Steve and I have received a slightly worrying trend of messages in recent weeks from members of ANW and elsewhere that suggest that there is a growing need for people to distance themselves from naturism in the 3D world and also on the internet. 

We debated this issue for a while on this weeks Virtual Meet and may well return to it in a further chat. 

RnR have reacted with typical speed and relevance with this Member Blog covering some of the debate and issues as they see them and it is well worth a read: Take Me To The RnR Member Blog


They also mention a Forum Topic that catches some of the problem, though this topic is mainly about those starting out in naturism and the obstacles that they currently face or remember facing at the time. So you may remember your obstacle as being more about your personal issues with your body. However, there is a relevance that may be worth checking through and adding your thoughts and memories: Take Me To the Forum Topic

In this topic I would like us to talk about existing naturists who having got over any original obstacles and enjoyed naturism for a period of time who are now rejecting naturism due to new and evolving fears. 

We may all ponder the idea that there is nothing to fear but fear itself, but is that any comfort to those who find themselves in that situation? Fear real or imagined is not a very positive thing to live with and maybe for some it is simpler to walk away from a part of their life that is supposed to give them joy and not trouble and concern. Naturism is about comfort - both inside and outside.

Steve and I pander to the fears of our sons - particularly the older - his fear about his peers finding out about our family naturism is a valid fear. He has for sometime been "abused" (for want of a better word) by other youngsters due to false, silly accusations. The battle ground of the school yard is not an easy one and as the fight gets taken into various internet war zones it is much tougher than ever before. Lies can do enough damage, imagine the harm done by reality. No matter how well we all know naturism, we also know that it is misunderstood by many, and children cannot be expected to be more grown up than adults about these things. 

So maybe these fears are becoming wider spread and moving into the grown up 3D world and supported by the world of social media. When someone says "I need to not be a naturist to protect my job." It may seem over the top but in this world where we all are monitored where ever we go it is not hard to see how paranoia breeds. There are cameras on the street, our phone calls and credit card payments capture our communications and spending trends, and almost all movement on the internet now involves accepting cookies. Facebook knows that you looked at a washing machine on Amazon and they will try and link you to that same washing machine on "BuyWashingMachines.com." When we visit websites for Naturism in The News, for example, we find the use of the sites so awful, attempting to read an article that is punctuated by dozens of adverts is very distracting and unpleasant. ANW is becoming a rarity in that respect. 

Yes nudity is very acceptable on the internet but there is always a debate. The internet has been waging war on porn for the last few years and naturism is stuck in the middle of no-mans land. Naturists tend to be rather pleasant and mild mannered people who simply do not want the grief. We chose naturism for positive reasons and all the negativity surrounding nudity will surely take its toll. 

Added to that, where is the support? I have seen some national bodies actually encourage a fear with a want to encourage naturism within the safety of their "charging zones." They like the idea of people being worried about free naturism on a beach and encourage naturists to hide behind fences - however it instils a fear, a feeling of imprisonment, and a feeling of the outside world hates us, we will even feel that we may be actually doing something wrong. Gosh even trips to beaches now are organised with a suggestion that nudity on beaches is a controlled and owned aspect of naturism. Charity skinny dips may raise money but they also raise that question of: is it safe and OK to simply visit a beach by yourself. The fact that it seems that not only many events and venues but also many charity based swims and walks are rejecting children (and therefore families) does nothing to encourage an idea that naturism is safe and suitable for all. 

Yes you can ride through a city naked or go for a swim or a run. But you do it to raise awareness of pollution, or raise money for cancer - good ideas but is there not a danger of forgetting that we do not need an excuse to enjoy being without clothes. Oh it is alright to be naked because we are saving whales. 

It is also true that celebrities are rejecting clothing, rejecting the bra, enjoying a skinny dip, embracing body positivity. But don't we just think: Well they are celebrities they have a different set of rules. They live for attention. They do not live in the real world. When an actress chooses to wear a see through top on the red carpet it gets her picture in the people. When a mother does that in a supermarket it just results in stares. One is sadly seen by many as selling her body for the media while the other selling her soul to the devil. The growth of nudity on the internet is surely making it worse. When we know teenagers are making money showing their bodies to dirty old men on internet apps then the knee jerk reaction is to mistrust nudity more and judge those that get naked more harshly. TV shows like Naked Education may help raise some questions but mostly people see it as a way of raising viewing figures and most viewers know that they are watching for a bit of a giggle. Though hopefully they will learn something in the process - unless they just fast forward to the naked parts.

Anyway, as I say we will be writing something more about this ourselves but in the meantime what are your thoughts. 

Does being a part of ANW, a member of a national body, promoting naturism on social media, visiting a club or event and even going to a beach place some people in a situation where they may fear the outcome of others finding out, and not just people they know, but the internet itself and the constant suggestions that society needs to clean up its act. Does the misuse of nudity on the internet, the lack of promoting of naturism being family friendly and the feeling that we are constantly watched and judged make naturism an unappealing hornets nest? Is it simpler for some to say: Look I love the idea of naturism but I fear the misuse and the misunderstanding that surrounds it so I am better off leaving it alone. 

What do you think? Where do we go from here? Are these worries completely unfounded? If they are, how do we stop people form worrying? 

One thing we do on ANW is help people feel safe and secure. No information is sold or available for third parties to use, profiles are there purely for connecting reasons, we don't have cookie style adverts popping up because we are part of some sort of monitoring of your internet presence. We want the time you spend on ANW to feel like it is yours alone, and when you share, you share with other naturists and friends on ANW free from all the judgement and sexuality within the rest of the internet. 

