nudism as an illegalism

Nudism isn't my primary intellectual interest. Far from it. And honestly, I don't always know how much there is that I have to say about it.

The basic principle of it is pretty straightforward, right? And for the person who doesn't really have any familiarity with nudism, that either sparks something in the imagination—feels like the right thing, perhaps—or it doesn't.

I'm an anarchist, which is to say, I have been an anarchist for some time—since I was a teenager, actually. That's when I met anarchists, started reading texts by anarchists, and soon enough started circulating in a private world created by anarchists, the much-maligned “anarchist ghetto”. And it was important and interesting and challenging in a hundred different ways that I have often found extremely challenging to articulate to a person who has no experience of this secret world, how things are done there, the reasons why things are done the way they are, and so on. So it must be with other secret worlds.

I have no experience of the secret (or more accurately, private) world that at least some adherents of naturist ideology have constructed for themselves. I imagine I could be comfortable enough in at least some corners of that world—and maybe someday I'll get to visit a landed club and develop an opinion based on some level of real experience, not just what I watch in a short documentary or a series of posts on Reddit. But, to the extent that it appears to be white, straight, bourgeois, too polite, too domestic, and too focused on lazy comfort, I'm inclined to think that it's probably not my thing.

Which isn't to say I'm not into lazy comfort, because I want more of that, and of better quality too. But I'm not wholly about lazy comfort. I like to, uh, do things. I like to be challenged. I can handle a bit of hardship, and I might even seek it out. Sometimes.

I just don't necessarily want to deal with hardship while wearing all the clothes I would normally have to. And who knows, maybe not wearing any of the clothes.

Doing the dishes. Taking garbage to the curb. Wheatpasting posters for some stupid cause I apparently believe in. Whatever. If I have to do it, I'd like to do it in as comfortable and enjoyable a fashion as I can.

Problems extant in society at large have always existed in the anarchist ghetto too. To the extent that they remain serious problems in the social classes from which the anarchists come, it's impossible to get rid of them entirely. But usually, once anarchists have identified a problem, there tends to be some discussion of it in the ghetto, and then some awareness of it too, that may not be so prevalent in outside society. As a collectivity, we do pretty okay, once we are aware of a problem.

I contend that the predominant culture of clothes-wearing, which is compulsory and obsessive, is a problem. And, while there are some people discussing it, they are almost all politically irrelevant—even more so than a lot of anarchists! I am also entirely unaware of any anarchists since Émile Armand (he died in 1962) who have made a point of talking about clothes-wearing and nudism, and no one exploring these subjects whose insights anarchists are seeking out today.

So I guess it's up to me to talk about this stuff.

I think I'm a pretty well-rounded person. I also think it's alright, and even a little funny, if people end up thinking of me as “the nudity guy” or whatever. To the extent that I am personally affected by this issue, I suppose I am motivated as well.

But I don't want to be the only doing it. Not forever, at least.

Hopefully I hear from some of you folks at some point. I know you're out there. My social account (on Hometown/Mastodon) is AT somenudist AT ni.hil.ist—drop me a line!