Nudity and protest
is sometimes used as a tactic during a protest to attract media and public attention to a cause, and sometimes promotion of public nudity is itself the objective of a nude protest. The practice was first documented in the 1650s with Quakers "naked as a sign" practice. Later the tactic was used by svobodniki in Canada in 1903. The tactic has been used by other groups later in the century, especially after the 1960s. Like public nudity in general, the cultural and legal acceptance of nudity as a tactic in protest also varies around the world. Some opponents of any public nudity claim that it is indecent, especially when it can be viewed by children; while others argue that it is a legitimate form of expression covered by the right to free speech.
Even in places where public nudity is tolerated, it is still unexpected enough that its use by activists as a deliberate tactic is often successful in attracting publicity from the media. For example, on 19 July 2020, a young woman wearing only a face mask and stocking cap, later dubbed "Naked Athena" by reporters, confronted police in Portland, Oregon, during George Floyd protests. Despite the deployment of pepper balls and tear gas, she posed for police for several minutes before they withdrew. Photographs of her action went viral.
Some nude activism is not to promote a particular cause, but rather to promote public nudity itself, or to change community perceptions of the naked human body, or as an expression of a personal desire to be nude in public.
Single issue protests
Anti-fur campaign
has used nudity to draw attention to its anti-fur campaign. Between 1992 and 2020, PETA ran their "I'd rather go naked than wear fur" campaign featuring celebrities, actors and models. In 2020, PETA discontinued the campaign after a majority of fashion houses and high street stores stopped using fur.Brexit
On 29 June 2016, Cambridge academic, Victoria Bateman walked into a meeting of the Faculty of Economics while naked in protest against the results of the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. She had written on her breasts and stomach "Brexit leaves Britain naked".Canada-US Free Trade
Two "Topless Disturbance" protests took place on Canada's Parliament Hill against the proposed Canada-US Free Trade Agreement, in 1987 and 1988.Land rights
Women in the Amuru district of Uganda protested about their loss of land for farming.File:Folsom Street Fair IMG 6560.jpg|thumb|A nude woman demonstrates for sex workers' rights at Folsom Street Fair, US
Peace and anti-war
Groups used nudity to protest the Iraq War. Groups using their bodies to form words and symbols to convey their message included Baring Witness.The African curse of nakedness
In some parts of Africa, women have used stripping naked on purpose as a curse, both historically, and in modern times. The idea is that women give life and they can take it away. The curse initiates an extreme form of ostracism, which anthropologist Terisa Turner has likened to "social execution". The curse extends to foreign men as well, and is believed to cause impotence, madness or other similar harm. The threat has been used successfully in mass protests against the petroleum industry in Nigeria, by Leymah Gbowee and Women of Liberia Mass Action for Peace during the Second Liberian Civil War, and against President Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivory Coast. In 2002 in Nigeria, members of the Niger Delta Women for Justice occupied a platform for oil extraction run by ChevronTexaco in order to protest against negative consequences of oil extraction and missing labor rights. When the military arrived to remove the protestors, the women threatened the soldiers to naked curse them. The soldiers did not touch the women.A group of about 16 women bared their buttocks and stormed into the offices of the African National Congress in Tshwane. The women were protesting against the outcome of an ANC Tshwane branch general meeting. The women claimed bouncers, armed with pangas and firearms, stormed the meeting and stopped them from participating in the voting process to elect the new branch committee.
