I’m Japanese and currently studying abroad in the US. Recently I was telling some classmates about onsens and how my family are enthusiasts and they were so weirded out by the concept especially when I told them that my father & brother go together the most (people are fully naked in onsens if you’re unaware). Non-sexual nudity was never a big deal to me and in Japan where bathtubs are the norm instead of showers it’s not even unusual for same-sex family members to bathe together (one at each end). Where does this prudishness come from? Especially in a country that’s known worldwide for its hyper sexuality (Hollywood, celebs, porn industry, etc.)?
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Too prudish to use a urinal. Kinky enough to BE a urinal.
What the fuck is this about prudishness getting off your feet and resting during a nice piss is great
Edit also there is always the chance for
I guess I’m a quick pisser since pulling my pants down, sitting down, getting up, pulling my pants up seems more effort than the short sit is worth.
Besides, usually it’s a lot quicker to go to an urinal
I sit down when I pee!
There’s nothing that crazy bout me
I’m just takin a whiz
Mind your own biz
Why’s everyone always staring at me?
It’s because a lot of social norms about that kind of thing tend to be set by religion, and the US has been heavily influenced by a particularly puritanical strain of evangelical protestantism that cares a lot about impropriety and sex.
Scandinavian here. I’ve noticed the same thing with Saunas. Not just Americans, though, but brits too.
Because having any articles of clothing on in a sauna is stupid. (I’ll defer to the Finns for a final judgement on that statement, but that’s my firm opinion, at least).
Short story: A b7nch of coworkers and I had to spend 24 hours in a Rio de Janeiro hotel for a medical exam the day after. And of course we did what any self-respicting doodlebugger would do: we went to the roof bar. After way too much beer vodka and whisky we realized that there was also a sauna there. So we did the only thing appropriate; undressed and chilled in the steam. And for us scandinavians that meant nudity. For anyone else it meant prudity. And we were an eclectic mix of nationalities.
Brit: “Uh, what are we doing here”
Swede: “We’re bonding”
Septic: “This is kinda gay…”
Norwegian: “SHUT UP, WE’RE BONDING”“Septic: “This is kinda gay…””
aight, bend over.
Septic?
Septic tank -> Yank. A brit slang for American I picked up somewhere.
As an American, this is good slang. I hate it here.
That’s a brand new Cockney rhyme to me, thanks for the giggles!
In Australia it’s shortened to “Sepo”.
Could you stick to Yankee or Yank or something? It’s not like I find the disdain confusing, but Septic is a little heavy-handed. We’ve got big and growing problems, but we are all still people here, and not everybody under that umbrella has been asking for it. The assholes in charge have been running on minority support for decades now.
Curious, though. Septic tanks are a standard feature in rural USA. Are they rare in the rest of the world? Is this something we’re considered odd for?
It’s cockney rhyming slang, it’s best not to think too deep about it
Americans are called yanks, yank rhymes with tank, and septic tanks are a type of tank, so Americans are septics. It’s not exactly flattering but it’s not really as much of an insult as it sounds.
The same kind of logic has them calling “stairs” “apples and pears” because pears rhymes with stairs and apples are kind of similar to pears.
Or “cherry” meaning “lie” because lie rhymes with pie, and cherry is a type of pie.
Finn here, anyone who sexualises sauna nudity is a complete idiot. YOU DON’T FUCKING WEAR ANYTHING IN THE SAUNA, PERIOD.
Protestantism.
I think you answered your own question: there is no non-sexual nudity in such a hyper-sexual society.
But the US is also weirdly prudish about sex.
That’s actually normal in sexually repressed societies.
Similar stuff happens in Iran, where young people get down to crazy freaky sex because they’re so sheltered from it in everyday life.
The more people are told “no,” but the only reasons are religious reasons, the more will rebel against it.
So while it seems backward, the US is hyper-sexual because of it’s prudish history. This was a country colonized by people who thought dancing was a sin.
Only in the official public sphere, off to the side it is very sexualized. Ads and tv shows are full of sexual references. You hit strange limits though like genitalia cannot be shown in movies (not X rated) but you can use a fake penis on men and a merkin on woman which is ok for some bizarre reason. The US forced its prudishness with genitalia on the Japanese after WW2 which is why they pixelate it. It likely has its roots in the US as a mainly evangelical Protestant settled nation vs the more Catholic and reformation Europe. Eastern cultures also have their own rules about nudity and sex but it isn’t seen as inherently sinful.
The prudity and hypersexuality are two sides of the same coin. In a culture where you are not allowed to discuss, portray, or explore sexuality, the only outlets for people’s base sexual desires become unhealthy ones.
The religious prudes think that any nudity must be sexual. Best to cover up and avoid temptation. They are the hyper sexual ones, in a way.
They are the hyper sexual ones, in a way.
Another example is how the think way more about trans-people’s genitals than trans-people do. The most religious areas also consume the most transgender pornography.
Their repression makes them think about it non-stop. It’s why so many of them want to ban transgender people entirely. They can’t stop themselves, so instead they want to completely remove the “temptation.”
15 years ago I had a trans friend who was in love with this on again off again Christian dude who was so into her but would have emotional breakdowns and cut her off after each time they had sex. That he needed to atone for his sins and couldn’t be close to her anymore… and like clockwork, months later he’d be back for more, only to repeat the same stupid cycle where he couldn’t face his own desires because of his unhealthy relationship with religion.
Anyway, instead of being adults, these fucking babies just want to remove the temptation at all through societal control, because they can’t control themselves. (Which is fucking scary, honestly, that deep down they have so little self control)
They can’t stop themselves, so instead they want to completely remove the “temptation.”
DING DING DING
There’s a state you can own a maximum of 6 sex toys, in law.
