News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on The costly criminalisation of the mentally ill. Parent comment

Re:The costly criminalisation of the mentally ill by smtddr on Thursday August 08, 2013 @11:35PM (#6183609)
>I propose that public nudity and refusing to give your name to police when they have no cause to ask it are both fundamental rights of man and that any society which denies these rights is tyrannical and any person who denies these rights is an enemy of humanity.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.... whoa. I like to think of myself as open-minded but I'm not ready for that just yet. That being said, San Francisco apparently has no punishment for being nude in public and yet I've only seen nudity in public twice in the 6 years of having a full-time job there. So maybe it should be removed from the law and most people will continue to cover-up out of personal modesty.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The costly criminalisation of the mentally ill by flumbaps on Friday August 09, 2013 @06:52AM (#6184845)
Honestly, I think if public nudity was common, no-one would care about it. When you go to the beach and see people in swimming costumes, there isn't really much left to the imagination. You can already pretty much figure out what they look like naked, but no-one cares, we're all used to it. Society just places a weird importance on nipples and genitals. But just women's nipples. Even though men's nipples kind of look the same anyway. You could take a swimsuit catalogue and cut the nipples off the men and glue them onto the women and turn it into porn.

If you think about it, we're just animals. It's really crazy that we can't just walk around in our natural state freely because we tend to feel really weird about looking at other members of our own species.

What if I've got it backwards and other animals are just as prudish? When a dog is barking at another dog, maybe he's really saying, "hey, check out this weirdo - he's naked! Get the hell out of here, you pervert!"

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The costly criminalisation of the mentally ill by DrStalker on Friday August 09, 2013 @09:00AM (#6185301)
If you want an idea of what the imagination can fill in when someone is in a swimming costume look up "bubbling"; the examples here will show you how it works:

http://gizmodo.com/5627807/bubbling-tricks-your-mind-to-make...

Link is technically safe for work but looks NSFW (that being the entire point of the illusion)

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The costly criminalisation of the mentally ill by sunglasses on Friday August 09, 2013 @07:57AM (#6185068)
"swimming costumes"... are you British? :)

But yes, this apprehension of nudity is something I've always found so bizarre. Why is seeing skin of our species such a big deal? At what point of our social evolution did it evolve that way (because the idea of clothing is pretty universal to humans).

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The costly criminalisation of the mentally ill by Symmetry on Friday August 09, 2013 @10:27AM (#6185837)
The idea of clothing isn't quite universal, but nearly so. Still, we're something of an outlier in how serious our nudity taboo is. As far as I can tell most cultures are ok with women going around topless and most think that it's ok for men and women to see each other naked when bathing, though I guess Hollywood is changing that.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The costly criminalisation of the mentally ill by jotm on Friday August 09, 2013 @02:40AM (#6184079)
Oh come on, it's not like people will start walking around naked just because...
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:The costly criminalisation of the mentally ill by ksrm on Friday August 09, 2013 @12:54AM (#6183826)
>I like to think of myself as open-minded but I'm not ready for that just yet

But...why? Is there any good reason, or is it just puritanism?

[ Parent | on HN ]