gender issues & nudism
There's an old tumblr post that really resonated with me about how some people don't have an innate sense of gender & just roll with whatever they're told that resolves with a joke about "my gender is wearing a red shirt at target." I'm AMAB & the closest gender identity I'd associate with is agender. I'm not a stickler for pronouns (although some of the second-order gendered language makes me feel sorta uncomfortable, "boyfriend" or "mister" or what have you.)
I grew up with a disability, which means I was in and out of hospital a lot growing up & visiting various paediatric specialists. Paediatric doctors typically are women, which meant I was growing up with my naked body being poked and prodded by mixed gendered groups & never developed a sense of shame around my body being seen.
But I did develop some body negativity about how I'm perceived in the world. The discourse in the period between girl power & metoo took the form of women's body positivity & liberation: the female body is a beautiful divine thing, vaginas are great & have monologues, and a female body and all it's parts aren't inherently sexual (which is true), etc. But a lot of it is also about how the male body is gross, men are predatory (which is an extremely valid complaint, but one that can be internalized in negative ways), male sexuality is inherently bad, and the penis is either disgusting or only sexual and in all cases is a threat. I don't want to be a threat, and it makes me sad that I live in a world where my body is a threat but women aren't wrong for it
In my early 20's (I'm in my 40's now) I was fortunate to live in an area & have a mixed gendered group of friends who when it was nice out (or, not gonna lie, when we wanted to score drugs) would go to the local nude beach, both because it was a legitimately nice beach but also because it was not heavily policed (as it was part of university land not the city) & we could have some beers without being hassled by the cops. Being young fearless and a few beers in lots of us would end up naked, the boys, the girls, the crypto-enbies. And it was not sexual at all, there were some couples but by and large nobody was sleeping with anyone or even interested in it, we were just young and naked having innocent fun playing at the beach.
I can't express how affirming it was that not only was the body parts that I knew were a threat & had anxiety about that fact were not only not a big deal to have exposed, but were enough of a "no big deal" that the people who would most feel threatened by them were comfortable enough to themselves be completely bare. And how affirming it was to be goofing around with all the body configurations out there prominently with no hiding the differences between our legs that we can pretend aren't there because they're hidden under clothes but still all being just the same.
It's not the same hanging around the house naked with a sexual partner, because there's that implicit "could lead to sex" that takes away from the innocence & affirmation of desexualized nudity
That group all drifted apart as groups are wont to do, and I've moved away to live in San Francisco. I've made friends here, but all of the textile variety. And I've hung out at some of our local places, Baker beach, etc, mostly solo (I'm not going to approach strange women or couples at a nude beach). And meetups & hanging out with "the boys" in the buff is great & comfortable but I still miss that experience of innocent nudism, shooting the shit with a mixed group & the gender euphoria I felt with it