Nudity is sometimes used as a tactic during a protest to attract media and public attention to a cause, and sometimes promotion of public nudity is itself the objective of a nude protest. [1] The practice was first documented in the 1650s with Quakers "naked as a sign" practice. [2] Later the tactic was used by svobodniki in Canada in 1903, and photographs of their nude protests have been published. The tactic has been used by other groups later in the century, especially after the 1960s. Like public nudity in general, the cultural and legal acceptance of nudity as a tactic in protest also varies around the world. Some opponents of any public nudity claim that it is indecent, especially when it can be viewed by children; while others argue that it is a legitimate form of expression covered by the right to free speech.
Even in places where public nudity is tolerated, it is still unexpected enough that its use by activists as a deliberate tactic is often successful in attracting publicity from the media. For example, on July 19, 2020, a young woman wearing only a face mask and stocking cap, later dubbed "Naked Athena" by reporters, confronted police in Portland, Oregon, during George Floyd protests. Despite the deployment of pepper balls and tear gas, she posed for police for several minutes before they withdrew. Photographs of her action went viral. [3]
Some nude activism is not to promote a particular cause, but rather to promote public nudity itself, or to change community perceptions of the naked human body, or as an expression of a personal desire to be nude in public.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has used nudity to draw attention to its anti-fur campaign. [4] Between 1992 and 2020, PETA ran their "I'd rather go naked than wear fur" campaign featuring celebrities, actors and models. In 2020, PETA discontinued the campaign after a majority of fashion houses and high street stores stopped using fur. [5]
On 29 June 2016, Cambridge academic, Victoria Bateman walked into a meeting of the Faculty of Economics while naked in protest against the results of the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. She had written on her breasts and stomach "Brexit leaves Britain naked". [6]
Two "Topless Disturbance" protests took place on Canada's Parliament Hill against the proposed (and then finalized) Canada-US Free Trade Agreement, in 1987 and 1988.[ citation needed ]
Women in the Amuru district of Uganda protested about their loss of land for farming. [7]
Groups used nudity to protest the Iraq War. Groups using their bodies to form words and symbols to convey their message included Baring Witness. [8]
In some parts of Africa, women have used stripping naked on purpose as a curse, [9] both historically, and in modern times. The idea is that women give life and they can take it away. The curse initiates an extreme form of ostracism, which anthropologist Terisa Turner has likened to "social execution". The curse extends to foreign men as well, and is believed to cause impotence, madness or other similar harm. [10] The threat has been used successfully in mass protests against the petroleum industry in Nigeria, [11] by Leymah Gbowee and Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace during the Second Liberian Civil War, [12] [13] and against President Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivory Coast. [14] In 2002 in Nigeria, members of the Niger Delta Women for Justice occupied a platform for oil extraction run by ChevronTexaco in order to protest against negative consequences of oil extraction and missing labor rights. When the military arrived to remove the protestors, the women threatened the soldiers to naked curse them. The soldiers did not touch the women. [15]
A group of about 16 women bared their buttocks and stormed into the offices of the African National Congress (ANC) in Tshwane. The women were protesting against the outcome of an ANC Tshwane branch general meeting. The women claimed bouncers, armed with pangas and firearms, stormed the meeting and stopped them from participating in the voting process to elect the new branch committee. [16]
To demand fuller implementation of the United States legislation Title IX, the 1976 Yale University women's rowing team held a naked protest. Pointing attention to their inadequate training facilities were more than a dozen team members, including Christine Ernst, Anne Warner and Ginny Gilder. [17] [18] [19] [20] [21]
In November 2011, a transgender woman from Morristown, Tennessee was arrested and jailed for 21 days for indecent exposure after removing her top in the parking lot of her local department of motor vehicles after they refused to alter the gender designation on her driver's license from male to female. This was despite the fact that the U.S. federal government Social Security office already had done so. As it is legal for a man to go topless in public and since the Tennessee Department of Public Safety refused to recognise her as female, [22] Ms. Jones decided to protest her treatment by going topless, stating "if I was a male, I had the right to, when I stepped out the door, take off my shirt... It's not right for the state to ask me to be both male and female. A choice needs to be made. They cannot hold me to both standards." [23]
In June 2017, more than 100 women stripped naked in front of the president's palace, Casa Rosada, in Buenos Aires, Argentina to protest against violence against women. [24]
Following the Arab Spring in the early 2010s, women in Islamic counties made personal protests opposing the restrictions on their freedom by posting nude photographs of themselves on the internet. Aliaa Magda Elmahdy an Egyptian and Amina Tyler from Tunisia fled to Europe to escape legal and religious threats.
