This area features organizations which have policies or practices which may be harmful (whether mildly or grossly) to body freedom concerns. Constructive criticism is offered to help these organizations make adjustments for the benefit of all involved.

1. Religious fundamentalists and the religious police who seek to indoctrinate and persecute others into body-negative beliefs and behavior.

These efforts have been going on internationally for centuries. Some of the more active groups have been the Christian Coalition, many Muslim Fundamentalist groups (whom I ask to resist issuing a fatwah urging a jihad against body-positive activists), FGM-practising societies, and the American Family Association. Several of these groups have disbanded, including: the Taliban's Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (disbanded by force in 2001), the Moral Majority, and the Spanish Inquisition.

This would also include people who circumcise their children without their consent for the sake of sexual control or because they want to force their religious/traditional beliefs on those at their most vulnerable time in life, and those societies which allow female genital mutilation.

Not only do many so-called fundamentalists want to restrict other people's sexual behavior, they want to restrict sex education in public schools, the availability of safe sex information, birth control, and the availability of other reproductive rights.

Check out our mock fundamentalist-hacked-site front page.

Positive things: Religious and spiritual groups involved in community.

Suggested reform: Get a body-positive outlook, respect the fact that others don't have such a high-level of disgust with their own bodies.

Look closer : Be sure to check out the American Family Association's model public nudity ordinance. They are using this model as a weapon to help body-negative individuals to outlaw public nudity. Curious how they define nudity? Check out the link to the ordinance above.

2. Government officials who pander to body-negative individuals and organizations.

These people would include legislators who allow passage of body-negative laws, judges and prosecutors who label naked people as sex criminals, and police who respond to public nudity complaints from body-negative individuals and play the village idiot on their behalf.

Positive things: By openly challenging freedom, they open themselves up to criticism and reform. Some of these people may grow tired of looking like idiots and puppets of religious cuckoos.

Suggested reform: Being naked is not a crime. Learn the difference between someone with a body-positive outlook and a sex criminal.

3. Smut peddlers that generate mind-numbing, sexist material that leads to body-negative unawareness.

How can it be that Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt are considered cultural pioneers for selling pictures of naked women? What does society gain from the Girls of Enron, Playboy Bunnies, lingerie pictorials, "talent" searches, "beaver hunts", "sexual liberation" via selling out and commercial exploitation, never-ending pop-up ads, Playboy Mansion parties, relentless sexual teasing, airbrushing, genital shame, shaming women who don't measure up, the body as a commodity? Its bullocks!

It is sad to realize that many children who are not given a good sex education or suffer from body shame often turn to types of pornography that are unhelpful at best, and mind-warping at worst.

Positive things: Challenge the status quo of sexual and political repression

Suggested reform: Take political action that is consistent with body-positive beliefs. Change content to reflect family values, natural diversity, and encourage a non-sexist viewpoint.

4. Those who promote the linkage of nudity with sexual activity (body freedom as fetish, voyeurism, et cetera) or who put it in an overtly sexual context (beyond innocent sexuality).

While one often feels a sense of physical (and sometimes sexual) liberation when naked, sexual activity is not implied when being in one's natural state. People who are overwhelmved by sexual arousal every time someone else takes off their clothes suffers from improper social conditioning. A body-positive upbringing must start at day one.

Currently, associating nudity with sex is a big money-maker for many online businesses. Examples of such associations would be predatory voyeurism on nude beaches OR nude in public as a sexual fetish or in the context of other sexual activity. Naturists and nudists have not yet successfully been able to divert (or barely tap) and redirect the massive interest in nudes in public (NIP) from its use as a sexual fetish to more wholesome directions.

There are many things which are both body-positive and sexually liberating but are sometimes placed in a context where many people might feel are exploitative. Generally it is good idea to find out what the community or organizations standards are so that everyone feels comfortable participating in a respectful manner and you don't run into unwanted legal hassles.

Examples of such things that are more sensual/sexual than many clothing-free communities wish to associate with in any direct way include sex toy shops, sexually-open communities, Mardi Gras flashing, "adult-entertainment" businesses, erotic festivals, nude in public (NIP) with some degree of sexual context, sharing sexually-explicit images, sex-centered activity in public places, general erotica, and so forth.

Positive things: Encourage unrepressed sexual discussion and sharing.

Suggested reform: Nudity does not imply sexual activity. Being naked is not an invitation to unwanted sexual contact, harassment, abuse, or exploitation. Get a more balanced, body-positive outlook.

Look closer: Coccozella focuses on places and people having fun naked. That is a great thing, the web can use more of that. A lot of traditional clothing-free web sites and other media presentations leave pictures off in fear of offending some and arousing others. Some even censor themselves, for example, by just showing non-frontal shots or avoiding certain camera angles, body jewelry/modification, et cetera. This self-censorship is not good and it does not go unnoticed. How can one claim to be for body freedom and be afraid of pictures of those enjoying that freedom?

BUT!....

While there are many great, creative pictures of people engaging in innocent nudity at Coccozella and even at some more sexually-oriented places like VoyeurWeb's "Exposed in Public" section, many pictures are placed in a context for those looking for something that is sexually arousing. This by itself isn't necessarily a bad thing, however, mixing the two is problematic when put it in an overtly sexually-geared or in a so-called "adult" context. When you move to equate nudity with sex, that is a limitation on both. There is no doubt that these sites are tremendously popular because of their sexual emphasis, but one has to ask, are the sites steering people towards body freedom or is it setting body freedom back by forcing such a strong connection to sexual activity?

People do not go the beach or engage in other non-sexual activities for the sexual gratification of others. While some photographic restrictions at nude events or places are draconian and often go too far, being overtly aggressive and voyeuristic with videotaping and photography is considered fundamentally creepy and invasive by many, especially for those who are just starting to seek their own freedom

Suggested reform: Separate the overtly sexual material from the innocent naked fun content, and don't overtly lure one group to another.

5. Body-positive individuals and organizations which back off from those in authority who are enforcing body-negative laws or encourage body-negative behavior.

Sometimes groups such as naturists do not wish to rock the boat to avoid further persecution or risk losing what few opportunities for nude expression they have.

Positive things: Things may not get worse, at best.

Suggested reform: Argue for your limitations and their yours. Take political action that is consistent with body-positive beliefs. If you want something in life that you know you have the right to have you need to aggressively pursue it.

Look closer: What are the organizations you are involved with doing to promote body-positive expression, including public nudity?

6. Individuals who do not question body-negative views and are not feel comfortable talking about the human body, sex, morality, and the law. Parents and teachers who educate children in a manner to keep them in a state of unawareness.

Unawareness leads to personal body shame and can make it easier to indoctrinate others to have body shame. Losing awareness of your body can limit your physical and spiritual enjoyment in life. The same goes for restriction/repression of normal sexual expression. People that are body-positive and are self-aware are argueably better protected from sexual behavior that leads to dysfunction, obsession, and other sexual hang-ups.

Suggested reform: Educate yourself and take action.When is it appropriate to talk to your kids about things that matter? As soon as they can communicate.

7. People who engage in human rights violations, domestic abuse, sexist behavior, predatory sexual behavior, and sexual abuse.

Check out the "Naturist/Nudist Hall of Shame" web site by Nikki Craft. Its goal seems to be"Exposing Nudism & Naturism's Dirty Little Secrets: Pedophilia, Swinging, Pornography and Sexual Exploitation" at

http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/NudistHallofShame/

Also:

See Amnesty International, UN Commission on Human Rights, domestic abuse organizations, ACLU, organizations that discuss body image, feminist philosophy