The internet claims to have been waging war on porn but I see no real evidence of it. I have virtually given up on facebook over the last couple of years but some groups only have a facebook page and no website. Reciently I have joined one page belonging to a naturist walking group and ' liked' other naturist things. I have started recieving the usual barrage of other stuff that facebook incorrectly thinks I might like , I assume because of their algorithm.

It really is difficult to believe that on a social media platform where the female nipple is banned , that pictures of young women with rather uncommon proportions wearing clothing several sizes too small for them and the message " follow me for more" are acceptable. I can see no other reason for recieving this sort of stuff , other than the fact that facebook struggles to differentiate betwen nudity and porn. Does it really want to ? I am sure it will live with upsetting a few genuine naturists ...

Online naturism ( with the exception of ANW , of course) really is a minefield in my experience. I joined another naturist site before I discovered ANW and very quickly realised that it wasnt what I was looking for. I wonder how many potential naturists have been put off by similar experiences ? Not simply to decide its not for them because of what they have been exposed ( no pun intended) to , but to actually go on to believe that naturism is indeed , all about sex.

If the internet does clean up its act , which I seriously doubt will ever happen , I think there is a danger that genuine naturist groups might get more restrictions placed on them because the hard of thinking cannot separate us from the legions of folks showing their bits online for money. Cyberspace is a bit of a two edged sword for naturism. There aren't that many of us . I would have much less interaction with other naturists without it and I expect others are in the same situation. However , finding a path through the dodgy bits is not always a straightforward process.

 

A lot of truth there Matt. 

Do feel free to recommend ANW to people you come across - we would love to home the walking group you mentioned for example and we would help promote them on Newsletters and on social media, and the ability to run a group is a simple aspect of ANW membership and joining the groups is free to all once going through the free verification service. I do wonder how such groups function on places like Facebook, where there are false profiles galore. Who knows who may turn up at a meeting? 

It does worry us how many people are put off naturism through bad press and misinformation. It also worries us how many others are maybe attracted to it for the wrong reasons due to this same misinformation. 

We feel that the current trend in the UK to push naturism towards adults only, segregate genders, hold drag artist entertainment evenings (why would naturism want evening all about people dressed up as people they are not - isn't that the complete opposite to naturism?), and fear mentioning children is a very bad course of action. Surely it is totally backing all the misinformation out there? Anyone who believes that naturism is about swinging is going to see the late night naked discos as 100% confirmation. There is nothing wrong with holding discos, but if that is the prominent way naturism is presented it is bound to cause confusion. 

I was on Facebook the other day promoting a new Group on ANW and there was a man who actively promotes naturism sharing images of a woolen penis warmer that exposes the end of the penis and saying he has bought one for winter. To anyone new to naturism it just makes us appear somewhere between saucy and perverse.    

There has been talk about different laws that protect people using the internet and on the internet involving intimate images. Revenge nudes, upskirting and down blousing, fake nudes and other nasty aspects of social sharing and internet porn that does damage to the internet, does damage to naturism and really does damage to tyhe whole of society. 

The UK has been looking at and introdudcuing new laws in recent years. What do you think about what has been donbe so far and do you think more needs to be done? 

How about internet laws on intimate images in your country? Do share links to news items relating to this issue.   

How does any of this reflect on naturism - does it help to protect us or does it just make people more afraid of sharing on the internet?

The so called war on porn appears to be the same as the war on drugs and terrorism, all of them have increased, so maybe we should have a war on nudity as it may just exapand the ranks.

All of this is just more fakery added to the pile to appease the so called puriotans of society, but the truth is social media will not improve, because ultimately as we wrote in our last members blog, "Sex Sells" and sadly revenues are what every aspects of politics, media and social media are focused on, they want the cash and have no issue exploiting anyone to get it, and what is even sadder is we live in a world where the majority just sit back and get spoon fed all the garbage that the media feeds them.

Critical thinking is dying, and the way we see it, 1% of this world have all the momney and control 4% or the decision makers as puppets. There is 5% who are truly informed and awake, and are trying to convince the 90% to wake up, whilst fighting off the 4% who are trying to stop us. Naturists are in the 5% doing their best to show people that their misinformed and do not understand the truth of naturism, but sadly also within naturism there is a select6 group who either are in it for the money, or want to make it more sexual, so all of us have our work cur out for us.

The only way companies like Facebook would change their rules, is if none sexual Nudity became a niche market that was expanded as quickly as the lesiure industry, if that happened, they would back it and actually listen, and we fear that day may never come.

We did wait for more responses on this threrad and it is a little sad there are not more, because having written a Members blog and had some great feed back, we really wanted to get this conversation going. We will again add what we felt was a very important point to the blog and the conversation we had on the goggle meet, which was simply this.

If a person is within the naturist life and they are really enjoying the freedom of living naked, and someone disagrees and tells them they should not do it and they stop, we would question what right does that person have to dictate to another grown adult, and why would a naturist do as they say?

It is only our opinion, but we do not believe any person should tell another how to live, and if the naturists stops because of it, we would question whether or not the naturist was indeed that, a naturist, or were they simply jumping on the band wagon and pretending? 

Conversations like this one are an important aspect of being within a naturists community, and everyone will see this different, which is actually the benefit of ANW, as we can all contribute to what is the melting pot. We are looking forward to more comments, and we will as they come, keep within the conversation. Thanks Anna and Matt for getting it started.