Naktivism – Page 21 – Zjuzdme.org

De Delftse Hout, het voorlopige vonnis

En aldus sprak de rechter gisteren over het naaktstrand in de Delftse Hout:

“De kantonrechter in Den Haag oordeelde op dinsdag 28 januari in driekwart van de behandelde zaken ten gunste van de naaktrecreanten: ze hebben afgelopen zomer volkomen legaal naakt gerecreëerd in de Delftse Hout.
De rechter kwam met een verrassende uitspraak dat vooral het aantal geklede bezoekers in het recreatiegebied bepaalt of het strand geschikt is voor naaktrecreatie. De NFN en de recreanten zijn blij dat de rechter met het vonnis in feite aangeeft dat de gemeente Delft het naaktstrand niet zomaar kan sluiten. Of een plek geschikt is voor naaktrecreatie hangt helemaal af van de omstandigheden, en niet van een beslissing van de gemeente.” (Bron: website NFN. Volg de link voor het hele artikel.)

Het is wel een bijzonder vreemde bedoening op die manier. Als er 150 geklede mensen aanwezig zijn (inclusief kinderen) is het strand opeens niet meer geschikt voor naaktrecreatie. De bedekte meerderheid heeft het dus opeens toch weer stilzwijgend voor het zeggen. Heel vreemd. En hoe is dit te handhaven? Wordt er dagelijks een nudist van dienst aangewezen om elk half uur geklede mensen te gaan tellen?

Het is in elk geval positief dat een groot aantal bekeurden hun boete niet hoeven te betalen. Het is zeker positief dat de NFN voor de niet zo fortuinlijken waarschijnlijk in beroep gaat over hun vonnis.

Nude beach Delft and court. The first results.

The first results are in. The court has looked at the fines of the Dutch nudists from the Delft nude beach.

Ruling: the beach is not fit for naked recreation when more than 150 dressed people (including children) are present.

Most people who were fined don’t have to pay. (I don’t know how they decided on that.)

The city of Delft has announced they are going to find a better place for the nude sunlovers. Many people fear that this will be a remote, hard to reach location where there is far more opportunity for sexual harassment than happened at the present location. A number of nudists plan to appeal, as on the same morning a large number of people were treated differently for the same ‘offence’.

Mass trial for nudists in the Netherlands.

Press release NFN 22 january 2014:

Mass trial Delft touches core rights of Dutch nude recreationists.

Tuesday January 28th will see a unique fact in Dutch history. Then the court in The Hague will look at the 43 fines that have been handed to nudists in the Summer of 2013. 20 nude recreating people did not pay their fines because they think they’ve been fined unjustly in the area where they were at that time. The NFN (Dutch Federation for Nude Recreation) agrees with these people and will support the right for nude recreation in the Delftse Hout (name of area where fines were written).

Rain of fines creates unrest.

In 2013 the city of Delft decided to ban nude recreation in the Delftse Hout and fine people who were there anyway. The ruling was an attempt to reduce harassment in the area (especially in the evening). The daily checks at the nude beach led to large unrest and irritation among the visitors, so many of them stayed away. Some felt so intimidated that they decided to put on some clothes. A large group of nudists refused to to accept the ruling of the city council and let themselves be fined. All those fines are now seen by the judge in one large trial.

(Source: NFN website – original text in Dutch)

Free the Nipple – Censored in America

freethenipple

Question: What is the legal penalty and fine for a woman walking topless on the streets of New York City?

3 days in jail and $1,000
1 days in jail and $5,000
5 days in jail and $1,500

Answer: It’s a trick question, because, according to statute 245.01 per the Appeals Court of The State/City of New York, it is completely legal for a woman or a man to opt not to wear a shirt (or bra) in public. Of course, a man wearing a bra will get more stares than a woman wearing a bra (thank you, Madonna) and a woman going bare-breasted will draw more stares than a man doing the same, but why? Why is a woman’s nipple so controversial? I decided to tackle this subject with my new film — Free the Nipple.

http://vimeo.com/80495306

More, if you want, at Why I Made a Film Called Free the Nipple and Why I’m Being Censored in America.

Naked Online [is] OK. The NOOK.

The nook? What’s the nook? No, this is not an advertisement for a specific e-reader. If you’re looking for that, Google again.

