Back in university, we sometimes organized nude swimming events for students. We had a private lake, so nobody from the general public was bothered. Sometimes, old couples would walk by, giggle, and then go their ways.
But then video cameras became cheap and easy enough to use. So eventually, a creepy old man showed up and started filming our swimming event without anyone's consent. As part of the organization team, it was my duty to confront him and ask for him to wipe the tapes. His wife had died, he was lonely and horny and just wanted to capture his lucky sight for himself.
So we succeeded after a long discussion and he let me wipe the tape. But the damage was done. Afterwards, everyone was afraid of being filmed without consent again. We never got enough sign-ups for another event after that.
>But the damage was done. Afterwards, everyone was afraid of being filmed without consent again.
Devil's advocate, but isn't the point of being nude in public that you are destigmatizing it? I know you mentioned this was a "private lake" but it is unclear of if you mean legally private or de facto private. In case of the latter, even creepers have a right to be there and film.
I used to visit a nude beach and there was always some clothed weirdo with their phone out. They would get unfriendly looks by everyone though, and I think the ostracization kept them on the outskirts of the community.
The lake was on private property owned by the parents of one of the participants. But there's an "open to the public" hiking trail at the border of their property. So legally, I'd consider this similar to looking over the fence into your neighbor's garden.
I'd estimate that for most participants, the point of being nude was to feel free. I mean this was students drinking, swimming, and playing beach games for relaxation, not some political rally.
I don't think people really like permanent recordings even when they're wearing clothes. One of my favorite things about the pandemic is the sense of anonymity in public that wearing a mask offers. Less likely to get messages like "hey I saw you slip on that ice on r/all". Instead you're just some rando slipping on the ice!
You can enjoy the freedom of being nude on your own private property then. No need to add "in public" unless you are trying to a) destigmatize or b) be an exhibitionist
Sorry but I just don't buy it. There's no functional difference between swimming in undergarments or swimming nude, so if you choose nude, it's because you don't think it should be stigmatized.
If you think it feels so much nicer, consider that it's because it's a mild rebellion against a social norm.
Look mr prudent, you don't get the motivation why folks do it, fine, but show some respect. And yes there is huge difference between swimming naked and in some swim shorts. I couldn't care less about rebelling against something, and I am definitely not any kind of exhibitionist.
Done it cca twice if I don't count swimming during night, second time got sting on the shoulder from medusa that left burn scar for years and hurt like hell back then. The idea of getting something similar on my johnson makes me shudder even now.
Why is being nude normal in some places, but not others? That suggests that a stigma exists in one but not the other, and so participating in one or the other is implicitly supporting that.
How can it be so difficult to comprehend, that people might want to be nude with other people but not have it shared with the entire world for all eternity?
How can you not comprehend there are stages between "complete and total privacy with one person for a moment" and "film this and display it for all time to everyone"?
You shifted the goalposts into a false dichotomy about "public vs. private" and the concept of de-stigmatization. I am saying the entire premise is bunk, there is not only "private" and "public".
There is clearly a definition of "public" that involves a limited, semi-unrestricted number of like-minded people in a safe setting without tools to record behavior for eternal and unlimited rebroadcast. You do not acknowledge this; you are talking in binary.
I think you have a wrong understanding of nude beaches. People are usually very friendly and relaxed. Most have not a model body and are a bit older. When I was younger I also could no imagine I would go to there, but it's just so a much nicer experience. I feel much more calm on a nude beach than on a normal beach.
Guess you are from the USA, where no digital age concept of privacy exists, and the word still has a 17th century meaning of "behind closed curtains at home" instead of the modern interpretation of "requiring consent of the data subject". I am from europa, our laws, culture and philosophy are different. More specifically i am german, and we have a nudist tradition that has nothing to do with making statements.
Not everything "in public" is a statement made with the consent to be recorded, shared over the internet by bystanders, exploited by corporations and archived for eternity. A public nude beach, and take note that this thread is actually about a private nude beach but let's argue the weaker point, is a place for people to be nude, not a place to be exploited to make porn. The fact that it is physically possibly to exploit a nude beach for softcore porn does not mean it is acceptable. In the same way that being nude at a shopping mall is physically possible, but socially not acceptable and mostly also not legal. Please note that nudism and exhibitionism are not the same.
