…outside of a sexual partner, of course? I was listening to the Dr. Joy Browne show on the radio the other day, and came in mid-call. Dr. Joy was saying that every woman she knew of had had a man expose himself to her…she didn’t know a single female who had not had this experience. I’m assuming she meant in the context of encountering a flasher on the street (which would be more common for her, I’m sure, living in New York) or some other stranger just whipping it out in some situation…I don’t think she was including friends and lovers.
This has never, ever happened to me…not in college, not in walking around the streets of big cities, not ever. So I’m curious…I can’t possibly be the anomaly in this situation as I am in so many others…(ask me sometime for the list of things that seem to happen regularly to other women but never to me)…so I’m asking the women on this forum …has this ever happened to you? And as a sidenote, how old are you? If it has happened, please share with us some details of how it happened and how you reacted, and was the man a stranger or someone you knew?
8th grade. Some creepy guy in science class did it when the teacher was out of the room, showed his junk to my friend and I, who did not want to see. Out of nowhere:
“Hey, look! penis”
He was expelled.
It just pissed me off but my friend got really upset about it, went and saw the school counselor. We weren’t really good friends, we just talked in class, so I didn’t know what was up. I just wanted to beat his ass for being a perv but it made my friend cry. I saw him again a couple years later and boy did he shoot me a dirty look. It’s not like I told anyone to expel him, I just told on him because it was wrong. Thirteen year old girls do not need to see a penis, especially unwillingly. Also, not like he ended up on the streets because of it, just went to a different school.
My sister was flashed when she was like eight (so I was either not born yet, or just born). A man exposed himself to her on the street. Being so young, she didn’t know what to make of it. She said it looked like a turkey neck.
31, yes, twice. One of them was a street flasher in Venice. I noticed him about ten seconds before it happened because he was looking at me in a shifty-eyed sort of way, and sure enough, he whipped it out for a split second and ran away. Stranger, obviously. I’m not sure I did react, beyond “Huh, okay then, that was weird.”
The other time was creepier. I was in grad school, reading on the top floor of the library, on a weekend in the summer when there was no one else around except this one guy who was sitting on the opposite side of the study lounge. I looked up, and I noticed he was was sitting with his feet up on a table, wearing baggy shorts and no underwear, and basically leaving nothing up to the imagination. At the time, I thought it was accidental, so I got up to read somewhere else in the library instead. Then he started following me. I got up to put my book back on the shelf, and when I turned around, he was a couple of aisles back peering at me through the shelves.
That’s how I found out what those red security phones in the library were good for. There was just NO way I was going to take the elevator or the stairs down eight floors with this creep following me, so I called the front desk, and they were very nice about sending someone to escort me downstairs.
Three times that I can recall. First time was 6th grade. As I was walking home from school a man pulled up in his car and asked if I wanted a ride home. Of course I said no. Then he pulled up his shirt to expose his already opened trousers. I thought it was disgusting! The second time was a similar incident in 8th grade. The third time was as a young adult while waiting for a train. The tracks were empty, and somebody on the opposite track flashed himself. Oh, that reminds me of a fourth time - somebody wanking off in his window. I have no idea how this can make anybody excited. Maybe they think we’re secretly thinking “wow - that’s impressive - I want me some of that” instead of “ew - how nasty - no wonder he has to flash - nobody would ever touch that.”
My mom tells the story of being flashed by an adult while walking to junior high school in suburban Chicago. This would have been around 1945.
My wife says when she was about 8 she was playing with a bunch of her cousins of both genders (BIIG family) & one 10 year old cousin flashed the group. She & the other girls didn’t think much of it but the boy’s Mom went berserk. This was the early 1960s.
Other than that neither she nor I know of any women who’ve ever mentioned being flashed.
On that evidence, the flashing hobby seems to have died out about 40 years ago. (Yes, I’m kiding)
On further thinking, I’d ask the OP if “streaking” counts. It was quite the fad in the mid 1970s & I saw several streaks in high school and college, not to mention a couple of partly censored ones on TV. If streaking counts, I’d say substantially the entire US native population now aged 45-55 has seen a flash. My take is streaking’s different & shouldn’t count, but YMMV.
