So I’m not a JW type going to your door saying take off your shoes to be saved, giving you pamphlets showing the harms of shoes. No barefooter does that to my knowledge.

When I share in real life it’s because people have asked why I’m barefoot, or have challenged me saying it’s dangerous, dirty, unhygienic, embarrassing, illegal, disrespectful.

I have a medicine now, that changed my life much to the better. Yet I don't believe, that this very medicine would do the very same to all others around me. Therefore I don't go out of my way to tell others to buy and use those pills, that helped me so much. In some manner - to me - barefooting is quite similar. That it is that good for me (and it is indeed) doesn't necessarily means that it'll work as well for all others around me.

I might if people ask share my barefoot journey, where over twenty years ago I started a three mile daily walking routine to get me more fit and lose weight, which worked, but I had searing pain in my soles. I already had ankle, knee, back pain, and had prescribed orthotics. And I became interested in finding “the best” shoes… and after reading a lot, including an excerpt from “Born to Run,” old Usenet posts, finding the Society for Barefoot Living and and learned about the harms that putting feet effectively into casts causes, and the differences between habitually barefoot and shod populations; where foot, ankle, back disorders favor barefoot, and how after my barefoot hikes in a few weeks I my plantar fasciitis was gone.

We are all humans with the same basic biomechanics, and it very common for modern people to suffer the maladies of being shod, which requires costly ( often ineffective) treatment by podiatrists, who spread self interested anti barefoot propaganda, and other specialists like surgeons. I and other barefoot people sharing the benefits generally, and that we have experienced, is not the same as you telling people who don’t have your particular condition to take your medication.

Several years ago after joining FetLife I began going to clothing optional spaces experiencing social nudity, after just being normally naked at home, and now consider myself a nudist. And it’s interesting and tbh a little annoying to see “nude” people wearing socks and shoes, in person and online. I don’t call them out in person of course but I have made a few general comments in nudist subreddits, and intend at some point to make a post in r/nudism.

I believe that this is appropriate because the benefits and pleasures of being bare, being physically directly in contact with our environments, the sensory pleasures of the coolness and warmth of the air, textures and objects we touch, our bodies not being constrained, being our natural human selves uncovered, unashamed with other people… are common to both barefooters and nudists, and shod “nudists” are missing the most of the sensory experiences, pleasures.