Replies
- EA
EarlDMay 26, 2024The word you may have missed in the OP is ethos [quote] How does the practice of all nude exercising and athletic training and some nude academic education fit into this concept?[/quote]ReactReply - RI
richardJul 11, 2024Nice to have a lesson on Ancient Greek Behavior.
When I was 8 I was sent to a private boarding school in England.
Once the children who didn't board went home, we turned into a nudist camp " boys only " we swam naked, had baths and showers naked, went to the Gym and got fit naked. On swimming sports day I was shocked when we competed in front of the Parents and Teachers naked. My poor shrunken genitals would have pleased the sculptures. I do however feel there would have been a slow evolution of social and political behaviour which molded the Greeks thru the ages .
By the time the Romans became the big influence and moral compass
orgies became popular with dinner or bath time . Nudity with sex seemed to have been tolerated.
There's always someone that ruins it for everyone . Not the One God people, of course not!! How many crusades over how many hundreds of years?
My personal opinion is; We have lost the natural side of life and replaced it with an artificial- "natural " asexual form of naturism that seems to have rules about every little suggestion of sex or pictures of peoples
penises that are too prominent or engorged. People can still be discreet and have their private moments away from public scrutiny. As sex should be a healthy part of everyones lives.
It's taken me 50yrs to come to terms with childhood sexual abuse , those abuses often came via the church whose moral compass was extremely questionable . They promoted nakedness as a cleansing ,
'Baptism in water '
Or a humiliating descent into shame and guilt.
Shame on them for bringing us to today in a state of Anxiety, confusion, abandonment and so much shame
.. Good luck to one and all.ReactReply - SA
Stone AndyJul 11, 2024As the abstact term "ethos" is used, it's worth defining it: Ethos is a Greek word meaning 'character' that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology; and the balance between caution, and passion. One of the academic articles cited refers to a Greek ethos of civic responsiblity and individual effort (for the greatest good), which lies counter to the individualistic consumer "what's in it for me" contemporary culture of the US. However, in the 50's and 60's, the golden age of naked swimming for men in YMCAs across the US, a more military ethos coming from the soldier culture of WW II vets prevailed. At that time modesty followed the thinking that we're all males and in it together, so what makes you think you have anything to hide?
As the balance between caution and passion shited to the later in the late 60s and early 70s, social male nudity became an issue. One one hand, that can be celebrated for less conformity, more tolerance and greater respect of women's and heterodivergent orientations. On the other hand, the sense of beloning as a male in community was also diminished if not lost. What strikes me is the loss of that balance between caution and passion. If the 50s were overly cautious and the 70s overly passionate, I agree with Old4me's assessment that we have lost a less self-conscious attitude towards nudity and sexuality to replace it with a legalistic and asexualized view of social nudity. Can that even be called Puritanical when men of the Victorian age swam and bathed naked in each others' company? Have men among men ever been so shy around each other as in contemporary society, so homophobic and afraid of their own shadow? That has pretty much killed nudism as we know it.
Young men today may do odd towel dances in locker rooms and other public spaces because of all the fear they grew up in. But put them among friends and I understand many are very open and casual about their nudity and sexuaity. Perhpas their ethos has shifted in ways that are still being articulated. I see hope in them that they are less individualistic than their parents (my generation) and more aware of the "greatest good" not necessarily defined by their local community watching in the bleachers, but rather the global community.ReactReply - SAStone AndyJul 11, 2024[quote]Homosapian was first coined in 1758, but Im pretty sure weve been around a bit longer than that.[/quote] Homosapien means "the wise human" and came out of the Enlightenment to recognize that humanity is part of nature and not separate from it. From my understanding, there was no awareness of other humans at that time as Neanderthals remains weren't found until the mid 19th century and not commonly recognized until the later 1800's. Homosexuality has also been around and recognized longer than the word. The key difference was using it to define people rather than behavior. Like the concept of race, it was defined to label and control people. At the end of the day, there is only one race and sexuality: human.ReactReply
- ST
StevieLornaJul 11, 2024cinaedus
Thats an old word.
ReactReply - STStevieLornaJul 11, 2024
cinaedus
Thats an old word.
