If I can throw in yet another view point to add to and also back up Anna’s brilliantly written post above.
School age children now have access to free porn from as young as nine, their schools mates are sharing the links with them. When viewed, which is happening on mass, nudity to them has been sexualised before parents are even aware, trust me, we caught our son watching it, and his attitude was everyone watches it. He is possibly right, but as I pointed out, acceptance of porn is actually buying into a body shaming and negative aspect of the human body.
Porn lists the more popular videos on its front page, which means, what is seen the most, gets offered the most, and it is important all of us understand that, and at this point, even though I stepped out of my therapist seat four years ago, I am still in loop advising some of my colleagues who have followed in my footsteps.
Today, we have a problem of serial porn abusers, which to a degree has rendered them incapable of arousal unless they view extreme porn, and it is not a small number of people, it is the highest it has ever been, which is why the extreme and most dangerous porn is the top of the rankings, the vanilla stuff, like most couple would do is at the bottom of the rankings.
Nudity, especially female, is seen as sexual in a manner that is also exploitative, and our kids are watching it every day on free porn channels like Porn Hub. I got a ban on facebook for posting a simple meme which showed a cartoon image of a school with a red cross on it, next to a Porn Hub logo with a green tick on it, with the simple question of, “Who is educating your child?”
Our children at a very early age are practicing what are considered to be dangerous sexual practices, which they learn online, because schools are failing to educate our children properly. Porn is most view aspect of the internet, you might hate that fact, but it is truth, most adults visit a Porn site on a regular basis, it has become an acceptable part of life, which causes problems, and is one of the reasons I moved into the field of sexual dysfunction in the later part of working in relationship therapies, before I quit.
I could write a whole ten pages here on what I have personally witnessed in a therapist room, of which I know some of it would repulse and shock the everyday naturist. Acceptance of nudity and the human is not as accepted in many countries as we are led to believe, but there is a growing tolerance for what we do appearing to increase, but we are not there yet.
The public are happy to accept naturism as long as we do not push into their faces, and make it a big deal, they will accept porn much easier, for the simple logic that to them, getting naked to have sex makes sense. Getting naked to do things they would do dressed confuses them, and so they see it as odd ball, eccentric, and a little odd. Suspecting naturists of being sexual, and having mass orgies makes far more sense, because they watch that on their computers.
The public understand that simple nudity is done by others, they get skinny dipping and sitting in hot springs, or even sunbathing, but for them it easier to turn a blind eye to groups getting together to spend a weekend or week camping without being sexual. To a degree, as a few parents have told me, they understand why their kids would want to watch porn, because they do, they do not understand why little Timmy wants to roam the house naked, and not get sexual, they see that as strange, because they do not do it.
One of the biggest problems we face, is firstly our national organisations are not doing enough to engage the public and educate them. Most people do not object to none sexual nudity, even if they do not understand it, which is why acceptance across the board is slow to be fulfilled.
The second biggest problem we face is advertising which is what pays for your free social media sites. Advertisers use subtle insults to make you believe you are not good enough, so you will buy their products with the false promise of this will make you feel wonderful.
Mainstream media is paid for by advertisers, so they are going to express the views of those giving them the money. Religions also play a huge role in the way in which nudity is viewed, and so when we meet people who are accepting or asking questions, that is why we need to show people the honest truth of what is true, traditional naturism. Not only is it body positive, it is a mental health life saver, and that message needs to be put out there.
Most people are smart enough to know that social and mainstream media lie to them, which is why most people do not object, the biggest problem is, they do not speak out either, so the social view currently is being set by the minority, as they get things all their own way. America may feel fairer than past years, but America is still the most media influenced, and Porn consuming, and within that, I fear it will take a long time before nudity and body acceptance gains a really significant foothold in popular opinion.
at June 10, 2024 7:59 AM BST 
We went for a walk and a picnic with a family we knew from Cornwall during our first years here and our oldest son's first year at primary school. We were chatting about the children and parents that we had known during that time and the mother was filling me in on gossip. One mother who had a daughter who had was repeating the reception year due to ill health and much absence. Came up. I remember her as someone who regularly picked up her daughter from school drunk. The daughter was having difficulty connecting at school and the mother, who had been a solicitor but hadn't work since leaving the father, persuaded me to bring my son around one weekend for a playday. My son was traumatised by the experience and begged me to never let it happen again. I spent most of the day explaining that I didn't want any wine.
After we left to Spain the daughter was picked up for school by taxi, because the mother was not reliable enough to get her there, she would turn up at school in her pyjamas and the school was expected to wash and dress her. Eventually the school said that she needed to arrive dressed and at that point the mother decided to home tutor her. Along the journey my friend feeling sorry for the daughter also accepted the idea of entering into playdays. Her own daughter was about 7 at the time. She didn't really enjoy the first visit but the mum thought it was good for the girl to have some connections away from her home life and persuaded her daughter to have a second visit. Picking her up a second time the daughter seemed rather fraught. Then the mother explained how the day had gone. She had decided that her daughter should have a sex education lesson and told my friend with some pride that her daughter had been also given a lesson. The lesson had involved sitting the two of them in front of extreme and graphic porn, a complete spectrum of interactions across genders and tastes. My friend found that her daughter was so traumatised that she had to sit with her over some time and teach her about sex before she had planned to in an attempt to help her daughter emotionally contextualise the things she had seen. That was the end of the play days.
