I should preface this by saying that while I’m very interested in hearing what people have to say about this and am looking for honest answers, from normal people, maybe people who’ve given the matter thought for one reason or another, people who’ve worked with such people or whatever (I don’t want to hear about anything that violates board rules, though), I’m not a voyeur myself, do not find the idea appealing in the slightest, and, well, nothing illegal has actually happened here, to my knowledge.
I’m trying to understand the mindset of someone who would, say, take pictures of unknowing girls’ cleavage, legs, butts, etc. or ‘upskirt’ shots…as a hobby. Can such a person ever be “okay” to know or talk to, or is the risk of danger, or of…(what? not sure…) too great? Does anyone think this is generally okay if the people being filmed never find out and are never physically approached? Does the venue, time, attitude of the victim, extent of what is ‘captured,’ or anything ever change things? If you found out someone you knew and loved did this, could you forgive them? If so, what would it take? Or would it not be an issue? Does anyone who is not a voyeur still understand the appeal?
Forgive me if this needs to be moved, explained better or deleted.
I find it reprehensible to take “upskirt” pictures - this isn’t just snapping an image of a girl’s cleavage while she walks by (which I find skeevy but forgiveable). To rig a camera in a bag or whatever to see what private parts that a person has taken normal precautions to keep private and then create a lasting record which could find itself to the internet and the view of millions - completely disgusting. It would be equally terrible in my opinion if the target never finds out. I don’t understand what the “attitude/time/venue” has to do with it - if it’s Mardi Gras and women are flashing their bosom for beads - that’s a woman that is risking her bare breasts to every camera phone in her immediate vicinity. There is no time when an “upskirt” shot could be mitigated by attitude time or venue - it’s just disgusting.
I could probably forgive someone, if they permanently and safely destroyed all images of victims (no matter how “innocent” the shots), went to counseling, accepted it was wrong, promised never to do it again and then followed through by never doing it again.
There have been a few threads about the morality of doing something where the “victim” never finds out. I know because I started one of them about a year ago. There was no concensus, but I was most impressed by one poster who said these kinds of voyeuristic photography take away the other person’s right to say no. Good point there.
To answer your other questions, I’d think about issues of age, context, and quality and quantity of actions. For instance, if an 18 year old guy does some dopey obnoxious stuff because of pressure from fraternity brothers, that’s one thing. If a 45 year old guy has been doing the same things for six hours a day for the last 20 years that’s a whole different story.
Just wanted to add - there are probably thousands of “posed” upskirt shots on the internet. A willing, paid model flashing her panties (or whatever). If it were just the sight of panties (or down a shirt or whatever), a posed shot would do. It’s not the panties that’s the turn on - it’s the fact the target is unwilling, unknowing, a victim. A dirty little secret - the voyeur is seeing what they aren’t supposed to - they are taking something from someone who can’t refuse.
It’s hard to articulate exactly what I find so reprehensible about upskirt shots - I have no problem at all with posed shots at all, it’s taking advantage of someone who took normal percautions to keep their private parts covered (and I’m not talking virginal turtlenecks and ankle-length skirts, just normal clothes, even if it is a short skirt).
If you take a picture of the publicly-viewable aspects of someone, that’s one thing. People can already see that as they walk down the street. If you have to go to some effort to take pictures of parts of that person which have not been made available for public view, that’s another thing entirely.
I have never understood the attraction of voyeuristic or ‘illicit’ things. Not just sex, but other activities as well. To some people the thought of doing anything furtively or hiddenly, or without permission, makes it that much more attractive. To me, it makes it far less attractive. Why would anyone want an unwilling partner?
I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong or surprising about people wanting to see a womans cleavage, panties, ass or whatever. Wanting to see it in some voyeuristic, everyday way is also perfectly understandable. I get the thrill of seeing down a girls shirt in public. Guys find women’s bodies sexy, and that craving isn’t just limited to your SO in the privacy of your own home. I think most people can agree that the desire isn’t a problem.
This desire is only amplified by the trend of women wearing more revealing clothing. Obviously the low cut shirts, thong panties and short skirts are intended to inspire this type of interest in men.
All that only speaks to the interest and desire for it. Actually going out and peeping and/or illicitly photographing these women is decidedly skeevy. I’m not ready to conflate it with rape and molestation like some have, but it’s pretty damn gross regardless of the venue and circumstances.
If the question is if it’s forgivable, that depends. For example, if the guy is an internet entrepreneur looking to make a quick buck off a lucrative fetish and sees it just as a business opportunity (meaning he’s not feeding some compulsion or addiction) I find that fairly understandable. I’ll concede that dealing hardcore drugs is wrong and can cause suffering one way or another, but I don’t think the young guy looking to make a buck selling it is a irredeemable person who cannot get past it. Same with this, I understand the motivation of doing something morally questionable to make some coin.
