…from http://www.naturistsociety.com/resources/PDF/205ARGUE.pdf
"The dominant idea that clothing is necessary for reasons of modesty is a cultural assumption. It is an assumption that is not shared by all cultures, nor by all members of our own culture."
"There is evidence that modesty is not related to nakedness at all, but is rather a response to appearing different from the rest of the social group--for instance, outside the accepted habits of clothing or adornment."
"Likewise, a woman feels immodest if seen in her slip, even though it's far less revealing than her bikini."
"Many psychologists and anthropologists believe that modesty about exposure of the body may well be a result of wearing clothes, rather than its cause."
"It is interesting to note that it is only possible to be immodest once an accepted form of modesty has been established."
"Hypocritically, if someone dresses specifically to arouse sexual interest, they are considered to have pride in their appearance. Even if they get great sexual gratification out of the attention others give, there is no suggestion of perversion or sexual fixation."
"Studies show significantly less incidence of casual premarital and extramarital sex, group sex, incest, and rape among nudists than among non-nudists."
"Prudery, it seems, provides mankind with endless aphrodisiacs, hence, no doubt, the reluctance to abandon it."
"Complete nudity is antithetic to the elaborate semi-pornography of the fashion industry."
"When a woman learns to treat her breasts as objects that enhance appearance, they belong not to the woman, but to her viewers. Thus, a woman becomes alienated from her own body."
"Nudity is often confused with pornography in our society because the pornography industry has so successfully exploited it. In other words, nudity is often damned as exploitative precisely because its repression causes many to exploit it."
"Naturism is innocent, casual, non-exploitative, and non-commercial (and yet is often suppressed); as opposed to pornography, which is commercialized and sensationalized (and generally tolerated). In some American communities it is illegal for a woman to publicly bare her breasts in order to feed an infant, but it is legal to display Penthouse on drug-store magazine racks."
"In the words of Michelangelo: 'What spirit is so empty and blind, that it cannot grasp the fact that the human foot is more noble than the shoe and human skin more beautiful than the garment with which it is clothed?'"
"Why is it permissible [in National Geographic] to show the penis and scrotum of an African Surma (Feb. 91) or a Brazilian Urueu-Wau Wau (Dec. 88) but not a Yugoslav Naturist in his natural setting? Why are photographs of breasts on Nuba (Feb. 51, Nov. 66), Zulu (Aug. 53), Dyak (May 56), Masai (Feb. 65), Yap Island (May 67, Oct. 86), Turkana (Feb. 69), Adama Islands (July 75), New Guinea (Aug. 82), Woodabe (Oct. 83), Ndebele (Feb. 69), and Surma (Feb. 91) women shown, yet not one white Canadian can be found to face the camera at Wreck Beach? Why are the breasts shown of Josephine Baker (July 89), a black native of East St. Louis, but the breasts of white native women of Miami Beach are not shown? The unanswered question implies but one conclusion: that the National Geographic has in fact a Eurocentric bias (racist) in portraying nudity."
"Presumptions that exposure to nudity will lead to problems for children grow out of the preconceptions of our culture."
"It is interesting to speculate as to what kind of model of the human mind Sigmund Freud would have constructed if he had based it not on clothed Europeans but on, say, a study of the naked Nuer of the Sudan. Almost all the processes which he discerns as formative for the adult mind would have been lacking. Freud assumes that children will not normally see each other naked and that, if they do happen to, the result will be traumatic. This is not true of naked cultures."
"Our society is far more at home with the idea of sexy breasts than functional ones"
"Millions of boys and girls have grown up never having seen a mother breast-feeding her baby... This is a sad commentary on our culture."
"In our culture, breasts may be exposed to sell drinks to men in bars, but women may not be topfree on a beach for their own comfort and pleasure... The criminalization of women baring their breasts, therefore, indicates that society views women's bodies as immoral and something to hide. There is something potentially criminal about every woman just by virtue of being female."
"Men have the right to cover or expose their chests as they see fit--women do not. Men have the right to enjoy the sun, water, and wind without a top; women do not. Few men would be willing to give up this right. Then why shouldn't women enjoy the same advantage? . . . Requiring women to cover their breasts in public is a highly visible expression of inequality between men and women that promotes an attitude that demeans women and damages their sense of equality. . . . For centuries, men have held the power to generate these misconceptions. The male view on the exposure of a woman's breasts is crucially influenced by the need of men to define women. . . . This reaction stems from a masculine ideology that has . . . doomed generations of women to a secondary status."
"By refusing to accept the need to 'protect' themselves from men by covering their bodies, women gain power, and shift the burden of responsible behavior to men, where it rightfully belongs."
