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Old 05-13-2006, 09:01 AM   #61
Shane
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Every single picture or statue I have ever seen from Egyptian culture they are clothed. What explains that?

Greeks did not go around in public naked. They went to sport naked. Women were not allowed to go to sport at all if memory serves.

Tribes that "barely cover anything" are not the same as not covering anything at all, and a long list of them without any recourse to any authoritative study or even any mention of what their sexual taboos are and are not does little to help the point you seem to be trying to make. About the only one of your examples I was able to check out was Eskimo culture. They do indeed seem to be very open about sex, up to and including fondling their children from early childhood. So there's one. From the beginning, I have stated that some small minority of cultures do indeed practice open nudity and do not seem to treat sex as privately as most cultures do. You have now convincingly identified one of them. Pacific islanders are a notorious example that often works its way into these discussions as well. I am aware of them, as I said from the beginning. What percentage of the total human population do they make up? Is there any data?

Indian monks using nudity as a special sign of some religious significance seems to argue opposite your point, as does the habit of ancient Celts to go naked into battle. I would also like to point out the singular lack of utility of the last, as it is likely among the causes of their downfall in early conflicts with the budding culture of Rome. In any event, it would symbolize little if anything at all if there were no understanding of the vulnerability of nudity.

Most American indian tribes appear to have worn clothes. The larger civilized nations of mezzo and south America seem to have worn clothes.

If anthropologists are capable of ignoring the weight of all the many, many cultures - Japanese, Chinese, Western, Middle Eastern, African - cultures from every continent where mankind has made its home in any large number... all the weight of all these cutlures who do practice sexual discretion and clothe themselves, in favor of a long list of small tribes that actually appear to represent a tiny minority of people, and represent in themselves a relatively small number of truly distinct cultures, then that is a sad state of affairs. I am not convinced, however, that anthropologists are ignorant of the wide range of sexual taboos or the habit of wearing clothes that seems to pervade cultures all over the world, whether they be Christian or not.

This is to me the most baffling of all:

"It is irritating to see that a person considers Christian culture, coupled with a single Guinea tribe that wears gourds on their privates, as outweighing the validity of the countless cultures past and present that behave(d) completely differently; that supplying the example of one primitive tribe as proof of the naturalness of body-shame requires a full-fledged thesis list to refute. Of course it isn't really about that Guinea tribe, it's about the certainty one feels about social 'truths' when one is born and raised to them. Of course the many millions of people for thousands of years don't compare to personal conviction, do they?"

Do I have to, like you, go back and list all the nations, western and non western, where clothes are worn and where sex is private? No... because they are commonly known, whereas isolated tribes of people with no sexual inhibitions living in places where it is hard to maintain any contact with anyone else need to be enumerated just to be known. It's not as if I am speaking here out of the blue sky as you intimate, and it is this tendency to overexagerate a point that brings my mind back to one of my earlier statements, which is that most people who argue strenuously over these matters seem to do so without much regard to any sort of systematic philosophy, but do so with a sort of self-appointed zeal and seemingly feigned exepertise that says a lot more about their own personal beliefs than it does about all of anthropology or all cultures.

Two examples. First, if you think that by rattling off a list of isolated tribal cultures you have proven that the large bulk of humanity does not wear clothes or understand sex in terms of it being private, you are mistaken.

Further, you put words in my mouth. I have never tried to pass this off as a strictly Christian habit. You have, in your attempts to somehow single Christianity out. I am talking about the world in general, and have made that point more than a few times. To hear you, one would begin to think that Christians were the only people who historically wore clothes, whereas my point is of course that they are not, and that it is false to assert that clothes wearing or sexual taboos of any sort are strictly Christian in nature.

Looking over nudism on Wikipedia, I noted this woman at the bottom of the web page. "Question Authority".



Pretty much sums up my experience with people who insist that treating nudity or sex as somehow private is a Christian aberation.
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Old 05-13-2006, 09:21 AM   #62
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LOL!
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Old 05-13-2006, 09:34 AM   #63
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Meaning no disrespect, but again you appear to be missing my point.  I did not mean to imply that small numbers make a people unimportant, or that they should be abused, merely that to argue that your culture's attitudes towards nudity and sex are a very small subset of the total of humanity, Christian or not.

