According to Child Protective Services, everyone in my family is guilty of possessing and sharing CSAM (child sexual abuse material). This includes my mother, father, sister, brother, aunts, nephews, cousins, godmother, and the priest at my local Greek Orthodox Church in Tarpon Springs, Florida. The photos in question are from my 1978 baptism. In all of the albums commemorating the event, you can clearly see the priest holding me over the baptismal font, dripping with holy water and olive oil, and my penis in full view of the masses. And, since I was under the age of 18 at the time, everyone attending church that day needs to be arrested. OK, the good folks in charge of CSAM may make exceptions for this type of material — I really don’t know — but nowhere is that clearly stated on their website, and this should concern all of us.
I became interested in learning about CSAM, a term I’d never heard before, after Bare Oaks Naturist Park owner and The Naturist Living Show host Stéphane Deschênes had his Patreon account suspended without warning. This was, of course, utterly baffling to me, Stéphane, and the thousands of listeners who have supported him over the years. As he made clear on his podcast, there are no visuals to go along with his show aside from a single cover photo. Some of those photos feature minors, but none of their “bad parts” are visible, and they are far less embarrassing than the baptismal photos my parents took of me. Now, Stéphane’s logo could be blamed for featuring a naked family in silhouette, since artistic depictions of children are treated the same as photos. It could also be that discussing naturism and families is a crime. Who knows?
Americans are terribly confused when it comes to the human body, perverting (literally) what is natural by equating any and all nudity, no matter the context, with sex and, by extension, pornography. This became clear to me when Amazon recently removed my book from their site for violating their anti-pornography policy. When I tried to explain to them that my book did not contain any adult material, they simply reiterated that their policy does not allow pornography. Yes, Thelana, the titular heroine, runs around without any clothes on, but so does Mowgli, Tarzan, John Carter of Mars, Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and Ulysses from Planet of the Apes. You might argue that those stories only allude to nakedness, but there you’d be wrong. In the 100th Anniversary edition of Kipling’s beloved classic, an illustrated Mowgli goes Full Monty in the first few pages. The artwork is subtle and tastefully done, but according to the CSAM experts, none of that matters, and potential buyers should probably avoid buying it for fear they may be charged with CSAM.
Now, I’ve mentioned before how AI is being used to censor us by conflating simple nudity with pornography. Yesterday, I tried to print a 3D Thelana figure using Jujubit. Finally! I thought, I can display an accurate model of my heroine in the privacy of my home. Yet Jujubit’s AI system automatically flagged the pic and put her in shorts. Every other nude figure I tried to make was either censored or rejected, except for when I uploaded a photo of Michelangelo’s David. For some inexplicable reason, classic nudes get a pass, but why modern artists aren’t permitted to follow in the footsteps of the Renaissance masters is a mystery that continues to elude me. So I searched for other 3D printing companies, but the only ones allowing “NSFW” material are used for making sex dolls. This hypersexualization insults the history of sculpture and the countless works of art chiseled by the likes of Praxiteles, Leonardo, and Michelangelo, all of whom should be spinning in their graves by now.
The Greeks and Romans of antiquity did not sexualize people the way we do. For them, the human body was something beautiful, something to celebrate, something divine. It makes me wonder why universities continue offering nude figure drawing classes (using live nude models, no less)—what’s the point?—or why the Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, an hour’s drive from me, has yet to post a warning to visitors due to all the CSAM on display.
The AI censors at Amazon and Jujubit regard all nudity—no matter the context—as sexual material. And it may be that these companies are also afraid of being accused of selling CSAM, which would not surprise me. CSAM is so strict that, according to their website, my underage daughter could be charged for taking a photo OF HERSELF.
This is what is called losing the plot, folks.
Look, I am not making light of child abuse. Anyone who touches a child the wrong way needs to be strung up by their testicles. I wouldn’t take torture off the table, and I am someone who, on principle, opposes torture.
I was sexually abused as a child by my brother-in-law. He used to come into my bathroom while I was showering to fondle me, and I hated him for it. Thankfully, fondling was as far as it went. In kindergarten, I met a girl who asked me to touch her “down there” at naptime. I didn’t understand what she was after, and only later—years later—did it dawn on me how she had been abused by her father.
Child abuse goes unchallenged because underage victims are taught that certain parts of themselves are never to be discussed. If my penis were not a taboo subject, I might have reported my brother-in-law, and the abuse might have stopped. If the girl at my school was not ashamed to talk about her body, she might have informed her teachers about her father. Shame is the weapon of the abuser. Nudism protects children by robbing abusers of their greatest weapon.
Contrary to what some people may assert, nudist parents do not strip their children of clothing, modesty, or privacy. But body shame is a learned habit. Kids understand from an early age the need to cover themselves in public. But in a household where mom and dad get out of the shower without immediately hiding under a towel, the child won’t think twice about doffing their diaper to run freely about the living room. Most teenagers leave the “lifestyle” when they hit puberty or when they learn how most of their friends live, but often return to it later in life. If anything, it’s textiles (non-nudists) who force children to dress up whether they want to or not.
Growing up, I hated wearing clothes — I hated the irritating touch of fabric on my skin — and I hated presenting myself in a way that never felt genuine for the sake of relatives, which is why I spent every minute of the day as naked as a jaybird whenever the family left the house. Living in a nudist home would have been a dream come true for me. Never having to keep my shorts on hand in case the parents came back early. Never having to worry about “what will they think if they find out?” and “will I be locked in a padded room someday?” And I imagine I am not the only one to have had these feelings. But in a conservative Orthodox family, I was taught that certain parts of me were sinful, and that nobody should ever see me “that way”—unless, of course, we were visiting the doctor, or a close relative chose to abuse me. Mixed messages regarding shame, abuse, and my desire to live freely caused me endless anxiety growing up.
Who is really sexualizing children?
Is it the overzealous proponents of CSAM, who confuse innocence with fetish material, or nudists who view photos of children, regardless of how they are dressed, as children and nothing more? I recognize, of course, that not everyone sees the world the same way. There are bad actors out there who will take advantage of a minor in his or her most vulnerable state—but it is wrong to assume that normal people may be tempted by the sight of a naked child. Pedophilia is a mental illness and should be treated as such. To cater to the very worst people in our society is to suggest we are all prone to the same sickness. Taken to its logical conclusion, we should all be dressing our families like the Brady Bunch, and avoid taking them to beaches and water parks, in case a pedophile happens to be there. In Europe, where baptismal photos are never a cause for concern, we see far fewer instances of child abuse. But American nudists are not so naive as to blindly trust in the goodness of others, which is why naturist venues like Lake Como require background checks for every visitor.
Context matters. Intent matters. To label innocent depictions of minors as CSAM is to suggest that the subjects of those images are, in fact, sexual beings. And when people in their most natural state are treated as little more than “material,” we all, regardless of age, become dehumanized, objectified, and sexualized in the worst possible way.
Being and Nakedness 
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