I think gender and sexual orientation should not come into it. There is a logic that if there are 50 membership pitches at a club that many should be taken up with couples and families, it is a little like car sharing, it is good for the club to have 100 residents or more rather than 50. But it shouldn't matter if they do have some single spaces whether they are men or women, and it shouldn't matter if couples are LGBT or not. At best diversity should be allowed to develop naturally. It would be awful if people were turned away because of the colour of their skin or their disability, but similarly it wouldn't be right to hold spaces in membership, for the random chance that a black couple or a disabled couple may come along in the future to join, or given priority over others. First come, first served will eventually lead to a diverse membership in an honest way.
Forcing people to be naked. There is a danger that if wearing clothes becomes common place then it will take over, people do like following each other. Many have complained about the big campsites in western France becoming primarily clothed apart from on the beaches, one person starts then another and so on. But to force people to be naked when it is cold seems barbaric and taster days are a great idea. Maybe clothing optional days could be held once a month as a way of welcoming people into the fold, without clothing becoming a habit. Personally I think it would be great if clubs opened up to local visitors once a month or at least once or twice a year so locals can find out about life beyond the pine trees and gates. I loved that story of the New Zealand club that used to allow the local school to come for swimming lessons. Become part of the community.
I have read the entire thread on this subject and I am so pleased that this is being discussed, I have tried to join various landed clubs over the years, both in England and Scotland, and as (on the face of it) I am a single male I have either been refused to my face with quotes like “we are full at the moment, we will let you know” or “sorry, no single men” I have been in a long term relationships for 20 years, but my partner doesn’t want to join me,
I feel that landed clubs really need to face reality and stop being so judgemental before they are forced to close.
I am a very practical younger man and could be a huge benefit to the club with building maintenance and general positive drive organising events etc, but I have been stereotyped and it’s their loss.
The upside for me is, I have brought my own woodland in Devon and I am able to be natural on my own terms ‘as a single man’
I haven’t named any clubs, but they need to really have a think….
at November 24, 2024 7:36 AM GMT 
I concur, a number of clubs probably need to adjust their approach. I personally am a member of multiple national bodies but have never joined a landed club. Part of that is a cost / benefit issue. Like the uk here nudity is not illegal so living a naturist lifestyle does not require high fences and secluded grounds. A bigger issue is the clubs insistence in maintaining a gender balance. Why? I go to an antique machinery club. Membership is heavily male, no problem. My wife goes to a knitting circle. Almost exclusively female, no problem. Why with naturism does the obsession with balance exist. If more males are interested / prepared to be involved in naturism, what's the issue? I suspect if historic clubs don't change they will die on the hill of principle.
We get asked a lot about why we are not members of any particular landed club, and our answer is always two fold, firstly we are lucky to have the RnR Garden, which caters to a wide range of our naturism, we also visit the monthly swim, so we have use of a pool. The second reason we are not members is geography, the only club that is relatively local to us (1 hour away) does not allow guests to visit, it is invite only, and it is also quite expensive to join. We would naturally want to make a few visits before joining to see how the club works, which we cannot do, even if it was affordable.
Another contributing factor is that we also have a good few friends who are single, and if we joined a club, we would naturally want to invite them to join us, as they have at events, but the problem is, the majority of our friends are single males, and so therefore not allowed, so we can completely relate to both Steve D and Grahame. What is the point of paying out for a club, we cannot invite our friends to join us at, it appears to us to be a pointless exercise?
This idea that men are a threat, does not exist in any other textile club, and if it did there would be an outcry of public complaints, it appears only in naturism, and as we have said in the past, it does appear to us that within naturism there is a very strong tendency towards gender discrimination. One of the things that really stood out for us in Wales back in 2023 when we were organising events, was that we had no shortage of male volunteers, if anything we had too many, but from the very start of the year organising offers from single men to help with the heavy work tasks came flying in, and we were really grateful for the support.
From our experiences of single males within naturism, both Rin and the Windmill Girl have always been treated with the upmost of respect, they have never been made to feel uncomfortable, or had any type of sexual misconduct towards them. To a degree this is what fuels are inability to fully understand the clubs, and we have questioned if this policy has been created out of a fleet of reports about sexual misconduct, or did it begin with one incident in one club, and the news spread rapidly, so all clubs battened down the hatches in so form of knee jerk reaction, because we have not seen this epidemic that the fear reportedly states of men behaving badly?
It is our opinion that Naturism should not be segregated, we have spoken at length about this, which to a degree goes against the popular narrative and has seen us repeatedly put in the naughty corner, but we do not feel we have done anything wrong. Naturism at its core is about acceptance, and we feel that should be rule, everyone should be welcome regardless of their sexual persuasion, gender or race. We honestly feel if these discriminatory rules were lifted, naturist establishments would thrive, and also be representative of society, if anything, there would be a need for more clubs.
Currently there is a trend towards segregation of genders, and age within the national mindset of most countries, and we feel it is a bad direction to be taking naturism, which is why we are as bloggers very out spoken on this issue. It is the current direction that will lead to the collapse of more clubs, and it should be avoided at all costs. National organisations constantly question why the young are not inspired to join naturism, we think the answer simply put is why would they, they are social and like to mix, if the club is busy logging who has what genitals and is ticking off which are acceptable and which are not, why would any young person want to be a part of that? No one likes to be excluded, and currently that is the direction of the so called new wave of naturism.
The irony of all this, is if a club was set up that was male only, firstly it would be packed, and secondly, the national organisations and all the clubs would have a melt down and scream from the roof tops, that it was discriminate.... Go figure!
Naturism has to be open for everyone, with no one pushed out. In this instance, it is the one aspect of naturism that needs to modernise the most, and if this club owners and committee members had any sense at all, and want naturism to survive, that would be the direction that they would lead their clubs in.
