The naked male body can be a beau­tiful sight and yet our hetero­sexual society is domin­ated by images of women’s bodies. The ancient Greeks were more relaxed about homo­sexu­ality and statues indicate their appre­ci­ation of the sensual male nude.

Gay men certainly appre­ciate the naked male, including male genitals but women are often offended by nudity, espe­cially genitals, and so nudity is censored in our society.

Andrew Stanway’s film ‘The Lover’s Guide’ (1991) was a break-through in British censor­ship of films for general release. He was allowed to show the erect penis for the first time but only because his films were intended for educa­tional purposes.

The film ‘The Wedding Date’ (2005) includes a scene where Dermot Mulroney is relaxed about appearing naked in front of a woman (as if!). The woman’s horri­fied reac­tion to a man’s genitals not only indic­ates how female sexu­ality differs to male sexu­ality but also provides a clue as to why women’s sexual arousal is much more elusive with a partner.

Men have more to lose by appearing naked because an erec­tion betrays their intimate thoughts. Men don’t want to expose them­selves for fear of being sized up or becoming aroused under scru­tiny. ‘The Full Monty’ (1997) indic­ates men’s insec­ur­ities over nudity.

Men’s sexual arousal arises from looking at images of the naked body of a sexual partner, which explains the daily sales of porno­graphic magazines.

Women, who have learned about their own sexual arousal through female masturb­a­tion, know that women do not use images of naked men for arousal. Women have to take a much more conscious approach to sexual arousal through highly explicit sexual fantasies.

As always, someone will disagree: “For instance, I’m an XX female, and yet am extremely visual and highly aroused by the nudity and genitals of part­ners of all genders, including men.” This woman was happy to admit that she was bisexual but she was not willing to say whether she could masturbate to orgasm. So who knows whether she has ever had an orgasm.

Regard­less of these claims, there are few porno­graphic magazines for hetero­sexual women. ‘Play­girl’ is an excep­tion but presum­ably has another audi­ence. Even the UK magazine ‘Scarlet’ marketed for sexual women, avoids images of couples engaged in explicit sexual activity.

“Many females consider that male genitalia are ugly and repulsive in appear­ance, and the obser­va­tion of the male genitalia may actu­ally inhibit their erotic responses.

… there seems no doubt that these reac­tions largely depend upon the fact that most females are not psycho­lo­gic­ally stim­u­lated, as males are, by objects which are asso­ci­ated with sex.

… only a small percentage of homo­sexual females is ever aroused erot­ic­ally by seeing the genitalia of other females.” (p655-6 ‘Sexual beha­vior in the human female’ by Alfred Kinsey published 1953)

My own naked­ness has never bothered me but men’s interest in women’s bodies teaches us to become self-conscious. Women’s bodies are constantly being scru­tin­ised not only by men but also by women. Any woman with a less than perfect body is ridiculed because the assump­tion is that a woman only displays her body in public to attract male attention.

‘The Calendar Girls’ (2003) tells the story of a group of middle-aged women who posed naked, but taste­fully, for a calendar. It caused uproar because they were not young women with flaw­less bodies but women who had given birth or grown old.

Nudity causes men to think about sex even more than usual and they mistakenly assume that women have the same sexual motiv­a­tions. While I was sunbathing on a nudist beach, one woman bent over to get sun cream out of her bag and my partner suggested that she must have done so delib­er­ately so that the men on the beach could enjoy looking at her genitals.

The fact is that she was much more likely to be just getting sun cream out of her bag! That comment made me aware of needing to keep my legs firmly together on the beach. I have been most relaxed when on a gay nudist beach in Mikonos, Greece because I didn’t have to worry that anyone might assume that I was sunbathing nude as a means of making a sexual invitation.