Mark Nisbet needs to make up his mind
December 1999
Billy Robinson writes from Southampton in strong vein:
Dear SUN,
Mark Nisbet (and with him SUN) needs to make up his mind. In TBE8
(page 3) he
berates the "clothes optional fad" and dreams of banning the
"lycra brigade" from Studland; on page 6 he's making a speech at the
appearance of the advertising sign and complaining of naturists being kept
behind a ten-foot fence. Does SUN want a ghetto at Studland? I don't. I'm not an
-ist, whether naturist or nudist, nor are most of those on the beach; we just
like it without clothes.
I remember an occasion which typifies what I like about Studland. I took my
best friend there one day, and there was a game of volleyball going on. Being a
player, he was asked to join in. Being Chinese, he hadn't stripped, so it was a
game with one textile and eleven naked players. But none of them NOTICED and
none of them CARED. Let's keep Studland like that.
Billy Robinson
Well, where to start? The fact is that whether we like it or
not - and we most emphatically do not - we are currently stuck with the National
Trust's imposition of a ghetto at Studland. Not an exclusive ghetto, mind - we
are forced to cede vast areas of the miserly allocation of 23 acres (out of
8000!) to hordes of non-nudists. What Mark was getting at in his first piece
(TBE8 p3) was that we are not getting equality of treatment with non-nudists,
since the National Trust insists we cannot use any other part of Studland outside the red
posts. Why, therefore, should we tolerate the presence of non-nudists?
I think Billy has slightly misinterpreted Mark's comments at
the launch of the ferry sign - the point is that the nudist Establishment has
encouraged the siege mentality, firstly by their almost messianically zealous
promotion of the restricted, fenced, hidden clubs and secondly by their
unquestioning, grovelling acceptance of the draconian restrictions as embodied
by the red posts.
The point is that SUN Group, by advertising publicly and
assertively our support for the naked lifestyle, is challenging the old,
secretive mentality that gives nudists such a bad name with the general public.
We are fighting against ghettoisation and for total freedom, and if that
occasionally leads us into what appears to be an ambivalent position, that's
just one of those things. We are breaking down prejudice and we are making
progress. It's a painfully slow process, but then we never thought it was going
to be an overnight success. Of course we all want a situation where nobody
notices or cares whether we are naked or not - but we want that everywhere, not
just on a pocket-handkerchief sized patch of land '"allocated" by
the patronising National Trust.
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