They don’t got their stuff figured out yet.
That’s Texas for you.
It’s probably so you can have one toy for every day of the week, except Sunday…
Yes. Their idiotic age rules (something about half age plus something, I don’t remember) they spread around on Reddit like it was some kind of gospel really made me question their sanity.
In the years before the US existed, when the land was colonized by European powers, Europe had a lot of really annoying, prudish types who were a major downer.
Someone had the bright idea to encourage them to move to the colonies where they could live their prudish existence free from the naked bodies of Europe.
We ended up with all of Europe’s biggest prudes. Europe’s prudes have been trying to reestablish themselves, but they are at a serious disadvantage. Meanwhile, we in America have to deal with an overwhelming population of prudes that we’ve struggled for centuries to extinguish.
While we’re on the subject, Europe also found it convenient to dump their criminals here. So we end up with a culture in which full frontal nudity is unacceptable, but gun violence is just fun entertainment.
I say that as someone who loves some good violence. Nothing quite so enjoyable as living vicariously through some bad ass beating the snot out of the bad guys in a movie.
I never would have thought of myself as a prude, but recently stopped watching the series Banshee because the amount of gratuitous sex in the show was exceeding the amount of gratuitous violence to such a degree that I began to feel uncomfortable.
What if I like both sex and violence?
I guess I’d recommend watching Banshee.
It’s not just them. I live in Sweden and I can’t understand why those from the middle east-area in the (men only) dressing room wrap themselves tightly i a towel and hide in the toilet to change clothes.
I’m sure the more cultural anthropologist types will have a more eloquent way of stating it, but the US has a hard time escaping it’s religious background, which views nudity as a gateway to sexuality, so people “must remained covered”.
And in the same way, if men are naked around each other, people are afraid of it being seen as a sexual thing. I mean non sexual nudity doesn’t really exist in “standard spaces” in my part of the country anyway.
And man, if an adult and young person were naked near each other, someone would call the cops!
I think Hollywood sexuality is exactly that, escapist fiction. The US is actually a pretty sexually repressed place.
You can sit around any bar and say “oh that girl is hot, I’d love to fuck her!” But you would get looks you’d get if you said “oh that girl is hot, I’d love if she pegged me!”
Maybe it’s changing, but it doesn’t really feel like it to me.
The hyper-sexuality and the prudishness are two sides of the same coin. Repressing things doesn’t make them go away, it just means it’ll be expressed in weirder, less controlled ways. Additionally, there’s some people who embrace hyper-sexuality as a reaction against the prudishness imposed by Christianity - but at the same time, it’s possible to still have certain brainworms instilled by Christianity among those who consciously reject it.
Yeah. Movies where people kill each other are suitable for children but movies where you can see a pair of tits for ten seconds, aren’t. Madness.
Movies have actually been a huge influence on America’s view on sexuality, if not the largest influence.
There’s one organization, CARA (the Classification and Rating Administration) who provides ratings for movies and TV shows in the US, and they’ve heavily censored nudity in film for decades, giving films shockingly high ratings if even a breast is flashed on screen for a moment.
This has caused studios to limit nude scenes, or to be extremely creative about sex scenes, to avoid higher ratings. Because the higher the rating, the smaller the audience will be, and they want to appeal to a larger audience.
If you watch American films from the 70s and earlier, seeing casual nudity in a film was a pretty normal thing, whereas you have to buy a porno just to see any nudity today.
This had a nasty backfire effect, where our culture now associates nudity with sex. We don’t appreciate the natural human body unless it’s under the context of sexual desire or procreation.
The crazy thing is, nobody really knows who the members of CARA are. Their identity is kept secret. The heads of their organization are known; you can check them out on their official website (https://www.filmratings.com/About), but the organization as a whole keeps their members’ names secret. So we have no idea who these people are who are censoring nudity in American films.
The greatest corrupter of humanity, organized religion.
We were settled by Puritans. I do not personally care, and my mom and dad didn’t either. It is not some sexual thing to stay naked while doing my hair and skincare, it’s practical because nothing gets on my clothes. We do have specific family friendly nudist resorts in the US but that’s countercultural, you are correct our culture is prudish.
Does Japan still censor their pornography? I heard that was a thing, wondered if they still do.
As for the Americans, it’s my understanding that the conservatives like to publicly pretend they’re chaste and pure because religious sexual repression, yet harbor the largest number of pedophiles and other affiliated degenerates, while the progressives aren’t nearly as backward and see sexual expression as natural.
For roughly one half of the population, they’re unfortunately internationally defined by the shittier other half that gets nearly all of the (very well deserved) infamy.
They do, but there’s uncensored porn too. Personally I think censored > uncensored anyway cause it puts your imagination to work.
That’s an interesting take, to me it’s always been either porn or not porn, and the idea of “porn but censored so I fill in the gaps myself” hasn’t ever had any appeal. I don’t know if this is related to what I’ve been more exposed to (probably is), but anytime I come across porn that shows everything except a tiny pixelated part (as in, only pixelating part of the junk) kind of funny.
If you go to the roots of it the Abrahamic religions (Christianity, Islam, Judaism) see the natural world as corrupt and a barrier to god. Nature was something to be “conquered”, human impulses are sinful and sexuality is especially impulsive and therefore sinful. It encourages all kinds of stuff like adultery, kids born out of wedlock (a big problem back then), and STDs (generally considered a divine punishment for sex). Clothing also denoted social rank and was even enforced by law.
The versions of Christianity that were too stuffy for Europe founded America. “The Pilgrims” that the US national story is built around were Congregationalists whose version of protestantism was so intense that they were forced out.
Those peoples are the ones who drove a more extreme religious fervor than Europe
