Last month our friends at Get Naked Australia have put a sad but understandable message on their Facebook page. They were going to stop posting the pictures they receive from their following and which have made them world famous in the first place. And not for the obvious reason that Facebook would put them in their jail, but because of the comments these pictures are receiving. Meanwhile they’ve reconsidered this and restarted posting pictures, but the issue remains.
Everyone who’s creating nudist content on social media or who’s moderating nudist chat groups or nudist pages has encountered this problem somewhere along the way. A perfectly genuine nudist photo or video is posted and (especially if it contains a nude woman) comments like “nice ass”, “I so want to do her” and “give me her number” start popping up.
SPECIAL WARNING: While reading this post you may become depressed, lose your confidence in humanity and start thinking that this world is full of perverts. Just know that there will be some good news at the end!
Hot or Not?
For some reason, there are people who think that everything that is posted online is just one big “Hot or Not” contest and they feel like they have to express their sexual feelings towards the person in the photo or video. Preferably without beating around the bush (pun intended). One could say that this is a human thing. Every man has seen a woman with a beautiful butt walk the streets and punched his buddy so he could enjoy the sight as well. Or just let his thoughts slid away. And women aren’t really any different. And that’s totally fine. But who would yell for the whole street to hear, including the owner of the butt, that he would “so do her”?
It’s a thing of the internet. Suddenly people seem to think that they can say whatever they want in whatever way to whoever out there. Just because they can’t get a physical punch in the face, all boundaries seem to get lost. And we wonder.… What’s the purpose?
Do they think that when they congratulate a girl in a faraway country about her “nice ass” that she’ll reply something like “oh thanks, I’m taking the first plane to have hot sex with you”?
Do they think that they will impress their friends because they dare to say such things to a girl several thousands of kilometers away?
Or do they think that the world is interested in their opinion about some girl’s physical appearance?
If you’re such a person, please let us know because we can’t understand… What goes through your head when you decide to comment “I would so want to do her” on a picture of a complete stranger?
Online nudism is a man’s world
When we started with Naked Wanderings and got into the whole online nudism scene, we were surprised about the gender imbalance. While in “real life” we found many women to be nudists and to be promoting nudism, online this seemed to be a lot less.
It didn’t take long before we got an indication about why this is, in the form of a number of dick pics. Posting nude pictures of ourselves didn’t help much either and soon we received comments saying “I would love to be that guy”. Referring to Nick, standing next to Lins. Or worse, some were just ignoring Nick and started sending messages directly to Lins, which didn’t leave much space for interpretation.
And we wonder.… Do these guys do that in real life as well? Just walk up to a couple, ignore the guy completely and start talking to the girl about her butt and how much he would like to do completely inappropriate things with it? Of course not. These guys probably don’t have the balls to walk up to a woman in person and therefor use the online world to prove to themselves that they do dare to talk to a woman. They even dare to say weird sexual stuff to her.
Honestly, if it wasn’t for Naked Wanderings we would probably not be sharing naturist things online either. And this is unfortunately how many naturist women feel. Many are reluctant to even comment on an article about naturism just because of the 50 friendship requests that follow every single time.
And then it got worse
One could say that it’s not really that bad. In the end, those messages and comments could be seen (with some imagination) as compliments. Of course they are not. If you post a picture online of your summer holiday, whether it’s in a nudist resort or not, and the majority of the comments you receive are about your physical appearance, there’s something very wrong with this world.
But what if you actually want to bring a message? Some time ago we shared a video from Dr. Victoria Bateman on Twitter, You may have heard about her as the “naked economist”. This Cambridge professor gained world fame when she was giving a lecture about the Brexit and at a certain point stripped down completely, having “Brexit will happen over my naked body” written over herself.
Since then she has been using her nudity to express other problems to the world. In the particular video we shared, she talked about the oppression of women.
There is *so* much to be gained by challenging the notion that women's bodies are sinful – & by standing up to the presumption that if a woman's body is on show, she is trashy, stupid, worthless & deserving of less respect. That's why I for one will *not* be told to cover up. pic.twitter.com/8mVg1LkVrW
— Dr Victoria Bateman (@vnbateman) February 7, 2019
We don’t expect you to share her ideas about this topic and we don’t expect you to agree with the way she chose to bring those ideas. And we don’t think Dr. Bateman does either. By using the controversial way of nudity she actually engages people into conversation. Her video was watched more than 2 million times on Twitter alone and our retweet produced about 50 comments. Something we would normally be very happy about if it wasn’t that the large majority of the comments were about… her pubic hair.
