I've been watching this thread for several days and really did not know what I could add to the discussion.  As a "senior citizen" my children are all grown and tending to their own families.  As I've mentioned before, I never wore a suit in our pool while my kids were growing up and I let them choose what they did or did not wear.  We did not go to nude beaches or resorts because they simply were not that close.

I have watched the growing trend towards fear of any nudity and am concerned where it will all lead.  I feel that social media, especially Twitter, has done far more harm than good, and I say this with the full knowledge that ANW uses a Facebook model.  Social media amplifies the opinion of a decided minority far beyond what it might have been in the past.  In short, it gives people who like to control others a greater opportunity to achieve that end.  When you add in the current fascination with "gender transition", a phenomenom that is embraced by some and hated by others you have the makings of a toxic mix.  I understand that there are individuals who feel they are in the wrong body but the concept is being so agressively promoted with apparently dire consequences for anyone who disagrees (J. K. Rowling for example) that ANY organization or group will fear for its very survival and thus not go "against the flow".

Naturism has always been a bit of an outlier as a lifestyle.  I'm afraid it may not have the critical mass necessary to counter the "common wisdom".  Dr. West's study of the effect of naturism on children will undoubtedly be hidden away because it does not say what certain people want to hear, and they may make their opinions known on Twitter.  I realize that I'm pretty negative with all this but I come to this conclusion after watching what has occurred over the last 40-50 years.  

I write this because I felt compelled to say something.  It is my hope that this trend can be turned around but I'm realistic enough to realize that it may take several generations to be accomplished.

Jonathan no age limit or family situation can make a person's point of view on this topic less important or valid. What you have written for example come from an awareness that younger members may not have the history to see. 

Yers it may be bleak stuff - but that is why we need to explore it and be realistic enough to attempt to make changes. Sad isn't it that negative changes can happen so quickly yet positive repairs in all probability may take generations. We have to carry on regardless. 

The world and society is in a mess and sadly the internet has to take a lot of blame. 

Anna ANW said:
Jonathan no age limit or family situation can make a person's point of view on this topic less important or valid. What you have written for example come from an awareness that younger members may not have the history to see. 

Yers it may be bleak stuff - but that is why we need to explore it and be realistic enough to attempt to make changes. Sad isn't it that negative changes can happen so quickly yet positive repairs in all probability may take generations. We have to carry on regardless. 

The world and society is in a mess and sadly the internet has to take a lot of blame. 

Anna, I disagree that the internet is to blame, it a tool and those who use the tool are to blame and perhaps not even them, it’s the way they have been brought up within the generations within their families. From the conditioning they have received through they generations, social norms and the church. They may not be religious now and fully clothed as in the past when showing an ankle was provocative however they are carrying those beliefs and are happy and zealous to preach their beliefs from the pulpit that is now the internet. 

I’m not religious, the bible does have great phrases, “forgive them for they don’t know what they do” 

I don’t know as I don’t know who these zealots are, however if I saw them on the beach I’d guess they would be wearing the skimpiest bikinis or  budgie stranglers wishing they had could take them off.

The fashion industry want to make clothes, sexy clothes sell, so setting a taboo that’s things that can’t be seen in public. The industry has a taboo to push against.

Remember the costume “malfunction” at an awards a few years ago, this made a huge amount of news copy, I guess the photographer who got the nipple shot made a mint. 

Pushing against a taboo has made many people rich, the skimpier the better. Pubic hair is a no no, so trim to a Brazilian an get away with something skimpier. The skimpier the more expensive, now that’s a great business model!

Society need naturists as a taboo to lean against but not too much, there’s profit to be made and blame to cast even if it isn’t true.

I struggle with this blame stuff as everyone has their views, their views come for someone else. I’ve recently discovered that love is the key to all this, offer love to all, even those who offend you, you’ll find the offence melts away as it has nothing to push against. They may well get confused and angry, support them with love ❤️ and they will either join you or melt away.

Angry zealots need someone to annoy. Don’t respond, send them love.

 

I know exactly what you mean John - the internet is a tool and when I wrote that the internet has to take a lot of blame - I did mean the misuse of it - as used well it is a wonderful tool - and I hope ANW is a great example. 

But its existence has had an effect on how we live and how we communicate and what we share. So there are levels where things are going wrong and if we need to apportion blame then we can look at centuries of social developement, media and advertising platform and the internets existence. 

Pornography existed before photography but photography allowed its growth to be more graphic and grow. Photography cannot be blamed in itself - it is just a tool. The created of easy publishing with magazine took pornography to another level again. But it has always been people's want to see nudity that drove it in the first place.  

