Nothing help do away with your insecurities about your body image than sweating profusely with your junk out in a room filled with other nude people sweating profusely. It’s a great equalizer.
Having grown up in a sauna culture as a bigger woman there’s been incredible anxiety around this social norm all my life, especially when I was younger and bullied for the way I look. I know countless others who also hate it.
These days I just refuse social gatherings where it’s in the plan which means it causes exclusion even when nobody notices. The people you see in the saunas aren’t people with body image issues, we aren’t there. And when we are, we notice the looks. The worst types are the joint saunas like steam saunas for all where the men typically intentionally park themselves so they can look at boobs or otherwise be disgusting.
The idea of going naked to the sauna with everyone from random co-workers to some workout buddies you just met as a SA victim is also pretty shit. Add a few scars from life on your body and I don’t know what this is supposed to equalize.
You are never not pestered about skipping it in social gatherings by people who have zero insecurities around their bodies. You are forced to explain or have an excuse about why you are skipping it. Mine has always been my long hair taking a long time to dry or already having my make up on as these often happen in gatherings where going out is in the plans for later.
Fucking hate it.
Sorry to hear you went through all that, comrade. This is why it’s good to hear from everyone’s perspectives.
Yeah I mean imagine expecting this from people not comfortable with their assigned gender for example, people with disabilities or whatever it may be. As a norm it is asked from everyone, the ones who skip the sauna are always asked to justify why.
It definitely fits the supposed “consensus culture” that is common in a country like mine, it translates to a total inability by the majority to see the margins or consider that not everyone enjoys or is comfortable with a thing that everyone is supposed to do and enjoy. It is also fundamentally a gender issue as a whole.
“Consensus culture” just helped me understand something about Finland that I couldn’t quite put to words yet. For a supposedly politically forward thinking country, I have found a surprising lack of imagination and vision from people when you learn about their politics. I guess it’s because it would break an illusion of consensus that makes people feel like they are on the good side.
In a way, I prefer the US where people are more direct about their ignorance, maybe even taking it as a virtue, rather than how Finns seem to pretend to be woke when they aren’t
Yeah. It’s a complicated result of very particular ruling ideology being drilled into the population over a few centuries. I should do an effort post about it. There are colonial features to it for sure.
It is why there are no meaninful protest, everything is depolitized, everyone is “equal” in the worst possible way. I need to write about it as the reasons for it are pretty interesting, depressing and eye-opening.
I would be very interested to read that if you where to write such a post. I live in a country that’s somewhat in between the US and Finland where liberal politics is depoliticised but due to cultural exchanges with the US and other colonized states we do have small protest subcultures
Would you be willing to expand a bit more on the gender issue?
I can only speak from my own experience, but having to do the sauna for example in puberty and especially mixed in with various extended family or family friends there was always an awareness of a power differential and the male gaze definitely happened even though in my culture the sauna supposedly isn’t a sexualized space. But men would definitely look at you. You’d also get the cringe “I can wash your back” comments.
In public saunas there tends to always be a few creeps that everyone knows about. Being in that space as a woman can feel unsafe or just gross.
In Finland you also are to be fully naked in a sauna, for example in a swimming hall. Going in in a bathing suit or wrapped in a towel is allowed for people with a disability only and this is why my stepkid who is trans doesn’t go in them anymore. The saunas are obviously separated to mens/womens, there is no gender neutral option.
Thanks for the response! though I am confused on a couple parts, are the saunas only separated in swimming halls and also you can’t wear a bathing suit while swimming or is it just in the sauna?
It’s only the sauna where you are to be fully naked. Separated saunas are common in gyms, hotels, swimming halls. Basically most public saunas.
Then you have a few mixed ones where you are allowed to wear a bathing suit or a towel, these usually involve open water swimming.
Oh ok thank you
I have a similar experience with shared showers for sports teams being trans. I never participated and my teammates thought I was weird because of that. I didn’t know I was trans but I did know I felt highly uncomfortable in my body and didn’t want anyone else to see it.
Still I think that there is a way to create a healthy culture around nude activities, but we should probably focus first on destroying capitalism and liberalism before trying to find out if reforming culture towards being more accepting of nudity is a good thing. Currently such culture will sadly be used to exploit women and children and oppress people who don’t fit in society norms.
Sorry about that.
FYI this post was meant to be a little tongue in cheek, I made it mostly cuz I just got back from a sauna and enjoyed it. I do think there’s maybe some truth in what I said but I also get it clearly wouldn’t work for everyone.
Fair enough, I probably reacted a bit harsh as I took it at face value at first and have heard the argument before from people who are oblivious to how complex body image can be.
And I agree that there probably would be better ways to do it in an ideal world where nudity wouldn’t be as delicate and as polized and there’d be less of a power difference in these spaces. But as it is now, I love going to the sauna with my partner, but don’t feel safe if I have to do it with strangers.
Yeah that’s cool. Glad we can agree that saunas are nice.
They are the best, waiting for our weekly sauna turn in about an hour actually.
I do love the Soviet block apartment building sauna reservation system where everyone gets to do sauna without owning one themselves.
