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I’ve been seeing a few short videos from this year’s London WNBR. Several of them got over a thousand participants, which is great, but it looks like the gender imbalance towards men is as bad as ever if not worse.
My local WNBR doesn’t take place until next month and I’m hoping to attend that, but I’m wondering if that will be as one-sided too?
Are there any WNBRs in the world where naked women outnumber naked men? Maybe different local cultures have different views on nudity?
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Get rid of misogny and there wouldn’t be gender imbalance.
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Is there misogyny in WNBR?
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You are right, but also a little unkind in that.
Men are FAR more likely to be into photography (and therefore to have the intrusive, large-lensed cameras) than women. I don’t have the statistics to hand, but it’s something like 8 or 9 to 1. Men love naked women (which isn’t misogyny, it’s biology), but the sort of geeky men who have big cameras and are willing to travel to an event like that, are (in my experience over the years) likely to be less socially confident, less confident with women and almost certainly not getting as much sex as they would like. Most importantly, they often (but not always) lack the social skills/awareness or empathy to act as women usually prefer.
For some of them, WNBR is the only female nudity they are going to see in real life this year so they are desperate.
That doesn’t excuse the behaviour or make it any more tolerable but it’s also completely unrealistic to expect it to go away. My local one doesn’t allow cameras in the screened-off preparation area, which probably helps a little.
Bamaswitch likes this
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I’ve heard a couple of times that the WNBR organisers are working to fix the imbalance but nobody seems able to let me know what they are doing.
We could certainly use some pointers!
Bamaswitch likes this
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Maybe it’s time to open another discussion here on how to attract more women to get involved?
Bamaswitch and Gary like this
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The trouble is that you really need the women in the group to say what would help them be more active and/or not stop them taking part
Ed and Bamaswitch like this
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There have been women in the group over the years and some have offered extensive advice on the subject. Most of the changes to attract and keep female members have been suggested by female members.
Our most recent female member seems to have vanished without trace.
I get a similar problem with the Naked Experiments. Women are often very keen to take part but then don’t want to do it again. From what I’ve been told there’s no problem with the experiments, it’s just something they wanted to try out and now they have. No need to do it again. I suspect this community has the same effect.
There’s also the other thing that everytime a female member starts posting comments etc. a sizeable chunk of the male membership immediately sends “Friend” requests and starts private messaging.
Someone suggested (sorry, I can’t remember who) that we should ban men messaging women and that men should ONLY be allowed to reply. It’s probably a good solution, but the forum system doesn’t support that and if I set it as a site rule, it’s going to be hard to enforce.
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That’s another advantage of the experiments. It’s totally anonymous and no-one can message you or send a friend request afterwards.
Bamaswitch likes this
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I can see from the site stats that there are several ladies regularly visiting the site. If any of you have any suggestions that would improve the community for you or encourage you to take part, please let me know. If you prefer to remain anonymous to the rest of the community, you can private message me instead here.
Please give me some feedback!
Bamaswitch likes this
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I just don’t know how to get female members to get more involved in the community. I am at a loss.
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Yeah. If you could get a few to participate, other women would feel more comfortable. I’m afraid the way men act in general, especially online, is a deterrent.
Prof Green and Ed like this
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Absolutely. There were many occasions when I’ve had to tell individual men to back off or stop contacting female members. On occasions I’ve banned people too. Of course, that’s where women let me know. If they don’t, I probably won’t be aware of it.
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I’m an admin of a naturist facebook site as well as a member of a fb group of other naturist/skinny group admins; its main activity is warning other naturist groups of predatory members.
I can tell you that the majority of the complaints we all get are from inappropriate messaging from men to women. The second highest complaint is fake profiles that are mostly men pretending to be women.
I think the best this website can do is be more equal in its library photos and blog videos.
Ed and Prof Green like this
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The men pretending to be women thing is mad. I’ve done many camchecks of “women” wanting to take part in the experiment sessions which have turned out to be men. It’s one of the two key reasons I insist on either meeting experiment participants or seeing them on camera before allowing them to attend an experiment session.
One thing I’ve learned from hard experience is that if the blog videos don’t bias towards women, visitor counts collapse and the site dies quickly 🙁
I’ve been told by a few women that photos/videos of naked men put them off staying on the site.
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Inappropriate or (most commonly here) just busy messaging is a constant problem. One technique I’ve been told about but never tried, is to set up occasional trap accounts pretending to be female then issue warnings to all male members who inappropriately message it.
It feels underhand but I guess it’s better than real female members being hassled by unwanted attention.
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The proportion of self-posted photos that are male (very nearly all of them) probably roughly matches the proportion of active visitors who are male. It’s a bit of a catch-22. The quickest way for a woman to increase the proportion of female photos is for her to post some of herself, but will she do that when nearly all the other photos are male? I doubt it. I shouldn’t name names, and my memory isn’t that good in any case, but the two active female members I recall, both used photos of themselves to illustrate stories. One was the tale of her modelling her new fur coat, and nothing else, to her husband. The other (recent) one was enjoying doing a series of dares.
Is there a problem with photos that just say “look at me naked”? The only photo on this site that I’ve ever not wanted to see was just that. There was no context, just a naked photo with a caption telling people to look at it. I can see that kind of image could put people off, but also that different people will be put off by different kinds of photo.
Are women and men equally happy with photos that illustrate stories? I expect so, but I have no evidence either way. The art videos tell stories, and so do the stripgame/ forfeit/ dare ones like poor Maggie having to strip for her friends. On another site I visit sometimes, men and women, probably more women than men, post fully nude images to get some feedback on how their diet or health recovery or whatever is progressing. They almost always leave their heads off the shot, so it really does look like a request for feedback, not a “look at me naked!!!!” picture.
