>It's a much bigger question why, such a completely natural and normal thing, like nudity, in the supposed to be educated - at least in basic biology - 2025, be made and exclusive thing.
Western culture and its morals around sex, gender and nudity are founded on the patriarchal taboos of the Abrahamic religions, whereby human nudity in general, and female nudity in particular (because women are the source of original sin,) is to be considered shameful.
That and we're currently in the midst of a right-wing political reactionary shift against the progressive norms of prior generations (and a moral panic about "groomers" and "pedophiles") which makes censorship of this type far easier.
So China and Japan are abrahamic? India is abrahamic? Every civilization on earth has norms against public nudity. Seems to be something more fundamental than blaming abrahamic religions
The context of this thread and the linked article implies that we aren't discussing every civilization on Earth. I apologize for not explicitly having stated that, sometimes I forget that this is HN, where nuance and context go to die.
Norms against nudity within Western societies - excluding non-Western societies such as in China, Japan and India - are based on Abrahamic religions.
It is true that other non-Western societies also have norms regarding nudity, but those norms are not the same as in the West, and even within the West and other Christianized nations such norms tend to be more permissive than in the US. To give an example, in the US breastfeeding is considered implicitly sexual and thus allowing it in public spaces is controversial, whereas this is not the case in cultures where any display of the female breast is considered to be pornographic. You can even find cultures where public nudity has little if any taboo at all.
So no, other than the strictly physiological need for humans to provide a layer of physical protection around their bodies by means of garments, there is nothing more fundamental going on here. Norms around nudity are entirely cultural.
Norms against nudity being based on abrahamic religions is still wrong.
It’s like saying norms against murder are based on abrahamic religions because the 10 commandments say so.
Cultures the world over have general norms against nudity in nearly all contexts, and also have norms against murder in nearly all contexts. Clearly the driving force that makes humans have norms against nudity or murder is more fundamental than religion.
Abrahamic religions may add a particular flavor to it, but it’s icing on a big cake
Anthropologically, given that every mass civilization that’s ever existed regulated nudity in public settings, there’s likely some sociological advantage to it that enables communities of people to reach scale and endure.
Do you have a single counter example of a large scale human community (10,000+ people) where public nudity was normal?
Note that I said it's controversial because it's considered implicitly sexual, not that it's illegal. The article you posted literally mentions the social stigma I'm referring to.
The USA has people taking part in the World Naked Bike Rides and the Folsom Street Fair, but the USA has "norms against public nudity". The millions of people going outside each day are not naked or expecting to see others naked. That's a "norm" and it applies to Japan as well; clothed is normal, the exceptions are few and constrained to a few places/situations/events.
A photo of a Japanese public space, would you expect to see a) everyone clothed, b) everyone naked, c) roughly 50:50 as people choose for themselves and going naked is a perfectly acceptable thing to do which nobody thinks is weird ? (a), obviously.
> shift against the progressive norms of prior generations (and a moral panic about "groomers" and "pedophiles")
Not altogether an unreasonable concern, considering that the International Lesbian and Gay Association at the United Nations was literally allied to NAMBLA and other pro-pedophilia groups, for 15 years [0].
It's only when the Americans threatened to take away the money that something was done about it.
Western culture and its morals around sex, gender and nudity are founded on the patriarchal taboos of the Abrahamic religions, whereby human nudity in general, and female nudity in particular (because women are the source of original sin,) is to be considered shameful.
That and we're currently in the midst of a right-wing political reactionary shift against the progressive norms of prior generations (and a moral panic about "groomers" and "pedophiles") which makes censorship of this type far easier.