Author: Paul

Promoting the clothes-free lifestyle.

Censorship, or: You’re not North Korea

Censorship.

Censorship, as we know, is a stupid thing. Depriving people from knowledge is bad. Acting as if something we all know isn’t there is stupid.

We’ve all seen this crap. Many of us encountered personally and we had accounts blocked, banned or locked away.

It’s there, whether or not they like it

All people have their dangly bits. Women’s breasts, men’s penises, flabby parts and perhaps some other stuff that’s out there. I think I listed the most important parts.

Places like most of the world, which definitely includes facebook and its branch called instagram, are famous for censoring and casting out.

Why are the people who run those place so afraid of the bits that we all have? Because they’re there, whether or not Mark Zuckerberg and various other items belonging to the human race like it.

Coffee moment

Those are actually important bits and pieces. Procreation-based bits and pieces. Without them, the human race would have been way ahead of the dodo and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Mark Z et al would be thrilled about that. Oh wait, there wouldn’t be a Mark Z, nor an et al.

Maybe you’ve heard about this:

It’s okay to be proud of your bits but you don’t have to slap them in everyone’s face.

It’s on many memes that I’ve seen with a variety in wording. I absolutely agree with it, but there is a difference between ‘slapping your genitals in someone’s face’ and pretending they’re dirty, evil, an abomination and ‘not there’.

Censored Nudity - YouTube

I’ve never seen people who walk around like this. Real people have real bodies, no black banners over their ‘naughty bits’. Which is a stupid name for them, because that loads them up with references to the sex industry.

As if naturists, here we go again, are all wannabe porn stars.

They’re human bits. And no amount of censorship will make them go away. Again, we all know they’re there. Why on Earth do people want to convince us they shouldn’t be seen…

Being naked. It’s like reading a book.

(and the textile world doesn’t get it.)

Paul reading
Reading,. Naked.

Maybe this subject requires a tad of elaboration.

Why do you read a book?

Right. Because you want to read it. Perfect reason.

And why are you naked?

Exactly. Because you want to be naked. Again: perfect reason.

I think that completes this blog post, doesn’t it?

Not entirely, because, as usual, there is more to this than the ‘naked’ eye can see. (Interesting phrase, that naked eye.)

Woman reading naked

I am convinced that one of the major misconceptions of the textilised humans around us is that they aren’t aware of the simple fact that we want to be naked for ourselves. It’s not for showing off or any other outgoing purpose – most of the time.

In fact, let’s be honest, most of us aren’t the model that would be ‘shown off’ in the textile world. They have different measures and standards, and they hide their own nature beneath their layers of fabric.

The subject title of this post suddenly came to me. It’s such a simple truth that I’m surprised I hadn’t thought of it sooner. We eat and drink because we want to. We read because we want to. And we ‘naked’ because we want to.

There are many things that we do because we want to do them, and in general most people have the same wants, cravings and needs. Books being one of them. Put in that light, there might be a way to make the textile world understand us, provided they want to listen. Because many minds are made up, set in stone and locked behind the cast-iron doors, courtesy of their peers and leaders.

Let our fight never dwindle. Each person convinced that we’re not the loonies is a win. Each person who finally sees that wearing clothes when they’re not needed is silly, is a big win.

Let’s stay naked. It’s good. I could write a book about that…

Naturism away from nature

Yes. That sounds weird. Still, we do it. Maybe not all of us, but many. I’m convinced of that.

nude, having coffee

When we’re inside, out of our clothes, we’re still practising naturism. In the wintertime that’s usually the way I manifest the lifestyle, anyway. I know there are people who are braver than I am, and they go out into the cold no matter what.

My idea for that is: “Go ahead, have your fun while I have mine.”

If nature chases us inside, there’s no harm in saying you’re in your naturist attire when you’re naked. Being inside where it’s warm is in our ‘nature’, right?

I find it interesting to see how flexible ‘naturism’ is as a term and way of life. It can mean you want/need to be outside, in nature, but it can also be you’re in a natural (naked) state.

Of course, there are those who claim that, once you’re naked inside, you’re a nudist, not a naturist, but that’s a word-feud that will rage on as long as there are naked people, I’m sure, so I’m not going there.

I, for one, am happy with this arrangement. Especially since there is no one around that could give me any cr@p about being naked. My neighbours can’t see me so that’s fine. I’m on the 4th floor (5th for Americans 😀 ) , so people in the street aren’t bothered either.

How away from nature can you take your naturism?

The naturist library

The library

You may have visited the naturist library page already. It’s a big, fat list of naturist books in a lot of genres. I had a quick look for you. 12 genres. There should be something in it for everyone.

How did this start?

Basically I started this for myself as I was getting tired of running over all the book stores online to find decent naturist fiction. Most of was erotica or porn, and it was nearly impossible to find the worthy gems in there.

I knew there were books. Good books. I had read them. As the list grew, I had this idea to put them online. I was proud to see that first list of about 50 or 60 books up there on this website, and people started helping me by sending titles and references.

Reading is good for the soul. Being naked is as well. Why not combine the two?

The work

At times it takes a bit of time for a new book to ‘come online’ in the library. It’s not a fully automated process. Some is, but most of it is manual because the site is hosted on a WordPress base.

My source is a spreadsheet.

It’s a very convenient way to keep things in order, and I wrote a few sorting macros to make the exports from there more convenient. There are 2 exports, 1 sorted on Genre/Series and 1 on author.

After downloading those, I run a script and a program I wrote, that together convert those exported text-files into handy dandy HTML files. I wrote those programs because I’m too lazy to code and link and x-ref (by now) over 170 books by hand. It’s also a bit too time-consuming. 😉

With that part done, I load the 2 files into an editor (snippet here on the left, doesn’t that look cool? 😀 ) and I log into the site, where I update the HTML code for the actual sets of books on each page; the main library page sorted by Genre and the one sorted by Author. This might not sound like a lot of work (it’s ‘only’ 15 minutes) but it’s not something I want to do for each new book.

Before a new book is in there

Because that’s not all the work. When a kind soul sends me a message to tell me there’s a great naturist book out by Smarty Johnson, that’s not exactly enough to add to the library. I go online, google Smarty Johnson, run into a thousand links of use tire dealers called Smarty Johnson and finally locate 2 of them on Amazon. 1 wrote a book on selling used tires, and 1 wrote, indeed, a book on naturism and its relation to, you guessed it, used tires. Yay, that means I found the link on amazon. But the book might also be on Barnes and Noble. And Kobo. And Apple. And perhaps some obscure other place. So there I go to search as well, often without a result as most people don’t seem to know there are books sold outside Amazon. Of course then I also investigate the actual book. Is this real naturism? Is it naturism enough? There’s always this difficult fine line, so I may ask someone to have a look as well. And if then the book passes the ballot, I’ll add the book to the library sheet.

Trust me, that takes longer than 15 minutes per book. Which is fine. That keeps the quality of the books high.

It’s a good source.

That brings tweets like this to life – and that is what the library is meant to do. It’s meant to help you find books about and dealing with our lifestyle.

Reading naked in the park
Reading naked in a park

So keep reading, people. And let me know if you find a good book that belongs in the library!