring in so many ways: teetotal, never smoked or tried drugs, don’t even buy lottery tickets or charity raffles because I don’t like gambling, yet here I am, posting naked photos of myself (although I have asked Ed to obscure my face, and my full name remains hidden).”

I had ADHD when I was younger and I have recently realized I am autistic and those things are sometimes seen as sort of contrary but they are often very much comorbid. It does have something to do with the dopamine in your brain where people who are autistic are often overstimulated whereas people with ADHD were under stimulated, but in both cases that might result in situations being more intense, and they found that people on the spectrum and who have the sensitivities tend to be more sensitive to things like drugs and alcohol and sex and things of that nature and I definitely think it’s true.

I actually live a very boring life as I am a 41-year-old Virgin, I don’t smoke I don’t drink I don’t do drugs, and I think that I do have an extreme sensitivity to any kind of stimulation, I kind of need a very rigid routine that’s very quiet and calm and peaceful in order to function at all, but I think that the flipside of that is that if you’re easily overstimulated and especially if you are socially awkward, as is the case in autism, a situation such as being naked, particularly when you are the only one naked, would naturally be a much more intense kind of situation, and I think it’s because it’s so contrary to sort of my boring everyday life that if I found myself in a situation like that it would be more intense for that very reason.

I actually started chatting about something very similar earlier in the day on the CFNM Village Board (CFNM equals clothed female, nude male) where I think a lot of people with the sensitivities and neurological conditions perhaps get more of a rush out of something like being naked compared to the average person.

@John
“I think we are naturally a slightly reserved race, but school/church enforces taboos about the body and sex from an early age.
My personal opinion is that is exactly why women get objectified. If artificial taboos weren’t introduced, and men and women were comfortable with nudity, as young children are before they are indoctrinated with religion, women would not be the subject of as much unwanted attention if they dare to wear skimpy clothes on a night out.”

I do think that is true because as they said children are natural nudists and it’s only when they start becoming socially aware and socially indoctrinated by culture and religion etc. that sexuality somehow becomes repressed and I think it is that repression that drives the hyper sexualization. Like in cultures where nudity is common there isn’t that association automatically between sex and nudity but in a culture like England or the United States, which let’s face it are the children of England, there still sort of that Victorian repression and that repression is what makes clothing more sexualized. It’s like if you always grew up and people were naked all the time it wouldn’t have the same charge then if things were hidden and that they only got seen under certain circumstances, repression definitely does drive kink. And wearing skimpy clothing can sometimes be more enticing than being completely naked because it’s not revealing everything but it’s giving you a hint of what could be there.

“It works the other way as well. It annoys me that it’s fine that women can wear skintight swimwear but there is now a taboo around blokes wearing Speedos, and this stupid baggy shorts thing has become acceptable. If I have to wear something at the baths or the beach, it will be Speedos.”

I think this probably goes along with traditional gender roles, women are expected to show skin and a man who is wearing something skimpy is seen as somehow feminized.

“It is strange, because we are one of the least religious nations, but we are very prurient in Britain. It’s possibly media driven, nudity is always portrayed as with sexual intent, I think it’s a patriarchal thing. Absolving men for lack of self control when they see a naked woman.
I could spend time with a naked woman and they would be perfectly safe if they wanted to be. I’m not sure that would be the case with a lot of men, or even me when I was younger.
Saying that, if there weren’t taboos that we were interested in breaking, none of us would be here, and this website wouldn’t exist, so we are where we are.”

Once again repression tends to drive kink. It’s interesting a lot of Middle Eastern countries that’s probably what drives a lot of suicide bombers. If you think of it like this way if you live in a place where women are always concealed and you never see anything you have lived your whole life pretty much covered up and it’s all a mystery and you are very ignorant about the human body, so it’s not surprising that you can entice somebody to be a suicide bomber by promising them beautiful naked virgins in the afterlife. This because it’s something that you don’t get to see at all during life in the repression is so severe it becomes almost self-destructive, and I definitely agree that that’s the result of patriarchy which sort of places men at the top and women as sort of temptresses.

It was funny because my grandmother and grandfather apparently when they got married in the 1940s supposedly my grandfather’s family didn’t like the fact that he was getting married to my grandmother because they wanted him to become a priest and they sort of saw her as taking him away from the church. Now my grandmother was definitely not a temptress kind of type of person and my grandfather would have made a terrible priest because he was very much womanizer, but that sort of how people view things, all of the pressure is put on the woman instead of teaching men to control themselves they blame the woman for her own assault or for her own attractiveness.