I was in a bar a few years back with my husband…it’s a very popular place, and we were crammed in with a ton of other people. We started talking to some Scottish guys who were in town to compete in those crazy games they do where they throw telephone poles and such. They were fun & nice guys, but proceeded to get VERY drunk during the course of the evening. At one point, I just sat at the bar and was kind of ignoring them, because they were getting kind of obnoxious. I heard one of them commenting that he “had something in his pocket” and he seemed to be rummaging around in his pants or something. Curious, I turned around…my husband tried to help me out by saying “don’t look!,” but it was too late…there it was…a HUGE schlong, hanging out of the guy’s fly. I figured he was one of those guys who looked for excuses to show it off. Maybe the huge schlong is all he has in life!
For purposes of this poll, streaking doesn’t count. Just seeing a naked or half-naked guy doesn’t count, it has to be deliberate and directed at you specifically, and I guess we should add, unwanted.
IANAW, but about 10 years ago I pulled into a little strip mall to go to the bagel shop. There was a youngish (20s) guy sitting in his car right in front of the shop, not just exposed, but furiously beating off while staring into the shop. I was tempted to yell at him, but I walked into the shop and discreetly told the manager what was hapening. He called the cops, but the guy pulled away before they showed up. unfortunately, I was too shocked to get his plate number.
In that case, no. It’s never happened to me. I was working in a library on the day that a woman and her daughter got flashed (and we all rousted out to find him), but that’s as close as I’ve ever gotten.
I did go visit a friend’s house in college–5 guys together I think–and one of them decided to take all his clothes off and hang out naked. That wasn’t too unusual for him, though. He kept trying to have a conversation with me and I wouldn’t look at him–in retrospect it’s pretty funny but at the time I was paralyzed with embarrassment.
It has never happened to me. I’m 47, have spent plenty of time in large cities, and have not been particularly sheltered from the unpleasant side of life, at least not as an adult. I too am amazed that this, so far, seems not to be an unusual experience.
There was a guy near the high school I went to - he was known for wearing a trenchcoat and nothing else underneath. Well, sometimes he’d wear a bra. :dubious: I really don’t know what his deal was, but we’d run into him on our way home (usually around 9pm) and he would flash us and scamper away. It was a bit startling the first few times but we grew used to it.
Yes. When I was about 14 my friend and I were walking home and some weirdo pulled up alonside of us. He asked us for directions and when we looked in the car he had his penis out and holding it.
When I worked at a prison I got flashed several times. Some inmates like to think they are shocking a female C.O. I mostly laughed AT them before writing them up.
Once, when I was 10 or 11, the teenage paperboy had his junk hanging out when I answered the door to give him our pay slip. It was the middle of winter, and he was wearing a coat, so it wasn’t … full view exactly. After I handed him the pay slip and closed the door, I remember thinking “well, I think that was his thing … but on the other hand, maybe it wasn’t because why would someone do that? And in the middle of winter? Maybe it was something else (as in, some normal explanation) and because I only saw it for a few seconds, maybe I made a mistake and thought it was his thing.” He wasn’t aggressive in any way, I answered the door, he asked for the voucher, I handed it to him, he thanked me, and that was it. I didn’t tell my parents because I wasn’t exactly certain what had happened, and it seemed like it would involve an awful lot of me talking about some kid’s penis, which I didn’t particularly care to do.
A few months later, my mother told me that he was fired from the paper route because there were several complaints about his exposing himself when women answered the door. She made some comment like “I’m just glad it never happened at our house!” so again, I didn’t mention anything because I thought it would upset her, and besides, he was fired already.
Another time when I was in my early 20s, I was going home from work on a late, very empty commuter train, and a guy in the car whipped it out and fondled himself. That might not count (for the purposes of this thread), because I’m not really sure it was aimed at me, specifically. He stayed in his seat, a few rows ahead of me, and enjoyed his train ride, I guess.
Yes, on a city bus in Vancouver, BC in 1984 on my way to SFU to meet a friend at that university to see Bruce Springsteen in concert that weekend. I was about 20 years old.
It was an older (50-60ish) Asian man, sitting in a window seat across the bus aisle from me. I glanced over, and he’d brought out his willy and was exposing himself. There was no question that it was deliberate.
At the time I was so stunned that I didn’t think to advise the bus driver.
Now that I’m older (42 now), if it happens again, I am going to make sure that I:
Point
Laugh
And take a picture.
I just don’t get it. I guess it’s a feeling of power? To shock and disturb and make a woman or girl feel uncomfortable and threatened?
My grandmother’s boyfriend used to expose himself to me when I was very young, progressing to full-on molestation eventually, but it started with him always showing me his junk. I think I was maybe four when I finally got skeeved enough to ignore his vague threats and told my parents. I wasn’t privy to everything that went down, but it stopped immediately.
In junior high it seemed like every girl was subject to unwanted flashing.
