Been pondering the nudity taboo lately.

As far as I can tell, the taboo began as a way to control who gets sexually stimulated by your mate. The sight of their genitals might make other members (hah) of your tribe to get sexually aroused and want to have sex with your mate, and the prospect of that makes you jealous, so you cover that shit up.

That means that the nudity taboo is intimately connected to our pair-bonding intincts. You know, the ones we have turned into an institution we call “marriage”.

Every human culture has marriage. The form may vary wildly but the basic idea – two people publically committing to one another – is universal.

It’s important that it be public because that way, the community knows that these two individuals are now off-limits for sexytimes fun for everyone but themselves.

Another way of controlling who gets aroused by who.

Incidentally, this is the exact same instinct behind all nudity taboos, even the ones we consider insane. Like the cultures where a woman is sewn into a sack-like garment the moment she is sexually mature and (supposedly) never takes it off.

Must make going to the bathroom tricky. But I am sure they have ways.

Such extreme measures can only occur in a culture where patriarchy has been in place long enough for its most toxic effecks to have manifested. And all because some man gets jealous when he thinks of other men being sexually aroused by his wife or wives in any way shape or form.

Anyhow, back to our less extreme but equally irrational nudity taboo.

The irony is that for a lot of the Northern Hemisphere, it is irrelevant except in the summer. People don’t need to be told not to go around naked in winter. Taboo or no, people are unlikely to expose their genitals in sub-freezing temperatures.

It’s also interesting to track the paring away of the taboo over the 20th century. We started with Victorians wearing so many layers of clothing that they outweighed them all the way to the thong bikini, which is the absolute limit of the paring back because it is as close to nudity you can get without actually exposing your genitals.

And yes, I know, there is the whole thing about men being able to bare their chests when women cannot. But I am trying to keep this nongendered.

I would be remiss if I did not point out the curious exception we make for the buttocks. The thong bikini illustrates this exception like nothing else because it gets so close to violating our taboos.

We seem to have decided, as a culture, that the buttocks are okay as long as the anus is not visible. We giggle about bare bottoms when we speak of children and babies and we use the phrase “bare ass naked”, but when you really look at it, it is the anus that is taboo. Otherwise, the thong bikini, which exposes everything BUT the anus, would be illegal to wear in public.

And that’s pretty much as far as you can go on that. I suppose that you could go around bare bottomed with your anus covered by some kind of humorous sticker, but that would be it. Otherwise, the whole world is gonna see where you poop.

That’s why the anus is taboo, by the way. Because of its role in pooping. But that’s a whole other world of taboos to be discussed another time.

But what about the anus’ role in anal sex, I am positive you are asking. Well that’s not a major factor. As a species, we are wired for penis in vagina sex. Anal sex is marvelous, of course. I am a gay man, after all.

But it doesn’t have a huge place in our evolutionary history or our nudity taboo.

It does, however, intersect with one of those hidden secrets of human sexuality, the fact that we never completed the transition from being a rear entry species to being a face to face copulation species.

That’s why primitive tribes inevitably practice rear entry sex. And it’s the whole reason why we find butts sexy in the first place.

I mean, when you take anal sex out of picture, what is sexy about butts? The answer is that they stimulate those latent rear entry instincts.

I suppose gay men just take that to its logical  concluision. Sexy butts get fucked.

Mmmm. Uh…. what was I talking about again?

Oh right. Nudity et al.

I am a lonely, lonely man.

Anyhow, as you cna see, we have pared the nudity taboo down to its absolute minimum in most modern society. This is a result of social progress, but that social progress came about less through enlightened thinking and more through sexual competition.

It’s simple. All it takes is for women, especially young women, to noticed that the girl who shows more gets more attention from the boys.

That sets the stage for a phenomenon wherein each generation pushes the boundaries, much to the outrage of older women who have husbands and do not want to see said husbands drooling over some young “slut”.

See, ladies? It’s not always about MALE jealousy.

You all know my position, of course. I would abolish public indecency laws entirely. People could walk around totally nude, with their genitals and anuses free and in the breeze, and I would not care.

If anything, it would strongly encourage people to wipe very thoroughly.

And society would not fall apart. That’s just typical conservative hysteria. For one thing, most people would still wear clothes because the social taboo would still be there.

And that’s the real enforcement mechanism of any taboo anyhow. When people have that dream where they are naked in public, it’s not the police they are worried about.

It’s everyone laughing at them and thinking they are a pervert.

And all over some silly scraps of cloth over our “naughty parts”!

But of course, there would be a small minority that did go around naked, weather permitting. And I imagine that once they do it and get away with it, others will give it a go just to exercise ther new found freedom.

And that’s fine. Nobody, not even children, is done harm by the sight of a set of genitals that are not their own. It would shock people at first, but they would get over it pretty fast, and learn to just not look at what they do not want to see.

So yeah. If I ran the world. people would be free to be as naked as they want to be, and all that taboo nonsense where people go around feeling shame about their “dirty parts” would be a thing of the past.

Of course, I would make public sex legal in certain areas too.

But that’s another column entirely.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.