I don't understand this story even slightly. There are men in Union Square Park who make a hobby of looking at women in skirts from an angle where they might be able to see up the skirts some? I mean, they're probably assholes, but why this is anything that should be given a fuck about beyond that I don't understand. We're talking about women dressed to be out in public, sitting in a way they're comfortable sitting in public, and men visible in public looking at them -- what's the issue?
Well, it seems like a subset of women's bodies not being their own in public; plus all the photography.
Oh, wait, photographs. That's creepier, but still.
Isn't getting some pants easier than moving all the way to suburbia and finding a snout house.
Is a snout house made of tobacco?
I'm thinking there have to be sexist assholes in suburbia, don't you think? I figure they probably hang out next to the escalators at the mall.
I'm a little bit more freaked out by Dog Molester.
Anyway, nobody tried to sneak a glance at my balls, but I do like the fact that I have a large amount of private space in which to conduct my life and not being able to afford the same in NYC is one why I'm just as happy not to live there.
Gross, they're trying to start a scare about something else. Peeping in NYC is just looking, and everyone does it all the time. People look at each other, in public. It's totally horrible? Sometimes they think someone is attractive or they notice that people have breasts or their underwear is showing?
Sure, taking pictures without asking is a problem, but that's exactly what "Normal Bob" is doing, from his high horse.
Did you know that you lose exactly 0% of your chastity when someone's eyes point in your direction?
I'm thinking there have to be sexist assholes in suburbia, don't you think?
I can confirm this to be so.
but that's exactly what "Normal Bob" is doing, from his high horse.
Maybe, but he isn't fingering dogs.
Did you know that you lose exactly 0% of your chastity when someone's eyes point in your direction?
It's like you've never even heard of eye-babies.
I missed the dog-molesting thing I guess.
I dunno; I used to give the stinkeye to guys who really blatantly turn around to stare at girls' butts or whatever, and then I realized I totally do it too. I wish they could be more discreet, but as long as they're not requiring the object of their lust to respond in any way by speaking to or touching them, I think it's pretty harmless. Nice people look nice, in public, and it's nice to look at them.
Did you know that you lose exactly 0% of your chastity when someone's eyes point in your direction?
UR DOING IT WRONG!
Oh, someone who's systematically lurking in a spot where he's likelier to see more up a skirt than the wearer intended I wouldn't be conflicted at all about snarling at if I noticed what he was doing. But that the existence of people like that gets coverage in the Times seems lunatic to me.
They could at least have the decency to make music while they do it.
If you read the site, you see that these are dudes (the same dudes, over and over) who stand there regularly for hours positioning themselves to look up skirts. Sometimes they even get down on all fours to do so. I think that's gross. But I guess bitchez be uppity prudes if they don't dig that? I'd happily shame them myself if I were sitting there.
OT: Currently taking a required online training where every two or three pages is a separate PDF I need to download.
And if you hear a loud collective sigh ...
19: I guess I'm discounting the website some, because it looks to be compiled by an obsessive who's exaggerating at least a little.
19: But I guess bitchez be uppity prudes if they don't dig that?
I'm sort of suggesting that maybe they don't care? Of course women know these men exist. "Normal Bob" is not informing women who sit in short skirts on low stairs of anything they don't know. I'm not saying they enjoy it, but I would suggest that getting the NYT involved in some kind of exposé of the public menace of some people going out of their way to look at other people is a bit much. If I don't want people to see my pussy, I don't show my pussy in public.
What I'm not at all saying is that women who even actually show their pussy in public should be harassed, raped, touched, or even addressed in any way.
The peeping thing takes on a new meaning, given the existence of the internet. These dudes could spend three hours in the privacy of their own homes looking at women who are completely naked, and not even have to spend money. They are doing this because they specifically want to catch someone live and in person exposing more than they intended to.
