Chapter 7
WE-THE PEEPERS
In the preceding chapters, we have observed the full amplitude of variety in voyeurism, from the casual, overt and approved voyeur to the compulsive, deviate and criminal peeping Tom. We have noted that far fewer females than males are affected by optical stimuli, generally-yet the feminine devotees have experienced an expansion in their enjoyment of sex through their acquisition of this additional sensory assist. We have marked the dangers existing in the two, proximate sources of sex information for the young; and we have seen that, for the criminal voyeur, unquestionably, there is no satisfactory solution for his problem.
It is a sad paradox that our advanced civilization, in which we take so much pride and satisfaction-with its truly remarkable material contributions toward making our lives more liveable, more comfortable and safer-that we have, at the same time, produced for much of our population, side-effects which add up to less security, far less comfort and considerably greater hazard. While we triumphantly solve one problem, we ignore the fact we have created two others.
Especially in considerations of sexual behavior is this tendency apparent, with the result that today, in our society, there are those who realize the futility of trying to exist happily within the tangled anomalies of acceptable behavior which are in apposition and opposition to nature's continuing, persistent and irresistible demands. These have been aptly described as sex rebels-and their numbers reputed great.
Glenn S. is best described as a happy voyeur and takes frank delight in it. "I look because I'm convinced girls dress to display their charms, admit it or not. Right now, I'm in the happy position of not having yet found the girl I want to marry, although I intend to, when and if the one I want is agreeable. Meanwhile, I go my merry way and look over the entire stock of merchandise. Out to dinner or in the office, these new fashions seem to give the girls a lot of trouble in keeping covered yet I notice none of them have renounced them for Mother Hubbards-it's my opinion the girls like 'em or they wouldn't wear 'em. It's a continuous needling process with the office girls. If they persist in sitting around with most of their legs showing, I look. Now and then they struggle to pull down skirts that have no more pull down to them; sometimes they give me a half-exasperated "Oh! Glenn!".
"If we get into bantering discussion of it-as happens at times, depending on the highly variable character of the female's feelings at any given time-it always turns out that some mysterious force makes them dress that way-they really don't want to. This is always implied. But when you point out that if they don't want to be looked at, all they have to do is go back to below-the-knees dresses, they look at you like you're crazy. It's a gas....
"I don't know what the shouting is all about, anyhow. I have ample opportunities for sex with some (what I consider) pretty smart-looking girls. Most of them are self-supporting, working at fairly responsible jobs. They like the same things I do-fun and sex. I enjoy living and looking contributes a lot of spice to it because it stimulates me and helps to keep me finding new friends among the girls..."
Jean M., a southern housewife is one whose childhood experience included the sight of boys' genitalia to which was connected the sexual activity of self-erotication. Her peeping was not done in secret; it was part of a mutual experimentation carried on in farm buildings, in the woods-wherever the opportunity and her playmates were both available. She required some time to achieve orgasm, from the time she first began, but was successful for the first time when she was in the company of boys with their genitals exposed. Thus, before she had reached puberty, Jean was fairly well set in a pattern of masturbation with the actual sight of boys' genitals as the trigger; as well as secret self-erotication with accompanying fantasies about the same objects as stimulants.
Her first coital experience occurred in high school. Between that time and the gradual cessation of her childhood activity, her family had moved into town from the farm on which she was raised and her contacts with her former sexual experimenters were largely cut off. Jean confesses to some attempts to peep into neighboring residences but with very little success; managed, with difficulty, to obtain a small stock of magazines which offered pictures of naked or near-nude males, which had to suffice for the interim. When a boy attempted coitus with Jean for the first time, she was repelled by the pain, largely and would not complete the act with her partner. He had to be satisfied with her masturbating him to orgasm. At the start of her junior year in high school, Jean had formed a fast friendship with a girl named Willa and, by the end of summer vacation, they had pretty largely divulged all their sex secrets to each other.
