User:Nikkicraft/1

Nikki Craft is a political activist, artist, and writer. She is perhaps best known for her feminist work, though she says, "My politics are much broader than that."

Activism

Craft has organized against oppressive politics and culture for thirty years. She has been arrested fifty times always for political acts of civil disobedience.

Since the 1970s Craft has been well-known in the feminist movement as one of the first people to publicly protest beauty pageants.

In 1975 in Dallas Texas at the Fairmont Hotel she presented the Rockwell International Board of Directors with "bloodied" dolls to protest their B1 Bomber called "The Peacemaker".

In the 1980s she was a prominent shirtfree rights activist and had a relationship with Lee Baxandall, then head of The Naturist Society.

Around 1990 Craft spent 23 days in jail for tearing up four copies of Esquire (magazine) magazine on a Bellingham, WA mall bookstore, to protest its cover story, "Your Wife: An Owner's Manual," which included "humorous" articles about wife battery and murder.

In the early 1990s she published a newsletter called "The Iconoclast" which exposed the connections between the nudist/naturist movement, child pornography and pedophiles, as well as her criticism of the nudist/naturist community for their exploitation of women. In the Winter 1995 On The Issues published Craft's article entitled "Busting Mister Short Eyes" about a naturist child rapist Craft helped put in prison with a 30 year sentence, later published along with other cases on her website, The Nudist Naturist Hall of Shame. At that time she began publishing the cases on the internet

In 2000 she campaigned for Ralph Nader's presidential bid, and in 2001 she wrote, A Call on Feminists to Protest the War Against Afghanistan.

Online Projects

Craft created and maintains a number of political websites focused on feminist issues.

In 1995, she created the Always Causing Legal Unrest] (ACLU) web page, which collected radical feminist writing on pornography, prostitution, sadomasochism, and related topics.

In 1996, she created The Andrea Dworkin Website (with Dworkin's permission [1]), which collects writing from and information about the radical feminist writer Andrea Dworkin. The website features a large Online Library of selections from Dworkin's writing and an "Andrea Dworkin Lie Detector", intended to debunk common falsehoods about Dworkin's life and work. After Dworkin died on April 9, 2005, Craft created the Andrea Dworkin Memorial website.

In 2001, she opened PeTA: Where Only Women Are Treated Like Meet, where she criticized People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for degrading women in its advertising.

In 2005, she created the Hustling the Left website, where she criticized Leftist leaders who associated themselves with the Larry Flynt's pornographic magazine, Hustler through interviews and public cooperation with Flynt's political activism. The website took its name from a June 2005 article by feminist Aura Bogado, who protested the promotion of Flynt's support by the antiwar group Not In Our Name.

Criticism of nudist/naturist movement

One of her major projects involved researching and publishing reports of pedophilia and child molestation within the nudist/naturist movement, and of the leadership's failure to address those issues. She contends that the American Association for Nude Recreation (AANR) and The Naturist Society (TNS) have not done enough to investigate offenders, remove offenders, report offenders to law enforcement, or modify club procedures for dealing with problem behaviors and abuse. She cites that prominent figureheads such as Ed Lange, editor of the monthly magazine of the American Sunbathing Assocation (ASA) (now AANR) have histories of involvement in child pornography. Another example is William D. Peckenpaugh, author of Familial and Societal Attitudes Toward Nudity, and the Effects on Children’s Development who was charged with multiple sex crimes with a child. This reporting was initially published in her newsletter "The Iconoclast", and now appear on her website, Nudist/Naturist Hall of Shame.

While many naturists and nudists acknowledge problems in the community, many believe Nikki Craft seems bent on inciting an unnecessary amount of fear into peoples' minds about what they believe is a safe, family-friendly activity. Her critics contend that many private clubs do check the criminal histories of visitors to make sure they do not have documented histories of criminal activity that would be of concern in a family-oriented community. They also point out that sexual predators are everywhere in society and all must be equally vigilant to making sure that both individuals and organizations take initiative in establishing protections against abuse and exploitation. Craft counters that the fact that sexual predators exist elsewhere in society is no excuse for the fact that nudist/naturist leadership fail to take easy and commonsense measures to protect the children in the movement, and that she has documented this failing in exhaustive detail.

External Links

Nikki Craft sites

Criticism sites

ClothesFree International forum discussion