Guns cannot be blamed for random shootings - if guns had never been invented then we would have random stabbings or clubbing. Reasons and blames are always in depth and never black and white. 

I do think the creation of the internet has given humanity an easier access to perversion - allowed for example child pornography to become more prolific and more readily available. Supply and demand feed each other - so the existence of the internet has increased those people supplying the porn and those people looking at it - but the people are at fault. 

It is the misuse of nudity, the perversion of nudity and the mis labelling and understanding of naturism on the internet that causes trouble for naturism on the internet - the people that do it are at fault - but if the tool did not exist naturism would be less mistreated and better understood. 

When the internet was quite young I read a report that said that around 80/90% of all internet browsing was pornography based. The blend of the people and the tool. 

Humanity is on a long journey and its relationship with nudity good and bad has been ongoing but like our major advances in the 1800s has led to a speeded up growth in populations, environmental damage, forest/jungle destruction, wars with more people dying than ever before, a staggering amount of endangered species etc...the creation of the internet has led to a speeded up growth in pornography, perversion, sexual sharing and sexualised nudity -which in turn has had major effects on how people view the human body, nudity and naturism. Society effects the internet and the internet effects society - it is a chicken and egg situation that feeds off each other. 

With my sons being 10 and 14 we are seeing how the internet is effecting them in a way that it never effected us when we were that age. They are growing up in a society that is so much more open in some ways and so much more narrow in others. It is like a balloon - squeeze it and one part becomes smaller but the other becomes inflated and stretched. 

The use of the internet has given them more readily available information and more easily available communication than we ever had. But the communication is often damaging to society and the information is often confusing and misleading. 

In real simple terms we have become more extreme in our views than ever. Innocent naturism has received protests about being unsuitable for children, classic nude art is seen as shocking and social media rejects breastfeeding   - yet children are earning money selling images on apps, they view graphic sexual images that somehow defy child safety locks during the most innocent of browsing, they take close up images of themselves in school toilets and share them across the internet. The things we hear that youngsters are doing through our sons (both ages) are shocking and I think are not really debated on a grander scale. One boy in my son's school took a boy with learning difficulties into the school toilets and recorded him playing with himself and posted it on social media.  It is prolific and not just about nudity. They record each other shop lifted, vandalising, beating up people. They share them on things like Tik Tok and they think it is great entertainment. Our boys will show us things and say look at what this person has done - and we say "block them and don't share it." We are cool with nudity but the things that youngsters are sharing are simply weird - and it is because they are growing up not aware of the boundaries - the tool is there but there are no rules with how to use it. And the schools don't know what to do. Then there is the bullying and the cruelty and the lies. 

Children make up fake accounts in other children's names and then send insults, threats, porn etc. Some people do the same using their own names. Over a year and a half ago someone made up a story that our son sent naked images to a young girl and these lies are still being spread like an urban myth and he is bullied, threatened and attacked for it. The lies are spread from chat room to the school playground and there is no way of stopping it. You wait for it to end but it is like a Mexican wave. It just keeps coming around again. For no matter how open these children have become they have also become much tougher too. Much more judging. Our son accidentally brushed against a girl's breast when being tripped up - she claimed to her friends that he did it on purpose and the next days he was mobbed by around 150 children in the playground. Came home cut and bruised with the things in his school bag broken.  The girl was made to apologise and tell her friends she was lying (she had already been shown cctv footage of the boy tripping him up and the boy that tripped him up was also punished) but how does this fit with a youth society so open to sexual misbehaviour on the internet? First people love to get attention - they love sharing on social media and have taken it into life - the girl enjoyed lying for attention. Second there are two dividing views. Getting old men to pay for pictures of naked teens is seen as cool a boy accidentally touching a girl's breast (through layers of clothing) is seen as abuse. The internet through sites like MeToo love to shout about abuse. We now see it everywhere and it has led to us to fear our neighbours. Children no longer sit on Father Christmas' knee. 

Naturism suffers at the hands of this double standard. Sexual sharing on the internet is cool - so let's allow naturism to be adult only and let people do what ever they want - libertine it up to the max - sex in the dunes is OK as long as children don't see! But what do we do then. Keep children at home - hide them from the beaches and the parks, hide them from our neighbours (as they may be perverts) teach them to mistrust everyone? But we cannot hide them from school (though home tutoring is popular), we cannot keep them from the internet, we cannot keep them from their peers, and at some point they have to go out into the big world - get jobs and fit in. So they learn are learning to fear innocent nudity like naturism but accept internet nudity that is graphic, shocking and money based. 

