Look, I Get It

I get it, okay? I know that nudity is not always sexual. Heck, it usually isn’t: babies are born naked, toddlers run around naked, medical exams sometimes involve nakedness, prison involves nakedness (so I am told) and people bathe and shower naked.

Nakedness is not inherently sexual. In the gym locker room, men are sometimes naked as they come back from the shower, or even go to the shower. They’re naked in between changing clothes. Some guys in the gym stay naked when they dry their hair or clip toenails.

And let me add something else that I get: I get that just as nakedness is not inherently sexual, a man being naked around other men is not inherently homosexual. It’s part of the same kind of thing. I can and will go further: men touching other men is not inherently homosexual. A man giving another man a high-five, or a hug, or even a kiss is not, by itself, homosexual. A man telling another man he loves him is not inherently homosexual. 

No, nakedness is not inherently sexual, and man-on-man contact is not inherently homosexual. As a society, we simply have to be mature enough to be able to discriminate between situations where sex and sexual orientation matter and when they don’t. I think this is especially true for men. If men can’t discriminate when nakedness means something sexual and when it doesn’t, they’ll be forever uncomfortable. Imagine such a man needing a prostate exam from a female doctor. If such a man were unable to separate medically necessary nakedness from sexual nakedness...well, you can see what might happen. Along the same lines, a man who can’t separate, say, medically necessary man-on-man contact, especially in the genital area, might not avail himself of medical checks he needs.

Worse, men who can’t discriminate between homosexuality and honest expressions of nonsexual affection will, sadly, refrain from telling one another how they feel. And what a sad, sad world that would be.

So, in short, I get it. I get that nakedness need not be sexual, and man-on-man nakedness need not be homosexual. Because of this, I ought to be able to encounter such situations and be completely non-reactive. 
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But for God’s sake, does this mean that at the locker room at my gym you HAVE to make sure when you drop your towel that my face is near your scrotum?

Be seeing you!