Nude PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Protest in Barcelona, Spain, against the abuse of animals whose pelts are used in the fur industry, January 21, 2007

Charges against a naked Portland, Oregon, male bicyclist were recently dismissed by a judge who ruled that the rider’s nude spin on a bike through the streets of the city was a form of “symbolic protest”.

According to Oregon Live.com, after two days of hearings, Judge Jerome LaBarre (no pun intended) ruled that nude “protest” biking is an already established tradition in Portland and that naked as a jaybird biker, Michael “Bobby” Hammond’s recent ride in the buff was legal.

Hammond testified that his ride in the nude was “expressing a message in support of bikes and against cars, foreign oil, the Iraq war and air pollution.”

Portland is famous for its World Naked Bike Ride, an event held several days prior to Hammond’s own bike ride a la natural before cops pulled Hammond over to the side and charged him with indecent exposure, resisting arrest, and fourth degree assault.

The Deputy District Attorney forewarned the judge that since Hammond wasn’t carrying any type of protest sign nor attempted to “communicate” what he was protesting–Hammond testified his “protest” was against four separate issues–anyone arrested for indecent exposure charges could now claim free speech.

Portland Police were caught between a rock and hard place: Hammond violated a city code that “states it’s illegal to expose genitalia in a public place in view of members of the opposite sex”. A bystander with a video cam caught Hammond’s arrest along with a woman yelling that “Oregon law allows nudity–as long as it isn’t done to sexually arrouse oneself or others”.

Naked protests span the globe: DBKP found a plethora of people baring their bodies to snow and ice to protest Global Warming in the Swiss Alps:

“WNBR is on! It’s time to put a stop to the indecent exposure of people and the planet to cars and the pollution they create.”
World Naked Bike Ride

There’s also a World Naked Bike Ride Day, a full-on frontal assault to cars and their deadly emissions, which doesn’t seem to be held on the same day in different locations of the world. According to NakedWiki.org, Naked Bike Riding Day in 2008 was held on June 7, in the “Northern Hemisphere”. Most “Southern Hemisphere” Naked Bike Rides were held on either June 8 or 9th.

Aussie PETA chicks caught in a “flap” over nude protests

The surest benign way to get attention is to shed one’s clothing in a form of protest. Australian police were not amused by a PETA KFC “Chick” Protest and arrested three women for “offensive behavior”. Apparently, according to the police, protesting Down Under in the nude is actually against the law, even though, according to PETA’s Asia-Pacific Director Jason Baker, a nude protest was held, without arrests being made by the coppers, six weeks earlier.

The crème de la crème of naked protesting was captured on film by an intrepid blogger, Zombietime, who attended a “Breasts Not Bombs” protest in Berkeley, California, in 2005.

The one photo is just a small snippet of what Zombie encountered at the naked protest. For a more “illimunating” experience visit ZombieTime. Forewarned is forearmed: the photos are extremely graphic.

With the terms “racist” and “racism” being bandied about these days, we thought we’d throw in this quote which the quoted claims those offended by a naked body is “prejudice, akin to racism”:

“To be offended by the visual appearance of another person is prejudice, akin to racism. The right to exist, uncovered, should hold precedence over the right not to view this, for the objection is irrational.” - Terri Webb

There you have it, according to Terri Webb, those who are offended by public nudity are not only “racist” but also, “irrational”. And yet it seems the contrary is true: there’s been no public reaction, such as confrontations with pitchforks, nor buckets of tar and bags of feathers, in fact, nude bike protesters have been free to pedal their wares without harrassment. Nude bicycle protests have even become a tradition in Portland. We’d even dare to suggest that the nude protests say more about the participants than the spectators. There are logical, rational laws on the books which are in place to protect the public. We could pose this hypothetical:

All laws are striken from the books regarding public nudity. Cars have been replaced by public transportation and bicycles: a commuter boards the A-Train to work and finds half the car full of nude passengers. The only seat left on the train is one just vacated by a bare bottom ticket holder. Is the clothed commuter “racist” if they have “second” thoughts on whether they should sit on that particular seat?

