What's True for Me
For me nudity is not bad or wrong. It's how we are born and ultimately how we return to the earth. Clothing is necessary in many aspects of life such as for protection from the elements or even just the chill of the produce isle. So that we can focus and function in our day jobs without the distractions of seeing all the delicate bits of the other beings around us. Sometimes just for art and the beautification of our bodies! (I have a white silk dress with red flowers that makes me feel like a beautiful butterfly when I wear it. 🤗) But often our layers of clothing are just being used as psychological protection. As a shield to protect and hide our raw vulnerable selves from being fully exposed and revealed...and judged.
Also for me, sex is not bad or wrong. It is the single strongest biological desire of all living creatures. We all want it and want to be wanted. It's how the species continues!
And yet so many humans spend much of their lives denying, hiding or trying to tame away this aspect of their being! And then the issue of what we teach our children about sex... they LITERALLY come from it and yet many of us attempt to "shelter" our kids from knowledge of sexuality as long as it's feasibly possible. We try and avoid those "awkward" conversations about where babies come from by tidying it up with nonsense statements like "only after a man and woman are married will god bless them with a child."
How do those folks 👆🏼deal with it then when their kids' teenaged baby sitter shows up pregnant?! (Seriously, I have a friend who told her kids the nonsense about god only granting pregnancy after marriage, like it was from magic dust or something, and then their 16 YO babysitter later shows up knocked up and tells the kids while she is watching them for my sweet but crazy friend, the parent. 😳😂)
This feels a little bit like a rant, and I'm sorry about that. I've just been wanting to write about this subject for a long time and I don't know where to start. So I'm starting here with my statements of what's true for me. 🙏🏽
I admire your thought
Thank you 🙏🏽
Not to get too religious, but it's interesting that Adam & Eve on first noticed their own nakedness & shame after committing sin. God realized they were shamed of their bodies while hiding behind bushes - which is how he knew they had sinned by eating an apple from the tree of knowledge.
So where I'm going with this and relating to is;
Sin = Shame of Nakedness = Clothes.
So the most Innocent "we" were or have been - was also a time where we didn't hide our bodies.
Whatcha think?
I follow your logic and agree! I'm not religious, but I agree clothing often is just a way to hide parts of ourselves. And hiding is really the problem...we all "sin" or make mistakes. Be open and honest about that to those who love us, and then recommit going forward. It's when we start hiding in shame that all our other problems build up.
Great comment. Thanks for engaging in this :)
Adam and Eve has some brilliant symbolism and can be interpreted in many ways! There's so much timeless wisdom and insight in these stories if someone can free themselves of the idea that these stories have to be literal or they're worthless, or if truth isn't found in a literal reading the authors can't have believed it was.
Highly recommend Dr Jordan Peterson, search more on him talking about this but here's a short clip where he talked about the Adam and Eve story. I also recommend looking up him talking about the Egyptian myth and what that represents
Upvoted for the sex positivity. Nude-shame is an obsolete custom whose days are numbered.
Thank you. Praises be!
nice logic there, it's correct too.. more should see this.
Thank you. Feel free to share the post. 🙏🏽
will do
The US and particularly The southeast where we live are not tolerant of nudity or sexuality. I think it is sad that I have to hide the fact that my wife is a former stripper because most people would immediately pass judgment even though many of them are morally (and in many cases intellectually) inferior in my book. She's a great woman and she's always been faithful and loyal to me and I've done the same with her. We have a great marriage.
I understand a lot of women aren't comfortable being nude and that's fine but I can't help but wonder how much that has to do with the way society has conditioned them to think and see themselves.
I hear yeah, and I'm starting to question my own notions "that I have to hide". I think sometimes, for me at least, I blame society, my parents, friends, a job… Whatever for what ultimately was a self-imposed restriction or hold back that I put on myself. It's my own uncertainty of how people would react that used to make me feel I had to hide. No one made me. Once that becomes clear we can drop the need to behave anyway besides the way the way we truly are...and just be.
So what if people pass judgment on me? At this point I'd rather live with the mild pain of being my true self and dealing with the reaction of people who are asleep, versus stifling myself to keep all of the sheep happy.
Your wife is a great girl and I feel you and she are on this same path.
What I find the most interesting about the subject is how its dealt with differently in different places in the world... I lived in the US for ten years and to me it seemed like this whole nudity thing was a much bigger issue than it is here in Germany.. and most of the rest of Europe.