"According to the 2000 census, the population of the 5 pernanently inhabited islands is 3,600 people in 646 households. With a land area of only 3.08 square kilometers, the islands have a population density of 1168 persons per sq. km. – much higher than the national average of 276 persons per sq. km.

Access to the Turtle Islands is difficult, as there are no regular means on transportation to the area."

Another Wikipedia entry, but is it not relatively accurate?

In other words, isolated incidences such as your case do not counter effectively the idea that most cultures do wear clothes and have sexual taboos regarding public sexual displays.  They consider sex private.
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Old 05-13-2006, 11:47 AM   #64
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Old 05-13-2006, 12:28 PM   #65
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Don’t have enough people to matter. Interesting thought, lets look at that.

My people the Odawa have never been a large tribe, before contact or otherwise. We are however, Ahnishnabek. The “K” in that word means that it is plural, nishnabe is a root word meaning “the people”. So what we are talking about here is membership to a greater collective. Other Ahnishbabek people include, but are not limited too, the Ojibway, Potowatomi, Cree, Sauk, Fox, Mickmac, etc. The Ojibway alone are the second or third largest Indian Tribe in North America today. Before contact, which is what I was referring too, we dwarfed the population sizes of many communities even today. Some accounts have as high or higher than the population of Detroit in the Detroit area. One quarter of the American continent is hardly “unimportant” do to small numbers.

Additionally, just because we wore clothing does not mean we were hung up on this nudity point you are making. Men wore leggings because we didn’t like our legs tore up in the forest. We just didn’t have the fore sight it would have taken to know that in order to clearly illustrate our comfort with nudity to someone from a different culture in the twenty-first century we would have had to not wear any cloths at all ever … atoll.

I do not often speak for other tribes, we consider it to be rude, but it is quite plain that other tribes throughout the America have held the same view. This is, of course, if you keep your nose out of Wikipedia. I recommend Francis Densmore. You can even find some of her work on line. She wrote around the turn of the 20th century so the whitemans poison was already firmly entrenched in the Ojibway (whom she was primarily concerned with writing about) but there were traditionals around even then. Densmore does give you a jumping off point though to read more periods works, some even written at the time of contact.

Brett makes a good point about doing your research thoroughly. A few years ago, before I finished graduate school, I heard one of the faculty at the college I was attended say, “What the Internet has taught us in academia is that you no longer have a right to your opinion. We cannot afford to say that anymore. You only have a right to an INFORMED opinion.” To that point I would add that anything is possible as long as you don’t know what you are talking about.

If you find that a bit harsh I am sorry. I know I found it to be the first I heard it. It is, however, the reason I decided to post here. I am responsible, for my part, in the proliferation or stopping the proliferation of erroneous ideas. The idea that Indians had a garden of “Eden”, that our culture was identical to the dominant culture today or that we used crystals in out ceremonies are all examples of that. That list goes on and on by the way so I will leave you with just the three.

Asaudan, if you are pointing that straw man at me please don’t. I think we are trying to have a serious conversation here.

--Tim
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Old 05-13-2006, 01:06 PM   #66
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I took an art class that covered it in some detail.

Regarding Greek clothing,

"The painting by Degas at the top of this page illustrates what is thought to be a not atypical scene of a (coed) Spartan gym class. However, it seems that the Spartans were not in step with the rest of Greece, where somewhat more prudishness was evident.
Although in Greece generally people were sufficiently used to the sight of nakedess, this costume of the Spartan girls was ridiculed. Hence they were called "thigh-showers", "those with bare thighs", and the expression "to dress in Doric fashion" ... was used of those "who liberally bared a great part of their body". In gymnastic and bodily exercises Spartan girls also put off this single piece of clothing and appeared completely naked.
Sparta aside,
In the rest of Greece the chiton as a single article of dress was only worn in the house; in public the himation was indespensible for women; this, with the exception of the somewhat modified cut required by the differently conditioned build of the female's body, was not essentially different from the man's himation."




I don't know if your misrepresentation was purposeful or not, but it is apparently somewhat common knowledge that Sparta was the exception and not the norm, and certainly neither is accused of being overly Christian, so where did they get these habits from?

The site also seems to dispute your assertion that all Greeks tended to get naked at the drop of a hat in clothing got in the way, and if you have ever done strenuous work of any kind, you will find in short order that clothes tend to keep certain sensative bits out of the way rather than being a hindrance.


