it’s over, folks

This isn’t a post I ever thought I would be making and most certainly never wanted to make, but I can’t ignore reality anymore.

So . . . it’s over, folks. At least for me. I doubt I will be writing any more articles for this blog.

If you’ve been following my other social media accounts, you may be asking if I am still a proud nudist? And the answer to that is a resounding YES. But while my beliefs have not changed, it is slowly dawning on me that I cannot win this fight. Nudism does not exist inside a vacuum; it’s a subculture within a much larger culture, a predominantly Puritan/Christian world that always equates nudity with sex. For the past three decades, I aimed to change that perspective, and I have failed miserably.

At its core, nudism is the belief that the human body is innocent—that a naked body does not have to lead to sexual urges. But the VAST majority of the population disagrees, and that’s really what matters. Nudism is not a science. We cannot prove our assertions through experimentation. We cannot insist that the way people feel about a subject is wrong. While a world free of shame may be a better world, it simply isn’t how the world is.

Now here’s the insidious part: the social media algorithm is largely to blame. When I started advocating nudism in 2012, I was confident that through social media, we could get the word out. With enough blogging, commentating, and YouTubing, the general public would eventually come around to understanding the lifestyle. I was wrong. The “algorithm” defines a thing not by what it is but by what people want it to be. So, if a majority of people consider nudism a sexual kink, that’s what it becomes. When you type “nudist” into Google and a hundred porn sites pop up, the average person, knowing nothing about the subject, will assume nudism = porn. When web designers looking to cash in on the label produce sites like TrueNudists.com, which fetishizes young girls’ bodies, nudism is redefined to mean the exact opposite of what it is. Even people claiming to be real nudists are often anything but. Visit Reddit’s “nudists” thread, and all you’ll see are exhibitionists in provocative poses, most of whom are women soliciting their OnlyFans pages. On my own blog, I have had to remove the share button after receiving too many dick pics. One of my followers calls himself ‘Penis’ and another guy’s profile is just a penis penetrating another man’s anus.

As search engines prioritize pornography over innocent nudity, genuine nudist platforms are dying out due to a lack of interest. Or they become erased entirely. Hector Martinez, founder of the Mexican naturist movement, had his YouTube channel deleted without warning and, despite repeated attempts to have it reinstated, remains MIA. Following that, Jessa O’Brien’s channel, where she informed the public about her nude lifestyle and Australia’s clothing-optional beaches, was removed following years of growing popularity. Nudism.TV, something I raved about on this blog, has yet to materialize anything more than teasers after promising a 2022 debut. Stéphane Deschênes, who recently interviewed me on his podcast, The Naturist Living Show, has had most of his social media accounts deleted from Facebook and Twitter. Other naturist advocates, like Lady God1va; and Felicity Jones, founder of the now defunct Young Naturists America, have disappeared from the web due to harassment.

As an aspiring author living an unorthodox lifestyle, it’s the literary arena that’s hurt me the most. Authors claiming to be nudists release content on Amazon that serves as little more than thinly veiled erotica. I won’t mention names, but it’s heartbreaking when someone you know who frequents clothing-optional places releases a book where young girls masturbate every other chapter. While books containing non-sexual nudity exist (The Feral Girl is one), they are nowhere near as popular, and as a response, Amazon primarily advertises nudist-themed erotica to readers looking to satisfy their skin fetish. This is why the Aenya Series is repeatedly mislabeled and why all the wrong people end up reading it. To the algorithm’s eyes, nudity = erotica, no matter the author’s intentions.

The sad, scary thing is this: this may not be just a social media problem. It may be that, for most of us, seeing a naked body goes hand-in-hand with sex. Twenty years ago, when I attended USF in Tampa, Paradise Lakes Clothing Optional Resort was my introduction to social nudism and where I spent every other day between classes. Today, Paradise has become a swinger playground and has been removed from AANR’s list of approved destinations. Down the road from Paradise, a bigger and more lavish resort, Caliente, opened a few years later. I frequented Caliente with my wife and kid when it first opened, but it has since turned into another swinger hangout. That leaves us Lake Como in Land O’ Lakes, but even there, I wonder about the motives of its patrons. Like why are so many “nudists” fully dressed in ninety-degree weather? The slow sexualization of this once-innocent lifestyle isn’t just an American phenomenon. Cap d’Agde, in France, the world-famous naked city, has been overrun by swingers and couples fornicating on the beach.

So that’s it.

It’s over.

We lost.

Does this mean I reject the tenets of nudism? That I’ll start wearing clothes at home? No. It only means nudism/naturism are words I will stop using because those terms have been sullied by the algorithm and are laden with too much baggage, and that, as a social movement, we have failed.

And yet I still believe that choosing what to wear, even if you prefer wearing nothing at all, alone or in public, is a freedom we should be allowed, but that, unfortunately, the capacity to respect women (and men) who go about as they were born, is a transcendent state of mind very few of us may ever reach.