They say it is not illegal unless you take pictures, which sounds like a fair line for the law to draw. Nevertheless, it does say a lot about the people who do it.
exposing more than they intended to
Or that they entirely 100% intended to. Yes, even women do things like not wear underpants with a short skirt and then go looking for a full-service shoe shop. Women are perverts too. (I am not an exhibitionist, but I seem to know a lot of them.)
things like not wear underpants with a short skirt and then go looking for a full-service shoe shop.
Wow, that's really an awful thing to do to someone.
26: I actually stopped being friends with someone because I just couldn't talk to her about stuff like this. She loved giving blow jobs in cabs, having orgasms while ordering in restaurants, etc., and it all comes with this air of control, because she's the wealthy consumer and these are service workers who can't say shit.
I'm just saying, the site of incidents where someone sees a vagina in public are at least a little tiny bit sometimes in the control of the woman who has gotten dressed and decided to walk around that day.
I'm sort of suggesting that maybe they don't care?
Oh, sure. And some of the women are clearly mocking the dudes they know are peeping them. But that isn't really what you said. "Did you know that you lose exactly 0% of your chastity when someone's eyes point in your direction?" seems to be an attempt to school and belittle women who don't want to sit on the 14th St. steps because of the 12 peepers peeping. And "If I don't want people to see my pussy, I don't show my pussy in public" seems like blaming the victims of harassment to me. They're not "showing their pussy." They're skirted and in public.
28: The chastity comment was pointed at the pearl-clutching tone of "Normal Bob" and the NYT article, not at actual women who have experienced this and felt harassed by it. I guess it seems to me more the sort of problem that men worry about than women, but maybe I'm wrong. (I.e., we have much more serious problems with harassment in public?)
I wouldn't want to sit on the steps at 14th Street in a short skirt with my legs apart, no. Is anyone unaware that they're doing this?
Is anyone unaware that they're doing this?
Tourists, or students new to the city, quite possibly. Both constitute populations of decent size.
30: They're not doing that -- which is what makes it almost touchingly pathetic. The women have their legs together, but the steps are quite shallow, so their knees are drawn up, affording flashes of knickers and thigh. Bonus frissons no doubt are afforded when the women shift their weight.
At any rate, I apologize for sounding callous. It just feels to me like, in the context of all the various humiliations and indignities of hyperurban living, including rape, threats of rape, lying and manipulation for sex, verbal and physical harassment, etc., the right to sit on low stairs in a short skirt with your knees up and apart without being seen by someone trying to look up skirts isn't really high on my own list of outrages.
Of course I saw this peeping behavior all the time. I'm not particularly careful about how I sit sometimes. I don't invite it, and I don't enjoy it, but I'm a public-nudity type of person and as long as someone doesn't see it as an invitation to hurt me or threaten me, I don't care if they see me.
I'm currently butting up against the opposite culture here now, in that everyone thinks it's really disgusting that I want to shower at the gym. I have been asked by fellow faculty members how I would cope if a student saw me changing in the locker room. The student employee at the gym responded to my question about where the locker room was by saying, "Um, there *is* one? But faculty don't use it." I *can't* use it? "They just don't." So I have to walk half an hour to my home past the houses of everyone I know, completely disgusting and sweaty in my workout clothes, and can't just go teach, because everyone will think I'm a pervert if I shower at the gym. I just get frustrated with it.
I'd happily shame them myself if I were sitting there.
I suspect many of these guys are not much capable of shame.
Wow, that's really an awful thing to do to someone.
I... can't imagine finding that anything but a perk, but I've never been a shoe salesman so maybe I'm missing something.
34.last: Broad knowledge about how feet smell?
12 peepers peeping
It is WAY too early for Christmas music, oud.
It just feels to me like, in the context of all the various humiliations and indignities of hyperurban living, including rape, threats of rape, lying and manipulation for sex, verbal and physical harassment, etc., the right to sit on low stairs in a short skirt with your knees up and apart without being seen by someone trying to look up skirts isn't really high on my own list of outrages.
I sort of hate this rhetorical move (How can you care about x when y is so much worse!?), but while I would agree that it isn't the hugest deal (but disagree that the women are somehow at fault for how they are sitting), it's just another small indignity that makes it a drag to be a woman in public. Having to worry about being recorded as wankfodder for sitting in a park is a drag and those sorts of drags add up.