For most participants Nudism is about freedom of self and a return to nature, it is about oneself, not about society or making statements, and not about pushing ones own nudity into other peoples faces. That would be exhibitionism. Many nudists are quite shy and not interested in becoming someone else wank material, or an actor on national television, or instahub. They do not wish to be recorded. They just want to be nude at the beach, there is no larger meaning or implied consent. Let me repeat that: being nude at a nude beach does not automatically imply consent to be filmed by anyone for any purpose. And we can argue this finer detail of "privacy" as being different from "privatly/publicly" and how it hinges on consent, without looking at nudism in particular:
Imagine every time you leave the house a national television crew follows you around. It doesn't actually matter what you do, they will cut and manipulate the footage to fit their narrative. You are not getting paid and are not consenting, and you have no influence on what the show is about. But it is going to be degrading, let's call it "americans most stupid". You should have stayed inside if you don't want to be exploited like that. This is the american idea of privacy: once you step outside, you have none. The usa does not differentiate between "being seen on the street, at a bar, at a beach" and "being published on national television, on instagram, on pornhub". If you want to use the former, you must accept to be exploited by the later and their endless supply of unpaid content creators. The european interpretation says that these people are not content creators, but creeps that are violating your human right to privacy and self determination by recording and publishing your activities without your consent.
The public is facing the tragedy of the commons as "public spaces" have become freely and easily exploitable by corporations in the age of surveillance capitalism and social media.
Note that european style privacy law is differentiated in the finer details: a person who films at a nude beach can claim to do so as a technological extension of their own personal memories and with no intention to publish the material and that is not in violation of privacy laws. This is the case in the thread starter. For the law it is the exploitation of the material, turning personal data of unwilling subjects into commodities without their consent, which is illegal. This is a detail most people at nude beaches do not like: they find the act of filming itself to be as creepy as a wanker sitting in the bushes.
Thanks for the detailed reply, but I disagree with almost every point that you made. You took the extreme version of "no privacy" with the "America's most stupid" example, so allow me to take the opposite extreme. Imagine every conversation and every form of public interaction going through real-time government censors to decide if it is appropriate. If it's not appropriate (for some subjective definition of 'appropriate'), you're arrested or fined for offense. Sounds dystopian right? I'd much prefer being followed around by a malicious film crew in public all day.
> Note that european style privacy law is differentiated in the finer details: a person who films at a nude beach can claim to do so as a technological extension of their own personal memories and with no intention to publish the material and that is not in violation of privacy laws.
This would be reasonably clear-cut if images were being published on a professional pornography site or whatever, but what happens when the voyeur changes their mind and sends a pic to a friend who never re-shares it?
There are two possibilities here: either the law is unenforceable in cases like these and acts more like a security blanket than any sort of protection to be relied upon, baiting people into a false sense of privacy where they're open for exploitation by creeps - or you've got mandatory on-device image scanning / no E2E / etc, as compromising private communications is required in cases where the material would never hit public services.
Btw, I don't even really see this as a US vs. EU philosophy-of-law thing - the US has plenty of dumb unenforceable laws that do more harm than good as well, but imo does at least get the privacy in public issue roughly correct.
My uncharitable take is that this is the result of this style of privacy protection's unenforceability problems. If it works so well, why the decline in participation / increase in electronic voyeurism?
i do not agree with the idea that every human right and corresponding laws that are not perfectly and fully enforcable under all circumstances must either lead to an ever increasing trend towards a surveillance state, or be dropped entirely. Both of those are terrible choices. Almost all human rights have some edge case were lack of discoverability prevents enforcement of the laws and prosecution of severe violations. Even murder cases go cold. Does not mean it should be legal.
That’s quite a bit of a slippery slope you’ve got there. Intent matters a ton in law. It’s the difference between man-slaughter and murder. It’s the difference between negligence and property damage. Why can’t it also be the difference between recording memories and publishing without consent?
I agree that such a government agency would be dystopian, but not that it is a logical extreme of a consent based right to privacy. Quite the contrary such an agency would be in violation of the right as it spies on all public interactions. Yet I am not surprised you radicalize a negative liberty of freedom from harassment by a malicious film crew, towards an intrusive government agency that ensures their absence. Consider the right to not be subject to violence, which you hopefully agree we have, and tell me, where is my government issued bodyguard ensuring absence of harm 24/7? I can claim a right, demand others limit their actions in respect of it, sue them if they violate it, and likely win, without needing a totalitarian surveillance state. But you can't win trial against a malicious film crew, if you have no right to privacy in the first place.
