Proving Pride's point

In response to an anti-gay response

Photo credit: Cecilie Bomstad

What a lovely start to Pride Month it has been! I spent this past weekend celebrating Pride in West Hollywood with my husband and some supportive family members and friends. We felt the music course through our bodies, the crowd pulsing around us. We had maybe one too many drinks, sure, but it was a much-needed release, a much-needed embrace, and a much-needed reminder of the joy that exists in the world. That things can feel good, even in an otherwise scary world.

On Monday, I was delighted to see that British Naturism had posted a strong message in support of the LGBTQ community on Instagram, wishing everyone a Happy Pride Month, and reaffirming that the queer community is an important part of the naturist community with relatable experiences of oppression, discrimination, and struggle. On Tuesday, a similar message from the American Association for Nude Recreation was shared across their various social media accounts, wishing the LGBTQ community a Happy Pride. As a member and volunteer of AANR, this post made me incredibly proud (no pun intended). Proud to be part of the LGBTQ community, proud to be part of a nudist community that embraces people of all stripes, and also proud of the progress made within the nudist community to become a more welcoming space, to include these voices and listen to its diverse membership and volunteers. This has not always been the case, as LGBTQ nudists were unwelcome in the nudist community for much of our history despite our often parallel paths.

Pride Month posts from British Naturism and AANR

As any queer person can attest, it would only be a matter of time before someone showed up to rain on the Pride Parade. Within a few hours, AANR’s message of support and solidarity had received a series of very negative messages from a very small handful of very angry nudists citing Biblical passages that admonish pridefulness, invoking Satan, shaming the LGBTQ community for perverting the rainbow, implying that the inclusion of LGBTQ people in the nudist community forces sexuality on others, and using words like “disgusting,” “disgrace,” “sin,” “and “grooming.” I have heard all of these tired arguments and comments before—from random people on the Internet and from my own loved ones—but that doesn’t mean it is any less hurtful to see them now. It is especially hurtful when they’re coming from other people in a community you love and embrace, that has brought you growth and self-acceptance, from people who you might otherwise have spent hours with at a club or on the beach getting to know and appreciate.

A handful of negative responses to AANR’s Pride Month post.

In my own life, pretty much no matter where I go or what I do, I mostly feel welcomed, embraced, or at the very least ignored as a gay man. I live in a large city where people like me are just regular, boring folks who lead regular, boring lives and have regular, boring hobbies just like everyone else. I have a whole safe world at my fingertips here and I don’t tend to go out of my way to travel to places where that’s not the case, where I might face danger or hate or rejection. I don’t need to spend time or energy feeling awful or unwelcome when there is so much goodness and kindness to be felt in the world. Of all the places I spend time, there’s no other place where I witness the kind of hatred and vitriol against LGBTQ people like I do when I’m on social media, a channel I largely use to stay connected to the nudist community… which is to say that, incidentally, most of the homophobia I experience in my grown, adult life is in online nudist circles. Not at nudist clubs or at the nude beach or in my volunteer work for AANR, but on Twitter and Reddit and in the comments section of my own blog articles.

And I can’t tell what exactly I’m supposed to do about that or how I’m supposed to respond to these negative responses. Should I take the hint that I, as a gay man, am an abomination and should not be welcomed into the nudist community? Are you saying that you don’t want me—the smart, funny, kind, well-spoken, multilingual, dog-owning, Tiguan-driving, pumpkin pie-baking, Christmas-loving gay man that I am—to experience the joys of naturism? Or is it that I can enter into nudist circles, but that I just should not be allowed to be myself, bring my husband, talk about my personal life, or act too gay? Wait… where should I be allowed to spend my time? Oh no… should I even be allowed on the Internet? Should I be allowed to write this opinion piece? Should I be allowed to have a blog devoted to nudism? Maybe I should be stopped. I guess I am just confused… I thought the whole point of nudism and naturism was to break down social barriers and get to know one another better without all the trappings and shame and social stigmas. I guess maybe that only applies to people who are already very similar, with the same way of life and the same way of love?

Joking aside, despite the noisy complaints around celebrating Pride Month and all the insistence that LGBTQ people should not be allowed to enjoy nude recreation, I am, in a way, grateful for this lesson. In all the blustery, blatant contempt for queer people—no matter how much we might have in common with the rest of the nudist community—the whole point of Pride Month is proven by this kind of response. This is a time for the LGBTQ community to shirk shame, to stop living in fear, to stand up for one another alongside our friends, families, and allies. It’s a time to celebrate community—not just the queer community, but the whole idea of community and solidarity that brings people together. It’s a time to lay down the struggles we have faced and choose for a moment to dance, love, sing, laugh, feel good about ourselves, and build each other up. We need Pride Month because responses like this are still so common, just like we need the nudist community because there is still so much divisiveness and shame. Are these not the same principles that guide the nudist and naturist community, after all? Do we not, as nudists, seek to embrace ourselves and each other? Do we not seek to shed our shame along with our shirts and shoes? Do we not, as nudists, seek to celebrate community, foster understanding, and look beyond our struggles to know our true selves? All of this anger and vitriol in response to Pride Month does not just prove why Pride is important for the LGBTQ community, but it proves why the core principles and values of the nudist community are important for all of us.

Add to that, the LGBTQ community includes some of the nakedest people you’ll ever meet. We are a folk drawn to a playful rejection of social norms, especially clothing. It is the LGBTQ community that we have to thank for many of our cherished nude beaches and it is the LGBTQ community that has stood up in recent years to protect them when they have been under threat and that has been behind many of the up-and-coming nude gatherings happening in urban areas around the country. As far as I can tell, the LGBTQ community has played—and is currently playing—a major role in normalizing naked bodies and championing nude recreation, in the real world and in online spaces, helping to carry the nudist idea proudly into the next generation. I shouldn’t even have to say this, but we belong here, too. Twisting our shared values in order to exclude or demonize one another is so far from the point of this community. Instead, we ought to be working together and learning from one another. It is the communal freedom from those stigmas and that shame that we should be heralding and exemplifying above all else. We agree on so much more than we disagree on.

I am sorry that any of us have to suffer this kind of negativity in response to our pursuit of joy and community. But let it serve as a reminder of why we’re here in the first place: To be true to ourselves, to learn more about one another, to let go of judgment and shame, and to just… get naked more often, frankly!

Here’s to rising above the anger this Pride Month, and choosing solidarity and nudity instead. 🪐

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Check out Timothy’s personal blog, Almostwild, for more thoughtful meditations on social nudism and nakedness, inclusivity, social progress, and environmentalism.