"Male power is perpetuated by regarding women as objects that men act and react to rather than as actors themselves. . . . their entire worth is derived from the reaction they can induce from men. In order to maintain the patriarchal system, men must determine when and where this arousal is allowed to take place. In this way, the (heterosexual) male myth of a woman's breasts has been codified into law. Because women are the sexual objects and property of men, it follows that what might arouse men can only be displayed when men want to be aroused."
"This emphasis on women as temptresses shifts the burden of responsibility from men to women; because women provoke uncontrollable urges in males, society excuses male behavior and blames the victim for whatever happens. . . . To sanction the concept that men have uncontrollable urges implies that violence against women is inevitable."
"After all, whole industries are now devoted to enabling people 'to get away from it all.' What is it, precisely, they want to get away from, when the iconography of their culture is promoted globally as the provider of everything? Many will admit they are looking for something not available at home (apart from sunshine), something to do with authenticity, a state of being 'unspoilt'. . . . They have been stripped of their cultural heritage; and this is why they have to buy back what ought to be the birthright of all human beings: secure anchorage in celebrations and rituals that attend the significant moments of our human lives."
"A bikini covering is accepted and even lauded on the beach, but is restricted elsewhere--in a department store, for example. Even on the beach, an expensive bikini is considered acceptable, whereas underwear- -though it covers the same amount--is not."
"One must remember that clothing itself is neither moral nor immoral. It is the breaking of traditions which makes it so."
"The degree to which women's breasts may be exposed has varied especially in Western cultures. At various times in history, women's necklines have plunged so deeply that the breasts have been more exposed than covered. Historian Aileen Ribeiro notes that in the early 15th century, 'women's gowns became increasingly tight-fitted over the bust, some gowns with front openings even revealing the nipples.' Breasts came back on display throughout the early 17th century, and again in the 18th century, especially in the Court of King Charles II of England. Ironically, in this latter period, a respectable woman would never be found in public with the point of her shoulders revealed."
"Given the opportunity and license to do so, women do take advantage of the option of going topfree. During the 1984 Olympics in L.A., Police decided not to arrest European women who went topfree on local beaches. American women, noting the double standard, took their tops off too, and feigned inability to understand English when told to cover up. Police called it 'taking advantage of the relaxed rule,' 169 though it should more accurately be considered 'taking advantage of a more civilized custom.'"
"In a free society such as the United States, one's lifestyle should not be dictated by anyone else (majority or otherwise), especially if that lifestyle does not infringe on anyone else's rights."
"The Constitution has been interpreted to protect individual freedoms except where they are overridden by a 'compelling state interest.' It is never the responsibility of individuals to justify their freedoms. It is rather the responsibility of government to justify any restriction of freedom."
"If people are allowed to wear the clothes of [Nazis], should they not also be allowed to wear the clothing of the Creator?"
"The Ninth Amendment makes it clear that no freedoms shall be denied that are not specifically prohibited. Thus, mere nudity is not illegal except where there are specific laws that prohibit it."
"It can't be argued that women have breasts and men don't, because both do; nor can it be argued that women have larger, often protruding breasts, because many women are flat-chested while many men have large breasts. Breasts are not sex organs, for they are not essential to reproduction, and in fact have nothing to do with it. A woman with no breasts can have a baby. Breasts serve the physiological function of nourishing a baby--but this is a maternal function, not a sexual one. Breasts may play a role in sex play, but other body parts do too, and are not censured--particularly the hands, and the mouth. And while breasts are secondary sex characteristics, so are beards, which are not restricted on men."
"Mere nudity cannot be offensive or immoral 'conduct'--for it is not conduct at all, but merely the natural state of a human being."
"It is a cruel reversal of justice when the law frowns on innocent skinnydippers, while gawkers on the fringe of the nude beach, who pervert and fetishize the body, are accepted as 'normal.'"
"We must never forget that for any freedom that is lost, we bear partial responsibility for letting it be lost... Find out just what people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of justice and wrong which will be imposed upon them... The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those who they oppress."
"It was disobedience that came between Adam and Eve and God, not nakedness. The scriptures themselves treat Adam and Eve's nudity as an incidental issue."
"To assume that because God made garments He was condemning nudity makes as much sense as concluding that because God made clouds which blot out the sun He was condemning sunshine."
"Every Biblical association of nakedness with shame is in reference to a sin already committed."
"It is not reasonable to cover the apples in the marketplace just because someone might may be tempted by gluttony, nor is it necessary to ban money because someone might be overcome by greed. Nor is it reasonable to ban nudity, simply because an individual might be tempted to lust. Furthermore, appreciation for the beauty of a member of the other sex, nude or otherwise, cannot be equated automatically with lust. Only if desire is added does appreciation become lust, and therefore sin. Even then, it is the one who lusts, not the object of lust, who has sinned. Bathsheba was never rebuked for bathing, but David for lusting."
I don’t see what’s so difficult about this. When will our "more sophisticated" Western society will abandon its irrational prohibitions regarding the human body?