Let's meet in the middle, at "freedoms end where rights begin". For most interactions this balance is kept not by a government agency, but by the people respecting each others rights. The censor that decide if it is appropriate in real time is not part of some government agency, it is the little voice of moral and reason in your head that says "don't punch him in the face" and, if you get my drift, "don't film at a nude beach". The government steps in after people sue.
I bring the european understanding of a human right to privacy based on consent into this discussion, as a consideration about limiting the right to film, as a counterpoint to your "even creepers have a right to be there and film.", which you made as the devils advocate and which is true, but ignores the creepers disrespect for the right to privacy of those they film. The american interpretation is that humans have no right to privacy in public spaces, at all, that the creepers freedom to film is unrestricted in such a situation because privacy only exists behind closed doors and drawn curtains. This further means the creepers right to sell the content to distributors is unrestricted and their right to edit and frame this material is unrestricted, without any consent of he people filmed, because in an american public space their human right to privacy is non-existent. In the post I answered to, you reinforced this by claiming a person going to a public space makes a statement, implying consent. I reject that. There is a fundamental difference between using the commons and consenting to be exploited. I think the american threshold of where one sides freedom ends and the others sides rights begin in this matter is unfit for postmodern times where cameras have become cheap and omnipresent and publishing of the filmed material turned into a big market.
The american understanding of privacy comes from a time when the discussion was about being seen by neighbors, not about being filmed and published on the internet for millions to gawk at. Had the founding fathers bathing nude in a public lake not only implied that some fellow people present there could see them, but that pictures and videos were being made available on the world wide web, the concept of privacy in the bill of rights may be very different. Times have changed, technology changes possibilities and the evaluation of the freedom to do whatever you want in respect to other peoples rights to not be subject to whatever someone else wants must change with that as well.
As a moral and constitutional framework, i prefer consent based privacy above curtain based privacy.
> Devil's advocate, but isn't the point of being nude in public that you are destigmatizing it?
Destigmatizing doesn't mean people are free to stare or film you. It's the same if someone were filming on a regular beach because they find people's bodies in bikinis attractive (or to have a wank, as admitted by that old creep). You probably wouldn't like that very much.
In the US, basically any public place (nude beaches included) is open for people to film. I believe there are some exceptions like public restrooms, where there exists a "reasonable expectation of privacy."
But yes, people are also free to complain to the person and make them feel uncomfortable for the scumbag behavior.
In Europe (Slovenia) you can't film people without their consent even if in public, unless if there's a huge number of people. Thus you're filming the crowd and not just a select few.
And I'm pretty sure that even in European counties that theoretically require consent for publishing identifiable pictures of people in public, many thousands of such photos are posted every day.
There's the law and then there is etiquette. They do not necessarily match up. In this case the law is a lower limit, and you may face social counter-action: a person standing to block your camera, angry words, etc.
Sorry, but I'm not following. How do you make the connection from going out in public to you have to accept what others do? It feels like you're bringing in NAP or something without actually saying it.
No, I mean, please explain why you have to accept what others do. Are there people who are going to make me? If so, then they have some justification to do so - what is it?
> No, I mean, please explain why you have to accept what others do.
Because the law allows them and prevents you stopping them.
> Are there people who are going to make me?
Police officers perhaps. Depending what you mean by not accepting it.
> If so, then they have some justification to do so - what is it?
Who and what? I don't really follow. People are free to look at what they like in public. I feel I'm repeating myself, I don't quite know what the difficulty is with this.
Thanks for your patience. I'm trying to understand your first principles, and they seem to be what is lawful is moral and what is moral is lawful. I simply find it difficult to accept that as an axiom.
NAP is the non-aggression principle[1]. I brought it up, not because I agree or disagree with it, but to jump to that part of the dialog were that your basis for framework.
Those are not my "first principles", but otherwise I'm not really interested in explaining to people on the internet what they are.
But people are free to be in public and look at things that are in public view. This is not a statement of my beliefs or principles it's just a matter of fact. If you disagree, can you provide evidence?
