Peeping Tom: Can of Worms

I'm not sure what to think about this Peeping Tom issue addressed by Svutlana. I'm talking about it here, rather than there, because I don't know what to think and because this raised a lot of tangents in my head. The issue:

I've got in the habit of spying on my neighbour as she gets undressed at night and have watched her having sex with her husband.

I know it's wrong, but it makes me really horny.

My very first reaction is pants-shitting hysteria based on sex + lack of consent = rape. OK, I got over that. He's just looking. Actually my hysterical reaction reminds me of my plan to become a supervillain by hacking into England's Orwellian public camera network, combining the feeds, and then holding England for ransom by threatening to objectify their entire female population with my male gaze.

Still, he says he knows it's wrong, and he's right. It's still lack of consent. I think upskirt porn is wrong too.

Another thought is that this is a fetish I just plain don't share. Like I've talked about, I want volition. I want her participation. A woman putting on a show for me would be tremendous; looking at a woman unawares is not. I'd rather see porn than spy on a naked friend or neighbor. I'd rather stare at a blank wall, in fact. That makes it hard for me to understand this issue; I don't understand the motivation. (Though I'd be more turned on by a fraction of a second's deliberate boob-flash by a friend or neighbor than the best explicit porn; the flash has volition).

Another thing that makes it hard for me to understand is that I don't understand the harm. Yes, I concluded that it was wrong based on principle. But I have some exhibitionist in me. This blog is evidence of that. The principal reason I don't put naked pictures of myself up on this blog is I don't think anyone wants to see them. (How much will Chatroulette spend on filtering software to remove images of what I've got?) It's hard for me to see someone wanting to see me naked in any terms except compliment.

Unless they're TSA, which is lack of consent again, which is principle again.

The exhibitionism raises another point, which we don't have any evidence for one way or another. What if this is exhibitionism on the part of the neighbor? Generally not too hard to close some drapes. Maybe the display is deliberate, maybe the display is the consent. Would that kill some of the excitement for our Peeping Tom? If so, his motive is definitely wrong.