"I told her about my never having been penetrated," Jean revealed "and she urged me to have a date with the boy who first did it with her. I was scared, of course, but the idea of a new experience-and one that I recognized I should have-sold me. Willa said he'd been very patient and gentle with her. I didn't realize until much later what a rarity he was-but the pain completely turned me off and I had to quit, offering to relieve him by masturbation. He suggested another method-(fellatio)-but I refused, not being entirely sold on its acceptability, I guess....
"Comparing notes with Willa later, she reluctantly admitted that she had done this (performed fellatio) and that it had excited her to an appreciable extent and her partner went clear into orbit. She was concerned about my aversion to another coital attempt and finally, during summer vacation between junior and senior year, she persuaded me to try again.
"We had, on occasion, masturbated together and mutually. Her dad had a vibrator-a hand implement like a barber uses-to relieve tension in his neck and shoulder muscles. Occasionally Willa and I-on rare occasions when we were alone at her house-would use this in our sex play and I thought it was terrific. I finally had another date with a boy to try to find an opportunity to try coitus. We drove out in the country, near where I used to live, to a creek with a natural swimming hole, and went swimming. Afterward, we wandered into the woods and began kissing and this led, naturally, to other things. When I saw his erection, my excitement mounted immediately. He wasn't as big as the first boy had been and this time I experienced little discomfort-but I couldn't manage an orgasm.
"I had two more experiences that summer," Jean continued. "There was little or no pain, but I just couldn't secure satisfaction through penetration; I guess because there wasn't any visual stimulus. It wasn't until Willa hit on the daring plan to double date and try it-the thought of which scared me silly at first-that I achieved my first orgasm this way..."
Jean married, after she had finished high school and worked for about three years. Her husband, through their participation in pre-marital sex, knew of Jean's difficulty in obtaining satifsaction in coitus. They tried sex movies and some pornography but the best they could come up with at home was an arrangement of mirrors which gave the necessary impetus to Jean's response to visual stimulus. When Willa and her husband proposed swapping wives, Tom-Jean's husband-was very reluctant but, knowing Jean's difficulty, they agreed to a sex session with both couples present. Jean's response was so gratifying to him that they continued, their procedure including swapping partners before long. They have expanded their circle of contacts and, presently, are active in a restricted area (due to income size) with other swappers who live near them.
June R.-as a result of an incestuous attack by her drunken father (a widower for whom she kept house)-fell into active lesbianism as a result. She ran away from home and struck up a friendship with a girl in a rooming house who "brought her out" and confirmed her in her preference for girls.
So repulsed was she by the recollection of her father's physical attack, that it was two years before she allowed herself to be put in a position where a man tried coitus with her and again she was revolted.
"I was all at sea," she explains, "I'd broken up with this girl I'd been living with-but a male was simply repulsive to me. I moved from where I'd been living, into another place where I shared a bath with two other girls. One morning, while I was showering, one of them asked if I minded if she fixed her hair while I bathed. I was a little embarrassed but told her it was alright. To my surprise, she took off her robe and stood naked before the mirror as she arranged her hair-do. Suddenly, I could hardly tear my eyes away from her-she had a beautiful figure, with full, pink-tipped, pointed breasts. I went back to my room and masturbated afterward."
After that, June began to welcome communal use of the bathroom and, quite often, received stimulus from seeing the other girls in nudity or near-nudity to inspire her to self-gratification. Her next lesbian liaison was highly disturbing to June, the other girl insisting that June perform oral sex on her, which she had never done. She broke off this relationship with much difficulty, ending by being forced to move to another town. She had a high proficiency as a waitress and had no difficulty in obtaining employment. Fearful of encountering another such problem as with her last previous lesbian arrangement, she shuns lesbian approaches; continues to live in a rooming house where she shares a large space with two other girls, all using the same bath.
She has ample opportunity, thus, for her voyeuristic activity and has learned to gratify her desires without the use of her hands, silently, after the lights are out. June recognizes that her sexual pattern may be somewhat bizarre but she is ashamed of her former lesbian activity and will not re-enter it. Her sole stimulation she receives through seeing other females in the nude, relieving her excitement through masturbation....