Sorry, but matters of fact, in my experience, rarely are. Rather, they are typically assumptions, and personal and cultural projections about reality. It's a common trope around here to state opinions, assumptions, and unexamined ideas as fact as a rhetorical device, and when pressed, to avoid such an examination. At the end of the day it's not up to me to prove that they aren't; it's up to you to prove that they are.
I never said anything about what people can or cannot do in public or in private, I only pointed out that "just looking" is not an ironclad defense.
Harassment is better defined in terms of both side intent, personal effects, and reasonable expectations, especially when anonymity and safety can be at risk.
isn't the point of being nude in public that you are destigmatizing it?
Context matters. The act itself can be destigmatizing (doesn't have to be the goal), but recording it and displaying it out of context usually causes more stigmatization.
Guys with cellphones are really a pain in nude beaches. I just go to nude beaches for swimming, tanning etc. But there are allways just some whatever rude word guys who act like "just do something on my cellphone" but it is very clear, they make a video.
One of my favourite places in Austria did close recently after they simply did not find a way to control all the bush wankers around the area. It hasn't always been like that, but in the last years you could hear people wanking and running around the bushes constantly. Creepy as fuck.
Disruption of gender roles and de-stigmatising hookup culture.
Nowadays average girls sleep with the top x% guys from tinder instead of finding local average peers. They also out-earn their male peers and just a small percentage is willing to date down and settle with a guy earning less then them.
This brought kids to find refuge in videogames or the internet in general and be overall very lonely.
The media outrage towards typically male traits (think toxic masculinity) and a unmeritocratic culture (think everybody gets a prize, "positive" discrimination for "minorities" in college admissions and in the work force) is also incredibly damaging to guys who struggle more then ever to be successful.
The rise of porn, onlyfans and twitch (as it provides companionship) are clear symptoms that each passing generation is more and more lonely.
Loneliness will eventually breed creeps, incels, school shooters or people who are easily radicalised by terrorist organisations.
> Nowadays average girls sleep with the top x% guys from tinder instead of finding local average peers.
I think this is drastically overestimating the reach of Tinder. Some quick searching suggests that in 2020, 15% of adults between 18 and 29 used Tinder in some capacity. Meanwhile, Tinder's users are 80% male. Finally, less than a third of those users actually open the app more than once a week. Putting this all together, the number of female Tinder power-users might be about 2% of this particular age group, which is far too few to draw conclusions about the behavior of the average population.
It depends on where those 2% of women are. If they are spread uniform across the globe (unlikely) then yeah, it will probably have virtually no effect. However, if they are densely located to certain areas, they could have a global effect.
Why do people think this? We have ample evidence that prudes and judgy people have no issue freaking out about fake scandals TODAY. Judging other people based on crazy rules you put on yourself is a human nature thing. There's no reason to believe there will be fewer prudes in the future to shame you for totally normal things.
Remember, there are people today who genuinely think rape victims got what they deserve for being sluts. I don't know how you can look at that situation and think "surely those same horrible people won't use this as an excuse to otherise someone". There are people within my own country who say "it was a mistake for the supreme court to allow gay people to marry" and the politicians who say such things are broadly popular. Where is this magical world where people aren't busibodies?
This coin has two sides, same time lying by politicians, offensive language and other bad behaviours starting to be normal and accepted too, making standards lower every year and society more divided.
That has more to do with rabid fan bases than lessening social stigma. Trump may be immune to stigma, but that doesn't mean most people are. Al Frankin still got kicked to the curb for groping a co-worker.
Why do nudes even exist for most people? No shame or anything, but I honestly don't understand. I've never had any inclination to take nudes. As far as I know, none exist of me. Am I the weird one?
Maybe it doesn't float your goat but many people are interested in it and sext with their partner. Who might become an ex which is when the trouble starts. Which brings us to...
Nope. I was just a regular student. But I was part of a group of friends who thought this would be fun so we just privately organized beach parties. Except we didn't have a real beach.
But then video cameras became cheap and easy enough to use. So eventually, a creepy old man showed up and started filming our swimming event without anyone's consent. As part of the organization team, it was my duty to confront him and ask for him to wipe the tapes. His wife had died, he was lonely and horny and just wanted to capture his lucky sight for himself.
So we succeeded after a long discussion and he let me wipe the tape. But the damage was done. Afterwards, everyone was afraid of being filmed without consent again. We never got enough sign-ups for another event after that.