On 8 February 2017, artist Rick Gibson walked naked in front of the Vancouver Law Courts in the middle of winter to protest Canada's ban of genetic engineering of the human genome. He walked nude in downtown Vancouver for 11 minutes, 45.75 seconds in a light rain and a temperature of 7 °C (45 °F). [25] [26]
Not all people who engage in public nudity see themselves as nudists or naturists or belong to traditional naturist or nudist organizations. Several activists, such as Vincent Bethell, claim that associations with naturism or nudism are unnecessary. Others will point out that many people who participate in events such as clothing-optional bike rides or visit clothing-optional beaches do so casually and without association or formal affiliation to groups or movements. Activist Daniel Johnson believes that labels and affiliations overly complicate a relatively simple phenomenon, alienate others from a fear of over-commitment or undesirable stereotypes, and thus get in the way of integrating nudity into everyday life.
World Naked Bike Ride (WNBR) is an international clothing-optional bike ride in which participants plan, meet and ride together en masse on human-powered transport (the vast majority on bicycles, and fewer on skateboards, rollerblades, roller skates) to "protest oil dependency and celebrate the power and individuality of our bodies". This represents one of the few events that combine elements that could be described as pro nudity and pro cycling (as well as environmental).
Many of the political rides have their roots from Critical Mass and are often described or categorized as a form of political protest, street theatre, party-on-wheels, streaking, public nudity and clothing-optional recreation and thus attracts a wide range of participants. Since 1996 Critical Tits has been hosting a "raucous topless bicycle joyride" on Friday afternoon at the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada. [27]
The Spanish movement, Manifestación Ciclonudista Mundial [28] has had rides predating WNBR (since 2001) and has since spread to other countries in Europe.
The protest group FEMEN (founded in 2008 in Ukraine [29] ) regularly stages topless protests against sex tourists, international marriage agencies, sexism and other social ills. [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] These protests received worldwide press coverage in 2009. [32] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] Since late 2011 FEMEN operations became not limited to Ukraine and they have demonstrated in other European countries including non-Ukrainian protesters. [29] [42] [43] FEMEN justifies its provocative methods stating "If we staged simple protests with banners, then our claims would not have been noticed".[ citation needed ] FEMEN receives small financial backing by individuals. [41] [44] [45] In January 2012, three members of the group staged a topless protest at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. [46] In October 2013 FEMEN had its largest membership in France (30 FEMEN France local activists in January 2013 [47] ). [29] In October 2012 the organization claimed it had about 40 activists in Ukraine, and another 100 who had joined their protests abroad. [48]
There are a number of groups and individuals campaigning for the right to be naked in public.
A group led by Avril X called UrbaNudismo has led several casual nudity excursions in high visibility public urban environments in Brazil as well as some Western European countries. [49]
Naktiv.net is a generic Naked Activities site. [51]
In 1969, in Denmark, 300 individuals participated in a naked "wade-in" at a Danish beach, which helped push forward a reform of public policy.[ citation needed ] It is now allowable to be naked at any public beach in Denmark with only two major exceptions: Holmsland Klit and Hennestrand. The remaining 4,700 kilometers of Danish coast are clothing-optional.
The Irish Naturism Association is the Republic of Ireland's nudist group. As of April 2018, it was "the fastest growing naturist association in Europe" with 231 members. [52]
In July 2016, Carina Fitzpatrick, a female concert-goer at the KnockanStockan music festival in County Wicklow, Ireland, was arrested for revealing her breasts at the concert in an attempt to highlight the inequality between men being able to go topless during outdoor summer events whereas women can not. [53] [54] [55] [56] The incident opened up a conversation about women's bodily autonomy and nudism in Ireland. [57] [58] [59] [60]
The short-lived Naturist Lifestyle Party in New South Wales, Australia, aimed "to bring naturism into the public eye, and to get an equitable allocation of public resources to those who support the naturist lifestyle." [64] Gerald Ganglbauer convened Free Beach Action NSW, a lobby group for naturism in New South Wales. [65]
Robbert Broekstra (now deceased) was involved in a group called "Friends of Nature". They would often go for naked excursions on public lands, sometimes in urban areas, often taking pictures. He was also involved in INIC (International Naturist Information Center). He authored the book Robbert Broekstra's Nude World [66] and his group appeared in "Naked Travels 1", by Charles MacFarland.
