Is nudity a right? What kind?

[Stu2630]

BobS

I can almost guarantee the majority, or at least a majority of them, are ignorant in this aspect.

Everyone knows what nudity is, Bob, and they know what they feel about it, and when they find it appropriate. Certainly, they may be ignorant about the philosophy and motivations behind nudism, but thatäs not really relevant.

The only difference between a nude person and a clothed person is what they are wearing. So why should the majority decide the dress code?

Human beings are acculturated in a certain way to receive the words and behaviour of others according to context. The only difference between an obscene word and a mundane word is the position of the tongue or lips when it is uttered, but to the hearer that is a crucial difference and it determines how he or she feels about it and responds. Nudity is more than just a state of dress just as the N***** word is more than just a word to a black person.

what gives the majority the right to discriminate and decide what behaviour is too offensive?

They have to live in the environment, so it's right that they should have a say in how that environment is regulated, and what behaviour is, and is not, tolerated.

And the problem is that segregation leads to a vicious circle of discrimination; people will treat the members who are discriminated as lower than them and because of that, they will not want to give them equal rights.

I really don't have a problem with segregation per se. We already segregate people in all manner of ways, the most obvious is when we segregate the sexes in changing rooms and toilets. Yes, we can allow segregation to become an excuse to treat one of the segregated groups as being in some way inferior, but we can also be sufficiently mindful and principled notto let that happen.

Stu, at what point do you believe that a majority should be overruled?

I think the majority should ONLY be overruled if they are either mentally or educationally incapable of making a decision, or in very extreme circumstances where they, for example, wanted to exterminate a section of their community. The default position should always be that the majority will is supreme.

Stu

[Stu2630]

Agde

we can agree that eliminating slavery was nobler than retaining it. The same is true for discarding nudity laws as people become more sophisticated.

You are making an assumption that an acceptance of nudity is an inevitable consequence of sophistication. I beg to differ. I think nudity is a primitive state, and I don't think anyone would accuse me of being unsophisticated.

Drunkenness starts with sobriety and then alcohol is added. The comparison with nudity doesn't work because nudity doesn't start with clothing -- it is the clothing that is added voluntarily.

This is a spurious point. Being clothed is the default state of modern humans and being naked is (a) the exception and (b) usually only occurs for very specific purposes.

a retained right for all citizens to be free of government intervention in matters of informal individual fashion choice.

I don't believe there is any such right. How we appear in public is as relevant as how we behave in public and what we say in public. The law has a right, and a duty, to make the public environment as acceptable to as many of the people who use it as possible.

Your formulation "benign to as many ... as possible" is not the same as "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

The two are entirely compatible. Nobody is denying anyone the right to live, enjoy freedom of movement or try to find happiness. Sometimes we have to balance the desires of a minority to behave in a particular way against the rights of others who find that behaviour to be unacceptable.

I am happy for you to have your own environment. I'll support you in gaining that environment and in making sure it has exactly the same facilities which the rest of us enjoy. I just don't wangt to share your environment, and I don't want you sharing mine when you are naked.

But "offense" to what others wear is a slippery slope. Based on "offensiveness", you are establishing a general principle that allows a local majority, like Red Sox baseball fans, to create a law in Boston against wearing a Yankee baseball cap (UK translation: against wearing Liverpool colours in Manchester).

That analogy doesn't hold. The very purpose of their being a Red Sox baseball team or a Manchester United is that they compete with other teams. No other teams - they can't play - so the notion of people being "offended" by another team's colours doesn't wash. I also don't accept that the majority members of any country or US state would desire a ban on people wearing the colours of a rival team. Like I said, people are generally better educated and realise that their devotion to a sports team is actually contingent upon there being other teams against which they can play.

I still think we all retain a "right" live life peacefully and share the same public space, whether we are "fabric fans" or not.

You can. Just put on a pair of shorts like everyone else. What you want is the right to compel people to see your genitals who really want to NOT see them. I'm not sure you can see the implications of that position.

You must raise your voice, flail about, make extra noise/commotion, actively insult someone, or do something explicitly sexual.

So what? Just as nudity is "natural" and "harmless", so is making loud noises with our vocal chords, moving vigorously, making sounds with our mouths to form meanings and indulging in sexual activities. It is only the CONTEXT of these, i.e. how people are likely to react to these as determined by our particular culture, which makes them unacceptable. And it is the CONTEXT of nudity in public, i.e how people are likely to react to it, which makes that unacceptable.

Stu

[Agde]

Originally Posted by Sunman

We all have one right. Stu2630 has taken over this post completly. I will exercise that right and with one click I will be some place else. Goodbye Stu2630

Sunman, whilst Stu may be hammering us with his well-known themes, he is the only non-naturist available on this forum with legal credentials, so I appreciate his time and input, even if it is sometimes a challenge to dig the legal points out of the rhetoric.