Or:

A woman, alone on a late night jog on a city park path, encounters a naked man. Is the woman “irrational” if she feels “fear” and takes measures to avoid him, even if he carried a placard against “Global Warming”?

Public nudity is a touchy subject. Mass marketing permeates our society with messages of sexuality, sex, and nudity. It’s no wonder the confusion over naked bodies and sexual connotations. Naked protestors shed their clothing to protest such issues as war, global warming, car emissions, and the unethical treatment of animals. But is it fair for naked protestors to claim racism if some in the public find their behavior offensive? Shouldn’t the public have the same rights, especially in regards to protesting against naked protestors?

The “Naked Truth”

Naked protests are mainly held in countries in which human nudity may be deemed offensive but do not go to great lengths to punish “offenders”. Public nude protesters in countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Iran, theocracies run under Sharia Law, would face much harsher penalties such as public beatings and stints in prison.

We found an article on Gulf News.com, which highlights the clash between Islamic code and public nudity: nudity in public is prohibited yet health clubs in luxury hotels are getting a jaundice eye for these practices:

“While some remove their clothes in the process of changing, there are also those who stand naked for minutes and indulge in trivial activities like spraying cologne under their armpits,” said one person.

UAE lawyer Mohammad Al Rokn says it is a punishable offence to “undress fully in a public place in front of others whether male or female.”

“A person doing so can be jailed for not less than six months under the UAE penal code,” he told Gulf News.”

If someone can be jailed for six months for undressing in a locker room of a health club imagine what the sentence might be for daring to ride, walk, or stand in a publicly nude protest in the UAE?

In one were willing to tell their “naked truth” about their perception and observations about nude protests one might concede that the reasons people shed their clothing is perhaps more for “attention” and less of “freedom” from society’s shackles. Our society in the U.S. has been “unshackled” for quite some time. While we rarely see fully naked ads, we do see mass marketing, on television and in print, that use partial nudity to sell their products. There’s no shortage of nudity in films. But most combine nudity with sexuality and sex. So it’s not hard to see how society equates the two: sex and nudity. Along come naked protesters who are “offended” that society dares to equate their “expression” with sexuality. They have a different meme: shedding one’s clothes is an expression of “freedom” from the shackles of society. Protesting in the nude is the freedom to protest “unfettered” by society’s norms. Luckily for them, the society which they reside in is “unfettered” by draconic laws such as Sharia which would slam their bare butts in prison with a public beating to boot.

As forms of protests go, public nudity is a rather benign form, much more appreciated than blowing up buildings, the old standard used by such groups as the aging members of the Weather Underground, who staged their “style” of protest in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s.

We can’t help but wonder: does the message purveyed by nude protesters get lost by the “style” of the messengers? What do spectators come away with when observing a World Naked Ride Day or naked women with gigantic boobs and men with enlarged scrotums protesting the Iraq War? Does the public come away from those types of public protests with an overwhelming urge to end the war and stop Global Warming, or does the public, instead, remember only the sight of the different shapes and sizes of the bodies of the protesters? Some of which, referring to an advertisement where a man streaked naked across a field during a soccer match, in the words of one of the sportcasters, images that would “burn into one’s retinas”?

Freedom of expression and freedom of speech are valuable tenets of our society. Tenets which should be allowed if we are truly to remain a free society. So in the end, public naked protests are tolerated, and considered by some to be highly amusing, but we do not condemn nor punish with prison nor public beatings.

What is offensive are those who claim that those who are uncomfortable with these kinds of public nude demonstrations are “racist”, a term far too often used for other connotations than the original premise these days. Just as some have used their right of freedom of expression to shed their clothes in protest, others who find it offensive, should have that right: to find nude protests offensive. And even though some do find public nude protests offensive, the two do coexist rather peacefully. As it should. After all, this is the fabric, or no fabric whatsoever, of our American lives.

By LBG

Image – Naked Protest Against KFC
Image – Naked Protest in Barcelona
Image – Breasts Not Bombs Protest