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- Ace Poster
I think of voyeurism as the visual equivalent of eavesdropping, and I’d include upskirting and downshirting in that. Now I come to think of it, though, if I happen to walk past a woman in a short skirt sitting on a low wall (as I did today) then glancing between her legs doesn’t sound serious enough to be called voyeurism. I know it’s impolite though! It’s more like accidentally overhearing something than intentionally eavesdropping, so maybe that makes sense. Where it becomes highly offensive, such as hiding a camera in a changing room, I’d definitely call that voyeurism.
The first house we lived in, the people who lived across the road didn’t like it that our next door neighbours had sex with their curtains open. The people across the road weren’t being voyeurs, they were just seeing something they didn’t really want to. If I had gone across the road to spy on my neighbours, I would say I was being a voyeur, even though the neighbours probably wouldn’t have cared. I assume they liked the idea that they could have been seen. Maybe they wouldn’t have liked being actually stared at though.