Male Nudity Matters is actually quite important, the slavers and the missionaries justified their actions by claiming they were bringing the naked savages into the light of civilisation and Christianity.
In ancient Rome slaves were always auctioned while naked and standing on a block, I suspect that slaves coming off the ships in the US and Caribbean were naked and stripped of all humanity when they were sold.
Native American Indians were dehumanised because of their naked savage image, they could be killed or starved on reservations while treaties made with Indian tribes could be broken because a promise given to a savage need not be honoured.
"Clothes maketh the man" the rich said while wearing their finery, the poor wore pass me down rags displaying their poverty while their priests warned them of the naked savages in the dark uncivilised heathen parts of the world.
In mediaeval Europe if you had no money you lost your home, you sold your clothes to buy food and then were thrown out of town to wander naked and helpless on the blasted heaths outside the law. Public nudity was originally covered by the Vagrancy Act, of having no visible means of support you would be arrested not for indecency but for poverty.
The naked man is a threat to society, to Christianity; if you can be educated, have a home, money in the bank and a smart phone connecting you to everything yet still be naked then the justification for colonising, enslaving and civilising the native peoples of the world collapses.
|