Originally Posted by Stu2630

Everyone knows what nudity is, Bob, and they know what they feel about it, and when they find it appropriate. Certainly, they may be ignorant about the philosophy and motivations behind nudism, but that's not really relevant.

It is very relevant because having "education and information" about naturist motivations changes how "they feel about it." This has happened time and again in my life. When people know me and my "philosophy and motivations," the dialogue leads to easy-going acceptance of my clothing choice.

Originally Posted by Stu2630

...Nudity is more than just a state of dress just as the N***** word is more than just a word to a black person.

There is a huge difference in terms of legal rights in that the object of latter insult is the other person, whilst the object of the former is only oneself. The correct parallel in terms of rights would be an insulting remark by a textile when encountering someone without clothing.

Originally Posted by Stu2630

...Yes, we can allow segregation to become an excuse to treat one of the segregated groups as being in some way inferior, but we can also be sufficiently mindful and principled not to let that happen.

Precisely what we are arguing -- that we have a right not to be treated as "inferior" second-class citizens due to clothing, and that others must thus be "sufficiently mindful and principled" to treat us with reciprocal respect.

Originally Posted by Stu2630

...I think the majority should ONLY be overruled if they are either mentally or educationally incapable of making a decision, or in very extreme circumstances where they, for example, wanted to exterminate a section of their community. The default position should always be that the majority will is supreme.

This is an extreme political stance, not a "rights" argument. Rights ALWAYS trump majority vote, because rights are core "mutual guarantees", whereas majority vote is a legal layer below, expressing "community preference".

Originally Posted by Stu2630

You are making an assumption that an acceptance of nudity is an inevitable consequence of sophistication. I beg to differ. I think nudity is a primitive state, and I don't think anyone would accuse me of being unsophisticated.

Nudity is neither "primitive" nor "sophisticated" -- it just is. How someone feels about being nude or interacting with someone else who is nude, is about social rituals. If upbringing fails to teach the etiquette of respectful interaction with others when you/they are nude, then there is a gap that gets filled either by primitive reactions or by learning manners.

Originally Posted by Stu2630

...Being clothed is the default state of modern humans and being naked is (a) the exception and (b) usually only occurs for very specific purposes.

This is the central tautology of your argument. People must be always clothed because they are always clothed. The corollary is that people take off clothes, and hence must take them off for a purpose. In fact, people put on clothes for a purpose. From a rights perspective, you are creating a legal "obligation" to put on clothes without a purpose.

Originally Posted by Stu2630

...How we appear in public is as relevant as how we behave in public and what we say in public. The law has a right, and a duty, to make the public environment as acceptable to as many of the people who use it as possible... Nobody is denying anyone the right to live, enjoy freedom of movement or try to find happiness. Sometimes we have to balance the desires of a minority to behave in a particular way against the rights of others who find that behaviour to be unacceptable... I just don't want to share your environment, and I don't want you sharing mine when you are naked.

What is the legal basis for laws having "to make the public environment as acceptable to as many of the people who use it as possible"? Constitutional? Civil right? Doesn't your formulation suggest that laws then should be expanded to cover more people, eg. naturists, by defining parameters for interaction, rather than wholesale prior restraint?

Originally Posted by Stu2630

...The very purpose of their being a Red Sox baseball team or a Manchester United is that they compete with other teams. No other teams - they can't play... - so the notion of people being "offended" by another team's colours doesn't wash...

So the "right" to tolerance is, for you, dependent on reciprocity, not "offense" afterall! But of course my point was that, whilst I am happy to let "fabric fans" cheer and "fabic teams" compete, if I personally am not into fabric, then their rules, rivalries and reciprocities shouldn't be my concern.

Originally Posted by Stu2630

...Just put on a pair of shorts like everyone else...

Dictating my wardrobe again! Do you also have a preference between American plaid versus safari khaki?

Originally Posted by Stu2630

...it is the CONTEXT of nudity in public, i.e how people are likely to react to it, which makes that unacceptable.

Exactly. My retained right. Their unacceptable reaction.

[Stu2630]

Agde

It is very relevant because having "education and information" about naturist motivations changes how "they feel about it."

I'm sure there are people out there who are OK sharing public spaces with naturists - but there are also very many who are not. The fact they are not certainly does not mean they are ignorant as to what naturism is. In my experience, the vast majority of Europeans know exactly what naturism is - and they want to keep separate facilities.

There is a huge difference in terms of legal rights in that the object of latter insult is the other person

You have taken a very specific point I made and put it into a very general context. I had said that nudity is more than just a state of dress just as the N***** word is more than just a word to a black person. The intention behind it is irrelevant - it's the reaction that something as harmless as a simple word, which is only a slight corruption of the innocuous word "negro", yet can cause so much offence.

we have a right not to be treated as "inferior" second-class citizens due to clothing, and that others must thus be "sufficiently mindful and principled" to treat us with reciprocal respect.

