We’re All Voyeurs | Lust Thrust Thursdays

A Culture of Voyeurism

This is a reprint from my Lust Thrust Thursdays sex column in the now-defunct Queen Mob’s Teahouse literary magazine. The article has been updated as some opinions have evolved since 2015.

From Rear Window

Whether it’s watching porn or swiping on Tinder for the hot people we have no intention of ever meeting in real life, we all engage in various degrees of voyeurism. Some of it can be harmless, but most of the time, voyeurism is associated with perversion and illegality.

So what’s a voyeur to do about these impulses?

When discussing it in the context of sex, voyeurism is paraphilia, a sexual condition in which the person is aroused by something deemed abnormal and/or problematic by most.

For a while in the 2010s, Upskirt, an entire genre where men film under women’s skirts, became popular on tube sites. Porn studios/directors had their female performers act like they didn’t know they were being filmed because that was part of the allure for the audience. That’s not a problem. The problem is when Joe Shmoe tries to replicate this in real life without the subject’s consent.

Filming without consent became enough of a problem that women are now taught “no space, leave the place,” as a way to test public bathroom and changing…