While walking home naked from my friends' house Pink Saturday night, a woman who was partying with her friends on their front steps yelled at me. "Your disgusting and rude. Why don't you go and do that in front of your house in your neighborhood, not ours." I asked her where she lived. "Noe Valley," she responded, "but my boyfriend lives in the Castro." Well, I live right around the corner, I told her. To which she responded, "Well, Scott Wiener is my supervisor too, so I am part of this community and I think your disgusting." I told her I often see people wearing things I think are pretty awful, but I don't point it out to them. That that, in fact, was what was rude and disgusting.
Long ago, I moved away from my small town home town partly because people called me disgusting when I walked down the street. (It is called homophobia, but I never like that term. It is NOT a fear, but rather a hatred!). It saddens me that not only young heterosexuals are now moving into my neighborhood--the neighborhood where I and many more like me, many who are now dead due to the pandemic, worked so hard to carve out a space in which to exist, live, celebrate, and thrive -- but assimilationist homosexuals as well, who now feel they have the right to tell me I am disgusting when I appear in public because I believe differently than they do.
For I believe that our bodies are not shameful, nor obscene, nor do they need to be constantly covered and hidden away. The exposure of ones body in public, the normalization of public nudity, is a healthy thing, it affirms our shared humanity and our connections with the biosphere we share with all other living things. The learned belief that our bodies are shameful, rude, and disgusting is harmful, it is a hatred, not an opinion. It is the hatred of the human body. How can we believe we are advanced, civilized, and cultured, when we harbor a hatred for our own bodies, a hatred for ourselves? I will continue to walk proudly naked in public. For every person like that woman from Noe Valley whose boyfriend lives in the Castro and whose supervisor is Scott Wiener, there are ten people who like what I do, who approve of me. They are not always as vocal as she is, but every once in awhile they are, and I thank them.
8 comments:
"homophobia - NOT a fear, but rather a hatred!"
Thank you for clarifying that. It is an oft-misused term that distorts the meaning of most things its used for. There's a big difference between fearing someone and disliking or hating them.
Folks are much more likely to at least tolerate someone they don't like than they are to accept those they fear, and fear is a great motivator for action. I don't have to like my neighbors but if I'm afraid of them I just might do something to get rid of them!
While we're on the subject of word misuse, 'exhibitionist' is another one. Without a sexually gratifying aspect involved, it's not exhibitionism. Simply enjoying wandering about in the nude is NOT exhibitionism!
Good luck with your 'neighbor'! Maybe you should bake her a cake! ;-)
Excellent post!
Thankyou for clarifying phobia, I use it all the time, and will stop.
Tolerance....another one, bullshit, tolerate a pain, not me.
hatred of the body has created this industry of youthism, surgery to correct noses, extend breasts rather than a healthy care system to make people well.
I lived in SF for years, I am saddened to see this...I moved to france.
Be well...
Hey Woody, it's Margy again. I for one am super-approving of what you do! You and your nudist friends are incredibly brave, actually, to deal with daily hassles and insults like this - does anyone ever tell you that? You are so right in what you say ie it's senseless and bizarre that we fear our own bodies. This isn't something most of us every stop to ponder, but it's totally true.
I also understand your indignance at having your neighborhood infiltrated by outsiders who then tell you off. Ugh. My old neighborhood in Boston got overrun by rich college students and fratboys who drove up the rents and wrecked the old houses.
Btw for this out of towner, who is Scott Wiener? Is he a politician or some bigwig?
Keep up the good work! I'll periodicially be reading along, for inspiration.
-Marguerite
Have you written on the Sadhus of India in comparison to your naked wanderings? I would be interested in hearing about that from your perspective. I am becoming aware of a kind of vocation to who you are and what you do. Thanks!
Hey man, know any good hotels in Castro where they accept nudity in public in the building? I wanna come to visit from England next week and try out the whole naked thing :)
Being a senior male nudist....Your website is wonderful....
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