Linden K., a door-to-door salesman, became addicted to peeping at an early age. "There were three daughters in the house next door," he revealed, "and my bedroom was right opposite theirs. I had learned to masturbate in company with some of my playmates when I was about seven or eight years old. There was a two-story structure out in our back yard, evidently left over from what had been farm land before the area was developed. My dad used it as a garage and everything we didn't want in the house accumulated out there. It was a great place to play and, up in the top floor, we had almost complete privacy. Just when some of the older boys I played with first displayed their sex organs and their proficiency at masturbation to me, I don't recall, exactly, but it must have been at around seven. I'd already started to school, I know.
"Seeing the other boys induced some sort of excitement in me, at first," Linden recalls. "Then, when they urged me to try it, I got a very enjoyable sensation out of manipulating my (penis) at their example. I didn't reach an orgasm right away: that came sometime later, but I do recall the fervent exchange of comments on girls between the older boys while they were bringing themselves to climax....
"I was an only child and I had never seen anything to stimulate me sexually around my home-until this family moved in next door. Two of the girls were blondes-twins-the third girl was a strawberry blonde, I think they called her. Her hair had reddish tints in it. Anyhow, one night after I'd gone to sleep, I was awakened and I heard the girls giggling and laughing next door. I rolled over in bed and looked out through the three-inch gap beneath the blind. Evidently, the three had been to some sort of party-they were getting undressed and laughing and chattering away as they did so. I immediately became excited as I watched the three of them remove their clothing, eventually to be naked before slipping into their pajamas. I'd never seen anything like it. The girls all had well-developed breasts (they were thirteen-fourteen years old) and not very much hair. My friends up in the loft had described the hair which women they'd seen possessed.
"I began to get an erection as I watched and reached down to grasp it. As I began to masturbate, my excitement and the pleasure of the sensations I was feeling increased. Before I reached a climax, the girls turned off the lights and went to bed, but I continued, in the dark, until I had an orgasm."
Linden recounts that, for the next two years, he kept a close watch on the girls next door, seldom turning on the light in his room and being careful to keep his blinds tight in the evening. Evidently, the girls were lulled by this seeming lack of activity directly across from them and sometimes he got a real thrill.
"One night they got to 'horsing' around with each other-giggling and touching each other on the breasts and (vulvas) while they were getting ready for bed. They were all naked and kept it up for about ten minutes until one of their parents called up from downstairs to quiet them down. I masturbated to climax twice while I was watching their antics..."
During this period a baby brother arrived at Linden's home and, when the baby was about a year and a half old, the younger of the girls next door acted as a baby-sitter. Despite the disparity in their ages, Ellen and Lin got on very well with each other and, during the time they were alone in the house together, advanced to the area of sexual experiment which never got beyond mutual masturbation. Linden finally confessed to Ellen that he'd peeped at them from his bedroom and masturbated and she thought it very funny, saying she was going to tell her sisters. Linden thought this not such a good idea, but Ellen said they'd get a big kick out of it. They did. One Saturday afternoon when both sets of parents were out and Ellen was baby-sitting with Lin's little brother, the other two girls came over-Marsha and Maria-and while the baby was asleep, the four of them participated in a peep/masturbation session. Linden recalls this was the greatest excitement he'd ever known up to that point. When Marsha ascertained that he did not ejaculate at climax, she asked him if he wouldn't like to do it the grown-up way (coitus) and Linden agreed, but said he didn't know how. Marsha showed him. She reached a climax but Lin didn't; then Maria asked him to do it with her. This time they both reached climax. The older sisters wouldn't let Ellen try, but the next time she baby-sat for Lin's parents, they experimented with coitus; over a period of weeks they managed to attain orgasm in the exercise....