If the guy does it and keeps a private shrine and masturbates to it for 3 hours every night listening to Celine Dion…um, that’s a little different.
I see a world of difference between being out in public and catching a glimpse of an attractive woman’s cleavage, thong whatever; and having a camera mounted on my shoe trying to get shots to go home and masturbate to. I think a big part of the thrill of those kinds of photos is that it is a type of sexual assault on the victim. Someone who engages in that kind of behavior is pretty broken in my opinion.
I think that might be going a little far IMHO. It is certainly skeevy, but while I agree that it does sort of take away the subject’s consent, if only utilized for personal reasons, who does it harm? An ignorant subject doesn’t know that it exists, and the skeevy photo-taker keeps it to him/herself I don’t see any “harm” or “assault” in it. There is a decided line to invasion of privacy. Our theoretical photographer is operating in public space and is not trespassing, nor peeping in windows. He is not in this example placing cameras in toilets, or locker rooms. He is not making any physical contact with the subject, much less sexual contact. He is not seeing anything that he couldn’t see if she tripped, bent over, or got in a car the wrong way. So gross, assuredly, assault I think not. Before anyone gets too worked up, mental “assault” is not any more assault than any of us commit daily when we fantasize about a sexy stranger we notice.
Yeah, reading through initially I guess I should simplify things a bit. Let’s say, someone you’ve known for a really long time, like your spouse or a family member, is discovered to have been taking upskirt-type shots of girls over the past 5 years or so, keeping a private collection of “conquest” photos. Like, as their thing. You have the chance to destroy this collection, and do. They are mortified and tell you they’ll stop or do whatever they need to do to make it better. Is it a Terrible Thing? Do you cut them out of your life? What would it take for forgiveness? Do you think you could trust them in a month, in a year, ever again?
Hope that helps, and I really appreciate the responses so far (and I note that some of them have run with the posed scenario already). What do you guys think?
In your example, how exactly did you come across their stash?
This is important.
If you were snooping and discovered it or if, by ‘accident’, they left it out for you to find.
Is the latter, I would say that he wanted you to find it, wanted you to say No and he’ll probably stop. If it is your spouse you should encourage him to take upskirt photos of you, and you only, and share his fantasy. Perhaps give him prizes if he is able to get them without your knowledge.
If you were just being a snoop, well, shame on you, and he probably won’t stop. IMHO.
In the big scheme of things, I don’t see it as a huge skeevy deal. More like something you can tease them about.
If it were a person close to me, it wouldn’t be an issue of forgiveness. Being majorly creeped out and disgusted would my main problems, and I’m not sure if an apology would erase those feelings.
The lengths that someone would have to go through to actually create a stash big enough to hide would be too extensive to write off as a minor kink, IMO. How does a reasonable person take upskirt shots? Seems to me you have to invest some amount of time, technology, and field work to this particular hobby. Add in the secrecy, and that’s pervo levels of creepiness.
If this were my SO, I don’t know what I’d do. We’d definitely have to talk about it so that I could at least get a sense of how deep the fetish goes. They could apologize all day long but I’d still be stuck with the image of them doing creepy things to unsuspecting women. It would be hard for me to just get over it.
As I see it, anyone engaged in this kind of behavior shows extreme selfisnhess, disregard for moral principles and accepted rules of behavior, and ignorance (or lack of acceptance) of the distinction between public and private. I’d have a very tough time ever trusting such a person
How about if it’s a person with a involved BDSM and/or humiliation fetish? They might get off on parading outside wearing a leash in some fetish garb. Might get off on going to the porno store and buying all sorts of demeaning toys. They might like to parade around at the grocery store and have people gawk at them at the behest of some real or imagined “Master”. It goes on and on.
That fits the definitions you quote. It’s selfish in that they display themselves to others unknowingly for their own pleasure. It definitely disregards popular moral principles and accepted rules of behavior (two very dubious concepts in and of themselves in many places) and absolutely blurs the line between public and private.
Do you villainize this person with a specific kink?
I do think the voyeurism is a lot more exploitative and further on the “wrong” side of things (even if I find it less kinky and abnormal) but the reason you quote aren’t very good ones.
The women who are getting “violated” here take some of the blame as well. They are fully aware that they are wearing the short skirts, low tops and whale tails, and they do it with the express purpose of drawing attention to their sexuality. I think that they are perfectly free to do so and I appreciate their ownership of their sexuality, but it’s silly to me to go and criminalize guys who take looking at it too far. They are creeps, but conflating them with rapists and heathens is bullshit.