You next go into a description of native dress in some cultures which I have already stated several times I am aware of. I am also aware of the concept you describe regarding shame being more of a result of breaking expected social norms. What I have said before is that in general, clothing's utility makes it near universal in use, and that once it becomes common to wear clothing, it tends to take on significance sexually since sexual characteristics that are normally hidden come into plain view, which has the natural effect of making this sudden appearance more sexually arousing than the same body parts would be if they were in plain view all the time. This bit seems to have been lost in translation somewhere, but if you look back you will surely see that I covered that ground.

Regarding Indian and Celt issues. Of course they had different ideas of what nudity meant, but the point is that it MEANT something. In cultures where clothing is habitually worn, I think it is a given that nudity will begin to mean something, since it will be the exception. I find it hard to fathom how it would not carry sexual connotations because it is necessary to get partially naked at least to have sex at all, and even in a culture where nudity is common place, one at least has to have the capacity to see a person of the opposite sex and be attracted to them and sexually aroused or else sex becomes impossible, so I don't think it makes sense to try to insinuate that the naked form does not carry with it a certain sexuality.

You accusation of me not having made even the slightest investigation into Celts belies the fact that I pointed out a specific point in their history where the courage and "fear factor" of going naked in battle became a negative rather than positive thing. Nor was the point at all that it was "right" that they were defeated. My point is that there are physical realities about nakedness that I believe play into the development of cultural norms concerning nudity and the privacy of sexual behavior, and I have stated this before as well. For some reason, you seem to like to shift from that thrust in my posts though and off into things I neither said nor intended. I wish you would stop. It would make getting on with things that I actually don't know much easier if you would stop accusing me of not knowing things that I do, indeed, know, and have even given examples of knowing in previous posts.

I did not discard the list of tribes as invalid. I specifically stated that they do not appear to make up a large portion of historical cultures, and my argument concerns the natural development of sexual mores and folkways around certain physical necessities, most notably clothing, and how the use of clothing would then give rise to dynamics that lead so many cultures to behave differently than the handful that you mention. In other words, it is invalid to argue that Christianity is somehow uniquely anti-sex when so many other cultures share the same or similar mores and folkways. I used the example of a tribe I had heard of because this tradition of rattling off little known tribes as examples of how narrow minded Christians have made western culture ignores the fact that not all tribes lack the taboo against nudity.

I never asserted that clothing was about shame. I said the use of clothing probably gives rise to the shame that then turns into a sexual taboo about nudity and the privacy of sexual conduct. ou ascribe that to me and then proceed to deconstruct the argument with little regard to what I have asserted.

About the only thing I have asserted forcefully is that it is unfair and off topic to take a slap at Christianity in a forum thread about sex in muds.
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Old 05-13-2006, 01:13 PM   #67
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I never said that. (Edited to add: Actually I very appologeticly and specifically said the exact opposite directly TO YOU, Tim.  What gives here?)

 I said that to accuse Christians of being somehow unique in their desperate hangups about sex and nudity would take more than stringing together cultures with small populations and insisting they make up some sort of norm from which Christianity has fatally strayed.

Wikipedia has been compared favorably to professionally created  encyclopedias and has an organizational philosophy that belies the insulting tone you use in reference to it.  It is at heart a lovely example of how people can free themselves of academic snobbery for which I find your quote regarding people no longer having a right to their opinions somewhat symptomatic.

To me, if one wants to prove tha Christianity is a horrible abomination when it comes to its effect on sexuality, one needs to make reference to something besides a group of little known people groups who form an exception, and not the rule, regarding such things.
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Old 05-13-2006, 01:52 PM   #68
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If you wish to refer to North America as nothing more than loosely strung together cultures of small populations then you will be constantly struggling with the chains of academic snobbery. At least academia has the virtue of actually having had to work to form their opinion.

You can go ahead and post your opinion on Wikipedia, going back and reading it there might make you feel better about having done little to form it.

Christian abomination, especially as it is expressed in America today and in American history, is readily apparent to anyone who is not Christian, ignorance being chief among that religions components. To speak directly to the issue of the confused sexual crisis with in the Christian faith I will quote Father Richard McBrien from the University of Notre Dame … he has a PhD so likely you will want to undermined this statement to the best or you abilities …

“Jesus could have been married, and see I am not discounting the possibility, but if we had clear evidence that he was and even that he had a family, that would have knocked out of the box all this nonsense that has been part and parcel of the Christian tradition, small T, for so many centuries that somehow sex is ahhh not so, not so nice.”