How can you worry about AWB's rhetorical move when people in Iowa are being subjected to poorly drawn analogies?
I sort of hate this rhetorical move (How can you care about x when y is so much worse!?)
It immediately reminded me of "Dear Muslima".
You actually lose 0.001% of your virginity when someone looks up your skirt. Normally this isn't a problem, but a busy place like New York and those fractions add up fast.
various humiliations and indignities of hyperurban living, including rape, threats of rape, lying and manipulation for sex
Are these specific to urban living?
The verbal and physical harassment as an urban thing (given greater anonymity) I can see.
I would guess that a leerer of this sort is (because if it was only the view he was after, he could look at the Daily Mail or Huffington Post) specifically turned on by the non-consensual nature of the thrill, and thus would also guess that every leerer is basically a harasser waiting to work the courage up to be more obviously unpleasant. And so they ought to be moved on, simply in order to inform them that society regards the slope that they are perched at the top of as a bad one. Although the guy with the website frankly comes across as a bit of a weirdo too.
I sort of hate this rhetorical move (How can you care about x when y is so much worse!?)
I don't mean it as some kind of straw-rape scenario. I guess I mean it as a category difference. Rhetorically (hopefully not analogically, let's see) speaking, I spent all last week talking to people about 9/11 and noticing that most of my New York friends think if you didn't literally lose a family member or barely escape yourself, you don't have a right to have an emotional or traumatized reaction. For people who saw it on TV, reactions range from needing to be medicated for constant panic attacks every time a plane goes by to wondering why we all have to perform this public mourning and pilgrimages of sorrow when it's not literally our individual loss.
Personally, my feelings are more on the side of saying that if nothing literally happened to me, I just need to be respectful of the feelings of the people to whom it literally happened. But I am finding out, and should learn, that people outside of NYC seem to have had far more intense emotional reactions to it than a lot of people whom it could have directly affected, and that those reactions are real.
Getting peeped has happened to me, a lot, many times a day some days, and its effect on my life was that sometimes I am not in the mood to show as much cleavage or leg because I don't wish to be seen. And I need to realize that it's really traumatic for other people.
39: Thanks, M/tch. Very thoughtful reading of my comment. (I am a woman who has experienced these things, not a man claiming that a story about a scary heterosexual threat is the same as a call for universal burqification.)
44: Sure, but you've come across as pretty flippant in this thread about the issue, e.g. "If I don't want people to see my pussy, I don't show my pussy in public".
I have been asked by fellow faculty members how I would cope if a student saw me changing in the locker room.
Wait, what the fuck? I'm assuming the lockers are gender-segregated and the students are legal adults. Why is this an issue at all?
33: Personally, I wouldn't give vague generalized concerns about faculty members showering in gym showers more than the second's thought it takes to reject them. Even if there is a strong local custom, I'd immediately write it off as ridiculous and accept any social consequences. But I am often an ox in a china shop about these things. I have noticed that if I do unconventional things with a blithely cheerful air, I rarely get called on them.
45: You're right that I've been insensitive. It's an issue I don't feel myself and it is difficult to imagine the feelings of others when they are so different from your own. Until Oud commented, I thought the only parties getting bothered by imagining the mindset of these peepers were Normal Bob and the scaremongery NYT, who seem to revel in a kind of disturbing way in the potential imagined dirty horrible thoughts of a peeper. There was just a lot of imagination going on in that article.
46: I CAN'T FUCKING KNOW. Every time I try to ask someone a question about this, it's like we're suddenly not speaking the same language.
I think the net nanny partially reacts to the density of naughty words. Thanks for diluting, y'all.
I have noticed that if I do unconventional things with a blithely cheerful air, I rarely get called on them get paired with the non-threatening, vaguely hipster protagonist.
48. Pffft. Fuck 'em, then. Shower where it's convenient. If nothing else, college is a fine time to try to force people to grow the fuck up.
Having to worry about being recorded as wankfodder for sitting in a park is a drag and those sorts of drags add up.