When the solicitor's daughter eventually came to senior school age she re-entered the education system after 4 years of home education. The senior school had to place her in a classroom for special support because she still had the reading age of a girl of around 5.
It is so sad that we live in a world where there is a glut of bad information available for parents and children to turn to for damage, yet a lack of social accountability when it comes to genuine nurturing. This poor girl whose mother obviously had an education herself has been brought up by the internet, while her mother drinks and her father is in a different county and the system is unable to find the power or the drive to help. The school flags up concerns and in return the girl is pulled out of the system rather than the concerns being met. Whatever the reasons are for the mother leaving work to spend her life in a drunken stupor, become obstacles for the daughter to inherit and add to.
Porn and the misuse of the internet are only a small part of the human condition and only exists because as a society we want it to. The catch 22 situation we find ourselves in with naturism is simply one aspect of the deep trouble within society. To stop people wanting porn and sexualising nudity we have to make nudity an innocent, casual and comfortable part of life, but how do we make nudity an innocent, casual and comfortable part of life when we crave porn and sexualise nudity. As I mentioned before as an example, how do women accept topless equality when they know that they will attract negative attention from both men and women by doing so. We can only really find that equality when the attitude towards the breast changes, and to do that we need a whole generation of women to go through getting negative attention from a world that is obsessed with breasts, and that is not a position we are able to convince women to do en-mass, and so we stay in the loop.
First let me say that ANW is an absolute gem amidst masses of substandard sources on the internet. I'm so glad that I found ANW, and just cranked up my membership to a higher level. The amount of dedication that Anna and Steve have put into this for years is fantastic!
Second, those stories Anna just shared are just awful.
I do think some of the bases for these issues that Anna and others have correctly described and written about, is a breakdown of moral values and the two-parent family. I simply do not know what can be done about that.
Having raised three kids with my wife, I firmly believe that children need a father and a mother. And one of the worst kept secrets is that girls in fact need a father! Parenting is hard work, as all of us parents know.
As everyone may know, here in the U.S. we have a high percentage of single parent households. Not sure what the correct percentage is, but I think it is around 50%. So these children might grow up not having a good parenting model to follow when they become parents themselves. We also have this messy "dual custody" arrangement that some divorcing couples agree to. In my mind, the jury is out on these arrangements. The kids are shuffled back and forth between two households on some schedule. Some kids are even flying commercial air, alone, in these schemes. And then, in some single parent households, you have boy- or girl-friends coming and going from time to time.
So, is the foregoing a barrier to involving families in naturism? Could be.
We have a 30 year old granddaughter, with a bachelor's degree, working a worthy job as a victim advocate in a police department. She's smart, sober, and attractive, and responsible with her money. She cannot find a good man with whom to enter into a lasting relationship! Too many young men in the U.S. today are a bunch of "slackers".
We are happy you found us here, you are right, ANW is a bastion of brilliance in the midst of everything, we certainly love being here.
We can certainly agree with your statement about moral decay within society, and both Rin and myself think that naturism within the family is a huge positive. As for slackers, it is not just America, we see it daily here, especially with the male population who are more inclined to only get out of bed in order to smoke drugs or sleep around than work. Parenting is difficult, and as parents we feel the worst decision we ever made was sending our son to art college, because once he became friends with all the other lay abouts there, he walked away from naturism, turned his back on his family, and became verbally aggressive, ego driven, and to be honest has become too entitled, as he struts around with his ego thinking he is a god, it is hard to believe he is our son, and is heartbreaking. The last three years for us as parents has been unbelievably hard, because he refuses to see his actions are selfish and show nothing but disrespect towards his family and his parents.
This apparently is the new society of porn, drugs and hook up culture, and it is a society we have no wish to be a part of. We have spoken out on this many times, as we do believe that a lot of this is being done deliberately in order to break down the family unit, and destroy the nuclear family, because it isolates everyone in a world where money dominates and makes it easier to manipulate and dominate the masses. There is certainly a lot of psychology being done at the moment that backs this argument up.
So what is the answer? We do think naturism, or traditional naturism as we know it, is a massive beneficial factor, and there are signs, certainly in the 25-35 age range that disillusion is setting in as our young people struggle and they are looking for answers, and within that there is a more wider acceptance of nudity. The biggest problem is, that the idea of traditional naturism with clubs, societies and national bodies is not appealing to them, and it is within that aspect that we feel naturism needs to modify, not modernise. The modernisation we see happening at the moment is failing, or at least it is in the UK, where our national organisation appears to be floundering, and struggling to find a formula that works. Adult only is popular, but excludes a massive section of naturism, and puts off the general public who feel because it is Adult only, it has sexual connotations, especially with the rise of swinger culture in the last ten years.
