Even though it may cause embarrassment, nudity is frequently easier to discuss than gender. Nudity might seem to reveal gender, in so far as clothed men and women can sometimes confuse onlookers about their gender. It used to be thought that nudity undoes that confusion, but now we know better: seeing a person’s genitals does not tell us his or her gender.  Such simplistic correspondence is a thing of the past. Of course, social conservatives can and often do disagree with this new view.

A society unevenly committed to the idea of gay equality might pretend to fight nudity when in fact it is blocking a political crusade. A society with a puritanical inheritance can insist it is only being true to itself when it punishes some instances of nudity. A predominantly Christian society in which women regularly expose décolleté, arms and legs might look askance at non-Christian women who refuse to.

An old topic indeed, nudity befuddled Americans anew at the outset of the 21rst century. Rest rooms especially but locker rooms as well became the new battleground in an ongoing culture war. As Americans were trying to prevent or veil the nudity –or partial nudity—of their school age children, the Internet was dousing them with ever more plentiful images of naked men, women and even post-op transgendered people. Heated bathroom debates in North Carolina, Virginia, and Pennsylvania (among other places) sometimes suggest that being naked will lead to unwanted sex. A person from a distant culture might struggle to understand how Americans decide which sorts of nudity to allow and which to condemn. It is not enough to say that mutual, consensual adult nudity is moral and adolescent nudity is not

The importance of covering up one’s body has spawned a special regard for modesty, which is sometimes taken as a synonym for chastity. Of course, modesty extends beyond dress: students, employees and politicians are expected to show modesty in speech (the 1986 court decision Bethel School District v. Fraser compelled it in public schools). Many Westerners will report they feel it immodest to gaze openly at strangers or at familiars who are changing clothes. And so on.

Chastity exhortations have tended to overlook same-sex experiences, particularly communal showering, which American public schools for decades required after gym class. This oversight stems from a missed step in thinking through chastity, specifically the possibility that men may on occasion admire and or even corporally desire members of their own sex.

Two separate fears are in play here: The first is that naked people will probably end up having sex with one another. We might call that one puritanical, which is not to say wrong. The second is that naked people are more vulnerable to sexual assault. We can call that one practical, which is not to say necessarily correct. While sympathetic to the second fear, I focus on the first.

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"Nakedness the concept has vanished – it disappeared behind the American fear of nudity."

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The excruciatingly painful scandal of Roman Catholic priests molesting and raping children is not at base about homosexuality. And yet, the scandal dragged homosexuality back into awkward public discussion in the early twenty-first century. The idea that gay and straight boys (to the extent we can use such old-fashioned categories) shower together at school was bound to ruffle feathers. The priestly pedophile scandal may have contributed to anxiety young men may have about being seen naked in locker rooms: You just never know who may be fantasizing about you.