Comrades of the European Internet Forum,
enough is enough!
For decades, we have placed ourselves in the cultural shadows - well-behaved, conformist, as if we were the ill-educated child of the great American moral uncle, who must not be too loud, not too naked and certainly not too independent. While half-naked shoulders are censored at high school graduation ceremonies in the USA, heads are thrown around like bowling balls in TV series. All normal, all ‘entertainment’. But woe betide you if you see a nipple - then the censorship hammer screeches louder than a Trump on Truth Social.
I ask you: What has become of Europe?
We, the continent-born of the Enlightenment, the revolutions, the renaissance of nudity on canvas, in stone and on film - we have allowed a country that bottles cheese in cans, of all things, to tell us what is ‘moral’!
It's not moral, it's demurely stupid.
Why are depictions of violence in mass media allowed to flow freely like American fracking oil, but natural, aesthetic, tasteful nudity - which has been part of European art and culture for centuries - is algorithmically filtered out, demonetised and labelled with warnings as if it were uranium?
No more prudish double standards!
We need a cultural return to what we have to offer:
- Enlightenment instead of transfiguration.
- Pleasure instead of violence.
- Nudity as an expression of naturalness - not as a moral offence.
I call on you: Banish pixelated prudery! Let's tear apart the corset of American moral dictatorship like a badly programmed DRM protection! Save the freedom of the breast - for Europe!
Stop aligning your films, games and series with a market that beeps ‘fuck’ five times but completely waves ‘shoot him in the face’ through.
We are not Hollywood's post office box. We are Europe. We are culture. We are naked! - So, metaphorically. And sometimes literally. And that's okay.
Thank you for your attention!
A billion porn sites and rule 34 are still not enough? Do mean really require titillation in all media to survive?
This attitude is exactly the problem.
OP wrote:
Porn and rule 34 is the opposite of this.
The most fitting example I found is the argument of a certain Protestant Pastor Schweigger who visited Istanbul in the 16^th century about the moral superiority of Germans over Turks: while Turks had gender seperate baths and used towels to hide their nudity even from their own gender to avoid sexual arousal. In Germany, men and women would sit naked side by side in the bath just naturally without getting aroused.
Nudity ≠ sex
Germans still believe they’re morally superior by insisting that someone swinging their sweaty junk 30cm away from your face is somehow a cultural experience.
I’ve been to a German sauna once, never again. It was full of groaning fat dudes rubbing their sweat all over their bodies and some fit dudes doing stretching exercises in the sauna, all naked. I didn’t come there to be a creep, but it should be noted that even though it was a mixed gender sauna it was like 80-90% dudes because most of the women went to the female sauna instead apparently.
You can tell me all about nudity and sex not being the same, but if there’s some smoking hot woman next to me in the sauna completely naked I will think about sex. Hell, I will probably think about sex if she wears a bikini. To me this is actually natural, not forcing people to strip naked and then also stripping them of their instincts. To be perfectly clear, you absolutely should not make anyone feel uncomfortable or be creepy in any way just because you have thoughts, there’s no justification for that.
In that sense, I prefer my country’s sauna rules with towels and gender separation and I can actually just focus on sweating instead of pretending that I’m not a sexual being.
I might be able to get used to being around nude sauna users. But I wouldn't want to be nude myself when using a sauna. Unortunately, I live in an area that doesn't have any single Texitilsauna within range. Looks like the only way how I can ever sauna in my neighborhood will be by suing the owner of a sauna.
@shaserlark @Kornblumenratte
Yeah I think I’d also be fine with others being naked, like I don’t like it but who am I to tell others how to live their lives. What bothers me is this militant attitude towards nakedness, you’re going somewhere to relax but it really is an oppressive space.
Feel for you and hope this changes at some point.