I mean if I were around a naked woman and I was standing there dressed and she was naked I would probably feel a little bit bashful because that situation it’s just like I can’t picture what would happen in a situation like that. I mean I certainly wouldn’t be in polite but at the same time it would be really awkward because it would naturally be titillating and very just awkward and embarrassing, and I think again that is because of the taboo, because something like that generally doesn’t happen, so when it does it’s exciting because it’s outside of the normal range of experience. If you lived in some kind of tribal culture where people walk around naked there wasn’t any of that repression and people had sort of a healthy attitude toward sex, but if you live in a society when everyone’s compelled to wear clothing all the time when you are around someone who is completely naked the only time you are used to seeing that is in a sexual situation so that’s the natural response in a situation like that.

“If there’s have been dom/sub events in my real life, I’ve been the Dom, but I do find the embarrassment/shame thing exciting, that anyone could read this, then immediately look at pictures or videos of me naked. I just don’t want that to get too close to home. I refused a video call from my female workmate yesterday as I was naked at the time, and called her back when I was dressed. She’d never have known apart from that I was at least topless, but I didn’t think it was right or appropriate.
Saying that, I will share a story soon about some comedy type videos I made recently that involved nudity.
I do think it’s good that we have a community where we sort of know people, but don’t know them in real life, yet share intimate pictures, and know what we look like naked. I also like that it’s non sexual, men aren’t erect, and women are not sending pictures between their legs.”

I definitely think that familiarity makes the difference. Sharing pictures online especially if they don’t show your face or are anonymous isn’t exactly the same as actually being naked around other people. A person might find a naked picture titillating, but it’s not the same as being actually around another naked person whether you are dressed or not. I think that the shame and embarrassment of the situation is kind of what makes it exciting at least to me personally, to me being naked is a very submissive feeling especially if others are staying dressed. Naturally if it’s around a person you know there is a greater factor of embarrassment because then you have to see them again after that, which obviously wouldn’t be appropriate at a work situation.

“Media does make nudity more acceptable based on physical attraction, but personally I find that very shallow. The older you get, the more that personality becomes important. I am not that interested in eds strip dare posts, more so in the arty ones, though some are too pretentious. I would find a naked person who I know I could have a serious conversation with more interesting than an 18 year old with a good body but zero in common.
I don’t think you would come across a sexual situation here or in British Naturists, but if you have a female friend that you could confide in and you went to an event, I would arrange some sort of safety contact system with them.
I’m struggling myself with the naturist/exhibition element to this, I try and separate the two.”

I do prefer stuff like artistic nudes rather than something pornographic or something like that, but I also agree that it’s very hard I think to detach the idea of sex and nudity. For people who are naturalists I imagine they usually just get used to being naked so it probably doesn’t have as much of a charge, and when everybody’s naked it probably isn’t as intense as being the only one naked around dressed people. It doesn’t really seem as much like exhibitionism when everybody else is naked but when you are just naked you stand out more and I think that you feel more naked as a result of that.

But from what I have heard naturalists and people who go to nudist resorts and stuff like that tend to be much more mature about nudity and they don’t always associated with sex although a person who is there for the first time would probably find a hard time disassociating the two things, and personally as a person is very shy and awkward I couldn’t see myself in any kind of situation involving nudity where I would not find the experience somehow titillating or intense.

[Julie]

I’ve just watched the Horizon episode: The problem with nudity.
It really links in so well with this thread.

John likes this

[Julie]

Replying to:

I had ADHD when I was younger and I have recently realized I am autistic and those things are sometimes seen as sort of contrary but they are often very much comorbid. It does have something to do with the dopamine in your brain where people who are autistic are often overstimulated whereas people with ADHD were under stimulated, but in both cases that might result in situations being more intense, and they found that people on the spectrum and who have the sensitivities tend to be more sensitive to things like drugs and alcohol and sex and things of that nature and I definitely think it’s true.

 

If you had ADHD when you were younger, then you still do now. Adults find ways to mask. Autism and ADHD together is now quite a common situation, and many people refer to that as AuDHD. This was my teenage daughter’s diagnosis and it set me off on a journey of discovery.
I’ve never drunk alcohol because I didn’t like the taste when I tried it. I didn’t like the idea of drinking to lose inhibitions, and then I learned to drive and felt the risk of alcohol in your system from night before drinking really worried me.
I’m aware that ADHD people might have a more addictive nature in some ways. I’ve never tested it. I work in healthcare and if I had a drug problem it would cause no end of trouble.

[Author]

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