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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   5564 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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American culture is far more tolerant of nudity now than it ever has been. When else would television shows like The Boys and Game of Thrones get away with showing so much of the human anatomy as within the last three decades?

Boy’s nude swimming was a mandatory subject in American public schools until the seventies.

A clever way to weed the gays out.

Right after penis inspection day, right?

No, Americans just used to have a very different attitude towards (male)semi public nudity.

Those were not the only different attitudes. Those attitudes existed at a time boys would receive direct instruction on the dangers of preditory homosexuals. Homosexuals could be excluded from many places due to their propensity for unnatural un-chastites.

The YMCA had greater focus on young Christian men. There are lots of older pagans at the YMCA where my children swim. I'd prefer the organization to return to Muscular Christianity.

They are cable shows, not TV ones, aren't they? Theoretically, you can only watch them if you paid for HBO/Amazon, you can't stumble upon them while browsing the channels for cartoons after school.

Seems to me they're actively trying to be transgressive, and nudity is a means towards that end precisely because it's still so very taboo.

Or maybe nudity just tickles people in the lizard brain and showmakers can finally get away with it because the taboo really has weakened.

Hell, I don't know. I just find it weird that something as extremely basic as being naked remains a big deal at all. But I realize of course that this is not a mainstream opinion.

More tolerant than before, but still quite puritanical relative to Europe. As I understand it, nudity in Europe is much more divorced from sexuality than in America. The shocked reaction demonstrated here seems exaggerated for a dress (well, "dress") that's 15 square inches of fabric away from a bikini.

Recent examples of nudity in American media reinforce the contrast. Even now, anything including nudity/involving sexuality is Adult and Mature and even the mere acknowledgment of genitalia is risqué. Meanwhile, the Netherlands has a children's show about a man's prehensile penis.

More tolerant than before, but still quite puritanical relative to Europe. As I understand it, nudity in Europe is much more divorced from sexuality than in America.

There is some truth to this, but it also sounds like a teenager's excuse how he came to possess a VHS tape of Emmanuelle. It is a variation of "the grass is less prude on the other side of border" effect, and not very good one. I don't think a pretty lady in skimpy outfit is divorced from sexuality anywhere in Europe. There is only a local difference in where the lines in previous battles for standards of public mores have been fought and lost. In general, Paris, London, Berlin and other big city urban cultures have had a different mores than more conservative small town - rural cultures. In some countries the urban mores have gained more ground than in others.

Concerning Dillermand show, I think Danish religious conservatism decidedly lost during springtime of people's and definitely by around WW1, something to do with industrial pork agriculture urbanizing the rural areas and parliament's iron grip of church providing no ground for a Christian revivalist movement. (Church of Denmark has no archibishop, they are ruled in name only by king and directly by parliament, resulting in a church ruled by concerns of secular non-believers.)

Paris, London, Berlin and other big city urban cultures have had a different mores than more conservative small town - rural cultures. In some countries the urban mores have gained more ground than in others.

I LOLed a little. I live in a very rural area far away from big towns, and you can find nude camping grounds and saunas practically on every other hill, and for every major bathing spot at a lake, there's another where skinny dipping is the norm. And it's not only or even mostly the libertine city folk who trek out here to go wild where nobody recognizes them; there really is a significant demand practically everywhere.

Which isn't to say that there isn't a cultural rural/urban divide. There is. But nudity is on the rural side.

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