Seriously? Let’s just summarize that. So there’s a professor at Cambridge, one of the world’s most renowned universities. Who talks about a controversial topic being oppression of women and women’s rights. Which she does in a controversial way: completely nude. And what do people talk about? Her pubic hair. Please keep this in mind the next time you wonder why few women are open about nudism and body freedom on the internet.
Important side note: It would be easy to blame the sexual mindset of men again, but in this case several of the comments came from women as well.
Micro-harassment
Back to online nudism. As nudist bloggers we (unfortunately) had to become used to online harassment and actually it doesn’t bother us as much anymore as it used to. We’ve become insensitive about it. When we receive another sexual comment or dick pick we just block the account and report them to the social media company. Hoping that one day they might actually do something about it.
A more difficult issue is what we call “micro-harassment”. Difficult because the other party often doesn’t know that they are doing anything wrong.
You’ve certainly seen this before. A woman enters a nudist chat group, says “Hi, I’m Lins” and receives many replies saying “Welcome Lins, we’re happy to have you, if we can do something for you, etc”. A man enters the group and says “Hi, I’m Nick”. He receives one or two or three “welcome Nick” and that’s it.
Similarly how women receive many comments on how nice they look. Somehow it seems like these groups are full of men who have been waiting for a woman to appear and then every single one of them tries to be as nice as possible to her. It’s often with the best intentions, but it’s suffocating.
What can we do about this?
When you’re being harassed or receive inappropriate comments on things you post on the internet, there is one thing you always have to remember: It’s not because of you or your content. You can’t help it that some people have a messed up mind. It’s like if you would post a picture of a baseball bat and someone replies that he or she would like to hit someone with it. It’s not your fault. Or the fault of the bat.
Just block and report the person.
When you’re considering to make a comment about someone’s appearance, please remember this: There’s a saying that women love to hear how good they look. This doesn’t really count when it comes to nudism. So basically, if someone doesn’t actually ask for your opinion, it should not be given.
Another good tip is this: Your idea about how much you would like to “do” someone is never, we repeat: NEVER, appropriate.
And a last one: Before you start a chat with the next new woman in the group or on the page or send them a friend request, ask yourself a question: “Would I do the same if this was a guy?”. If not, you may want to reconsider your reasons.
The good news
We’ve promised you some good news, right? Well, here goes and please keep this in mind as one of the most important messages in this post:
“The real life nudist world is nothing like that at all !“
Really, we can’t stress this enough. Harassment of female nudists is something that pretty much uniquely exists on the internet. Which proves our statement that the harassers are just sad little people who only dare to speak out online. The real lfe nudist world is free of those people and is one of the safest environments to be.
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It was alarming to hear about the verbal/ on-line harassments,which naturist face. When I visited the site truenudists, I saw similar comments and wondered about whole philosophy behind naturalism. We are a couple who started to engaged in naturist lifestyle. We were inspired and accept your invitation ‘to take off your clothes and come with us!’ and tried it and ever enjoying the naked way. However, when you see the way the people view naturist, sometimes, for us (we come from Sri lanka and Asian culture taboos nudism), it is scary. Thank you for the article.
Great topic. I, too, find the things that some of these “nudists” say online depressing. It’s why I stopped using True Nudist. There are a few good nudists on there, but the vast majority of its members are men looking to hit on other men and women, often asking to video chat. It’s a shame because it makes me lose hope that there will ever be a legitimate online community for real nudists. The best I’ve found are small private Facebook groups for nudists that have actually met in person prior to being added. I’m a member of a small “secret” group of young nudists that actually plan gatherings and events, but you actually have to know someone in the group that will vouch for you to receive an invitation to join the group. Sadly, I think that is the only way that these online groups can exist without creeps. The public pages and groups out there now that are overly infiltrated with perverts give us such a bad reputation, and further the negative stigmas that are used against us.
Overall, there probably are a lot more photos of naked women on-line than naked men. The porn industry still amounts to something close to half of all Internet traffic. There appears to be a never ending parade of women who choose to appear nude in sexually oriented photos and videos. What is missing is women who will appear in non-sexual nudist photos. And, there also are naked men on porn sites. Women make up about half of viewers of Internet porn. I don’t criticize the mob of women who appear on the porn sites any more than I criticize the men. Sex is a deep biological and evolutionary desire that keeps our species from going extinct.
What I find strange is those who want to pretend that nudist humans, in person or on-line, somehow lose our sexual desires and instincts. Yes, some of the comments may be more sexual than the particular woman wanted this week. The kind you mentioned don’t sound like they were intended as insults or harassment.
What can you do about it? I suppose you could go hide in a cave and try to block all human interaction. I really can’t think of any other way.