The Freedom to be Yourself campaign (TFTBY or FTBY) was founded in 1998 by Vincent Bethell. The group, according to Bethell is about "the right to be naked in public". Supporters of TFTBY organized several grassroots naked protests in public in London; protests also took place in Brighton, Bristol, Birmingham, Coventry, and some in the United States.
Terri Sue Webb is an activist living in Bend, Oregon, who was one of few activists in the United States active in the TFTBY campaign. She has been imprisoned and released multiple times for public nudity. On several occasions she has remained nude while incarcerated, often resulting in a much longer jail sentence. There has been quite a bit of media coverage of her activities. Daniel Johnson went nude with her in public on two occasions in 2001 and 2002.
Vincent Bethell made legal history [68] [69] in January 2001 by being the first defendant to stand trial naked in a UK court. The trial was at Southwark Crown Court London. Vincent was naked throughout this court case, and was found not guilty. [70] [71] Stephen Gough, also known as "Steve Gough" and "the naked rambler", is an activist from Eastleigh, Hampshire, famous for walking the length of Great Britain from Land's End to John o' Groats in 2003–2004 and again in 2005–2006 (that year accompanied by his girlfriend Melanie Roberts), with nothing on except boots, socks, rucksack and sometimes a hat. He has been arrested several times and put in prison in the course of his rambles. In his last walk he was only arrested twice in England, and released almost immediately, but due to the different legal system and laws in Scotland, he was arrested many more times after crossing the border and spent time in HMP Edinburgh, then moved to HMP Barlinnie Glasgow in June 2008. [72]
Richard Collins has been cycling naked through his home town of Cambridge, England for some time. He had been organizing several protests on the TFTBY Stop Segregation discussion group (no longer in existence). Collins has been arrested numerous times and released, although he was convicted of an offence under section 5, Public Order Act 1986, in Bournemouth, England, on 13 June 2011 after his nude cycling attracted complaints approximately 12 months earlier. [73] He was in the news again in 2023 when asked to leave a Wetherspoons pub. [74]
The topfreedom movement has challenged the law in a number of countries, especially in North America and in Europe, on sex equality grounds arguing that the present public indecency laws discriminate against women. The movement advocates equal rights for women to be topfree in the same circumstances that a man is permitted to be bare-chested.
The Topfree Equal Rights Association (TERA) [75] is a Canadian organization which endeavors to assist women who are having legal troubles exercising their rights to be topfree. Their website states that they serve both Canada and the United States. The organization also aims to inform and educate the public about topfreedom, and to change laws against topfreedom in North American jurisdictions. GoTopless goes further and organizes demonstrations to protest against the legal and public attitude to the inequality. In Sweden, Bara Bröst is active in advancing topfreedom, [76] [77] as is Topless Front in Denmark. [78] In France, the feminist collective Les TumulTueuses has the slogan: "My body if I want, when I want, like it is" ("Mon corps si je veux, quand je veux, tel qu'il est"). [79] [80]
Naturism is a lifestyle of practicing non-sexual social nudity in private and in public; the word also refers to the cultural movement which advocates and defends that lifestyle. Both may alternatively be called nudism. Though the two terms are broadly interchangeable, nudism emphasizes the practice of nudity, whilst naturism highlights an attitude favoring harmony with nature and respect for the environment, into which that practice is integrated. That said, naturists come from a range of philosophical and cultural backgrounds; there is no single naturist ideology.
A clothing-optional bike ride is a cycling event in which nudity is permitted or expected. There are many clothing-optional cycling events around the world. Rides may be political, recreational, artistic, or a unique combination thereof. Some are used to promote topfreedom, a social movement to accord women and girls the right to be topless in public where men and boys have that right.
Clothing laws vary considerably around the world. In most countries, there are no laws which prescribe what clothing is required to be worn. However, the community standards of clothing are set indirectly by way of prosecution of those who wear something that is not socially approved. Those people who wear insufficient clothing can be prosecuted in many countries under various offences termed indecent exposure, public indecency, nudity or other descriptions. Generally, these offences do not themselves define what is and what is not acceptable clothing to constitute the offence, and leave it to a judge to determine in each case.
