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Open letter to Tom Mulhall on the Facebook censorship issue

Hi Tom, it’s really time for AANR, with or without TNS, to have a sit down with someone at Facebook. As nudists, we are clearly targets, and the majority of the links and photos which are being removed actually meet the FB terms of service. The social network outsources nearly all of this arbitrary censorship, and because of this there is rampant inconsistency.

But you call this “un-American”, which is simply wishful thinking, because censorship and prudishness about sex is an American trademark. “Banned in Boston”, the movie production code, Janet Jackson’s nipple, The people vs. Larry Flynt, the war on clothing-optional beaches, the prohibition of public nudity nearly everywhere (even now in San Francisco), and so on.

And it’s really not just the US - take a look at what David Cameron did to “protect” people on the Internet from sex and nudity by putting in a ridiculous filter which actually blocks important health information on issues like breast cancer and sex education, and witness what is now going on in Germany to completely prohibit any and all photos depicting child nudity.

There is some sort of mass hysteria sweeping the country and many parts of the world that professes that any depiction of the nude human body is somehow harmful to the general public, even though we all have a nude human body underneath our clothes that we can look at anytime. The nudist idea is more relevant, important and necessary than ever, not only to combat these ridiculous notions, but to set us on a healthier course when it comes to body image and sexual health.

Pornography, the airbrushing of models in magazines, the use of body doubles in film, and many other false depictions of the human body in media are threatening our own self-image, turning the perceptions of our own bodies into something completely artificial and unattainable. As humans, we need to see real bodies in order to maintain a mental balance between what is real, and what is fantasy.