Introduction
In this age of sexual equality women are taking over the male role more and more. Want ads in newspapers no longer separate job offers by sex so that a woman can apply for any position a man can. In a large number of homes the male-female roles have been reversed where jobless men take care of the children while their wives work. All over the country women are finding a new aggressiveness and freedom. However, as every rose has a thorn, the new sexual freedom that women are enjoying today has brought with it new problems. One of them is that women are now getting into sexual difficulties that used to be the sole problem of men. The following autobiography is an example since it deals with a recent phenomena . . .female voyeurism.
Historically, Peeping Tom was a man. He was the one who dared gaze at Lady Godiva as she went through the town naked to protest a tax increase. While male curiosity about the female anatomy is considered normal a woman with the same interest in a male body is viewed with alarm. For century's women have been brought up with the belief that no "nice" girl would want to gaze upon male genitals. Times, however, are swiftly changing. The popularity of the Nude Theatre which exposes completely naked men as well as women to mixed audiences has shown that females ARE just as interested in seeing male nudity as men are seeing female nudity. OH, CALCUTTA, the nude show that has five men and five women in the cast constantly draws respectable matrons who sit in the front rows arms with binoculars. Jokes have always been told about bald-headed men who sit in the front row of burlesque houses but now the same gags can be told about the gray-haired dowagers that attend theatrical performances where male nudity abounds.
As a psychologist interested in human sexual behavior and its ever-changing patterns I have become aware of an alarming increase in female voyeurism. A number of these female Peeping Toms have already come to me for treatment in an effort to control their strange compulsions. One of my patients was a middle-aged housewife who was caught by the police wandering around the locker room of an athletic club while intoxicated. Although she convinced the police that alcohol had clouded her senses so that she didn't know where she was the woman confessed to me that she had gone into that male preserve out of a desperate need to see naked men. Since suburban matrons are not known to be voyeurs the police immediately accepted her excuse and allowed her to return home. If a middle-aged man had wandered into a woman's locker room he would have been booked as a Peeping Tom.
Lorna Dixon, the woman who wrote this book, was another of my patients. She is a very attractive housewife of twenty-eight who came to me seeking help about her voyeuristic compulsions. After months of treatment during which the young woman was able to control her unusual drives she decided to write her story both as a form of therapy and a wish to save some other woman from the grief she's suffered. Lorna feels that, if only one woman reads this story and is encouraged to seek psychiatric help because of it, her efforts would not have been wasted. Therefore, to this woman and the rest of the public, allow me to present the remarkable confessions of a female voyeur.
-Charles K. Webster, Ph.D.