Voyeurism

[Ed]

Wow, that is a vague and contradictory term in the world of psychology. I was wondering about doing a glossary of terms like this for the site and it’s much more complicated than I expected. I thought the definition of voyeurism was having a sexual interest in seeing the sex you are attracted to undressing or naked.

According to two of the psychology sources I consulted. That’s NOT voyeurism. Voyeurism is specifically the act of watching people have sex. Other sources (papers on that area) said that voyeurism does include just the act of seeing someone partially or fully naked.

As this site does not include sex acts of any kind, I am going to stop using the word “voyeur” as soon as I find some alternative term.

I haven’t got the time or concentration to do detailed research right now, but it’s clearly not as simple as I thought.

 

Some interesting stats:

Voyeuristic interest (seeing people naked):

Women: 28%   Men: 83%

Technical Voyeurism (arousal from watching sex):

Women: 9%  Men: 58%

Exhibitionism (sexually enjoying wearing revealing/tight/no clothing):

Women:  71%  Men: 22%

Diagnosed Exhibitionism (Compulsive behaviour – arousal from exposing genitals to a stranger):

Women: 2.1%  Men 4.1%

Don’t take those figures as definitive. I’ve found many figures from many different studies and they vary hugely (but then so do the criteria).

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[Arthur]

I always took the term voyeurism is that you like watching people and their intimate moments particularly when they weren’t aware that you were watching them. But it’s interesting what those statistics say seeing as it seems like more men like watching women naked or undressing whereas more women by far seem to enjoy wearing revealing clothing, suggesting that men like to watch and that women like to be watched. But that could just be down to society seeing as there is just much more sexual objectification of women compared to men.

[Mark Oz]

If 71% of women enjoy exhibitionism where are all the naked women???

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[Ed]

As it includes tight and revealing clothing. Go into any town centre on a hot day. Being naked has social connotations but, up-t0-a-point, skimpy is allowed.

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[Anonymous]

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.

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[Ed]

That sounds about right to me. As is often the case, the scientific/medical term doesn’t entirely match the everyday use.

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