Reasons Society Doesn't Want to Allow Public Nudity

[jbeegoode]

It is never said, "Oh that outfit looks dull. You ought to take it off." They are telling us to put something else on, because clothed is the perspective that they come from. For the textile minded, a nude outfit is very exciting, too exciting.

Maybe I can show how the textiles are confused and contradictory, by some examples.

They are also saying that it doesn't mask that you're less than some idealized perfection. It doesn't titillate, accent, or cover the right places to draw attention and be sexy, so it isn't sexy enough. It doesn't say sex, it says nude. But nude says sex because it means "unclothed" to the textile orientation.

You aren't allowed to be accepted as you are, or to stand confidently as what you are. You must always be something else, something safe, something conforming, some identity. If you don't fit in with the way that you dress, then you are labeled and treated as "the nudist" and given a host of ignorant boxes to fit in, or projections to fulfill. Let us not forget the"them and us" dichotomy of this fractured world, which exploits us, divides us, sets us against each other, as the puppeteers watch.

Yea, "that outfit is dull, here try another."

Being nude is considered a stab at getting attention, not okay. But, wearing something to get attention is okay. But not too much attention.

The following isn't so confusing. A state of nudity is the basic person, the foundation, the real deal, it deserves to be accepted. Clothing should be a conscious decision to drape it, after the fact of who the person is. Nude is a person's humanity, the real person. Clothing is a social game generally, but like any social game, it needs to be recognized as such, as it is, play. When clothing comes off, we need to be seen as returning to ourselves, our truth, our core. Clothing means, "I'm playing a game." I switch clothes and try another game. No clothing, "game over, let's just be two human beings doing the task at hand." Screw the "them and us."

Textile social concepts are confused and pretty much and to me, they've got it backwards.
Jbee

[nuduke]

We could use a few women here right now. It isn't enough to just be guys taking about them.

I couldn't agree more, jbee.
Why don't women gravitate here?  Kayaker hasn't posted for ages, feared gone. From TSNS, Am is a matter of history and of the handful of ladies that have joined up there and here, none of them ever stays for more than a few posts.  Even DF only nods in occasionally usually through Jbee.
Are we the victim of statistics i.e. where proportion of females on our forum = pF_n x pF_sm x pF_f
Where p=proportion, F=females
n=women that are naturists (I think about 10%) but quite age related so we can assume ladies that join us might be over 40
sm= those that use social media (above 45 social media use drops to 10-15%)
f= those that bother with forums say 10% (in this day and age probably very few.  Kids don't do forums and its we old guys that cling on to forums as a social medium).
so 0.1 x 0.125 x 0.1 = 0.00125 (0.125%) of women form an eligible group to join the forum- a tiny fraction.  But how many women is that? Let's say 1/2 of the world's women are in sufficient state of technological progress to be able to find us that means there are around 4.5 million women that could join.  More than enough.  So where are they?  Perhaps I should limit it further by suggesting that we are a very English speaking forum so maybe that reduces it to about 1-2m women.  So why can't we even get 6 regular contributors that are women?

Yet there are ladies on other forums such as Naturist Corner.  Why not us? 

Is it the nature of the conversation - too male? Too factual?  Are we too hard to find?  Is Jbee putting them off? [ Joke, dear boy.]

Maybe Karla can shed some light?  Karla?  You keep an eye on us, judging by your occasional interjections.  Why isn't there a better gender balance in our conversations?

John

[ric]

The answers is  in  the title.... Women just don't do free range naturism.
Just look at most of free range reports ...it's largely males doing their own thing alone

[BlueTrain]

It occurred to me that of all the books I have about hiking, camping, log cabins, woodcraft, bushcraft, etc., most were written by single men or men who otherwise stayed away from home (or their wives) most of the time.

[Greenbare Woods]

The answers is  in  the title.... Women just don't do free range naturism.
Just look at most of free range reports ...it's largely males doing their own thing alone

It has been my observation over many years that women don't really do free range anything as much as men.  Women have much more instinctive needs to be with the group or tribe, to do what the other women are doing and go with the other women.   For humans and many other species the free range individuals are usually only the males. 

[BlueTrain]

It's an interesting topic. As such ("free-ranging"), it should in theory be quite rare among the older tribal societies, though it may not be. Or it may vary a great deal. In the pre-industrial tribal or clan society, survival was based on group membership. Presumably that included group identity, although one shouldn't overthink the point. One is born into a certain group and that's it.  Just like your family (the clan or tribe being a larger family), you are born into certain circumstances and that was it. There was never any choice involved and I don't imagine it was ever questioned. You did what your father did. As societies grew in size, they generally have become more stratified, replacing one group (the clan) with another group (the class).

There are always exceptions. In some tribes, I believe that young males are given a task as part of their initiation into adulthood. In the same way, serving in the armed forces today is a similar coming of age rite of passage in some places and in some families but avoided in others. For women, however, the only rite of passage I can think of, experienced as an individual, is motherhood. But it should also be mentioned that the concept of manhood and womanhood can differ greatly from one culture to another or from family to family. And Western culture is not monolithic but consists of widely varying cultures around the world.

And as Robert Service said, "There's a race of men that don't fit in."

[Peter S]

I think for females the first rite of passage is the onset of periods, possibly followed by a noticeable shape change of the chest.

[BlueTrain]

These days, when we are much less rural than we used to be and far removed from being hunter/gatherers, there are nevertheless many milestones which don't quite equal the traditional forms of rites of passage. Getting your driver's license, finishing high school, your first beer or cigarette, your first real job, getting a social security number, getting married, shooting your first deer and so on. For the exceptionally well-placed and ambitious, there are things like getting into the right college (after finishing prep school), becoming a junior partner, joining the Junior League, joining a club downtown (not a nudist club, that is), joining a country club and so on.