Christianity teaches, among other things, that one: it’s followers need to be ignorant of even their own religion and two: to veraciously attack anything that even remotely looks like it could challenge the political position or power of it’s faith. Father McBrien is desperately trying to combat this very issue in his own faith. I can respect him for it but he is a salmon swimming up stream. His statement does however shine a light on the confused sexuality of the Christian faith.
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Old 05-13-2006, 03:10 PM   #69
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This edit function is not to be used twice in a row with quote functionality, it seems....
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Old 05-13-2006, 03:15 PM   #70
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Old 05-13-2006, 03:20 PM   #71
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Yeah, there's a balanced expert opinion on Christianity for you, academia style.
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Old 05-13-2006, 04:24 PM   #72
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As I said, you will obviously want to devalue Father Brien’s comments. He is an informed well-educated individual who must adhere to the mechanism of pier review. Something you obviously are very intimidated by.

The point remains however that the racist ideology that we Ahnishnabek did not have a cohesive culture or a body politic is flatly incorrect, despite what you might find splashed about the Internet or what gives you personal satisfaction to think.

The fact that Christianities morally bankrupt view on sex has poisoned the indigenous cultures of the America’s is again a signpost I am sure you will continue to argue with.

The point however, is that your Puritanical views on modesty are not common to cultures outside the influence of the Christian Church. In fact, they are not even common to early Christians.

The fact that a cohesive indigenous culture comprising of no less than one quarter of the American continent did not agree with, support, or act in a manner consistent with your fallacious belief in human nature is just a bit more than you can stand and as such you cast about for any life raft of denial. Additionally, the fact that many other Indigenous cultures acted more in accordance with the Ahnishnabek than with your Puritanical Christian faith buries your argument entirely.

On the point of Wikipedia, take a college class sometime. Try using it as source to support any writing you do in that class (much like you are doing here) see what kind of grade that gets you. Before you go off on the oppressive nature of “the man” … an analogy might be to get a serious infection and rub grass in it instead of taking penicillin, or if your one of those types you can try the power of prayer. You could likewise try praying yourself to work in the morning as apposed to driving or shaking your cross at your computer to make it run. I suspect that to you these analogies seem inconsistent because you want your computer, you want your car, and you want penicillin but you LOVE Wikipedia because you just don’t want to be wrong.
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Old 05-13-2006, 06:01 PM   #73
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Tim, if you're trying to keep me from posting by making my case for me, please don't.

Come on, I know you're just kidding, yourself. Your sentence structuring gave you away.
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Old 05-13-2006, 06:09 PM   #74
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Old 05-13-2006, 07:27 PM   #75
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If you are going to do that keep it in the bathroom and private no one wants to see you stroke yourself that way.

I realy do not believe that you are incapable of understanding what I wrote so please, keep out of the realms of your fantasy and to what was put down.
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Old 05-13-2006, 07:43 PM   #76
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Tim, the concept of modesty is not "specific" to the Christians. It is not *only* common among Christians (as opposed to being common among any other non-Christian sect). In addition, Christianity is a religion, and not a culture. Judaism, which is both a religion -and- a culture, which predates Christianity by a couple thousand years, has always embraced modesty as a cultural and religious norm. That isn't to say nudity within the privacy of your own home is taboo, but nudity outside the privacy of your own home would likely get you in trouble, or even cast out, in a secluded Jewish community. Even within the home, an Orthodox wife is required to wear a shteitle (a wig or other hair covering) except when she is alone or solely in the company of her husband. I've never been to a ritual bath (required for Orthodox women who are menstruating) so I can't attest to the rules there. Nudity would be allowed, then of course, but I'm not sure if they'd be allowed to remove their head covering even then.

It has nothing - absolutely nothing - to do with Christianity. Sure, Christians have turned the whole sex taboo thing into an art form, but they most certainly don't hold the patent.

Even Eskimos know better than to run around their neighborhood naked. Maybe inside the home, sure. But even in the Alaskan summer, when temperatures are perfect for nude sun-bathing, they embrace modesty in public. Hindus and Hindis also practice modesty. As do Muslims, and religious communities of -most- faiths and populations.

