Gypsy Taub

Gypsy Taub
Gypsy Taub is standing between two people and behind a red sign wearing hat that displays a image of Scott Wiener's face being crossed out and text saying "Recall Weiner."
Gypsy Taub protesting Scott Wiener's San Francisco nudity ban in January 2013
Born Oxana Chornenky
1969 (age 48–49)[1]
Moscow, Russia
Nationality Russian American
Occupation
Years active 1988–present
Children 3

Gypsy Taub (born Oxana Chornenky in 1969) is a Russian American naturism advocate, 9/11 truther, and former pornographic actress and club stripper most known for being part of the San Francisco public nudity movement.[2]

Childhood in Russia

Taub was born Oxana Chornenky, but most people called her by another name, Olessia (meaning "Forest Girl").[1] Her family consisted of her, a physicist and inventing father, a French teacher, fashion designer mother,[3] a brother and a sister.[4]

Early ventures

Chornenky moved from her Moscow home to Boston in the fall of 1988 at the age of 19 in order to attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her family immigrating to the city the next year.[4] When Chornenky was in Boston, she was unable to work in most positions such as a restaurant waitress due to a lack of a work permit, so her only way to make money was by dancing at a strip club located in Boston's Combat Zone district named The Naked I, her first experience in being naked in public.[4] She used the money to support her family.[4] As she recalled her experience working at the club, "I grew up with all these inhibitions and judgments, but dancing helped me realize that those things were based on bullshit. Being naked doesn't make you bad. It was liberating to learn that."[4]

When she was 23, Taub attended the City College of San Francisco in order to obtain a pre-medical degree.[5] However, despite being very successful in her classes, after around 18 months attending the college, she dropped out, reasoning that the amount of studying she had to do got in the way of her spiritual growth.[5] She felt it "didn't represent the things I was looking for in terms of freedom. [...] I was tired of projecting this image of being a successful person and fooling everybody."[5] In 1995 he also changed her name from Olessia to Gypsy and became a Deadhead.[1]

Advocating career

Taub began her activism shortly after her daughter was born in 2000.[1] She is a 9/11 truther[6] and began a public access television show called Uncensored 9/11 to increase awareness of her beliefs about the September 11, 2001 attacks that 911 was an inside job, that it was ocrchestrated by the government.[1] In order to gain viewership, she decided to host the show without clothes on; the method was a success.[1] In 2008, Taub turned started a cable television show named My Naked Truth'

2. Retrieved April 4, 2018.</ref> According to Taub, the show is intended to "liberate people, expose political issues, and expose the fact that our society is oppressive and full of lies."[6] On the show, any guest can talk about subjects that are censored on mainstream tv. You can find those inerviews and a lot of nude protests and parades on her main video blog www.MyNakedTruth.TV

Taub also runs a porn website under the alias "Carmen" that features natural women. She appears on the site as an actress but most of the content is of other people. The site is unique in that unlike most adult websites it features real couples. The site is called "Lustful Goddess" and can be found at www.LustfulGoddess.com

In 2012, San Francisco supervisor Scott Wiener proposed a law that fined any city resident above five years of age $100 if he went nude public and sentenced him to a year in jail if he did it three times.[4] Taub led a movement of "body freedom activists" that protested against the ban.[4][6]

A public hearing of the ban was held at the San Francisco City Hall on November 5, 2012.[3] Taub went to the hearing along with her three children.[6] Overwhelming majority of the people opposed Wiener's legislation,[6]. Taub's children said statements such as "Naked people don't bother me, and they are nice people" (Daniel), "A naked person is like a dressed person. There is no difference" (Nebo), and "If God wanted us to go everywhere wearing clothes, he should have made it so we were born with clothes" (Inti).[3] Taub was only wearing a shift dress and no underwear.[3] Taub made a statement twenty minutes into the hearing, stating that "Nudity does not harm children. [...] What do children do when they see naked people? They laugh."[3] She also said that the right to be nude is one of the"unalienable [sic] rights" given by the Declaration of Independence, stating that "our bodies are sacred, and an attack on our right to be nude is an attack on sacredness, beauty, love, freedom, art, and creative self-expression."[3] After that speech, Taub took off her dress and was escorted out of the hearing room and detained.[3]

Taub then wrote a class action lawsuit[7] against the ban that went through the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.[5] Five plaintiffs signed the suit and it was filed by Christina DiEdoardo three months before the nudity ban went into effect in February 2013.[7] DiEdoardo stop representing the lawsuit's plaintiffs since there were disagrements between the plaintiffs.[7] Gill Sperlein served as Taub's second lawyer for the suit.[5] He was previously a member of Wiener's campaign committee.[7]

