De-constructing the Weaponised Male Body

I recently came across a thread on Mumsnet that had been written in response to repeated sightings of a naked male rambler in the Peak District. The Mumsnet comments were damning. Almost without exception the female commentators stated that they felt intimidated by the thought of encountering a naked male in the Derbyshire hills. Some went as far as to state that male nudity was an obvious sign of aggression (https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4003361-Meeting-naturists-when-hill-walking-would-you-be-worried).

Given my own well documented clothes-less forays into the great outdoors (see the gallery) I spent a couple of days processing their perspective – I certainly don’t have the intention to cause distress when I practice, and would be devastated to think that anyone found my presence disturbing or intimidating. Eventually, I reached the conclusion that what the Mumsnet thread expresses is a well-established socially constructed narrative of the male body.

If the female form has been objectified and sexualised by a male patriarchal society then the male body has been mechanised by an industrialised society fixated on expansion. In other words, whilst the female body was presented as an object of sex, the male body was presented as a tool. Since the dawn of advertising there have been countless ad campaigns across various cultures depicting the male body (often partially clad) using tools and machinery in the furtherance of national and social goals or, more recently, simply to sell an unrelated product.

But tools are synonymous with violence: hammers hit, axes chop, saws cut. It’s perhaps unsurprising that many everyday tools have historically found their way onto battlefields and barricades in the hands of mobilised labourers and peasant soldiers. Likewise, the male tool has been weaponised too. Men in uniform enacting violence is a Hollywood trope and the current idealised version of the male physique resembles a stereotypical 1980’s super soldier. Indeed, the most weaponised body part in the western mind is an erect penis!

Clearly, for the conservative, capitalist classes that have evolved from a puritanical ancestry the mechanisation of the male body serves an expansionist goal. The male tool has often been employed in the conquest and appropriation of the natural world and its resource. But the narrative of a weaponised male comes at the cost of trepidation, the fear of male violence, epitomised by male nudity – the weapon unsheathed.

But is this fearfulness fair? In my own experience nudity – especially nudity amongst nature – exposes vulnerabilities. The last thing I feel when I’m naked is aggressive!

Ultimately, we would like to live in a society that is free from socially constructed narratives, so that we can construct and express our own authentic narratives in each new moment without fear of judgement – whether that be the judgement of others or judgement of the self. But to liberate ourselves from the oppressive narratives of the past we must first be able to challenge them with a realisable counter narrative.

In recent years many feminists have used their own nakedness to successfully challenge the constructed narrative of sexualised nudity. Nakedness has become an expression of emancipation and rebellion, with naked protests increasingly commonplace. This is politicised and intellectualised nudity rather than sexualised and objectified nudity. Perhaps then, men can do similar. Except male nudity is not perceived as a sexual act, it’s perceived as an act of aggression. The challenge then, is to present the male form as something contrary to this – naked and timid, vulnerable in nature, an integrated part of the whole rather than an aggressive invader.

It is not an easy course to travel, as the Mumsnet thread highlights, the constructed myth of the mechanised and weaponised male is deeply entrenched and perversely useful to a certain traditionalist sector of society. Worryingly, part of the reason for their shared intimidation was the perception that nudity is somehow symptomatic of unpredictable derangement. It’s difficult to reason with people who think you’re deranged.

But narratives can and do change. Imagery and anecdotes combine to form an enduring pattern. Patterns become stories and stories become beliefs. And so, we must consider how our nudity impacts upon the prevailing narratives – are we portraying ourselves as dominant and aggressive, or passive and unobtrusive? Are we extrovertly naked or naked introverts?

So, be naked, be proudly naked, but be consciously naked too. Use your nudity wisely, not as a weapon but as an offering of peace, if not to the Mumsnet commentators then to the natural world that the male body has so often been used to exploit.