For Andrew...(public nudity debate).

[dales]

Public nudity etiquette rules up for debate

City officials have no plans to stop the cover-up at City Hall come Thursday.

That’s when the Board of Supervisors’ Public Safety Committee will consider Supervisor Scott Wiener’s legislation regulating public nudity in the city. Fans of going au naturel are welcome to testify, but under City Hall rules, they must be covered up – top and bottom. Footwear also is a must.

“It could be large green plastic garbage bags,” one city official said of an acceptable body covering. “As long as they have shoes.”

Wiener’s proposal would require naked people to place a towel or similar barrier on a public bench or chair before they sit down, and also would make them don clothes when they dine in restaurants.

It is not illegal to be naked in public in San Francisco, except in a state of arousal.

The supervisor came up with the idea after fielding complaints from some constituents who are uneasy with the “naked guys,” who hang out in the Castro district plaza at 17th and Market streets. Wiener didn’t want to go as far as calling for an all-out ban on the the clothes-free contingent, he said, but just put in place some common-sense public sanitation precautions.

The hearing is set to start at 10:30 a.m. in City Hall’s legislative chamber.

[rubato]

I don't suppose an appeal to consideration would help?

No, I guess not.

yrs,
rubato

[Andrew D]

No, an appeal to the I-don't-want'to-see-it-so-you-have-to-hide-it crowd for some consideration for those who are not so myopic would probably not accomplish anything. Narrow-mindedness and consideration tend to be mutually exclusive.

[Scooter]

How does an appeal to consideration by putting a towel down on a chair or bench in a public place before sitting on it with one's exposed anus, equate to 'you-have-to-hide-it'?

[Andrew D]

It does not. But I did not take rubato's posting as referring only (if at all) to "putting a towel down on a chair or bench in a public place before sitting on it with one's exposed anus".

The proposed legislation would "also would make them [naked people] don clothes when they dine in restaurants." Wouldn't "putting a towel down on a chair or bench ... before sitting on it with one's exposed anus" accomplish the same thing in a restaurant as it would in other public sitting places? Or is there something special about restaurants such that sitting naked atop a towel (etc.) in a restaurant would be inadequate, whereas sitting on naked atop a towel on a public bench in a public park would be adequate?

After all, it is quite common for people to eat while sitting on public benches in public parks. The fact that restaurants involve people's eating does not appear to be the answer.

I took rubato's posting to refer to public nudity generally -- to suggest that "an appeal to consideration" would be an appeal to people not to go naked (except, presumably, at nude beaches and the like). Perhaps I mistook his posting.

He suggested (rhetorically) that "an appeal to consideration would help." Help with what? He did not say, so I responded to what I took his words to mean. If he did not intend the meaning which I took from his words, perhaps he will articulate the different meaning which he intended by them.

[Rick]

I for one wouldn't like someones exposed anus passing by my plate at the same level...

[Scooter]

After all, it is quite common for people to eat while sitting on public benches in public parks. The fact that restaurants involve people's eating does not appear to be the answer.

It is also quite common to encounter pigeon shit on public benches in public parks, but I imagine health department officials would have something to say about finding it in a restaurant. It is not at all unreasonable to maintain a higher standard of cleanliness in a place whose business it is to serve food, than in the outdoors. I don't particularly need someone's bare anus (and whatever pathogens it might be harboring) brushing against my chair or the edge of my table when I might touch either with my hand while eating.

[Andrew D]

I don't recall whether I made the same point particularly about restaurants, but I did make it about grocery stores (specifically their produce sections): There are circumstances in which nudity poses hygeine issues which need addressing. (Ha ha.)

It is also quite common to encounter pigeon shit on public benches in public parks ....

And people still eat while sitting on public benches in public parks. So why is it necessary for people sitting naked on public benches in public parks to put down barriers (towels, etc.) between their anuses and the already-pigeon-shit-covered surfaces of the benches?

Surely people are already disinclined to eat directy off of guano-spattered public benches. Are they any more likely to eat directly off of public benches where naked people have sat? I doubt it.

And consider dining al fresco. In places where pigeons, seagulls, and other rodents-of-the-air are common, it is not at all unusual -- indeed, it may be more common than not -- to find an outdoor chair or table on which some avian has deposited its waste. (The waste is mosly bird piss, not bird shit, but we can leave that distinction for another time.) Should health department officials be running around demanding that every outdoor table and chair be sanitized before being reused? Or should it be up to customers to decide whether or not to eat at a table (and/or to sit in a chair) that has obvious guano deposits?

As mentioned, I am not at all averse to regulations of nudity which are grounded in sensible public-policy considerations. But there is the rub: If a bench is already the repository of bird shit, what sensible public-policy consideration militates in favor of requiring someone to lay down a towel before sitting naked on an already shit-covered bench?

[Scooter]

It would appear that, unless this proposal is passed, you are free to sit bare assed on any public bench in San Francisco to your heart's content, so go ahead and enjoy.

[Andrew D]

San Francisco's weather usually inspires me not to go bare-assed even in my own backyard (when I lived there, which I no longer do). I gather that the questions posed will not be addressed. Okay.

[The Hen]

I will answer your posed questions.

I do not think it necessary for someone who is naked to place a towel down on anything they sit on.

If a naked person has a shitty arsehole and the detritus from that arse is placed on a bench and I sit on it and get it on my clothes, I should have checked more carefully before I sat.

There is countless amounts of crap and scum on public benches as it is. For the most part we are all blissfully ignorant of what we have come in contact with.