You should read the comments on Victoria Bateman’s Twitter posts – they were most definitely insults and harassment. Viciously so. Straightforward misogyny.
We completely agree that during the “fight” to normalise non-sexual nudity, some have gone to far and made nudists seem like asexual beings. But somehow the “real life” world has been able to maintain a degree of modesty and politeness which seems to be completely gone online. Why is it ok to tell a woman that she has a “nice ass” on the internet but why do so few tell that in real life? Why is it ok to discuss the pubic hair of Dr. Bateman on Twitter while we doubt that anyone will have mentioned it during one of her conferences?
We’ve noticed many times that women who talk openly about nudism online, or just say “I like to go to the nude beach” are attacked from all sides. Suddenly they receive hundreds of friend requests from people they don’t know and often accompanied by pictures of their penis.
When this woman would mention this to a couple of strangers in the street, how many would drop their pants?
It’s the combination of nudism still being completely misunderstood (you don’t want to know how many people ask us for nude pictures, when we don’t send them they are confused… “why not? you’re a nudist aren’t you?”) and people thinking that online they can say whatever they want and don’t think about the consequences for the other party.
Interesting subject.
Much of tho owns a huge thanx to pornography.
Good looking females (cause thats the subject here) will natrually get hot comments..
Also females that are actually not into porn (but might be secret escorts) considering the kinds of pic they make, will also get hot comments, .. the point is, that those pic are MADE for that kind of reaction.
So now when u have a nudie page, with ordinary looking ppl, again, ppl will connect that nudity with porn, and considering the not so hot looking pic, cause its of a person in not that good shape, or one thats 70 yos ,they will make bad comments.
Same goes for those that do look good ,of course , they will get hot comments.
The internet , with everything if has, actually made ppl to be more honest, cause they write what they wouldnt tell in person.
Now the big question is, what is better? To be honest? or to be fake moral, or fake modest.
What is the true nature of a human? To speak the mind? or to be “decent” cause thats how the “society” decided it should be, but then again .. that same society that has chosen decent, says that its not decent to be naked in public, in front of kids and so on so on..
As always, its not if this side or that side is better or correct , its the hypocrisy ,where we somehow always manage to “grab” something out of a situation that suits our view, while we dont mind at all when things are totaly the oposite as long as THAT suits our views…
Excellent point. People are so used to see naked people in a sexual way that it’s often very hard to make the click between this person is naked for the purpose of arousing me and this one isn’t.
One could say that the internet has made people honest, others could say that it made people rude. Daring to say things online which you wouldn’t say in real life does not make you more honest. If you’d say exactly the same things online as in real life, no matter how rude, we would respect you. Maybe not like you, but respect you.
It is not just “good looking” females that get comments. All women get critical comments and rude suggestion. No matter what they look like, someone will try to put them down with criticisms about certain parts of their bodies.
I don’t believe that most of this is honesty.
At best, it is rude as Nick and Lins pointed out. There is no reason why anyone should feel they have the right to comment on someone else’s body. My body does not exist for others. It is mine and what it looks like is nobody else’s business.
At worst, these comments are lies intentionally communicated in order to hurt people.
Well what i said was aimed at both, the nice hot sexy comments to making fun of comments.
Tho it still is honesty.
As far as the owning the body, in ur words, i cant comment a brand new Renault car that is ugly for me , just cause its not mine? Or cause its some1 elses car and not mine? Kind of a bad analogy.
I mean it sounds crazy and rude but ,that hoesty thing was aimed at the analogy between saying online something and in person.. when is a person actually honest? When they tell u what they think/mean or when they shut up and pretend? That was my point about the honesty stuff.
There’s little honesty in hiding behind a screen, often using a fake name and not sharing any personal information at all, and verbally attacking people on their appearance.
And we don’t think you can compare a body with a car. People can buy cars and can get rid of them. You only have one body and you’re pretty much stuck with it for the rest of your life.
A well once again, u are looking at it from the wrong side, its not hiding, its “hiding”.
When we speak about things we have to get back to the bone, not from a point where things have already been put on..
As fas as the car thing ,yea.. one is stuck with its body forrever, but that dont mean u cant do something about it to make it look “good” ,and if ur fine with it looking “not good” ,still ppl have the right to have an oppinion about it same way they will have of it when it looks good.
Here you put an interesting thing on the table… What defines “good”? And more importantly, is it “looking good” for oneself or “looking good” for others.
There will be a lot of readers who are not going to understand what I’m going to say but I’m going to say it anyway, because I believe you should consider it.
