After all these years somebody suddenly explained to me why children must be protected from seeing nudity: it might give them sexual ideas!
Wow. Yes. If you accept as a given that seeing nudity will make anybody think sex. And if you accept as a given that sex is evil. And if you accept as a given that children are always asexual, and therefore innocent. Then it's obvious. Seeing nudity will corrupt them. (Well, I guess you also have to accept as given that an asexual being can become a sexual one by casual visual input.)
In fact it's so obvious that nobody ever explained it! And, to me at least, the idea is so alien that I never understood it! So there we stand on separate little islands, totally foreign to each other.
Oh yeah. When I'm at the sauna seeing all those naked old ladies, all I think about is SEX. Obviously. Duh.
ReplyDelete...and therefore innocent...
ReplyDeleteSo being sexual makes you nocent?
Sorry, what is nocent?
This "somebody" is getting a lot of free space here for his/her nonsense.
He wouldn't, except he is so dominant almost everywhere. Give me a list of countries where you can walk naked in public without getting picked up by the police. Not even in Denmark can you do that for sure.
ReplyDeleteThat's a lot of "if"s to accept.
ReplyDeleteSo much for Freud explaining that:
a- Children ARE sexual beings, in their own childish way and since birth, because like everything else sexuality grows up over the years.
b- Repression of that sexual side, or of sexuality itself, by messed-up adults, is typically what gives people severe issues about sex later on when they grow up.
Anon,
Thanks for sharing that. Now it's back to intensive therapy for me. Ugh.
;-)
Eo,
I could give you a list of places where one COULD freely walk naked in public. But the missionaries got there, and ruined all that GENUINE innocence.
Like the Zo'e, who fortunately saw the Brazilian Govt kick the missionaries out, with a new policy of strictly preserving all which still can be saved of the indigenous cultures.
I know I didn't connect nudity with sex for a long time. And even when I did, it was only because that's what all of society was teaching me at the time. Hell, I'm pretty sure that's the only reason people connect the two.
ReplyDeleteGive me a list of countries where you can walk naked in public without getting picked up by the police.
ReplyDeleteLuckily no such place exists, and hopefully never will. If everyone looked like a model, I'd be all for it, but few people do. That's why models get paid so much.
Jes,
ReplyDeleteWhat, you mean not ALL animals connect the two? Surely you jes, I mean, jest. ;-)
Joe,
As I said in previous comment (don't tell me THAT one was too long to read ;-), The Zo'e, for one, are a people who live naked. Well, except they all wear that wooden piece in their lower lip, plus the women wear a crown of down in their hair, while the men always have a sheath made of a rolled leaf around their penis, so technically it's not complete nakedness.
They only wear "clothes", temporarily, for the funerary ceremonies. Clothes from all-natural materials, which are then cast away in the forest after "absrbing all the negative vibes of the bad spirits surrounding death", so to speak. "Goodbye, and good riddance!"
And guess what? Sure, none of them look like an anorexic Naomi Campbell, or an effeminate male model (and I'm not complaining). But it so happens that most of them are very nice-looking: they're healthy, and slim, almost athletic. In spite of the fact that they spend little time working. It's just that they don't stuff their faces with indistrial junk food, they only eat when they're hungry. Most of them are just a pleasure to behold. Even the old ones are far better physically than the vast majority of elderly folks whose bodies I've seen in several years of hospital training. I saw ONE woman among them who was markedly fat. She'd be the tribe's cook, incidentally. :-)
The Zo'e have very healthy teeth, and their constant happy, carefree spirit reminds me of a certain web site featuring beautiful nude women. Naked, yes, but with as much dignity in everyday life and attitudes as greek statues come to life. Other fortunately isolated tribes, around the world, live naked too, and are seldom unpleasant to see. At worst, they may be skinny because of food scarcity. (Heck, the Zo'e women don't even have sagging breasts!)
Healthy is beautiful, period.
And the naked human body is natural. It is only because we urbanized humans receive a VERY artificial social upbringing, and something not unlike life-long brainwashing, that our own naked bodies feel so "unnatural" to us. So, of course, that we're not used to, and which we're accustomed (programmed?) to view as shameful, bizarre, intrinsically disgusting, we'll be embarrassed at when we see it.
But it is us who are abnormal. Even the three Monotheisms agree on this: the same God whom they all rely on for moral reference created humans as nude as they were innocent[Gen 2:25]. Then humans moronically got their minds messed up and invented loincloths[Gen 3:7]. And finally, God sighed and gave them something far more comfy on the skin than fig leaves[Gen 3:21].
And, as a concluding note, the Biblical expression "uncovering the nudity", which is later used as something often very frowned upon by God, is a notorious euphemism for sex. Until quite recently, Christians of all ages -including converted adults- were baptized naked. In front of an assembly.
If this Allah-forsaken country wasn't so puritan, I'd seize the first possible opportunity to try the Naturist lifestyle, and un-train my mind to all the thing I was taught which I know are false and silly about the human body. I mean, FINISH untraining my mind, because you don't graduate as a doctor and retain an absolute squeamishness about the view of certain body parts. (And believe me, I've seen things none of you will ever witness. Bodies terribly mutilated by disease. Or anatomical part so intimate, only a surgeon will ever get to see them.) Check my Blogger profile: "Religion: respect". Nakedness is nothing that I would intrinsically disrespect. While I've seen some "upstanding citizens", very pious, proper and clothed, do some things which morally I can only describe as nauseatingly obscene. Shame, guilt, lewdness, ugliness... it's all in the mind, in the soul. Are any of you ever ashamed of being naked for a bath? I guess not. Now, how many of you would feel okay about a person undressing you with their eyes like you were a piece of sexual meat?
The body doesn't sin. The mind, the heart, the soul, this is where evil lies. Exclusively.
"Not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, this defileth a man.
Do not ye yet understand, that whatsoever entereth in at the mouth goeth into the belly, and is cast out into the draught?
But those things which proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man." [Matt 15:11, 17-18]
Intrinsically, even the sight of two people having sex can naver shock me. Not even if they're old, fat, gay or amputees. In itself? It's perfectly okay, and God created it. This is why explicit porn doesn't bother me, only its tastelessness does.
Now, infidelity, or rape, THAT is bad. For reasons totally unrelated to sex.
My own, self-deducted, and very firm religious belief, is this: "The only sin is absence of love."
Now, how many of you would feel okay about a person undressing you with their eyes like you were a piece of sexual meat?
ReplyDeleteAre you kidding? I love that! At least since I discovered the Elixer of Life and managed to get the wrinkles out of my birthday suit.
Yeah... occasionally in my life, a woman or a girl has regarded me with unbridled lust or even whistled or such. I always love it. It seems to me that if such makes you feel hostility, then you're messed up.
ReplyDeleteElixir of Life? Sounds more pleasant than direct ironing...
ReplyDeleteI think few people mind being desired, and even just lusted for. I'm sure not one of those sad prudes. What I meant, is the clear attitude of coveting, someone who looks at you like you're not a person, just some thing they can buy, confiscate or commander at will, no matter if you find them repulsive. People who identify desiring with owning, thinking it somehow gives them rights over others.
Especially considering that most such people are indeed repulsive the second you get to know them. Anti-erotic ugly personalities.
Usually very poor lovers as well, 'cause they're so selfish.