Linden's adult pattern is one of complete enjoyment of coital activity in sex-but a corner of his libido requires voyeuristic stimulation. He married at twenty-seven; introducing his wife to the swinging society after they'd been married about two years. He considers that his sex life is complete. His wife enjoys swinging-Linden finds complete satisfaction in a combination of coitus and being able to watch other females in the sex act ... he is quick to say that what he sees brings him to more satisfactory climaxes than sex without the additional stimulus. He is a confirmed voyeur.
Carleton N., the youngest of a family which numbered three sisters beside himself, was early exposed to his sisters dashing about in all stages of undress. Even the sight of them nude, on occasion, did not elicit more than a curious glance from him. At the age of seven, he had started into the bedroom of his parents one morning, when they were engaged in love play prior to coitus. The child could understand his mother's sounds of delight but was concerened when she moaned in climax. By the time he was ten years old, he had made occasion to spy on them on several other occasions; had finally reached the conclusion that what they were doing was pleasant to both of them. The last two or three occasions he spied on them (before being caught in the act and excluded by a locked bedroom door) he had become excited and masturbated while he watched. The last occasion, he reached a climax. This combination remained fixed in his memory as the most exciting moment of his life.
Carlton, in adult life, is a confirmed peeper. Naked girls do not excite him, particularly; the sight of girls engaging in homosexual activity does not stir him to more than moderate interest and excitement. He is addicted to viewing coitus and masturbating to climax while he is peeping. He has been arrested twice in the act of peeping; has served one jail sentence; has changed his city of residence four times in six years.
He works as a service station attendant and is good at his job. He is obsessed with his Peeping Tom activity; cannot obtain full sexual gratification and release without it. He has become an expert at fire escapes, trees, breaking and entering. His activities have expanded to include burglary but he confines his thefts to money, only. He wants nothing which can be traced to him.
Girls do not interest him-unless they're mindlessly involved in a sex act with another man-and the greater their excitement and enthusiastic response, the more vigorous and satisfying is Carlton's orgasm. There is little chance that he will avoid prison-but Carlton is exercising all his acquired skill and native shrewdness to indulge his addiction and stay free of the law....
These are the peepers. They come from every socio economic level; from happy and serene homes, as well as from broken homes. Their educational levels, religious affiliations, personal conduct outside their fixation tells us nothing-voyeurs include most of us and Peeping Toms may come from the house next door or turn out to be your first cousin.
Obviously, with the ability of the eye to bring attractive pictures to the consciousness, the opportunities for voyeurism are limitless. That nudity is frowned upon as a socially acceptable practice seems a tragedy. Many would be spared their involvement if nakedness were as common as clothing.
The difficulties arise from the professed attitudes which hold that sex is sinful, nasty, dirty-a shameful act. Yet, evidently, once a couple marries, the accepted character of sex changes. There is no approval, in our social customs, of sexual activity outside marriage; the laws of some states proscribe certain acts, even between married persons; and parents have been jailed for permitting their offspring to witness their acts of coitus. Obviously, there is something wrong, somewhere, in behavioral machinery which balks and stalls and is more noted for malfunction than for smooth operation. But publicly, the demand is for obedience to the rules of conduct which our civilization has accepted for so many centuries that adherence is a conditioned reflex; its adherents opposing any change in-ground rules.
Meanwhile, individuals continue to be damaged by the easy impressions of the eye and the body's erotic response to erotic stimuli. There are some who frankly enjoy and are benefited by voyeurism. In some segments of society, the female has accepted voyeurism as an acquired taste and enjoying the resulting amplification of the most enticing, exciting and fulfilling act of which the human body is capable.
On every hand, the appeals to the vision multiply; the inducements to look proliferate, the rewards from exercise of sight grow richer. There is some evidence our part of the world is beginning to apply the sense of sight as it was used in man's earliest times: to include the frank appraisal of desirability in the opposite sex-and the intensification of the satisfaction which stems from that desire.
It is to be hoped that We-the Peepers-are finding a path to that happy plateau in man's history where the furtive, secretive peep may be replaced by the acceptability of open and frank regard....