What’s wrong with these two pictures?

That’s right. Nothing.

But they show male and female naughty bits! And to find the likes of them on the internet is increasingly difficult: one either has to steal them from the nether reaches of sites like Flickr or go to X-rated sites. Not even most stock photograph or medical sites carry wholesome photographs of real people in the nude. This is ridiculous. Indeed it is increasingly censorship by the back door.

Malcolm Boura, British Naturism‘s (BN) Research and Liaison Officer writes a useful short article in the latest edition of BN’s members’ magazine with a longer, more detailed briefing document on the BN website.

Here, in Malcom’s words, are some of the salient points from his article:

Until a couple of years ago, I was proud to live in a country which valued freedom of speech but then I started to dig below the surface … There are an enormous number of censors but most of them operate behind a veil of secrecy …

A worrying development in recent years is the exporting of American prejudices to us by corporations such as Facebook and Apple … why should a US businessman dictate what we are allowed to see? …

Films on television are frequently cut but have you ever known a broadcaster admit to it? … Usually, the censorship is to placate those who preserve the memory of the late Mary Whitehouse, not for any rational reason, so it suits them to keep quiet about it …

So what harm does it do? If a social worker tries to obtain child protection documents from the BN website, they will probably be stopped by the council’s web-filtering software. The message is clear – naturism is so dangerous that even adults must be protected from it.

That reinforces prejudice and that could be catastrophic for any naturist family with whom the social worker is working …

Censorship has been vastly more effective at preventing access to wholesome pictures of the body than it has in preventing access to pornography. Should pornography really be the main way by which children and young people find out what people look like? Even worse, should it be the main way they find out how people behave in a sexual relationship? …

Why is it that so many people just assume that nudity must be harmful to children? Why is it that politicians just assume that people will support moves towards greater prudery? … The excuse … is “Think of the children” but as happens far too often, nobody is bothering to actually think … It is just an appeal to assumed popular prejudice. I say ‘assumed’ because I doubt very much if it really is that popular.

If you’re interested in censorship, the extent to which its tentacles reach into daily life, how it affects society and ways in which the naturist movement may be affected, then I commend the Malcolm’s briefing document.

And if censorship reaches so far into the realms of nudity, body image, sexuality etc. you can be sure it is there in may other areas as well.

We need to remain ever on our guard and fight this creeping paralysis. It’s hard because much of the censorship is not formalised and is totally unaccountable. But to maintain a civilised society freedom of speech and human rights must be upheld. And to do that nudity and sexuality need to be normalised, not marginalised and criminalised.