That's not in dispute. All I am saying is that, for the tiny minority who actually want to be naked in public, they should have the facility to do that, but away from the general populace. I would say the same for any minority who wanted to behave in a way that many members of the general public would not want to see in public.

Rights ALWAYS trump majority vote, because rights are core "mutual guarantees", whereas majority vote is a legal layer below, expressing "community preference".

I disagree. I see a strong link between "rights" and "majority rule" in that I consider that i have rights to enjoy an environment free from the sight of your genitalia.

People must be always clothed because they are always clothed.

I haven't said that. People are always clothed because they prefer being clothed and they prefer being around other clothed people. That preference has been so strong for so long that it is now often a serious taboo to be unclothed where one is expected to be clothed.

The corollary is that people take off clothes, and hence must take them off for a purpose. In fact, people put on clothes for a purpose.

People rarely put clothes on for a specific purpose. They may wear particular clothes for a particular purpose, but wearing clothes is mainly a deeply ingrained habit they would never even contemplate breaking.

What is the legal basis for laws having "to make the public environment as acceptable to as many of the people who use it as possible"?

In most European countries, the public place is akin to a shared area within a block of apartments. Everyone has their own, private space, but the residents as a whole decide what is, and what is not, allowed in the common or shared areas. This notion goes back many centuries and is the thinking underlying public order laws.

Doesn't your formulation suggest that laws then should be expanded to cover more people, eg. naturists, by defining parameters for interaction, rather than wholesale prior restraint?

No, it suggests having the equivalent of "common areas" for minority groups where they can live according to their own lights yet without bothering anyone else.

So the "right" to tolerance is, for you, dependent on reciprocity, not "offense" afterall! But of course my point was that, whilst I am happy to let "fabric fans" cheer and "fabic teams" compete, if I personally am not into fabric, then their rules, rivalries and reciprocities shouldn't be my concern.

No, I was explaining why your sports team analogy does not actually give rise to "offence", because teams actually need other teams against whom they can compete. Textiles don't need nudists or nudity to be textiles any morte than nudists need textiles to be nudists.If you are offended by the sight opf people wearing clothes (and I'm sure you are not) then stick to nudist places. I am offended by nudity and I promise you I'll steer clear of nudist places.

Dictating my wardrobe again! Do you also have a preference between American plaid versus safari khaki?

You can wear what the heck you like - you can wear a Tarzan loin cloth or a Prada number in pink chiffon for all I care - just so long as the rude bits are out of sight.

Stu

[Skinview]

Originally Posted by Stu2630

Strange. Slavery was abolished in Britain, which had the "tyranny of the majority", in 1833.

Britain lacks a constitution and judicial review, but it is still a republic, and as such does not have majority rule. It is not a literal democracy. A few elite individuals rule over the country, as is the case in the US. A parliament is still a powerful buffer between the passions of the masses and actual policy. But I digress from your point. Both the US and UK can be subject to the "tyranny of the majority", though more so in the UK.

It was more than three decades later (1865) before it was abolished in the US.

I wonder how long it would have taken in Britain if it had an agrarian economy based on cotton, with a long established slave labor force. And we didn't vote down slavery. We went to war over it.

That is, however, not the main point. The fact is that slaves were not enfranchised people - they had no say in their slavery, and so any country which has slavery is not a true democracy.

Its too easy to point out some flaw in the government and discredit it as not being "a true democracy". We were as true a democracy as it gets. There was a time early in our history when blacks could vote. It didn't do them any good.

The trouble is that where you have such elites, they tend not to look after just ordinary minorities - they especially look after privileged minorities, like the rich.

There is some truth to this with regard to politicians, but the rich have zero influence on appointed judges. It could be argued that there could, theoretically, be some influence in the appointment process, but in fact, it doesn't happen. Probably because such attempts would have so little effect since there are so many steps between where the influence of the rich ends and an actual ruling on their interests occurs, and so many other factors that go into the selection process.

I don't think many people would argue about the very high status we should afford to free speech (although there are limits even to that). Nobody is advocating denying nudists free speech. The amount of freedom to behave as you like is, however, not afforded such status, and is subject to balancing the rights and interests of others.

Controlling how I dress is not a "right". Its a power. Making other people do things they don't want to do is not a "right".

So the people who pay their salaries, and who they are employed to serve, have no say either in who is appointed as a judge, or whether they should be dismissed.