You'll find that the majority of cultures who prefer nudity or semi-nudity live in climates that are conducive to it. It makes sense to strip down in semi-tropical areas. In the jungles though, stripping down could mean dying to disease carried by flies and mosquitoes, so clothing isn't optional; it's a survival tactic. Modesty, in most cases, descends from necessity and not from religious morality (or lack thereof). Those who dwell in the desert climes where the majority of Muslims live NEED clothing, because without it the sands and winds would strip their skin raw. And so - after time, they decided, "Hey let's make it an actual rule so idiots don't start making a fuss about how they're bleeding to death in the middle of a storm." Necessity isn't only the mother of invention, it's the father of social, cultural, and religious mores.
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Old 05-13-2006, 08:06 PM   #77
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I am Ahnishnabek that is all the pronouncement you will ever need. It is not my intent to convince you of anything, you are devout Christian you can’t be convinced of anything. The fact is, like the sun rising in the east, you can deny that I am not an authority but the fact remains, I am. Like it or not I am one of a very few people who speak my language and know my people’s traditions. The fact is we stand as proof of the blood that runs on your hands and the shame you people can just not face no matter what.

I understand that as a Christian you are incapable of admitting a solid point when you see one.

You have been given several. Francis Densmore for example and yes, as much as you just can’t bring yourself to admit it, I am another authority. As far as my spelling goes, it’s your language not mine.

I can’t understand you when you mumble.

See, I can do it too.

So, lets buck up and accept the evidence posted here by both Brett and I. There are plenty of positions you can take that still include a different point of view than my own. Those positions however do take some work and research on your part. I know you are taught to keep you head in the sand, and to a degree your church leadership is right to do so, but if you are going to step into a public forum take the time to read a book on the subject, say like
“Blood Politics” Circe Sturm
“Ritual and Myth in Odawa Revitalization” Melissa A. Pflug
“Chippewa Child Life and Its Cultural Background” Inez Hilger
“Ojibway People” William Warren
or
“History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan” A.J. Blackbird (a relative of mine)

These are just a few books that I felt like posting and ones readily off of my bookshelf and they hold more proof than someone like you can handle.

In the end though you will just twist those thoughts in your own mind as you do the posts here. You are Christian and are incapable of speaking or thinking straight. The thing that rely intrigues me though is the arrogance in Christians. In you it has caused you to spend so much time trying to twist what I and Brett write here that you’ve completely missed the fact that I am not talking to you, I am talking about you too the rest of the people that might come here and read this.
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Old 05-13-2006, 08:13 PM   #78
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It's customary even in academic circles, rather than to prove your point by stating you are right, to cite references and where they are from, rather than just present a reading list.

And, once again, your post is largely insults and short on discussion points.

I will wait and see if your treatment of Jazuela is any better than the treatment I have received at your hands. You've well and truly re-enforced my ongoing opinion and experience regarding those who argue the case for open nudity and open sexuality without limits.
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Old 05-13-2006, 08:26 PM   #79
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No it is not, nor am I arguing that it is. Shane however wants to put it forward as an inevitability of developed cultures. The idea that modesty is somehow a higher understanding IS a Christian thought as they wish to paint themselves as the most correct, most developed or Acme of human development. Additionally Christianity is not a culture but it impacts culture significantly and aggressively. For example, many of my own people will not learn our traditional language because they are Christian and to learn our language, in their minds, would re-affirm that they are “ignorant savages” from a lesser culture doomed to go to hell.

The fact that they have turned it into an art form makes it about Christianity, especially when we are talking about their negative impact on a group of Indigenous people like my own. The assertion that Shane put forward is that Human nature is manifest in the Christian faith, the Ahnishnabek stands as a defiant example of that position and the fact that Christians beat, raped, starved, and tortured us because of this fact is not only significant to the question of what is human nature but it is significant to Shane’s position of the infallibility of Christian doctrine.

Again, if you go back and read my posts you will find where I talk about how my people, as well as other Ahnishnabek, wore clothing. We did. In winter, we wore lots of clothing. The issue however is that we did not have the sexual mores that Shane is asserting is somehow human nature.

--Tim
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Old 05-13-2006, 08:29 PM   #80
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You've been given it. I responded to your insults with insults and to your assertions with assertions but I understand your need to back out.

--Tim
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