This post is about a very nice place on the interwebz called The NOOK. A place that nudists and naturists can join, where they can be themselves and don’t have to be afraid to be stared or laughed at. The NOOK (which stands for Naked Online is OK) has members of all ways of life, and it’s safe to discuss all facets of the naked life. This does not mean you can throw anything into a discussion, there are some rules and guidelines. (Have a look at the NOOK’s Mission statement.) Here is the first part of it:

The Nook is provided as a safe place for people to post Naked and Active content, images and text, to discuss these issues, and how they work, or not, in our modern society. In part, the site is a counter-reaction to the highly succesful, but reactionary, social networking monolith known as Facebook which, with it’s judgemental, hypocritical and puritanical, censorship rules, imposes a stringent sexual code of conduct on it’s membership. The Nook aims to be a decent alternative, by definition non-PC (not politically correct), social networking site.

There is more, hit this link for the page with the whole mission statement, but this section described The Nook very well.

Note that you can’t always be 100% safe 100% of the time – there are always people who come in and start making trouble of kinds. Luckily the NOOK management (owner and moderators) are on patrol frequently to keep these occurrences to a minimum.

Seen enough? Curious? Ready to take the plunge?

(The image will take you there when you click it.)

Nudism in fiction. Do we need more of it?

After writing “Naked Crow”, an urban fantasy that involves naturism I’m thinking about a science fiction that involves naturism.
What do you, visitors of this blog, think of that idea?

Worth pursuing or should I just forget it?

For those not familiar with “Naked Crow”, please have a look at this Smashwords page (more stores to come!).

Good on the Naked Rambler – more public nudity would be a good thing | Daisy Buchanan | Comment is free | theguardian.com

Good on the Naked Rambler reposted verbatim from ‘The Guardian’.

Good on the Naked Rambler – more public nudity would be a good thing

Stephen Gough is back in jail. Embracing his activism might just do wonders for our society’s unhealthy attitude to flesh

The 'Naked Rambler' Stephen Gough

Stephen Gough. ‘Why is it OK to hint at highly sexualised nudity all day long and then persecute a normal man for getting naked.’ Photograph: David Cheskin/PA

You’d think that a fortnight of gale force winds would have us all hunkering down in jumpers, tucking our thermal vests into our jeans and flagrantly disregarding our partners’ hostility to bedsocks. Most people might be layering up in order to maintain bodily warmth – but not the Naked Rambler.

On Monday, Stephen Gough was jailed for 16 months after he breached an asbo intended to make him cover up in public. Gough is a prominent public nudity activist and has walked the length of Britain unclothed on two occasions; his most recent trip was the subject of a BBC documentary. He has also been sentenced and imprisoned numerous times on public nudity charges.

Gough maintains that being nude in public allows him a sense of personal freedom. The British legal system maintains that Gough’s nudity is not for mass consumption. But why, in 2014, is so much money being spent on keeping his body out of sight? His court records state there is nothing disorderly about his behaviour – it’s just about, as his lawyer pointed out in the autumn, “people’s reaction” to that behaviour.

We’re continually being exposed to sexualised nudity, but it’s rare to see a middle-aged man naked in public. During the day, before the watershed, we see hundreds of advertisements for gorgeous, semi-nude women moaning in ecstasy because they are enjoying their yoghurt or shampoo. Go and stand in any gym, cafe or shop with a TV on, and count the seconds until you see cleavage. For more than 40 years, the Sun newspaper has been publishing pictures of nipples that readers can gaze at over breakfast. Why is it OK to hint at highly sexualised nudity all day long and then persecute a normal man for getting naked as he goes about his business?

Gough’s critics are concerned that his presence could make vulnerable people feel disturbed and threatened. There’s nothing disturbing about nudity itself, just the meaning that people ascribe to it. Yet when nudity isn’t being used as sexual semaphore, it’s presented as something grotesque, to frighten the observer and make the subject a symbol of ridicule. Shows such as Embarrassing Bodies and The Man With the 10 Stone Testicles have fetishised freakishness in a way that stops us recognising real bodies. I suspect that the many men and women of all ages who experience body dysmorphic disorders are not helped by this. We may be regularly exposed to representations of naked flesh but we only ever see gods and monsters.

