How did I attain my freedom? To find out, we must trace my inner journey backwards from the present. The most recent step in liberation was acceptance of my sexuality. For years I deluded myself that I was asexual -- that I had no sexual needs. This was not true. But only after I was forced to acknowledge that, yes, I am a sexual being, with sexual needs, was I able to see where this mistaken belief had originated. It came from what most would consider a poisonous home environment: growing up, I never heard anything good about sex. Instead, it was portrayed as the most horrible thing in the world. And so, whenever my unacknowledged needs broke through into consciousness, I would ruthlessly condemn them as the sin of my flesh. I lived with constant guilt, and tried every religious-sounding trick I could think of to try to make myself be asexual.
Before this came my acceptance of evolution. What, you ask, does this have to do with body freedom? Simply this: that evolution puts us human beings unequivocally in the realm of biological organisms. This is an intolerable thought to those who wish to overspiritualize life, that is, to put every occurrence into spiritual terms. If certain emotions, behaviors, and drives come neither directly from God nor the devil, but rather from the organic processes inherent to human biology, this completely upsets some people's theology. If such human characteristics as love, altruism, and piety turn out to occur also in primates and other animals, this threatens some people's notions of our unique relationship with God. And if our corporeal drives turn out to be the same as those of animals, not because of wilfull rebellion, but because of innate neurochemistry, this robs those who would rule by guilt of much of their power.
Before I could accept evolution, and hence my own sexuality, I had to reject corporeal punishment, including the spanking of children. The doctrine of punishment is based on the premise that the inborn nature can (and should) be eradicated and replaced with something else, presumably more spiritual. When the punishment is corporeal, this is a statement of belief that the physical properties of flesh are the source of evil.
But the fullest form of body-denial -- and hence the first one from which I needed to be freed -- is the belief that the body itself is a wicked and shameful thing, and must therefore be kept concealed. This doctrine comes couched in social mores based on such euphemistic words as "modesty" and "decency," both of which translate in practice to shame and its resultant concealment. My early experiences with nudism were so liberating and empowering, they set in motion the whole chain of events leading down the road toward true freedom. The first time I took off my clothes at the nude beach, I felt as if I had just been freed from heavy bonds; as if all my life I had been tied up, and was just now set free.
Without that very visible first step, none of the other, more inward steps could have happened. I had to free my body before I could free my mind.
Thus, at its root, my journey has been one of acknowledging and claiming the inherent dignity of the human body. This has been my fountainhead of strength; the thing I know can never be taken away, no matter what indignities life may try to throw at me.
Anyway, the insight I reached while talking to Wage was this: body shame and spanking are in fact the same thing. The only difference is that one is a mental/emotional manifestation, the other a physical manifestation; at their root, both are a denial of the dignity of the human body. This is the only explanation for why I found ordinary spankings so traumatizing throughout my childhood; I don't remember feeling any physical pain, but I remember vividly feeling I had been stripped of human dignity, and by the very people I should have been able to trust. I have no doubt this is the real reason laws sequester nudism away from the general view, and why proponents of spanking are so adamantly vociferous in defending it: to erode either body shame or corporeal punishment, would erode the power of those who wish to rule us. A person who rejects either one, but keeps the other, will always be a bird flying at the end of a tether -- freer than one caged with clipped wings, but captive nonetheless.
As Bob Marley sang, "none but ourselves can free our minds." And our bodies are part of ourselves.
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