How many parents joyfully put they children on slides in public parks for a lark? How many of those parents realize that drunken youths have probably pissed down those slides the evening before? You don't die from indirect, or even direct contact with feces or human waste if you practice basic hygiene standards. i.e.DO NOT suck the foreign substance from your fingers that you have just collected from the bench.

By the way, is it just because I have a bodacious bum that my actual anus doesn't make contact with what I am sitting on, or do most people's arseholes not actually touch what they sit on?

[Gob]

By the way, is it just because I have a bodacious bum that my actual anus doesn't make contact with what I am sitting on, or do most people's arseholes not actually touch what they sit on?

I don't have any buttocks.

[The Hen]

.... And massive Farmer's.

[Rick]

Oozing men's danglers and puss filled chancres.

Women draining little dabs of blood where they sit they sit or leaving little dollops of cottage cheese everywhere...

[Lord Jim]

Keld has of course hit the nail on the head, (so to speak)

People,,,uhh..."leak"... some more than others...

This is why underpants were invented....

I'm sure this problem is obvious to anyone who isn't so consumed with arrogance an all important sense of entitlement, and a peculiar psychological exhibitionist need to wave their naked butts and naughty bits in the faces of complete strangers....


BTW I strongly suspect that the reason this currently allowed in San Francisco is because the folks partaking in it have confined their activities to very limited parts of the city....

Should they start engaging in this inconsiderate vulgar narcissism in parks or playgrounds frequented by children, or should they feel the compulsion to wag their willies about in the Financial District or in front of some of our toney hotels, I believe that even this bastion of silliness would put an end to it right quick.

[Andrew D]

My, oh my. So much disordered thinking in so few words.

We can start with the most obvious. Sitting naked on a park bench is not

wav[ing one's] naked butt[] and naughty bits in the faces of complete strangers

unless those strangers are in the habit of supining themselves under park benches in order to catch glimpses of other people's buttocks, anuses, genitals, etc.

But, hey, maybe some people frequent parks for different reasons than I do.

And who is more

consumed with arrogance an all important sense of entitlement

The person who says "I am not requiring you to do or not to do anything"?

Or the person who says "This is my preference, so everyone around me must abide by it"?

Who is engaging in

vulgar narcissism

The person who says "You needn't pay the slightest attention to me"?

Or the person who says "It's all about what I see when I am in public; I don't like it; I, I, I"?

But beyond the most obvious, there is the more fundamental.

I was going to post that children, whatever their chronological ages, believe that there are such things as

naughty bits

whereas adults recognize that no "bits" of a human body are "naughty".

But children don't actually believe that. At least not at first. Children, like adults, recognize that no body parts are "naughty".

Then psycho-emotionally stunted pseudo-adults fill their heads with nonsense. Of course, those underdeveloped people had their heads filled with the same nonsense when they were children, so I suppose that we should pity rather than blame them.

At its core, though, that nonsense is is not merely stupid; it is sinister. Its essential purpose is to engender a sense of shame. Because shame is a means of control.

Shame has a salutary purpose: It can be a useful instrument for impressing upon us the wrongness of what have done.

But that is the key point: What we have done.

What the shame-mongers -- those who came up with and still use the odious term "pudenda" for genitals -- want, however, is for all of us to be ashamed not only of what we have done, but of what we are.

We can always change what we do. And if we do that, those who have shamed us (sometimes rightly) for what we have done will no longer have control over us.

But (for the most part) we cannot change what we are. So if others can make us ashamed of what we are, they can control us forever.

And should any of us dare not only to think as adults but to behave as thinking adults, those whose greatest fear is that we will behave as thinking adults will be there to

put an end to it right quick.

[loCAtek]

whereas adults recognize that no "bits" of a human body are "naughty".

But children don't actually believe that. At least not at first. Children, like adults, recognize that no body parts are "naughty".

I disagree, adults recognize that another person's secondary sex characteristics are designed to be stimulating. When the stimulation created is inappropriate or unwanted; then you may consider that part of the body "naughty".

Children are also aware of this; but I agree that when they are very young, children are asexual and don't understand the differences between the sexes.
However, it is not all by social conditioning, that they become aware of the role sexuality plays in society. For example, children are very aware of what is inappropriate touching. It is not shame, that instinctively guides them away from it, they know without being told that that is inappropriate or unwanted, and "naughty".
Contrarily, a child has to be 'groomed' or conditioned to accept an unnatural behavior like that, when their first instinct is telling them, that's wrong.

[Andrew D]

The difference between

(a) an unwanted or otherwise inappropriate touching or other stimulation is "naughty"

and

(b) one's genitals themselves are "naughty"

ought to be immediately obvious.

And even to children (except some disordered children), it is.

[loCAtek]

Well no, they themselves and their body parts are not naughty, but their bits being used against them sexually is naughty.

Which is why you have to teach children to be aware of, and resist such abuse of their physical person. In simple terms, it's ' naughty'.

[dgs49]

I was reminded of this thread while reading a headline this morning.

The headline was about Jennifer Aniston showing a bit of cleavage while out in public the other day. So here we have a 43 year old actress, and the fact that she exposes a little more of her skin than is customary is worthy of a national news report. Indeed, if she were to offer to pose nude for, say, PlayPerson magazine, she would generate sales records beyond belief.

And here we have a pathetic little poster who laments the fact that if he exposes massive quantities of his skin, he risks arrest and incarceration. And deservedly so, I suspect.

What a world.