Not directly, although there is some indirect control in the election process. If we want to have the Supreme Court recognize our right to bear arms, we better not vote for a president who wants to trample that right. If Gore or Kerry had been elected president, there would now be no recognized right to bear arms in the US, because they would have appointed judges hostile to that right. But for practical purposes, there are so many competing factors in the election process, that the electorate has very little purposeful control over who is appointed to the court.

As for the Constitution - that is simply a form of law, too. It can be amended by elected representatives just as ordinary law can be.

No. Its a very different and enormously difficult process.

"An amendment may be ratified in three ways:

* The new amendment may be approved by two-thirds of both houses of Congress, then sent to the states for approval.

* Two-thirds of the state legislatures may apply to Congress for a constitutional convention to consider amendments, which are then sent to the states for approval.

* Congress may require ratification by special convention. The convention method has been used only once, to approve the 21st Amendment (repealing prohibition, 1933).

Regardless of the method of proposing an amendment, final ratification requires approval by three-fourths of the states."
-wikipedia

Not many laws are passed with two thirds of either house of Congress. Both at the same time? Rarer. And then get three-fourths of the states to agree? Not very likely.

There has never been a constitutional convention. Americans find that idea positively frightening. I could only concieve of that happening after several amendments went terribly wrong and the country fell into civil war or some such calamity.

[Skinview]

Originally Posted by Stu2630

My requirement for determining that majority rule should be a sacrosanct principle is that the majority are educated, and have access to information, so they can make their determination from a position of knowledge and not blind ignorance. In the time of slavery, the majority were not so educated and informed.

They are not very well informed today either. On most issues, the electorate is profoundly ignorant. Your requirement for making majority rule sacrosanct has never existed in the real world. Its one major reason why we live in republics and not democracies.

[missouriboy]

AGDE, Post #53

We tend to defend the "right" to public nudity narrowly, kind of as a minority right against all others. Instead we could be building a broader coalition with others who think, as a general principle, that people should be free to clothe themselves as they wish without government intervention. The recent news story about "making morning coffee in the buff" in Virginia is a case in point. We need to engage in the debate and turn it on its head -- not whether there was "exposure" while making coffee, but whether, and if so what, clothing is legally required to make coffee. This appends nudity at the casual end of the clothing-choice spectrum, gives it broader social and legal context (along with other kinds of clothing choice), and makes it a state-of-being issue rather than a regulated behavior.

My admitted goal is to build a case for the general principle that the courts shouldn't be involved in litigation concerning individual dress code disputes. The corollary legislative remedy, in a very US 9th Amendment friendly way, is, not to authorize public nudity, but instead to de-authorize government intervention in fashion preference -- to establish that a citizen's basic right to clothe themselves as they see fit means that civil protection and regulation must be clothing blind, not showing preference or prejudice according to any citizen's state of dress.

Exactly! In fact, this is just about what I stated in Post #47...

[Bob S.]

Stu: "Everyone knows what nudity is, Bob, and they know what they feel about it, and when they find it appropriate. Certainly, they may be ignorant about the philosophy and motivations behind nudism, but thatäs not really relevant."

Everyone knew what blacks looked like, too and still they banished them from certain places. They are not educated on nudism, nor do they even care. That means that all regulations and laws regarding limits on nudism should be repealed. They do not understand why they are averse to seeing nudity. They just react because it is illegal, but cannot explain why its so bad.

Stu: " Nudity is more than just a state of dress just as the N***** word is more than just a word to a black person."

And in the US, the courts have decided that the govt has no business regulating what words come out of people's mouths unless the words are likely to cause a riot or immediate violence.

Stu: "I really don't have a problem with segregation per se. We already segregate people in all manner of ways, the most obvious is when we segregate the sexes in changing rooms and toilets."

Yes, but when the govt orders it, that becomes very dangerous. When it is voluntary, it is perfectly fine.

Stu: "I think the majority should ONLY be overruled if they are either mentally or educationally incapable of making a decision"

Even if the decision is averse to an equal group? What if they just refuse to educate themselves? Blind ignorance is as dangerous as tyrants.

Stu: "Being clothed is the default state of modern humans and being naked is (a) the exception and (b) usually only occurs for very specific purposes."

Wrong, Stu. Nudity is the deault state of humans as it has been for as long as the race has existed. You can put clothes on and take them off. Your state without any adornments is your natural state. It would be like stating that the natural state of women is having pierced ears. Those who do not have pierced ears are unnatural? There are so many men and boys in the US who have been circumcised, so does that mean that is their natural state?

The natural state of humans cannot change from society to society. Clothes are no more part of the natural state than jewelry or tattoos. It may be the accepted public societal state, but it is not the natural human state. The natural human state is what you were born with.

Bob S.

[nimrod]

I do not think that nudity itself is a right, the freedom of choice is. If you choose to be nude, that right of choice should be protected. People might object to the nudity but should agree that it is the right of the person to choose to not dress.