Axar.az presents an article, “In Praise of Streaking” by John Samuel Tieman.

I’ve noticed an increase in streaking at a park in a neighboring city. I thought of a friend, let’s call her Sophie, on that city’s council. She represents the ward that contains the park. That makes the streakers her constituents. I can hear Sophie asking herself, “For this did I get a law degree?”

I mentioned this to my beloved. To which my wife replied, “Streaking is an act of absolute defiance. We need more streaking.” And when Phoebe speaks, John listens.

Let me make some distinctions. We need more defiance against authoritarianism. We don’t need more disruption. Donald Trump has given us plenty of that. Nor do we need more contempt. MAGA has given us plenty of that. We don’t need more disrespect for the norms of governance. We need to honor the democratic republic. But sometimes we just need to tear off our clothes and streak. We need to defy Trump. We need to defy MAGA. We need to defy — we must defy — authoritarianism. We need more political streaking.

So I’m pro-streaker. Sorry, Sophie.

This, however, has required a bit of research. I’m somewhat amazed to note that streaking has its own Wikipedia page. Beyond the recorded incidents, I am struck by one simple sentence there concerning etymology: “The word has been used in its modern sense only since the 1960s.” I remember the ‘60s. (On behalf of those of us who were there, let’s not forget that “the 1960s” included the first half of the 1970s.) Antiwar protests. The second wave of feminism. Civil rights. The sexual revolution. Defiance of all manner of restraint, all manner of authority. Woodstock. The Age Of Aquarius.

And, in the U.S. especially, defiance of our Puritan heritage. No small part of that defiance was against the growing “imperial presidency” of Richard Nixon.

I saw my first streakers on campus in 1973, a man and a woman on a Harley hog. Streakers were everywhere — a baseball game, the Olympics, Wimbledon, the Oscars. And let us not forget the self-styled “Streaker of the House,” who flashed through the Hawaii Legislature in Honolulu.

Streaking is always illegal. It is usually defined as a form of indecent exposure and is generally classified as a sexual offense. Penalties include small fines and jail time. Put simply, while it is generally considered harmless, the streaker is going to spend a night in jail if caught. Still, it is “an act of absolute defiance.” Why? Because no states say it’s OK to defy them, particularly states run by authoritarians and those who aspire to authoritarianism.

Streaking is both political and sexual. The streaker always breaks the law, and the streaker is always naked. So it’s worth considering Sigmund Freud. Everyone has a restlessness that results from a paradox. The politics, the norms, rules and institutions that make a community cohesive and secure, these also require the repression of urges. Thus do primal desires continue just under that thin crust of rationality. People are unhappy. But folks can balance that emotionally when there is a kind of equilibrium. The government gives you this, but you give up that.

Civilization, however, is not a conscious contract. This is where Dr. Freud’s “Civilization and Its Discontents” runs into John Locke’s “social contract.” Our nation is founded upon Enlightenment ideals. It’s pre-Freudian. So we make a conscious deal wherein we forgo the pleasure of speeding because the stop sign gives us safety. Fair enough. That’s the democratic republic.

But there is more to a community than the rational explanation. What happens when the other side breaks the contract? What happens when authoritarianism overrides personal rights? What happens emotionally? How does a mother feel today when she explains to her teen daughter that she will have fewer rights, and less control over her body, than her grandmother had?

The rational explanation, sure, that’s part of the answer. That and sometimes we just need to rip off our clothes and streak. Why? Because it’s one thing to be irritated by the new stop sign. It’s quite another when immigrant children are ripped from their mothers’ arms and put in cages.

You might not be able to do much about kids in cages. But you can always run naked through the park with a sign that says “Dump Trump!” It might not be the best solution. But, for the moment, it’s an emotionally satisfying one.