Granted, there a lot of people who make stupid, thoughtless, provocative comments on what they find on the Internet. It would be nice if they would all go away, but that’s not something we can do anything about. So what can we do? I suggest we grow thicker skins. Ignore the creeps, their comments are annoying, but otherwise pretty harmless. Who really cares if some jerk says your naked body is as ugly as a mud fence? Didn’t we mostly out grow that sort of thing in kindergarten? If you ignore the nitwits maybe they’ll disappear, and if not, don’t worry about it.
That’s exactly what we do. We ignore them and block them and move on. It doesn’t bother us anymore if we receive yet another dick pic or sexual comment or some other comment about how we look.
But as we said in the blog post, if it wasn’t our goal to promote nudism, we’d probably already quit social media altogether. Or just kept it for ourselves and our real friends.
But we are promotors of nudism and we often try to think from the mindset of a beginning nudist. Let’s say you’re a twenty-something woman and interested in going to a nude beach. At that age, the internet and social media are your main sources of information. So you find a group or a page or whatever about nudism and ask “does anyone have tips for my first time at the nude beach?”.
Next thing you know you receive 50 friend requests, a couple of pictures of penises, several men telling how nice you look, several men telling you that they’d love to be naked together with you, a couple of video chat requests and some other stuff.
That’s your first impression of how nudists are. Will you still go to that beach?
I think ignoring them leaves the impression that it’s okay to make those comments. I believe that a response informing the writer that his/her comment is not acceptable and he/she will be banned if it continues is more effective.
Many writers of these kinds of comments seem to do so to draw attention. And often it doesn’t really matter wither the attention they get is positive or negative. So responding might not always be helpful and sometimes give them exactly what they want.
It all depends on who the writer is and that’s something we often don’t know.
“This comment is unacceptable. You are blocked. This has been my response to similar comments over 200 times.”
I personaly live by a rule I call “Live and let live”. I’m a frensh canadian that doesn’t like hockey but don’t go around telling it’s complete crap to those who do like it, same as I love nudism but don’t go around telling everyone it’s the best (except close friends). So I expect the same of others. So should everyone, in my opinion.
It is definitely a problem. It scares some women away from trying naturism. We discussed this with you (both of you! but I did ask Lins specifically about it) when we did our interview for the Naturist Living Show. It was also the topic of an entire episode: https://www.naturistlivingshow.com/2017/12/topless-topics-online-harassment-of-women.html
I admire the courage and resilience of naturist women who stay online. But I worry that the nastiness will eventually get to them.
The fact that we heard ourselves talking about this subject again was another one of the reasons why we decided to write this post. But mostly because it’s just such a problem. If in a couple of thousands of years archeologists find the hard drives of social media companies and read all the things people are saying. They must think we’re the worst species ever 🙂
Harassment is the reason that many nudist Facebook groups are male dominated and to be frank more than a little sad.
Everyone must be welcome, respected and feeling safe.
You are right..it can make one lose hope and faith in humanity.. except for few good women and men that are the light at the end of the tunnel.
Frustrations on such behavior is not limited on Naturism in general and abuse of women in particular, but it extends beyond to any fundamental differences whether ethnic, religion ( or the lack thereof), ideologies and the list goes on and on.
And it seems – though it is well advocated by religious institutes – that religions doesn’t substantially help in the inhibitions of any moral degeradation as long as the person is lurking in shadows only seen by his/her deity – in that case : online.
Such bullying community is too large and and it seems to inflate exponentially..you cut a head 10 more grow to backup.
The limited narrowed vision that some or many have put themselves in, that lead to such psychological distorted behavior seems to be beyond repair. World or humanity for a lack of better word requires fundamental rehabilitation.
And It is all up to the few good women and men to make such a change.
Great article on an unfortunate subject. Although it can be hard work and discouraging at times, there is no point in giving up. All this does is clear the way for the idiots. It’s important we maintain positive posting of nakedness and our various naktiv lifestyle/s. When people post stupid or offensive comments these need to be removed and the offender made aware that his comments are not wanted. Perhaps reporting and banning their accounts.
Giving up means that the idiots win. Fighting back means that we create the world in which we want to live. Nobody else will do this for us, least of all the idiots. We need to be pro-active on this issue, not just today, this week, this year, next year and so on.
Al posted a link to this discussion on Naktiv which is also creating an interesting thread: https://www.naktiv.net/members/cornet1961/activity/442681/?q=%2Factivity%2Fp%2F442681%2F
Regarding compliments, a rule of thumb in naturist venues might be to only compliment what would normally be uncovered in the textile world. Smile, eyes, hair, etc
this case also happened to my wife… so sad..