I Sing the Body Naked
I’ll enumerate a few facts from my childhood, a time when concepts start to form and solidify in the mind of a man. The reason is to let you, the reader, see in which way we are different, even if we’re on the same page regarding such subjects.
We both live in cultural and social frameworks and I don’t know about you, but it took me a long time to unlearn my mind and instincts, just to fit with the many. And then, I worked to bring myself back.
Born in November, the next summer I was already on the beach. The Sea with her sounds and smells, the Sun scorching or running through the clouds. And the Naturist colony, to which I adhered all my life.
Human nudity was right there, before anyone started labeling it for me. A child’s sexuality starts developing much later so liking nudity to sex was not implicit.
At that time I thought we worn clothes because the city was dirty and cold. And the way people dressed, in my mind was a way of saying “since we need to protect ourselves against the city, at least we can do it in some style”.
Of course, the “true reasons” for dressing took the place of my thoughts but I always had a problem associating nudity to obscenity. What is obscenity, anyway?
The dictionary says it’s the act of offensive or disgusting behavior, according to accepted standards of morality.
OK, I agree to agree on standards of morality, because some need those definitions. I would define, far above nudity, the acts of public disrespect, acts of war, abuse of people and life in general, as disgusting and offensive acts.
Nudity and sex, we all do that, one way or another. True, it doesn’t mean you should force others to unwillingly witness your sexual acts and naked body. The same counts for pushing ads but that is not considered obscene.
If some agree that a certain area in nature can be dedicated to nudists or even people having personal sex encounters, nobody should qualify that as prohibited. You are entering a nudist area, leave your prejudgments at the door or please go some place else.
There are plenty of those spaces out there but sufficient Karens to shout against them when seen on tv or an art gallery.
Erection
The heart beats, that’s what the muscle does and on tv we sometimes are shown that. Nobody shouted it’s obscene, not to my knowledge.
A penis is flask and it hardens, that’s what it does, to perform a function (reproduction and pleasure bringing). I cannot see why an erection should be stigmatized.
You don’t want to see one, don’t click that link, don’t enter an art gallery which has a painting or statue of an erection.
It’s accepted to watch paintings of nude men with softies. Well, not OK for some zealots who find Michelangelo’s David obscene. See, that’s another good example: Italians (and not only) grew up surrounded by art depictions of nudity, both male and female. They don’t associate the nude in art with obscenity.
If art depicts a nude man riding a horse with another nude man, don’t shout “obscene!”; that would be contrary to accepted standards of public behavior (in a museum at least).
It’s no secret that humans and their art have always been subject to what now, in “modern Western world”, is called obscene.
I simply wonder why someone would need to stand up and fight against something we all know, we all do. And to allow our instincts and minds be trained to “this is bad” theories.
It would be indeed tiresome to be on the metro and see, every day, some men masturbating. Some would find it funny to watch, others would ignore it. To me, at the most, it would only be bad taste, it’d say something about the man doing that.
Children
Ah, the “children” argument. I don’t buy that.
I had erections before I was in primary school, we boys on the playground spoke about it and parade it. Then we forgot about it. We didn’t show that to girls, because we knew they didn’t have one to show for and that would be cruel to them.
We circle jerked and the older boys, who had sperm emissions, told us that’s the way you know you’re no longer a child: the fruit was ripe, the juice was coming out. Natural.
Sex education, properly done, could start in very early ages. I know it would have helped me a lot, in many ways.
If I sound like a perv it’s probably because you were told that every adult who speaks of child sexuality is a pedophile. Tell that to a father who changes the pampers of his little girl.
Maybe not all my arguments and examples are solid but what I was trying to say is very simple: I act according to the agreed social norms but nobody can or should change my mind about it. Nudity is not obscene, an erect penis is as normal as a heart beat. I look at one when I choose to do so and I’m glad someone out there feels free to share it. So do I, in places where I know I would not shatter someone’s solid, inherited convictions.