From: middleto@poincare.ucsd.edu (Tom Middleton ; System Manager)
Newsgroups: rec.nude
Subject: Re: nudity & sex
Date: 18 Dec 1992 03:53:07 GMT
Organization: Institute for NonLinear Science, UCSD
NNTP-Posting-Host: poincare.ucsd.edu


These discussions on nudity and sex tend to go all over the place.  I'd
like to try to refocus things for awhile.  The problem we have to deal
with is that many non-nudists seem to have the feeling that the ONLY
reason to take your clothes off is for sex and if you do it in a public
place it is for public sex, also known as orgies.  This is where the
equation nudity = sex comes from.  They are of course wrong about that,
there are many reasons to take your clothes off in public and although
some may do it for public sex that is a very small group and certainly
not to be used as the basis for judging all nudists/naturists.

People have a right to be wrong and if those people weren't involved
in decisions affecting my life I wouldn't care less about it.  However,
those people do affect my life.  Hey, I'd be happy if they were right.
If just taking my clothes off around someone I was sexually interested
in resulted in sex I'd love it.  But it just doesn't work that way.

There are indeed very deep and ingrained sexual aspects to life, eating,
getting dressed and getting undressed.  But anybody that argues that 
nudity = sex is providing fuel for those people that need that association
to fire the emotions of the uninformed and defeat the freedom to chose
what we wear or don't wear.  Every single argument against public nudity
is based on a sexual aspect and IMHO we can and should take every
opportunity to assure the uninformed that the nudity = sex equation is
wrong.

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Some of you may say "don't try to dissociate nudity from sex, lets get
society to open up and accept sex so it doesn't matter if nudity = sex
or not".  Thats a good thought, and certainly if society accepts sex
openly it will also accept nudity.  But it is my opinion that the battle
to negate the equation is much more winable than the battle to get
society to be more open and accepting towards sex.

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Some of you may say "people will always believe nudity = sex, you can't
convince people it isn't true".  To that I say we already have the proof
in the form of many public and private clothing optional and nude recreation
areas.  All we have to do is get people to open their eyes and see for them-
selves.  I think we are making progress in this area but it is also one of
the reasons we tend to get angry with nude beach users who do things that
newcomers look at and say "see, sex, nudity does = sex".

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Please, if you followup this posting clearly state your position.
Thanks.  (No, by position I don't mean '69', 'female superior', 'doggy
style', 'male superior' or anything like that.  Geez what a bunch of
perverts, you should be ashamed for even thinking that. :-))

-- 
===============================================================================
Thomas Earl Middleton
middleto@poincare.ucsd.edu			computers = sex
aka Happy Bare