Sometimes when someone is being an asshole, that’s all it is, a guy being an asshole. That’s where this falls in my estimation.
What’s that line from the song: “My hard-on will go on”?
I think celebs like Britney are crazy not to wear panties etc. when they go out. You KNOW they’ll be getting out of a car surrounded by paparazzi and some will (even inadvertantly) get a shot of the goods up the skirt.
It makes me think Britney et al want that attention to draw notoriety, boost record sales, or whatever because how could they NOT know those pictures would be taken? Hell, wear panties till you get into the club and take them off in the ladies’ room if you’re worried about panty lines.
But no matter how such a photo was taken of a celeb, I don’t agree the photogs have a right to publish them. Privates are private. I’d say too that such presumably accidental pictures are wrong when taken of Joan Q Public, but the photogs don’t make tons of money off her coochy.
Then of course we have the deliberate stuff, which is wrong. Say for instance I see a pretty girl walking down the street. She has a nice rack and a low cut top. If I take a photo that shows nothing more than what she has already volunteered, no problem. But as someone pointed out, this is about a dirty secret and by definition that makes it trickery.
Recent dialogue at work:
35yoGuy: “Wow, Girl, you’re so fashionable today.”
22yoGirl: “me? Hell, no, this is last year’s!”
She totally meant it. What he wanted to say, and would have said if compliments on phisical appearance hadn’t somehow been redefined as “sexual assault” was something like “oh Girl, you look juuuuuuust gorgeous in that low V-neck! Do you think you could wear it more often? Preferably on days when we don’t have meetings, it would be a bit too distracting.” But she wears what she wears because it’s what Mango has, she’s barely conscious that guys in bars aren’t the only guys with eyes :smack:
Yes, I know the majority of the girls with plunging necklines out there aren’t socially-inept, 6’-tall, natural-streaked-blonde programmers But some are.
For me, it would fundamentally change the way I thought about that person. I wouldn’t cut them out of my life, but if it was my spouse we’d have some serious work to do on the relationship (especially since it would mean my wife is apparently a lesbian). I don’t know if it is forgiveness exactly, but there is no way I could forget about it the next day. I also think it is evidence of pretty strong compulsive behavior that I don’t think could be turned off easily. If this was someone I was very close with, I would also want to dig pretty deeply into the motivations behind the behavior. Ultimately, I would worry that having female friends and relatives around this person could put them at risk of being humiliated.
I also don’t agree that it is entirely victimless. When I worked in an office in DC, a bunch of us would often go to the park for lunch. There was this creepy guy obviously trying to see up women’s skirts. I’m sure he thought he was on the sly, but many people knew. When he was around, it made women uncomfortable and feel unsafe. That is a violation of a person’s right to be out in public IMHO.
Are you sure that he has been taking the pictures? Are they of someone recognizable? To my mind there’s a huge difference between him having a large collection of that type of picture and him actually taking a huge amount of those types of pictures. One makes it just a kink, the other makes it a problem.
Aside from the lesbian part, you (and a couple others) have hit the nail on the head in regards to where I stood on the subject (forgiveness was totally the wrong word). At that point I realized I’d hit a wall thinking about what I’d do next. It strikes me as similar to a “finding someone’s cache of child porn or freezer full of severed hands” moment, but one of the reasons I proposed this scenario is that I know there’s a clear difference in clear-cuttedness (dammit, what’s the word?) and (arguably) in urgency. I don’t know if it’s a crime to the degree that a counselor would be obligated to go to the cops or what, but that’s the first thing that came to mind for the picture-taker…though, I don’t have a lot of experience with counseling and I don’t know whether it would really help anyway.
In the case of someone really close like your father or brother or husband or best friend, where up until that point you had a huge emotional investment and sense of security, I couldn’t wrap myself around one’s own emotional “next step”. Is everything built up to that point trumped by knowing this was going on for a long time? It doesn’t seem like something that could be “weighed” against the person’s other positive achievements and relations to me, but perhaps someone disagrees. Could a person whose mind you can’t read ever really show you they’re past it? Could you ever really feel safe taking them around your female friends again? Is it none of your business? If cutting them off were out of the question, I’d personally feel a need to take some kind of responsibility for support, that’s certain, but can’t think whether constant stern support would be better than comforting support. And mixing in the new-found shock element…whoo, it baffles me.
And yeah, Atrael, this is assuming that the collection or a large part of it was actually taken by the person. Perhaps there are relatives or mutual friends in there (eek), perhaps it’s obvious localities like the person’s job…there’s some way you know for sure.
But yeah, assuming it was an accident. Interesting outlook.
But some are.