Barnard Rabenold

I think this issue needs to be addressed, because it is a destabilizing hypocrisy in the nudist community. The nudist community has largely adopted an ideology of acceptance and equality for all. This issue regards the commonly practiced single male discrimination policy, which bars men from attending nudist resorts if they are not accompanied by a woman. The policy often remains against men who are married, but not accompanied by their wives. Apparently to the resort, "my wife is not a nudist" is not a valid excuse for coming alone. This issue came up on Facebook when someone advertised a place where the "SMD" policy was practiced, and I thought it would be appropriate as a Naktiv siteblog:

Many people don't understand why a single male discrimination policy is counterproductive to stabilizing the nudist community.

Nudists simply need to accept the fact that nudism is a male majority community. Eventually when society better matures, more females will join.

But discriminating against single males will only shrink the nudist community, which in turn will create a snowball effect, because the smaller a minority is, the more of a spectacle they become as individuals.

Video-gaming used to be a male majority community. But the male gamers weren't concerned about the gender of their co-players. Eventually, women got curious about gaming, and they too joined in.

But the problem that needs to be addressed with single male discrimination is that it pressures single males to convert women to nudism. What if a man is a gay nudist? Then what does he do?

Sometimes nudism gets a bad rap because non nudists perceive us as pushing our lifestyle on to them. This is exactly what the single male discrimination policy pressures males to do, just to be able to join the club and embrace their nudist dignity.

There is a huge quantity of single males! To pressure them to try to convert non nudist women will only bring negative attention to us.

Not only that, but the single male discrimination policy focuses too much on the community as a whole and neglects the actual individual. This adds up and eventually affects the community. How is a single male to feel about himself or nudism in general if he is turned away just for being single. It implies that males are not people, but an excess quantity.

A very inconsiderate policy, indeed!

My first nudist experience was when my parents surprised me with a trip to Sandy Hook beach in New Jersey. It was awkward at first, but open minded as I am, I quickly got over it and embraced the waters.
At first, I went into the water to hide, but realized that I enjoyed the liberating feel of it. At that point, I forgot that I wasn’t wearing anything and just enjoyed the lack of confinement.

I then realized the fallacy of prudes. Living in their clothes all the time, they don’t understand the purity of nudism because they don’t know any different. I felt pity and thought, how sad for one to go their whole life, confined in their clothes, just because they had fear instilled in them as a children. Words can never awaken them, as one must have an open mind to understand that there is more to it then what you see.

As I got out of the water, I realized that it really didn’t make sense to be uncomfortable. There were some old people, but I never looked directly at them. In fact, despite being around so many naked people, I never saw any genitals. The idea of zeroing in on that just seemed petty and immature.

After that day, I have actually been absent from the nudist lifestyle. But somewhere around 4 or 6 years ago, I was visiting a neighbor. They had a toddler who went into the bedroom. Spontaneously and unexpectedly, she came rushing out completely nude, laughing and giggling.

That made me wonder if nudism was actually natural as opposed to being some unique fad. If I remember correctly, her mother scolded her and quickly made her put her clothes on. That’s when it dawned on me. The psychological dependency on clothes and censorship is instilled through fear by parents.

Sometime after that, I started doing research and what I found was a surprise. I’ve learned that nudist communities exist in my country and all over the world. And this is nothing new. This has existed since at least the dawn of recorded history. But the great tragedy is that these people long for their freedom, but are oppressed by an ignorant majority with unrealistic prudish perceptions.

From my experience in embracing nudism for the first time, we never notice the uncomfortable, confining sensation of wearing clothes until we learn to cast aside the fear that was instilled in us as children. Once we do, we feel free at last, as if we've been suffocating all this time.

Since then, I’ve become an activist, striving to promote tolerance for these peoples freedom and encourage other nudist activists to help me educate the public on this injustice.

But what I’ve found was that people are firmly locked in their insecurities, never to challenge what they have been instilled with logic and reason. And another tragedy is that nudists are a submissive group, too afraid to stand up for their rights, hiding like criminals.

There are many nudists, but activists are few and far between. The only nudist that I know of who stands up for this community's rights as bravely as I do are Stephen Gough and The Gypsy Ms. Taub. No, they are even more daring then I. But alone, we are powerless in educating the public against the false impressions the majority holds on nudism. The rest of the community agrees with us, but does not join us out of fear of discrimination.