Our national body even went so far as to spend thousands of pounds partnering up with another none naturist group to host an event where the word Naturism would not to be used, aimed at the under 30’s, in a desperate bid to gain young support, but only attracted 28 people, of which a large chunk of those were staff, and those that did attend were already within the Young British Naturism group, so it attracted no one new. The world naked bikes ride attract far more with 200 riding through Manchester last week, and over 2000 in London, so it is clear there is no objection to nudity with the young, but there appears to be some objection to organised nudity within established naturism.
Again, when we watch the bike rides, we see little objection to the naked body from the general public, they are more than happy to applaud and wave, as they smile, which is why as naturists Rin and I have taken the time to get into the public at these events and talk to them about nudity, and we have encountered no objection from those we spoke to, most people if anything are happy to allow naturist to do their own thing and leave them to it.
It stands to reason, if the public are not that bothered, then surely we should do more in the public eye to garner more support, as naturism is the one thing that a large aspect of society currently isn’t, which is moral.
at June 11, 2024 1:04 PM BST
I think, and I have probably said it over and over again here and in articles elsewhere that naturism represents a middle space when it comes to nudity. Residing in a place between those that hate nudity and mistrust it and those that relish in nudity and abuse it. This middle space has been traditionally where most people live and function, but where people have no need to shout about it. We are all too aware of the rise of sexual sharing, inevitable in some ways. The internet is a place of lots of modern money making and has long been primarily used for porn. With the introduction of digital recording and photographs porn on the internet has become something any one can profit from and get involved in. A lot of children are growing up with the idea that the internet is the simple way of making money, and getting famous quick without any specific training or qualifications. Influencers are earning millions simply for telling people what to buy and think, youtubers sit playing computer games and children tune in in their thousands instead of just playing them themselves, people are becoming very wealthy for being the most muscular, the greediest eaters, the rudest to policemen on duty or the most confusing to strangers on the street. Something has to give though, as at some point these children will realise that there are 2 million people all trying to tell you how they are happy to spend 24 hours with a nest of bees in their underpants. The advertising and the interest will only stretch so far and a lot of children will have to grow up and realise that becoming rich from you tube and tik tok may be just as unlikely as becoming a premier league footballer or an astronaut. But in the meantime sexual nudity on the internet remains a trend, almost a right of passage for much of modern youth and also an easy money maker.
Yet on the other side are the protestors, the zealots and the nudity haters who are rightly horrified by the trend and show it by wanting to do everything they can to reject the human body. But they show no ability to judge, like Facebook they hate all nudity. They get upset by programmes like Naked Education, mistrust naturism and say their children will be traumatised by witnessing a naked bike ride, and have fits about school trips to art museums that may have the odd naked statue or painting. Their claims of protect the children pull in the do-gooding crowd, as who would ever not wish to protect the children. But protect them from what? This is never thought out is it? We see too much of this hyperbole in human mindsets today and it is doing no good at all. It is breaking down society, splitting us up and encouraging fear and hate between people due to the colour of their skin, sexual equality, their sexual orientation, their gender, their religion, or the idea they may be child abusers, or would be rapists.
Naturism is trapped in the middle with no ally. We hate the sexual sharers as they damage our lifestyles reputation and ruin our beaches, we cannot make friends with the nudity haters because they simply won't listen, even though if they allowed themselves some moments to think they would see we are on their side. Yet in that middle lies the vast majority of people, who may well listen. They don't like the idea of sexual sharing, and so they are more willing to listen to the nudity haters, but if we spoke out to them they would realise a much more sensible option is available.
And that is what we see when Matt chats to people on the train after a bike ride, or we take our family to the beach. Normal people are happy for naturism to exist and they are happy to understand it is fine, and may even try it themselves if they ponder it enough or the moment takes them.
My fear is that the too extremes are building in number as the middle ground is simply ignored and people aim to fit in somewhere. This is particularly true of the growth of sexual sharing. The more something is seen the more we become immune to it as shocking and before long the more we accept it and take it on board ourselves. We can see this in society in various ways over the past 3 decades or so. Some things are simply fashion trends. Look at body shaving, body piercings and the growth of tattooing in recent decades. They may have always been around in small numbers but suddenly grew and grew. Many people disliked the trends at first, then they got used to them, then started to like them and then embraced them themselves. Whatever we may think of trends good or bad they find their way into the heart of society. And some are definitely bad - Sexual sharing on the internet is finding a normality. Somethings are very worrying, the rise of drugs, binge drinking, knife crime and videoing people being beaten up have infiltrated society due to popular awareness. It is what everyone does, is an argument against any unpleasant behaviour. Everyone vapes, everyone swears... what is really meant is that the people that are looked to are vaping or swearing. Everyone posts (sexual) nudes of themselves is starting to be voiced. One day naturism may be replaced by statements like everyone has sex in the dunes.
I feel that we do not have time to lose. The middle people are still vast in number and still have not sold out to one side or the other. We need to ensure they never do. We need to ensure that the world of naturism, clubs, national organisations, groups, families, couples, individuals, ANW and any caring and genuine opportunity speaks with a clear message. Naturism is non-sexual, safe and suitable for all and family friendly. Take our place in the middle ground with pride and invite the silent majority to join us in body and spirit.
at June 11, 2024 2:24 PM BST 