I still remember how funny I found it, when my American friends wanted to watch commercials all the time on TV here. Always a good chance of seeing some (half)naked ladies ;-)
Facebook's policy is down right absurd and often deadly for artists... I had my page banned for two years. Most likely because one could see a few (female) nipples.. if you looked close enough ;-)
A friend made fun of this, when he offered a picture of a male nipple ("leagal")to be pasted on top of ("illegal") female nipples in our fb posts :-b
So, to get to the point... for me, most rules about nudity and sex are among the silliest mankind ever developed
Btw... beautiful pictures 8-)
Agreed...it is interesting how nudity is more of an issue some places vs others. I'm very grateful for the freedom on steemit to show what we want to share, tag it nsfw if need be, and and then let it be.
And don't even get me started on the male/female areola issue! 🤣
Thanks for the compliment and the comment. 🙏🏽
Yes, this nsfw feature is just one of the things I appreciate here. Still trying to find out how it works. The quality of the "conversations" is a lot better than anywhere else too
Now you got me curious... how could I get you started on the male/female areola issue? To me it is utterly absurd. What if someone decided, that all of a sudden the female mouth has to be covered? Far fetched? My guess is, that the erotic potential isn't far from that of the female nipple... ans if it wasn't for that, they are both... how can I say... food related O:-)
Agreed the comments and conversations here are better than anywhere else I've experienced online! Some folks just make more effort here since there is money potential, and others of us are just naturally conversive and have found a community on steemit of like minded folks here. :)
Regarding nsfw...my understanding is that each of us via settings can chose to see nsfw images in our feed, or else select to have them hidden in case you are scrolling thru somewhere that might cause a problem. If you chose to obscure nsfw images, you may still see them by simply clicking on the post.
What is deemed nsfw is a bit subjective, but generally it is anything of the genital region or female nipples...of course.
"Don't get me started..." was just my way of agreeing with you in the absurdity of the male/female nipple controversy. "Don't get me started" means I might go off in a RANT about the ridiculous inequity of that issue.
Really though need to write out my thoughts more on the nipple issue...writing/blogging is how I clarify my stance on issues. The areola issue isn't about nipples. Male/female nipples appear IDENTICAL when isolated in an image. The real issue is the fullness and curvature of the female breast, not the nipple.
I get it. I see it. Female breasts are beautiful and can cause arousal for most, and it's that power of sexual arousal that people have a problem with. Many people still unconsciously believe sex is bad or wrong, or that we should at least deny and hide our sexuality and...sexual beingness. So, if the female breast, which IS punctuated by the nipple, generally triggers arousal, and that's "bad" then they advocate to just avoid all that "mess" and ban the nipple/ keep them covered up.
Hey, thanks for triggering all that 👆🏼for me. This convo just gave me a big insight for another post I'm working on. 🙏🏽
This reminds me of certain members of our extended family would literally walk out of the room when I was breastfeeding, like it was something I needed to do in private or hide. EYE ROLL That's only tangentially related, but this reminded me of it. :)
It a conundrum for many how to act around an open boob! They are beautiful! They are sexy! But then when a breast is used for such a nurturing motherly thing as nursing...well hell, then people don't know what category to put them in. So lots of folks just avoid, like the relatives you mentioned, and leave the room.
Good is that depressing, when my upvote shows no effect. Thanks a lot for yours :-)
Posts with nsfw have to have that as a first tag, right?
Understand and agree completely what you say about the rest. Of course I got it, what you meant with "Don't get me started...". But artists tend to be a bit... provocative (?) and I love it when I can entice someone to a little rant O:-)
Plus to me art is not just about creating something. Someones reaction to it is an essential part and it surprises me quite often.
Very curious for (about...(?).. donno the proper word) the post you are working on.
And wasn't there another one pending about the high heel thingy?
You're welcome for my little vote. My upvote only makes more impact than yours because I have purchased and curated more SP over time. Yours will increase likewise...
Your comment/lament about your upvote's lack of effect caused a song to start playing in my head yesterday. I love this song by Hayling, and It goes, "don't think about all those things you fear. Just be glad to be here." I wanted to say that to you. 🙏🏽 AND (thank u very much) it was the message I needed to receive about a matter causing me angst in my own life. So often I/we worry and wish and focus on what is lacking...and the solution to all of that is always the same - gratitude. Just being grateful for what is and just being glad that we are here now.
