English 110
Professor Priest
20 October 2014
Is It Time To Legalize Public Nudity And Sex?
There is a rich history in human culture when it comes to our attitudes towards public nudity and sex - before the Victorian era people talked about it openly and it would not be unheard of to see people in the streets performing sexual acts. We did not hide the fact that sex exists and that there are differences in the anatomies of the male and female sexes from our children, it would have been odd to hide such a natural thing from them. However, in the Victorian era attitudes changed; sex and related things became taboo. It became illegal to not wear clothes and to have sex in public, and not clinging to heteronormative sexual practices was prohibited. Even now, in our so-called "sex saturated" culture, it is frowned upon to speak of sex in public.
It is considered rude to hold a conversation of ones preferred sexual acts and kinks; it is inappropriate to even mention sex in front of children because it is apparently corruptive. Michel Foucault wrote a lot about the subject in his three volume work called the "History of Sexuality" where he explores the history of society's attitudes towards sex from the pre-Victorian period until now. (Foucault)
Attitudes towards sex and nudity have changed a lot over the years; it has gone from being considered a given that it is an open activity to it becoming a private thing to be kept from public and hidden from children is a very drastic change (Foucault). These days there is a movement,
often called naturism or nudism, to sway people's attitudes to see that nudity and sexuality is natural, and that it should be perfectly normal and legal...