Initially, I thought that the laws “protecting” us from Gough’s body had a wider purpose. After all, if he’s allowed to get naked, we might all start doing it, and no one wants that. But the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that the widespread adoption of naturism might solve our problem with nudity. If we stopped seeing our bodies as either a source of shame, or something to show off, we might become healthier, happier human beings. Public nudity could prove revolutionary.

Young women would grow so accustomed to seeing real bellies and bottoms that they would feel less inclined to lose weight in order to match up to imaginary images, or get industrial filler injected into their buttocks. Violent sexual crimes might become more clear cut and easier to prosecute: you couldn’t make a big deal of a victim wearing a short skirt if no one was wearing any clothes at all. And there would be no need for Embarrassing Bodies, because we’d tackle our health issues frankly and fast, knowing there’s nothing to be ashamed about.

Gough has not chosen to go nude in order to invite us to comment on his body. He is reminding us that we are all naked under our clothes, and that no individual’s body should warrant particularly close inspection – but our collective attitude to nudity certainly does.

Naked Crow. The book is available.

It’s taken a while, but my book “Naked Crow” is finally published. For now it’s on Smashwords only (they have every format for every e-reader). If you follow this link you’re taken to the page where it’s available.

Alternatively, when you have a smartphone, you can simply scan this QR-code:

As soon as it’s available on Apple iTunes, B&N, Amazon (as a Kindle e-book, if you want to wait for that) and as a paperback, I’ll post that news here as well. This however takes a bit longer.

Wordt jouw nieuw jaar een naakt jaar?

Goede morgen.

Eerst wens ik iedereen het beste voor het nieuwe jaar. Dat is eigenlijk een vast gegeven maar moet wel even gezegd worden.

Hoe zie jij je nieuwe jaar? Als je niet al een nudist of naturist bent, ga je erover denken? Ik weet dat het voor veel mensen tegen de ideeën van ontspanning en zelfs ‘normaal’ indruist, maar wat is normaal? Toen auto’s net uitgevonden waren vonden veel mensen ze onveilig om te gebruiken, dat paard en wagen veel verstandiger was. En nu? Overal waar je kijkt zie je auto’s.

Misschien denk je dat naturisme iets van de laatste jaren is. Volgens de Engelse Wikilpedia:

De vroegst bekende naturistenclub in de ‘westerse’ betekenis van het woord werd in 1891 in Brits India gesticht. De ‘Fellowship of the Naked Trust’ werd gestart door Charles Edward Gordon Crawford.

Oudere referenties staan onder andere op deze website:

In het oude Griekenland in de 8e eeuw voor de jaartelling werd sport beoefend door naakte mannen, en tijdens het Romeinse rijk, tussen de 2e en 4e eeuw, baadde iedereen naakt in publieke badhuizen, zonder scheiding van geslacht of sociale klasse.

Dat is heel wat langer geleden dan de uitvinding van de auto, en toch zijn auto’s helemaal geaccepteerd terwijl het naakte lichaam (waar iedereen mee wordt geboren) dat beslist niet is.Of beter: niet meer is. Ik vind dat best vreemd.

Will your new year be a nude year?

Good morning.

I wish everyone the best for the new year. That’s a given but never should be left unsaid.

How do you see your new year? If you’re a not nudist or naturist already, will you consider it? I know it’s against the ideas of relaxation and even those of ‘normality’ of many people, but what is normal? When cars were invented not many people thought they’d be safe to use, that there was no better means of transport than a horse-drawn cart. And look at the world now: hundreds, thousands, millions of cars. Maybe you think that naturism is a fad from the last few years: it isn’t. According to Wikilpedia:

The earliest known naturist club in the “western” sense of the word was established in British India in 1891. The ‘Fellowship of the Naked Trust’ was founded by Charles Edward Gordon Crawford.

Even older references can be found on this website:

In ancient Greece in the eighth century BC, the sports were practiced by stripped men, and during the Roman Empire, from centuries II to IV, everyone, without distinction of sex or social class, used to bath nude in public baths.

That’s much longer ago than the invention of cars, and yet cars are accepted and the naked body, with whom everyone is born, still isn’t. Or rather: isn’t any more. It’s really very strange.