Equal facilities for female athletes
To demand fuller implementation of the United States legislation Title IX, the 1976 Yale University women's rowing team held a naked protest. Pointing attention to their inadequate training facilities were more than a dozen team members, including Christine Ernst, Anne Warner and Ginny Gilder.Transgender rights
In November 2011, a transgender woman from Morristown, Tennessee was arrested and jailed for 21 days for indecent exposure after removing her top in the parking lot of her local department of motor vehicles after they refused to alter the gender designation on her driver's license from male to female. This was despite the fact that the U.S. federal government Social Security office already had done so. As it is legal for a man to go topless in public and since the Tennessee Department of Public Safety refused to recognise her as female, Ms. Jones decided to protest her treatment by going topless, stating "if I was a male, I had the right to, when I stepped out the door, take off my shirt... It's not right for the state to ask me to be both male and female. A choice needs to be made. They cannot hold me to both standards."Femicide is Genocide
In June 2017, more than 100 women stripped naked in front of the president's palace, Casa Rosada, in Buenos Aires, Argentina to protest against violence against women.Women's rights in Islamic countries
Following the Arab Spring in the early 2010s, women in Islamic counties made personal protests opposing the restrictions on their freedom by posting nude photographs of themselves on the internet. Aliaa Magda Elmahdy an Egyptian and Amina Tyler from Tunisia fled to Europe to escape legal and religious threats.Human gene editing
On 8 February 2017, artist Rick Gibson walked naked in front of the Vancouver Law Courts in the middle of winter to protest Canada's ban of genetic engineering of the human genome. He walked nude in downtown Vancouver for 11 minutes, 45.75 seconds in a light rain and a temperature of.Public nudity movements
Not all people who engage in public nudity see themselves as nudists or naturists or belong to traditional naturist or nudist organizations. Several activists, such as Vincent Bethell, claim that associations with naturism or nudism are unnecessary. Others will point out that many people who participate in events such as clothing-optional bike rides or visit clothing-optional beaches do so casually and without association or formal affiliation to groups or movements. Activist Daniel Johnson believes that labels and affiliations overly complicate a relatively simple phenomenon, alienate others from a fear of over-commitment or undesirable stereotypes, and thus get in the way of integrating nudity into everyday life.Clothing-optional bike rides
is an international clothing-optional bike ride in which participants plan, meet and ride together en masse on human-powered transport to "protest oil dependency and celebrate the power and individuality of our bodies". This represents one of the few events that combine elements that could be described as pro nudity and pro cycling.Many of the political rides have their roots from Critical Mass and are often described or categorized as a form of political protest, street theatre, party-on-wheels, streaking, public nudity and clothing-optional recreation and thus attracts a wide range of participants. Since 1996 Critical Tits has been hosting a "raucous topless bicycle joyride" on Friday afternoon at the annual Burning Man festival in Nevada.
The Spanish movement, Manifestación Ciclonudista Mundial has had rides predating WNBR and has since spread to other countries in Europe.
FEMEN
The protest group FEMEN regularly stages topless protests against sex tourists, international marriage agencies, sexism and other social ills. These protests received worldwide press coverage in 2009. Since late 2011 FEMEN operations became not limited to Ukraine and they have demonstrated in other European countries including non-Ukrainian protesters. FEMEN justifies its provocative methods stating "If we staged simple protests with banners, then our claims would not have been noticed". FEMEN receives small financial backing by individuals. In January 2012, three members of the group staged a topless protest at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In October 2013 FEMEN had its largest membership in France. In October 2012 the organization claimed it had about 40 activists in Ukraine, and another 100 who had joined their protests abroad.Naturist and nudist movements
There are a number of groups and individuals campaigning for the right to be naked in public.Urbanudista
A group led by Avril X called UrbaNudismo has led several casual nudity excursions in high visibility public urban environments in Brazil as well as some Western European countries.APNEL
is the prominent French nudity rights group.NAKTIV
Naktiv.net is a generic Naked Activities site.Denmark
In 1969, in Denmark, 300 individuals participated in a naked "wade-in" at a Danish beach, which helped push forward a reform of public policy. It is now allowable to be naked at any public beach in Denmark with only two major exceptions: Holmsland Klit and Hennestrand. The remaining 4,700 kilometers of Danish coast are clothing-optional.File:Banner protesting vehicle emissions at the World Naked Bike Ride, Auckland, New Zealand - 20050217.jpg|thumbnail|right|Protesters gathered outside a courthouse on 17 Feb 2005 to protest against the arrest of Simon Oosterman, Auckland's 2005 WNBR organiser.
Ireland
The Irish Naturism Association is the Republic of Ireland's nudist group. As of April 2018, it was "the fastest growing naturist association in Europe" with 231 members.In July 2016, Carina Fitzpatrick, a female concert-goer at the KnockanStockan music festival in County Wicklow, Ireland, was arrested for revealing her breasts at the concert in an attempt to highlight the inequality between men being able to go topless during outdoor summer events whereas women can not. The incident opened up a conversation about women's bodily autonomy and nudism in Ireland.