ReactReply - SAStone AndyJul 11, 2024[quote]Some additional historical perspective on athletic nudity in Greek from academia exploring the introduction of nudity in the Greek Olympic Games. The quote and the two papers by the same authors illustrate that nudity was not always a part of the Olympics. In fact there were 15 Olympiads over 50 before the introduction of any nudity in the games. They suggest its introduction was utilitarian in nature. Not some high minded acceptance of public nudity, as is oft implied in current modern nudist mythology. Nudity at the Olympic Games was neither primitive nor original, by all accounts it was deliberately introduced around the l5th Olympiad or 720BCE, more than 50 years after the traditional founding of the Games.11 Before that, athletes presumably competed in loincloths (zomata) that covered their genitals, as they had in Homer's epics-our earliest written account of Greek athletics. Outside of sport and certain religious rituals, nudity was and always had been considered shameful in Greek society Interestingly enough, explanations for the introduction of athletic nudity at the ancient Olympic Games include (l) performance enhancement and (2) safety. The 2nd c. CE travel writer Pausanias tells us that Orsippus of Megara initiated the practice by winning the footrace after losing his loincloth. "My own opinion," Pausanias adds, "is that at Olympia he intentionally let the girdie slip off him,realizing that a naked man can nm more easily than one girt."3 On the face of it, this story seems plausible since we commonly think of athletes as doing anything and everything to improve their performance. Dionysius of Halicarnassus concurs that the runner intentionally dropped his shorts, adding that before the incident Greeks were ashamed to appear naked at the Games. Ancient Athletic Nudity and the Olympic Ethos of Arete Naked Virtue: Ancient Athletic Nudity and the Olympic Ethos of Arete[/quote] In the text and footnotes of the cited "Naked Virtue: Ancient Athletic Nudity and the Olympic Ethos of Arete," it's fascinating how concepts regarding nudity in ceremony, sport and the Olympics varied in periods of history in their symbolism and significance. A nice overriding statement is: "The ancient Greeks acted as if everything was visible to the eagle-eyed god they honored at the Olympic Games. Athletes competed in the nude because they had nothing to hide and the virtue symbolized by their naked bodies itself was divinely beautiful." Whereas the modern Olympic Committee suggests games were universally performed naked, it appears that it was a gradual development that emerged around the 7th century BCE, perhaps initiated by performance and safety, and then taking on virtuous qualities. The Greeks did not appear to consider nudity shame-free, but may rather viewed that its heroic, divine, athletic, and youthful attributes trump the shame attached to the nakedness. Key for me is that there is a historical precedent in Greek culture that nudity implies authenticity, transparency and vulnerability, from which courage, integrity and glory arise.ReactReply
- JO
JobyAug 15, 2024[quote]Maybe the genitalia on Michelangelo's David are undersized for a similar reason. Undersized? From what I've seen around nude men, that size isn't unusual at all. I think it only seems that way because much of the rest of David's anatomy is supersized, so to speak.[/quote] I was going to say the same thing. If we look at average penises in Greek statuary, to those that are even smaller, I think it is largely representative of most men, to be honest. As a former athlete I was in a lot of locker rooms. And since then I have been in a lot of gyms, not to mention nude beaches, etc., and most men are not hung huge. Mostly average. I know that what I have witnessed is only a cross section of men, but often times a cross section can give you a fairly decent idea of what is out there. We certainly live in a more exhibitionist type society now where "size" is everything. No matter what it is, it seems. And when it comes to male members, that is certainly the case. In fact, even though nudism is meant to be a celebration of the human body, many seem to lose focus on that point. Which is why men who have size often flaunt it, and then the reactions that follow would suggest that his size has some innate sense of "special" to it. For me, that's not what nudism is about. Maybe the TS form of nudism, but not the TN brand. A large size is the luck of the DNA draw at the end of the day ;) But as far as the statuary is concerned, I see it as being largely representative of most men.ReactReply - NA
NakedCaveManAug 18, 2024Michelangelo was an amazing sculptur, so any difference in proportion was surely intentional. David's hands are indeed much larger than other parts of his anatomy.
ReactReply - JOJobyAug 18, 2024[quote]Michelangelo was an amazing sculptur, so any difference in proportion was surely intentional. David's hands are indeed much larger than other parts of his anatomy.[/quote] Very true. At the end of the day if you had a museum full of male nude statuary, and every single one of them was hung, it would be distracting to the rest of the art. And again, it wouldn't necessarily be representative of most men. It would seem too contrived, almost cartoonish, and deemed by some as vulgar. Even though a large penis is certainly neither cartoonish nor vulgar. But again, the art would lose something in my opinion, because now the focus is on the size of the phallus and nothing else.ReactReply
- UN
uniballAug 28, 2024Always believed ancient Greeks had it right about penis size. Smaller is better. Back then, men would be praised for it but somehow society got it all backwards so now we have to feel ashamed about not being big enough down there. It ain't fair
ReactReply - UNuniballAug 28, 2024
Always believed ancient Greeks had it right about penis size. Smaller is better. Back then, men would be praised for it but somehow society got it all backwards so now we have to feel ashamed about not being big enough down there. It ain't fair
ReactReply - NUnudeyooperAug 28, 2024
We do not have to be ashamed of our size. However, some choose to do so. My wife insists that girth is much more important than length and what I have satisfies her. But this has nothing to do with nudism. We are to be non judgemental, uncaring about what others have, and that being naked is an eqalizer. What the Greeks depicted must have been about right since their civilization remains to this day.
ReactReply - JOJobyNov 20, 2024
And what is interesting, is when I see a man with a small penis, I'm not thinking, 'wow, look how small that is.'
Just the opposite. I'm thinking how great it looks.
Every penis is special, in my opinion. Because it's attached to a unique man.
And as I've noted on a couple of boards here, my ex was a pilot in the Marine Corps. Good looking guy. Nice physique. Small penis.
I couldn't have cared less.ReactReply - JOJobyNov 20, 2024
And what is interesting, is when I see a man with a small penis, I'm not thinking, 'wow, look how small that is.'
Just the opposite. I'm thinking how great it looks.
Every penis is special, in my opinion. Because it's attached to a unique man.
And as I've noted on a couple of boards here, my ex was a pilot in the Marine Corps. Good looking guy. Nice physique. Small penis.
I couldn't have cared less.ReactReply