In the West we know the military uniform, clerical collar, medical goatee, and judge's wig. But where people are naked, it is the body itself that must be changed.

However, we must put up without clothes as they are—they have their reason for existing. They are on us to expose us—to advertise what we wear them to conceal.

How many of us human animals could endure the sight of our own selves, stripped of the garments of illusion with which we clothe them? In our infancy others begin to garb us in conventional illusions to spare their own sight, and later we ourselves continue the process - we carefully deck ourselves out in elaborate regalia of pretence to hide the raw nakedness of our souls, not only from others, but from ourselves as well. We hate most those who strip us bare - and their motive is generally one of self-protection, as a man points out the deformities in others to draw attention away from his own defects.

- A Thunder of Trumpets

If you see all these, you know that it is a sign of a war to come. Then they would move to the offender’s house, matching like soldiers. When they get there, they would pull the offender out (which is the man), strip him naked and sit on him naked. And they take turn in this symbolic sitting on him which is what we call nudity as protest. The man is now naked with the women holding him down, and the women lifting up their skirt and sitting on him, planting their nakedness on every part of his body. A man who is punished that way stands humiliated in the eyes of the community. Some men will enjoy that…

I use nudity because it's a weapon of the weak and the poor. The cost to pay is called shame, but I think I'm not ashamed of my body. It's a beautiful big mama body, and I am glad to deploy it for war.

Ashamed of the many Frailties they feel within, all Men endeavour to hide themselves, their Ugly Nakedness, from each other, and wrapping up the true Motives of their Hearts in the Specious Cloke of Sociableness, and their Concern for the publick Good, they are in hopes of concealing their filthy Appetites and the Deformity of their Desires.

in the city, nudity means something; in the wild, it just exists

What the government proposes is a radical rewriting of our understanding of identity: now it’s a question of an internal essence — a soul, if you will. Being a woman or a man is now entirely in your head. In this climate, who would challenge someone with a beard exposing their penis in a women’s changing room?

I don’t ever have to take off my top (to confirm my gender) because people stare at my breasts anyway. All the time. It has really empowered me and my body because I often have to say to people ‘you know you’re staring right?’.

For male and female alike, the bodies of the other sex are messages signaling what we must do — they are glowing signifiers of our own necessities.

Women admire naked women as the kind of body they would like to have, while men admire naked women as the kind of body they would like to have tied down and squealing on the end of their dicks. (12 January 2005)

Veiling and nakedness, they are two faces of the same kind. To see a woman naked, that does not mean she is liberated. It means the woman is just a body, not a mind. Traditional education, even postmodern education, veils the mind; the media veils the mind.

Maybe it’s because women feel they want to maintain some mystery that they’re not gross, to be more attractive or something. For me it’s all part of intimacy. That’s how I define intimacy – living closer and being more honest, closer to what your real desires are – and it’s exciting.

In great matters, men reveal themselves as they find it appropriate to do so; but, in small matters, they reveal themselves as they truly are.