https://www.naturistlivingshow.com/2021/12/naked-age-most-liberated-woman.html
This interview is great! It's historically significant because the subject is one of the founders of Sandstone, a sexual retreat that was open in the late 1960s, maybe ground zero for the "Sexual Revolution." You get to hear a little old lady with a country, Missouri accent speak about sexual pleasure, and her belief that sexual openness was/is key to solving the environmental and social problems that that vex us.
It's also significant because it is hosted by The Naturist Living Show podcast. Stephane Deschanes, Ontario naturist club owner, and maybe our moment’s most canny impresario and spokesman for socializing in the nude, introduces Evan Nix's interview with Barbara Williamson.
For Deschanes, “Naturism is more than just taking your clothes off.” If I’ve got it right, being nude socially is a token of an ethical system that includes self respect, respect for other people, and respect for the environment. In past Naturist Living Show episodes, he has been comfortable with gay interviewees and with the use of the word “fuck” in answers to his questions. But he has made it clear that what his naturism, and Bare Oaks, his club, are about is not sexual.
In a recent Deschanes-produced video, The First-Time Experience, one of the characters says about swinging, “That’s okay, but that’s not what this is about." Deschanes, a genuine liberal, has repeated this at least once since. In his intro to the interview with Williamson, Deschanes, only a little uncomfortable, says, Of course naturism is not about sex. We’re all sexual creatures, of course, but naturism specifically… We’re fighting to separate nudity, mere nudity, from sexuality, to prove that the two don’t have to be connected. But I think there’s no question that people who are sexually liberated are likely to be comfortable with naturism. After all, if you’re willing to be in liberal sexual situations, you’ll be more comfortable with nudity than most. And you’ll also have a more open mind when it comes to—obviously sexuality, but—also the human body and how society can work. And the movement (naturism), particularly in the sixties and the seventies, was promoted and grew because of the liberal sexual attitude that came in the sixties and seventies. In fact, the sexual liberation probably had more impact on opening up naturism than the other way around. Going back to the very early twentieth century, nudism/naturism came out of the lebensreform movement, as did free love, along with a bunch of other schemes for making what must have sometimes been a pretty grim life, better. Not every nudist was on board with free love. Richard Ungewitter, often called the father of nudism, seems to have been a prude. Still, there was an intersection between nudists and free lovers. The nudists made a tactical decision not to identify with the sexually liberated, to avoid alienating potential converts, because of some of their own sexual ethics, and to avoid legal sanction. The nonsexual nature of nudism became doctrine, club nudism forbidding displays of mere affection, such as chaste kissing and hand holding between wives and husbands. 1950s nudist leader, Mervin Mounce said that “nudists had freed their bodies but corseted their minds,” but even circa 1990, Naturist Society founder Lee Baxandall wrote that swingers didn’t belong in naturist clubs because they couldn’t be trusted to take "No" for an answer.
You’ve got to hand it to Stephane Deschanes. History is bending a little toward sexual liberation.