The adults are doing the same. We applaud women who shove their bottoms into the camera and say they are "sexually liberated" - "Good on you girl!" and fail to see that they are simply attracting dirty old men to follow them and buy them a cup of coffee. Yet we are horrified by the idea of a family being naked together on a beach. The internet (or misuse of it) has made us so confused about nudity and how it can be shared - that we have no way of understanding that it can be simply innocent and harmless. The misuse of the internet has damaged the understanding of naturism, encouraged it to be adult only, removed any idea that nudity is not sexual and has made people fear being naturists because so many people do not understand it, the internet means done of us really have privavcy, and they may be photographed and displayed on the internet.

Society decided how the internet was used but now it has a momentum all of its own and it needs to be brought under control. Sadly many people see the only  answer to that is to completely censor the internet and that includes naturism. And protect the children from nudity and that also includes naturism. 

I have a strong suspicion that their are people on naturist federation boards around our planet that feel the only way that naturism can grow is to allow it to be adult only - because them it fits in with modern ideas of nudity and modern use of the internet. If that is allowed to happen then naturism has no future unless it all goes the way of Cap D'Agde. And I think the use of the internet has been a big part of taking naturism down that route. 

We have to ensure that naturism does not allow this to happen, we have to fight against the wave and we have to ensure that naturism uses the internet wisely and it has to come from us all. National bodies, clubs, families, couples, individuals, old and young, sexual orientation doesn't matter, religion doesn't matter - we have to ensure that the users of the internet and through a knock on effect those that do not use the internet completely understand that naturism is innocent, healthy and family friendly - and that means steering clear of falling into the trap of creating adult only party events that are easily going to be considered as libertine - because we have to consider how these things are judged and not what are intentions are. We have to consider how we promote and advertise naturism. Concentrating our promotions on adult only late night partying is the worst possible way to promote naturism. We have to stop being hip and cool and we need to start getting back to basics - naturism is about everyone and that very much includes families and if we are afraid of acknowledging that then we may as well give up.

Anna, I think you nailed down the problem very well. Internet is a tool, people use it. You can cut a tree with an axe, you can also kill someone. You can write a best seller with a pen, you can also write disgusting shaming words. You can bring people together with internet, you can tear people appart with it. However, I do think four things are at play here :
1- Schools don't educate children anymore, they are barely keep them busy...
2- Parents don't play their role anymore of setting limits, teaching respect, and ensuring they do their part of family duties...
3- Work has been disgraced by low wages (plagued now by inflation) while riches become richier in a disgraceful manner, low interest (specialisation of tasks make jobs menial), and a no-future attitude...
4- Happiness is tied to material possessions.

Shake all this, add a pinch of voyeurism to the riches (soccer players, actors and actresses, influencers...), stir with infinite accessible entertainment, and you have a society that is highly polarized and lost its values.

Naturism has to adapt, hence sexualisation, adult only, and the likes. We know this is not the naturism we love, want and promote. However, we fight a tough uphill battle. Can we win it? I don't know! Shall we continue fighting it? Yes, because we have many strong arguments that we need to repeat again and again; yes, because its values are aligned with ecological requirements for a livable world; yes, because its benefits are many and almost undisputable. But it's almost a battle of civilization and it's hard.

How to fight that battle? By explaining naturism, by sharing naturism and by welcoming everyone, particularly families. Being inclusive is neither hip nor cool, but it's necessary to our civilization. Being inclusive requires to open minds, hearts and arms. Being inclusive requires to be benevolent, to seek diversity and to welcome everyone. Being inclusive requires also to stand strong on our values, proudly grounded on mutual respect. I often cite respect when talking about naturism and it's my principal argument to be accepted as a naked naturist: I respect your right to be clothed, respect mine to be naked. I'm not killing or harming anyone, and I ask you to see my nudity as my natural way of being. It's not a sexual display, it's a simple, casual and natural way to be. Respect is a two-way path, even it sometimes looks like a single-track road.

We must refuse that naturist federation excludes families and children. They are the flag holders, they need to show the way and the way is inclusive, not exclusive. That some resorts, campings, or events become adult only is OK, as long as there are resorts, camping and events that are welcoming families and all age naturists. We also need young adults resorts, campings and events. We need naturist-friendly sports clubs, naturist-friendly swimming pools, naturist-friendly beaches, and so on. But above all, we need to stand firm, strong and proud for an all inclusive naturism.