They’re considering bringing back adult bathhouses and sex venues in Minneapolis Minnesota after they were banned during the aids crisis https://www.cbsnews.com/minnesota/news/minneapolis-adult-sex-venues-bathhouses-license-proposal/
I used to go to a sex club in Seattle. Really is about as good as it gets for body positivity watching every body type and age under the sun getting absolutely plowed
So, I’m kinda naive about can bath houses/sex clubs. Whats the setup? Like, what is facilitated and how does it work?
I don’t know tbh but apparently they were a pretty common part of the night life there before the 80s , so I guess we have to look back to what they did then
https://lemmy.ml/post/46041276/25207385 <— my explanation as a self proclaimed connoisseur who has heavily patronized of both types of establishments heavily in the last 2 decades all over this country (not an exaggeration).
I don’t know about bath houses at all. The sex club I went to though you have to go through a quick orientations n where they’re basically like “don’t be a prude, do be respectful” and some hygiene and consent things. They’re very, very clear about consent and have specific words and ways to phrase things to prevent miscommunication. Some general rules surrounding certain activities like a couple things weren’t allowed because it’s too difficult to properly sanitize or could be too much of a physical risk (like knife play falls under both).
The actual sex part though it had two floors. Areas were set up for “scenes” on both floors but the upper floor was mostly for chill vibes, cuddling, socializing, and things that took a bit more time to set up like big rope play scenes. Lower floor was where most of the sex-sex happened it had more beds and whatnot.
They provided sheets, towels, cleaning supplies, honestly can’t remember if they provided condoms because I always brought my own stuff but can’t imagine them not being available. There was also a locker area which is fun everyone showing up and seeing the mix of people changing clothes or like me just getting ass naked out the gate.
Socially it’s actually really chill. You go up to someone you’re attracted to, chat a bit about the kinds of things they like to do or have done to them, then are basically like “yo wanna hook up” or “not my vibe tonight but you have fun”. You get rejected often, you also reject others often too, but there’s a ton of people there so more than likely you’ll find somebody. I’d say maybe half the time I went I realized I didn’t even want to fuck that day so I’d just find people to make out with or, my personal favorite, get involved in a nude cuddle puddle (those are super fun you have no idea whose limbs are whose and the conversation inevitably turns into talking about tattoos. Occasionally someone will be like it’s shuffle time and everyone stands up and recompiles in a new configuration).
It cost like I wanna say $30 to go, but they had a sliding scale. There’s also a monthly membership fee but that isn’t like an automatic thing it’s basically I believe for legal reasons they need to be a private club and that’s how they do that. The membership was like $10 and I would only go sometimes so I just paid for that the same time I bought an event ticket. There were a variety of event types they’d do but I basically only went to the LGBTQ ones because I’m queer af. Wanted to go to one of the dance party ones but never got the chance before I moved.
bath houses are ostensibly “day spas” with massages, hot tubs, steam rooms, etc. where people usually (not always) go hide in their rooms to have fun. if you have body image issues, this is probably not the best place for you because the environment is skewed to favor conventional standards of attractiveness.
sex clubs usually don’t have day spas things and almost never have private rooms; so people have fun in the shared areas where they can be easily seen by everyone and their activities effectively become live action porn that inspires all who watch to engage in their own fun. if you have body image issues, this is the best place for you since the collective arousal makes you forget about your own issues and everyone is always someone’s type.
bath houses are much more common than sex clubs now-a-days since most municipalities hate sex clubs, but are easily fooled by the day spa veneer of bath houses
i was going to say this. i’m a fat middle aged man whose incapable of reading the disgusted reactions of the room, so i do my thing anyways and the room ALWAYS ends up filling with horny men that had been repressing themselves out of fear of judgement by the people who left.
san francisco did the same thing and technically allowed them to return, but in reality, the regulations that they must comply with are so onerous that not a single sex club has returned since either the aids scare or covid.
the only one that still operates there is grandfathered in.
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Counterpoint: i hate sweating it makes me feel like shit
So therefore nobody can sweat
This is the take I didn’t realize I had inside me all along
if people got together in public places and saw real, non-airbrushed, non-ai-filtered bodies on a regular basis, i think a lot of anxieties would get smoothed over. assuming that the getting together can be prevented from becoming just another vector for shaming, of course.
I disagree. If random cis people see me naked, i might just get hatecrimed, if i am even allowed in a sauna in the first place.
Queer or trans exclusive saunas are a thing, and can be very wholesome
I know, that’s why i said “random cis people” instead of talking about saunas in general.
i think wearing an N95 in a sauna would actually just kill me outright
I would think the heat in there would kill pretty much any viruses.
not impossible ig but i wouldn’t trust my health to it without some compelling research
These people would never handle a sweat lodge lmao
is this not what a sauna is?
♨️
This guy Koreas
I guess I always knew that people in other cultures use the sauna naked but the idea just seems weird. I think I’ve only been in a sauna a handful of times but I don’t think anyone has even been in just a towel in them. Bathing suits may not be mandatory but they may as well be.
I need to learn more about the world