Freikörperkultur (FKK) is a social and health culture that originated in the German Empire; its beginnings were historically part of the Lebensreform social movement in the late 19th century. Freikörperkultur, which translated as 'free body culture', includes both the health aspects of being naked in light, air and sun and an intention to reform life and society. It is partly identified with the culture of nudity, naturism and nudism in the sense of communal nudity of people and families in leisure time, sport and everyday life.
Christian naturism is the practise of naturism or nudism by Christians.
Social nudity is the practice of nudity in relatively public settings not restricted by gender. This occurs both in public spaces and on commercial property, such as at a naturist resort.
Nude recreation consists of recreational activities which some people engage in while nude. Historically, the ancient Olympic Games were nude events. There remain some societies in Africa, Oceania, and South America that continue to engage in everyday public activities—including sports—without clothes, while in most of the world nude activities take place in either private spaces or separate clothing optional areas in public spaces. Occasional events, such as nude bike rides, may occur in public areas where nudity is not otherwise allowed.
A nude beach, sometimes called a clothing-optional or free beach, is a beach where users are at liberty to be nude. Nude beaches usually have mixed bathing. Such beaches are usually on public lands, and any member of the public is allowed to use the facilities without membership in any movement or subscription to any personal belief. The use of the beach facilities is normally anonymous. Unlike a naturist resort or facility, there is normally no membership or vetting requirement for the use of a nude beach. The use of nude beach facilities is usually casual, not requiring pre-booking. Nude beaches may be official, unofficial, or illegal.
This timeline of social nudity shows the varying degrees of acceptance given to the naked human body by diverse cultures throughout history. The events listed here demonstrate how various societies have shifted between strict and lax clothing standards, how nudity has played a part in social movements and protest, and how the nude human body is accepted in the public sphere.
Femen is a Ukrainian radical feminist activist group whose goal is to protect women's rights. The organization became internationally known for organizing controversial topless protests against sex tourism, religious institutions, sexism, homophobia, and other social, national, and international topics. Founded in Ukraine, the group is now based in France. Femen describes its ideology as being "sextremism, atheism and feminism".
In Canada, topfreedom has primarily been an attempt to combat the interpretation of indecency laws that considered a woman's breasts to be indecent, and therefore their exhibition in public an offence. In British Columbia, it is a historical issue dating back to the 1930s and the public protests against the materialistic lifestyle held by the radical religious sect of the Freedomites, whose pacifist beliefs led to their exodus from Russia to Canada at the end of the 19th century. The Svobodniki became famous for their public nudity: primarily for their nude marches in public and the acts of arson committed also in the nude.
Felicity Jones is an American naturist who blogs pseudonymously for Young Naturists America. She is from Newton, New Jersey and is known for her activism in the nudism and feminism movements.
Inna Shevchenko is a Ukrainian feminist activist and the leader of international women's movement FEMEN, which often demonstrates topless against what they perceive as manifestations of patriarchy, especially dictatorship, religion, and the sex industry. Shevchenko has a higher profile than the other members of the group. She was the leader of the three FEMEN activists reputedly kidnapped and threatened by the Belarus KGB in 2011. She achieved attention in Ukraine by cutting with a chainsaw and then bringing down a 4-metre high Christian cross in central Kyiv in 2012.
Olexandra Shevchenko is a member of the Ukrainian radical feminist protest group FEMEN, which regularly demonstrates topless against manifestations of patriarchy, dictatorship, religion, and the sex industry.
Naturism in the United States is the practice of social nudity as a lifestyle that seeks an alternative to the majority view of American society that considers nakedness and sexuality to be taboo based upon the legacy of Puritan and Victorian attitudes. Enthusiasm for naturism began in the late 1920s with the establishment of members-only communities where naturists could gather to socialize and enjoy recreation without clothing in an environment that was no more sexual than that experienced while clothed. In later decades some groups began advocating for more general acceptance, and the opening up of public land to clothing-optional recreation.
Naturism refers to a lifestyle of practising non-sexual social nudity in private and in public, and to the cultural movement which advocates and defends that lifestyle. Both are also known as "nudism". Naturist organisations have existed in New Zealand since the 1930s. Although not a daily feature of public life, social nudity is practised in a variety of other contexts in New Zealand culture.
A naturist resort or nudist resort is an establishment that provides accommodation and other amenities for guests in a context where they are invited to practise naturism – that is, a lifestyle of non-sexual social nudity. A smaller, more rustic, or more basic naturist resort may be called a naturist camp.
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