I think we need to make a distinction between naturists, who want to be nude 'in the open air' as it were but are careful of the sensibilities of others and therefore do so in places where doing so is expected, or at least where everyone knows it's likely to happen, and this guy who wants to be naked where ever the hell he feels like it and damn what anybody else thinks.

Let's be frank here, there are plenty of places in the UK he would be causing absolutely no trouble or concern to anyone whatsoever if he was naked. The problem is he doesn't want to be naked in those places, he wants to be naked in all the other places where everyone else would prefer it if he wasn't. He's not making statement about free speech or individual liberty or any of those things. There may have been a point to be made some time in the past but that time has long since gone. He's put his side of the argument and society as a whole has rejected it. But he's decided to carry on the argument anyway, regardless of the fact he didn't win. If a child did that, we'd call it a tantrum.

If enough people agreed with his stance then when he was prosecuted there would be a public outcry. He would get a swell of support and, if enough people agreed with him, there would be political momentum for the laws to be changed. But very few people do agree with him, there was no outcry, there is no political momentum and the law stays as it stands. He's lost the war but he seems to think it's still worth fighting the battle.

So, in answer to the thread title, it's him. It's completely him.

Jon

But the point is that their personal reaction is not his intention. He is not intending to use his nudity in an alarming or distressing way. It's just a state he's in, and your response is up to you.
Offence cannot be given, only taken, as someone wiser than me once said.

Other cultures don't give a toss, so what's the big deal over here?

I would say these days he's absolutely doing it to get a reaction. It may not have been at the beginning, but it's got beyond the notion of a simple wish on his part to commune with nature, he's now doing it to make a point. That somewhat robs him on any degree of moral superiority over the issue.


With all due respect, it's very easy for me (or anyone else) to do something which it is offensive to pretty much everybody. The idea that if something is offended it's always their problem is bunk. Out of courtesy to society as a whole, we don't do things which will offend lots of people because that's what a society is - us all not doing whatever we want to on the grounds that not doing it helps us to get along better. I'm a believer in the notion that you don't have the right to be offended by anything you want to be, but if a given thing is something which most people would be offended by, the boot is on the other foot, as it were.

And I come back to my point earlier. There are plenty of places he could be where him wearing no clothes wouldn't be a problem at all and would even be welcomed by the people there. He chooses not to go to those places, he chooses to go to other places, where he knows ahead of getting there people will be offended by his state of dress. I don't see how this behaviour is anything like laudable. If I go to a concert and the music being played contains lots of swearwords and I sing along at the top of my voice, that's fine. If I stood up in the middle of someone's wedding and sang the same song at the top of my voice, I wouldn't expect everyone else to put up with it. It's not merely the act, it's the context in which the act occurs that define what it is.


Well, the obvious difference is we're here, not there. Why should our culture be the same as someone else's? And what defines their culture as preferable to ours? Again, you're starting from an assumption that a more permissive attitude towards public nudity is by definition 'better' than our current mores, but you haven't presented an argument as to why that is the case.

Maybe he is - in which case ignore him.



Sadly I disagree. As you correctly go onto point out, context is everything. So long as the act falls within the law, what's the problem? Public nudity is not illegal. Merely being undressed in public isn't the problem; the problem is how people react, fundamentally.



Yup, but unless he's 'manipulating' himself in public, deliberately getting onto crowded tube trains at rush hour and pressing himself up against people, I'm not sure there should be the witch hunt. I think most children would've found it quite funny, asked their parents why he was naked and not thought much more about it. Of course, it'd then be the parents who get all flustered and blow hard about the matter.

"Gough, from Eastleigh in Hampshire, was today convicted of committing a breach of the peace on July 20 by walking naked in a public place near a children's play park in the Townhill area of Dunfermline, Fife."

I'm still very unclear as to what the crime is, or how one's nudity can breach the peace?
There aren't any inflammatory statements, there is no violence, no loud noises, no hatred.
Just what is about a naked person that can 'breach the peace'?



We don't need to be like anyone else's culture, but the attitudes we have to nudity, the human body and how it's expressed are all very prudish. In fact, I think it's not the physical presence or act of nudity, it's their interpretation, and what it means to them.
It's a naked body. We all have them. They all look different.
I'm not about to strip naked and go for a walk myself, but if someone wants to, can anyone precisely tell me just what there is to be upset about?