Nsfw - I think that can be any one of your tags. Doesn't have to be 1st.
Gosh...I really like conversing with you. So often u say things that really strike me or contribute to something I'm already wanting to write about (like the high heels...I'm getting to it 😉) . Like also what u said about art. I totally agree. It's not just about creating something, but also the viewers reaction. Ultimately art is often an unspoken engagement between the artist and experiencer.
One thing to keep in mind is that we WANT taboos with sex. No one who claims to find whatever it is sexually exciting should seriously resent that. If one finds breasts sexually exciting the last they should want is to wish away the excitement. It's a matter of economics.
The more scarce something is the more we find it valuable. If something is abundant we might not even recognise it's there. Most of us live in such incredible wealth and we still complain as if we have nothing. We can't appreciate all the things we take for granted that for all but an eye blink ago were the number 1 most desired resources. We live like kings, better than kings, but we can't feel it because a king is on the top and since we can see there's so many above us we feel poor.
When sex was more taboo it didn't take much to get someone excited, now much less is taboo and it's harder to get excited. If you like being excited don't try and get rid of the taboos and hope the excitement will stay with you. As soon as what was scarce becomes abundant our focus just shifts up a level.
How would you ever be able to enjoy feeling "liberated" sexually or otherwise if you didn't have anything to be liberated from? How would you ever be able to enjoy food if you were never hungry? If you could eat your favourite food every day all the time how long would it stay your favourite?
On a related topic:
(I edited this little)
There are those who say the purpose of breasts are for feeding children and so are not sexual, which is a very poorly considered point to make but I've seen it quite a lot when the subject comes up.
The argument is that treating womens breasts as sexual and for mens benefit isn't reasonable (side note, often assumed only men find boobs sexually exciting) when they're not for that purpose. The implication being that the only body parts we should consider sexual is the primary sex organs.
I don't think I've ever seen the response that what we find most physically sexually attractive and most important is usually EVERYTHING APART from their primary sex organs! How else would we ever get to see, or want to see, someones genitals if that wasn't the case? It's particularly strange to see women usually the ones found saying this, as more women tend to list physical features as sexually stimulating that are entirely unrelated to sex. Even the most graphic porn target at men tend to emphasise a womans entirely non-sexual physical features particularly her face as essential. That's not to say humans don't find looking at genitals sexually stimulating, but we only find it stimulating based on context
@steemed-opem
Oh boy...what a good point. Let me reply more to this later. Thank you for the thought provoking comment. :)
wow @steemed-open nice post, I agree. Following you now in order to stay in touch and send in my support. Keep steeming
Nice concept
Thank you
It's strange how we have such a stigma against sex in the US, and yet we do so much to glorify violence. Nothing wrong with kids watching gory crime shows about messed up serial killers, but heaven forbid they catch sight of a nipple!
I don't know about you, but if I had kids, I'd hope they could grow up and have a healthy, satisfying sex life. I wouldn't want them participating in violence. Yet most people are conditioning their kids for the opposite.
Not at our house...we let our kids watch equal parts sex and violence so each are glorified with equality. ...I'm just kidding 🤣 But I would rather my kids see a sex scene than a gory abusive scene.
Ive thought a lot about this topic and I'm convinced many parents aversion to sex scenes, and their bizarre support of violence-is-okay-but-sex-scenes-are-not, is because of many parents' own sense of shame and discomfort with their sexuality. As in, it's okay kids for you to watch violent movies because that's just fantasy and the fictional dramatized actions of "others", but movies with intimate sexual scenes...that shit hits much closer to home for most parents! That's the stuff they are doing behind closed doors! It's real, they like to keep it hidden, and it makes many uncomfortable.
Thanks for commenting ✌🏾
Beautiful thank you very much for sharing! We all do want to be wanted which is a perfectly natural desire and I appreciate your courage in talking about it along with posting the photos of you and your husband! It might be funny if he did his own post in the same locations as you!
Yes, we really do all want to be wanted. It's biological! And yet so often we pretend we don't care, that it's not true, or even that we are offended by the interest of others! thanks for your understanding J. Hugs
Hugs are the best except sometimes when people say no which is the worst!