I’ve sometimes posted naked photos of me here. I’ve normally done that to illustrate a story or to make some kind of point about something or to try to be amusing, but I must also have posted some simply because I was in the mood to be seen naked and couldn’t be bothered to find a live audience. Maybe that’s not a good enough reason to post.
And just while I’m here, when it comes to excessive or inappropriate messaging, do we actually need the facility at all? I used it once when someone was trying to arrange for me and him to do a “receive a delivery naked” dare together. It didn’t work out but it wasn’t a problem. I’ve had a few (very few) folks message me just to say hello, and that’s not a problem either. But neither of those was essential to keeping the community alive. Both conversations could have happened in public (except perhaps if we’d got as far as needing to swap email addresses). I don’t know what the “friend” facility is here for – I can’t think of a current use for it. Would the system support limiting messages to just friends? That way, a woman could ignore or decline friend requests and wouldn’t have to put up with any unwelcome or unpleasant text.
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The two important uses are help/advice requests. I get several of those per week.
Also I use PMs to contact people who are breaking rules and to let them know about Community Supporter status either starting or ending. It’s vital for me as most people don’t seem to get my e-mails these days.
Paul likes this
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I don’t know if this belongs here or in a different thread but it shows Florence Pugh (I’m not actually sure who she is) showing off a nice pink dress. Apparently lots of people are outraged that everyone can see her nipples. When I googled for images, most of them (not these, obviously) were pixellated. I wonder how much of the absence of women from naked events is the inevitability that morons will try to body-shame them.
If we’re allowed to see a funny side, this does remind me of a cartoon I posted here a long time ago of a woman who had gone to see the doctor suffering from pixellated nipple syndrome.
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Outrage and offence are interesting things. Outrage is a misused term which is used to the point of becoming meaningless. People frequently describe themselves as “outraged” when they are nowhere near that put out.
Offence I find weird because many people think there is some right to not be offended. Obviously, there isn’t. There are many things in life which offend me, but I’m not going to go around making a fuss and attempting to influence (or, worse, control) other people’s lives.
Anyone who is truly “outraged” by seeing nipples clearly needs help.
Paul likes this
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If the law was changed so that taking photos or video at WNBR events was illegal and there were enough Police officers present to enforce that, would the event still be worthwhile?
Paul likes this
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@Prof Green
“This image (from wikimedia commons) illustrates the problem very well.”
I’ll say, the look on her face is absolutely priceless! You could see the way she is looking and smirking she is probably thinking I was probably going to be one of many naked women here, and now she’s like I’m the only naked woman here and all of these guys have cameras and I am going to be all over the Internet later!
I’ll admit in the opposite situation if I showed up at an event where I thought there would be mixed nudity and I was only the only guy there naked with a bunch of dressed women, yeah it would be hot, but good God would it be uncomfortable and I would be feeling really awkward if they were all standing there with cameras and I think that I would be afraid to show my face in public for a while after that!
But it is worse to be the only naked woman around a bunch of flesh hungry guys. Women outnumbered a naked guy would be embarrassing and get lots of amused laughter from women, that woman with all those dressed guys must feel like meat on a plate! Women have a harder time getting over the reputation of being that naked chick than guys would being that naked dude.
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There was at least 50 nude women at london wnbr 2016.
But that photo sadly is reflective. Blokes just not understanding boundaries.
Paul and Prof Green like this
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The problem there is also that we’re never going to change that. Men are visually stimulated, we like naked women and there will always be a (minority I believe) who won’t miss an opportunity to photograph women without their clothes.
The only solution I can see is to hold the event in private but that instant defeats the object of it.
Paul likes this
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Not the whole event, but they could screen off a changing area so that individual naked participants didn’t have to run a gauntlet of male photographers on their own. Cycling as part of a group, even a small group, must be a much safer experience than having to squeeze through a mob of photographers to get to the start line or away from the finish line.
Like so many naked activities, it would be great as fiction or an experiment or a dare or a forfeit but not great if that’s not why you’re there. In the photo, she presumably went there to protest or celebrate body freedom or whatever, but – from her face – she didn’t go there to be ogled at such close quarters.
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The Cardiff WNBR has certainly recently screened off the start point (I don’t know how long that’s been done). I assumed they all did to give participants somewhere to undress.
Paul and Prof Green like this
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Does having a screened-off enclosure for participants to undress encourage more women to take part?
Paul likes this
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Screened area: It creates a safe space.
Does it encourage more women to take part? Marginally, because they have had to decide to arrive first. Perhaps the screened area gives them confidence to wear less or at some starts makes them decide to wear more or not bother.
It’s what they are seeing on the internet and media for the other 364 days a year that makes up their mind to arrive at the start.
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I don’t see how a changing area would affect attendance at a naked event. If the whole idea is to get naked simply being able to change without being seen doesn’t make you any less naked once you have already changed!
Paul likes this
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You are MUCH more of a target for photos while stationary and undressing than you are on a moving bike.
I know a lot of women object to crowds of men photographing them up close while they are undressing or getting bodypainted.
Paul likes this
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“You are MUCH more of a target for photos while stationary and undressing than you are on a moving bike.
I know a lot of women object to crowds of men photographing them up close while they are undressing or getting bodypainted.”
A good point, in motion on a bike you can’t really get a real close up and personal look.
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where I live the bike ride was mainly male as well, tho a few females…this is Edmonton Alberta Canada…they gather in a park, paint themselves up, put slogans on their bikes, and then they’re off for the ride
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