The only 'crime' this man has committed as far as I can see, is that the rest of the public doesn't think a naked person should be allowed in public, despite this being perfectly legal.

Flashers like to disrobe in order to cause alarm. Racists like to tell black people they are, well, black, in order to cause distress. Trolls like to insult the dead on the internet because they enjoy the reactions that their actions cause.

His state is a result of his actions, and therefore is something he is in control of. The reactions of viewers is very much less so, they are taken unawares. I don't see any obvious merit in suggesting that the reaction is to be suppressed instead of the behaviour. It is no excuse to say I don't think people should be offended by my actions, therefore I will ignore the fact that they are. It is a different thing entirely to recognise their discomfort, but not compromise because of an overriding principle. Rosa Parks is an example of somebody doing just that for a very good reason. I don't know which category he falls into - or if he is genuinely incapable of understanding even that his actions do have such an effect on people - in which case his mental competence is in question.

Breaking laws because you don't agree with them is all very well if you feel that the sanctions are less severe than the moral implications of compromise. But martyrs are supposed to be defiant, not whiny. He knows what will happen to him if he wanders around with his gentleman's truncheon meat on display, it's up to him whether he chooses to suffer the consequences. If he wants to do so without consequences though, then first he must win his argument by persuading people to find his saggy flesh less revolting, after that he can put it on display whenever he desires.


Social norms exist, and it appears that they must exist for human culture to work, but that does not require them to be Right or True, nor is it obvious that they could ever be so. Claims that one choice is more valid than another because it is claimed to be more natural assume that all things in nature are better than manufactured products. But firstly all culture is man-made, so the 'natural' in this concept is necessarily artificial. And secondly it is relatively simple to point to things that are quite natural but also bad.

Likewise a very small proportion of these norms can be shown to have real practical benefits or harms - marriage between close family members is genetically risky and to us morally repellent, but it is also widely tolerated in many cultures - and some consider it preferable for economic reasons. A case can be made for one set of values being objectively better than another in such cases - but it is not obvious that nudity can be included as one of those either.

So, in short, nobody can tell me just what he's done wrong?

I'm still waiting for someone to explain what law has been broken, and why.



My question was specifically asking why, here, we apparently care so much about the naked form being on display.
As far as we know, he wasn't 'manipulating' himself in front of someone. He was out for a walk. It just happened that he was naked, something that apparently society cannot abide, apparently for reasons unknown.

There is no why, it just is. The fact that it could be different is not evidence that it should.
The "but why" game isn't going to work because I can consistently reply "why not".

So, like me, you don't know.
I find it very odd that considering we are all in possession of a naked body, we should find the act of simply going for a walk while naked to be a 'breach of the peace'.

as I said, context. If he were going for a walk in an area where it was common practice to be naked, then he wouldn't have been prosecuted. But he doesn't. He intentionally goes naked in places where nudity is not expected or welcome. He goes and does this specifically to provoke a reaction - given he knows the reaction he'll get before he gets there, there's no others conclusion to come to. Because he goes there to provoke a reaction, he's therefore going naked with an intention to offend and therefore he's in breach of the law.

All the arguments you're making have previously been made in court by learned people. None of them have held enough water to get him acquitted.

No. I recognise that there is no reason why, or why not; and unless some objective criteria is found that can help us establish a reason for one view being more true than the other, there never could be. A society can have a tolerant attitude to public nudity, or an intolerant one, and irrespective of which view they collectively hold it is neither right nor wrong, it just is. We don't tolerate cannibalism at funerals, there's no very good reason for that either.

The problem you face is that both items are equally arbitrary, but your case loses under those terms. His justification for going nude is that he wants to do so, nothing more. Society's justification for not allowing him is that by and large we don't want to. He finds clothes offensive, others find his baby maker alarming. A compromise is on offer (naturist friendly locations) but he disdains it, choosing instead to force his views on others by turning up unannounced and showing them his junk. If he's going into the business of forcing his views on others, he can hardly complain when they respond by forcing theirs on him.

The only way out is to find some actual reason why one opinion on public nudity is objectively better than the other. In the absence of such, he is just one deluded man demanding that everyone else make changes to accommodate his arbitrary wishes, and predictably not getting his way.