DiEdoardo noticed the police were discriminating in regards to who could be nude in the city, noting that they went for people who had little political influence like Taub: "If you live in San Francisco, you know the kind of clout the Bike Coalition has, so it's not surprising the police doesn't go after them."[7] In the two years since the ban was put into effect, Taub was denied a permit ten times, one of them involving her unable to receive a permit for a parade do to not having 50 to 100 members despite no policy in San Francisco's police code setting a minimum number of people required to have a parade.[7] A discrimination claim by Taub was resolved via a $20,000 settlement by the city in June 2015, and in September, the police department garnered a restraining order from them not letting Taub have a permit for a nude parade at Jane Warner Plaza that was held that month.[7]

On September 13, 2017, Berkeley City Council held a meeting about a proposal by the Topfreedom campaign "Free the Nipple" to allow woman to go topless in public, with Taub attending.[8] Officials of the council postponed a decision of the proposal, because one of them, Sophie Hahn, felt it wasn't a very important issue in the city right now, and even if it was, men would have to cover up their nipples too.[8] By the time the meeting ended, Taub protested the decision by stripping all her clothing and walking on a wooden table and the manager's desk while criticizing the council members as hypocritical tyrants and anti-body-freedom fascists.[8] One of the phrases she yelled was, "Your sex life is a joke because you never liberated yourself from body shame."[8] Taub later reflected when interviewed by Berkeleyside, "[Hahn] was pretty much talking to herself. Hahn completely disregarded what most of the public comment was about as if she wasn’t even present in the chambers.… In the end she suggested that we should make men cover up their nipples to make it fair."[8]

As Lybarger claimed, Taub was notable for her "ruthless firebrand energy or theatricality" when advocating for naturism rights,[6] which garnered mixed reactions from those in the movement. One of the advocators, George Davis, said she is "bright, creative, and energetic" but also "very argumentative, and there's a question about her focus."[6] Rusty Mills said she was "good for the movement" but also criticized her "very belligerent" attitude.[6]

Personal life

Taub attended a Montana Rainbow Gathering, where she met Jamyz Smith, who was 20 at the time and came from Jackson, Missouri.[5] The two were engaged in Berkeley, California and married via a nude wedding protest at City Hall on December 19, 2013.[5] In June 2015, Time magazine listed it as one of "The 17 Most Intriguing Weddings of All Time."[9]

In early 2014, Taub and Smith staged for a photoshoot of a featured picture of a story about San Francisco in New York magazine.[10] It depicts the two standing naked in line about to ride a Google Bus.[10] Taub recalled the drivers having "mixed reactions. They were mostly scared," and the ones riding the bus "quite uptight" and "uncomfortable."[10] Jessica Powell, Google's vice president for product and corporate communications, responded by saying there should be "no nudes on the bus. It might interfere with the Wi-Fi."[10]

Since 2009, Taub lived with Smith in a Victorian flat in Berkeley and was still living there as of December 2013.[1] She has three children, a daughter, Inti Gonzalez (born c. 2000), and two sons, Daniel Gonzalez (born c. 2005) and Nebosvodop Gonzalez (born c. 2003).[1] She follows a diet of eating organic fruits and vegetables, yoga, and running to stay healthy.[1] Taub said in a 2012 interview that she takes her children to events like the Burning Man and Rainbow Gathering because "they can grow not being ashamed of their bodies."[11] As of 2015, Taub and Smith are separated, Taub saying, "He's going through a really dark stage in his life. He was raised around Bible-thumping people. Everybody was cooking their own meth and abusing their kids, prostituting their kids. He went back to Missouri to take care of some things."[5]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Whiting, Sam (December 16, 2013). "Naked truth behind Gypsy Taub's nude nuptials". San Francisco Gate. Retrieved April 6, 2018.
  2. ↑ Whiting, Sam (November 17, 2013). "Nude activists cause a stir at protest in Castro". San Francisco Gate. Retrieved April 22, 2018.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Lybarger, Jeremy (December 2, 2015). "SF's Most Notorious Nudist Stakes Her Claim to History". San Francisco Weekly. p. 3. Retrieved April 6, 2018.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Lybarger, p. 1. Retrieved April 4, 2018.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Lybarger, p. 4. Retrieved April 7, 2018.
  6. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Lybarger, p. 2. Retrieved April 4, 2018.
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Lybarger, p. 5. Retrieved April 20, 2018.
  8. 1 2 3 4 5 Raguso, Emilie (September 13, 2017). "Naked activist slams city officials after ‘free the nipple’ proposal dies". Berkeleyside. Retrieved April 11, 2018.
  9. ↑ "The 17 Most Intriguing Weddings of All Time". Time. June 17, 2015. Retrieved April 12, 2018.
  10. 1 2 3 4 Bowles, Nellie (March 12, 2014). "Who Are These Naked People Getting on My Google Bus?". Recode. Retrieved April 12, 2018.
  11. ↑ Kepka, Mike (October 13, 2012). "Free to be nude…for now". San Francisco Gate. Retrieved April 12, 2018.
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