Y
ou fancy yourself an activist, an agent for change doing battle for the outcast and downtrodden, seeking an end to wars, cleaning up the planet and trying to get health insurance for everybody. Sure, you went to the community meeting where they talked about recycling and made yourself feel good, and you sent twenty bucks to a political action committee to help buy airtime for a pro universal health care commercial. But, how committed are you really to seeking change? Probably not as committed as the Doukhobors.
Oh hell, maybe you are just as committed, but you just don’t have their jazz and flair for effective civil protest. The Doukhobors, a band of Russian immigrants to western Canada at the dawn of the 20th Century, had civil protest distilled to a fine art. Whenever an issue arose to inflame their passions the Christian mystic Doukhobors—men, women and children alike—would throw off their clothes and parade into town butt naked. The very sight of this angry gymnosophical crowd, a veritable sea of pissed-off naked people, often brought instant concessions from the establishment.
From their arrival in Canada in 1899 through the 1920s the Doukhobors got worked up and naked over such issues as pledging allegiance to Canada, military conscription, private land ownership and compulsory public education. Though in the end their protests effectuated little change in Canadian governmental policy, they did manage in 1932 to spur the Canadian parliament to pass legislation criminalizing public nudity, a statute which brought an immediate public protest and deomonstration from the Doukhobors.
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Uhhuh, and I guess I should convince the Green Jobs activists to parade around in the nude, for us Finns, nudity is nothing new!
I think we’re all nude under our clothes, right?
I think the PETA people get naked sometimes to protest the taking of animal skins for coats and things. It gets attention! I wonder why the sight of nudity is so shocking to most people? Everybody is fundamentally the same without clothes. If you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all, really. So why the shock? It doesn’t really make any sense.
Why is nudity such a big deal? When you stop and think about it there is no reason at all for everybody to get so freaked out by the sight of a nude human body. When did this all start and why?
Remember those fig leaves in Genesis?