‘A secular, feminist reimagining of a prophetic tradition.’

Victoria Bateman’s naked protest should not be so shocking to Quakers, says Madeleine Ward. We’ve been doing it for centuries.

It’s been a rocky few weeks in the news. ITV’s political editor recently announced that he now believes no-deal to be the most likely outcome of the ongoing Brexit crisis, while the first global scientific review has warned of an imminent ‘catastrophic collapse of nature’s ecosystems’. Set against stories like these, very little should now surprise us.

Enter Victoria Bateman, the Cambridge economist, who has responded to this bewildering political juncture with impressive clarity, by challenging the MP Jacob Rees-Mogg to a naked Brexit debate.

This is not the first time that Victoria Bateman has politicised her own unclothed body, or even the first time that she has done so in relation to the UK’s departure from the EU. In 2014, she commissioned a life-size naked portrait of herself, challenging society’s disproportionate sexualisation of the female form. In 2016, she attended a university meeting naked, specifically in protest at the result of the EU Referendum. And this week, having delivered an anti-Brexit lecture in the nude, she subsequently undressed during a BBC radio interview with Today presenter John Humphrys, and invited Jacob Rees-Mogg to join her in a naked debate so that he might justify his views in person. She explained her protest as an expression of her belief that ‘Brexit leaves Britain naked’ – and since these words were emblazoned across her unclothed body, she quite literally embodied the sentiment.

John Humphry’s reaction was sceptical at best: ‘Why do you feel the need to take your clothes off? Isn’t it just exhibitionism?’ Elsewhere, Victoria Bateman’s Brexit protest has been judged inconsistent with her earlier insinuation that female nudity is ultimately a good thing. In response, she insists that the symbolic use of her body in this manner only bolsters her earlier reflections on the female form. After all, isn’t the point that women should be encouraged to use their own bodies for intellectual and political self-expression, rather than sexual or maternal enslavement? And indeed, Rachel Johnson (sister of the infamous Boris) appeared to strip off on television in solidarity with Victoria Bateman just a few days later, declaring that ‘it can be hard to get your voice heard about Brexit nowadays’.

Ancient tradition

These protests might be startling, but they are not ‘just exhibitionism’. Rather, they are the latest manifestations of an ancient rhetorical tradition that long predates the 2016 referendum. And this is a tradition with which we, as Quakers, have an intimate connection – for her dissenting nakedness bears the most striking similarities to the prophetic nudity enacted by Quakers ‘going naked as a sign’ in the mid-seventeenth century. The world had turned upside down then, too. Even more so, in fact: a hugely bloody civil war had led to the execution of the king in 1649, and the period leading to the reinstatement of the monarchy in 1660 provoked several expressions of this religiously motivated nudity. Thus, the Quaker William Simpson walked naked through several towns declaring, ‘as naked shall you be spiritually, as my body hath been temporally naked in many places in England’.

These first Friends believed that spiritual perfection was possible if one completely denied one’s own desires in perfect obedience to God, and William Simpson therefore hoped to give himself entirely to God’s will. By walking naked, he was surrendering even his body to divine agency so that it could take on new symbolic significance as prophetic communication – and for the same reason, he regarded himself as immune from the shame normally associated with bodily exposure. Nonetheless, that didn’t mean that shame disappeared altogether. Rather, it was simply redirected all the more forcefully against his opponents. The act of ‘going naked as a sign’ was specifically intended to emphasise the moral chasm between the faithful Quakers, clothed only in God’s righteousness, and the spiritual indecency of the age.

This same understanding was reflected in other accounts of Friends’ prophetic nakedness during this period. Thus, the Quaker Elizabeth Fletcher was described as ‘a very modest, grave young woman’ who nonetheless ‘contrary to her owne will or inclination, in obedience to the Lord… went naked through the Streets… as a signe’ – and told her opponents that ‘the Lord would strip them… so that their Nakedness should Appear, which shortly after, at ye return of King Charles the 2nd, was fulfilled upon them’. And as George Fox elsewhere wrote of his detractors, ‘ye have had only… the sheepes cloathing, but have been naked of the life’. In this sense, this rhetorical use of nudity was one of the earliest and most striking instances of Quaker nonviolent direct action, rooted in deep faith.

These protests also drew on Biblical precedent. William Simpson compared himself directly to Isaiah, who was similarly directed by God to ‘go and loose the sackcloth from off thy loins, and put off thy shoe from thy foot’ to walk ‘naked and barefoot’ for three years. This naked witness was also intended ‘as a sign and wonder’, as God simultaneously declared how his opponents would be ‘[led] away stripped and barefoot… with buttocks bared – to Egypt’s shame’. And in turn, both cases relied on the deep-seated association of physical exposure with shame, expressed most famously in the story of the Fall itself. As Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, their shameful behaviour translated into a shameful awareness of their own embodiment. They made clothes and hid themselves from God.

Modern tactic

Of course, Victoria Bateman’s recent protest emerges out of a vastly different culture. She does not claim to be a prophet. Nonetheless, her logic draws on the same subversion of the ordinary relationship between shame and nudity – and to this end, it can be understood as a secular, feminist reimagining of a prophetic tradition that directly inspired the earliest Quakers.

The similarities are threefold. First, the naked individual in all cases claims a personal victory over shame. For Victoria Bateman, this is cast in terms of confidence and female self-realisation: she strongly emphasises that her nudity is an expression of freedom, and that it is therefore inherently liberating. In contrast, William Simpson’s victory arose of his complete denial of personal identity: he was primarily making a religious statement, not a political one. Secondly, this victory is resented and rejected by those observing the demonstration. The early Quakers were accused of arrogant ‘shamelessness’, just as Victoria Bateman is accused of exhibitionism today. Finally, and most importantly, despite having liberated themselves from personal shame, the naked individual does not reject the rhetoric of indignity outright. Instead, their own liberation is (paradoxically) exactly what enables them to ‘shame’ their opponent even more strongly. In short, Victoria Bateman claims the moral high ground precisely by that same nakedness (her own) which she uses to condemn Jacob Rees-Mogg. This is the same tactic that the early Quakers used to take a stand against their religious opponents in the seventeenth century – and it is surely condemnation in the starkest terms. n

This article first appeared in a shorter form on the Theos think tank website (www.theosthinktank.co.uk), where Madeleine works as a researcher.

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Comments

Fascinating! I had totally missed Victoria Bateman.

By john0708 on 4th March 2019 - 22:59

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