I'd replace "Having to worry" with "Worrying" here.
how I would cope if a student saw me changing in the locker room.
"Is there a racquetball ladder or a softball league?"
I haven't read the article in question, but the NYT is quite capable of taking something that is a genuine problem and proceeding to write about it in a way that is nevertheless annoyingly pearl-clutching.
It's well within their ability to be wrong even when they're right.
Oh, AWB, I don't know what they're freaking out about either, but I had similar confusions going from PNW to StL. I was only a grad student, too. Whatever the reason, the repercussions might be forceful (and yet, maddeningly unspoken).
OTOH, upskirting creeps me out more than you. The Seattle version involved camera tech to see more than a person usually could, & then I think the legal decision was that there's no expectation of privacy in a skirt of any length or material.
56.2 is creepier to me. Personally, I feel a reasonable expectation that if I can see your eyes, I know where you are. Following up the stairs too closely? Creepier, but still not going to keep me up at night. Once we get into using tools to achieve the peep, it's crossing a line for me. (This is probably because I feel I have the right to look at people in public, and even find them sexually attractive, but that's a line I wouldn't cross.)
Well, I don't like the prospect of being naked in front of my students because of (a) the whiff of parental power dynamics involved in the relationship, which makes me think that it is plausible that it would make them uncomfortable/distracted to know what I look like under my clothes while we're performing the student-professor relationship, and (b) my suspicion that many students are the kind of callow youths who will be all "ew ick, I prefer to imagine that most people over 24 don't have bodies."
I would not care about this at all if not for the strange forced intimacy (in combination with attendant barriers to actual intimacy) of the classroom, and the asymmetry that makes me more of a public figure to them than they are to me. And I don't love the prospect of their seeing me all sweaty and disheveled post workout, in much the same way.
But these are all just reasons for my own discomfort, not anything I would expect to have "forceful" repercussions for someone who was comfortable with the situation.
Re showering: I've had similar comments, and I interpreted it to mean "the showers are so old and gross in that building! Aren't you scared you'll get toe-mole?"
On the other hand, there are plenty of faculty and staff who use the showers. Diverse set of opinions.
I'd say it sounds like AWB's school is putting the loco in in loco parentis, but I guess it's not just them.
[also, optional archive link]
59: (a), I guess I'm a little strange, here, because I just don't generally visualize people naked. Especially not when they're lecturing.
61, I think I'm with #7 in that thread, basically.
If any of the male NYC Unfoggetariat are willing to get done up in drag and go down to the park commando I'll give you five dollars. Show them your balls. For justice!
I'm with 62. Even with people I have seen naked. Or if it's someone changing at the gym, unless there's something really remarkable about her body, I'm not going to stare, especially if it's someone I know. I have a hard time imagining running into a student at the gym and ending up trapped at the same bank of lockers, and I go to wrap a towel around myself and she's like ogling me the whole time. It just wouldn't happen, unless she had no sense of decorum at all and was also for some reason terrifically interested in my body, which no one is.
65: I was going to say "even with people I'm evaluating for sexual attractiveness, even with people I've seen naked, even with people who are wearing boots, panties, and electrical tape."
And I'm sure someone somewhere is terrifically interested in your body.
66: Someone who hasn't at any time in the past killed anyone with a gun or a knife? Let's be realistic.
I guess I'm basically with AWB here. As I think I've mentioned here before, my old firm had a rule where at retreats the older partners and younger associates would sometimes have to share a room, which meant that you got to see your supervisors naked. The whole room-sharing thing was sure weird and unfun, but it's not like the nudity itself otherwise made any difference whatsoever.
67: This is horribly tasteless, but that led me to imagine an internal dialogue of: "How come I can't get a former poisoner, just once? They're so patient and attentive, unlike those damn knifers and gunmen."
67: Why not? There are a lot of stranglers out there.
(See, this isn't fair - you can be as self-deprecating as you like, while I have to try to be funny while worrying about coming off as either unkind or creepy.)
Hey, I'm back in here now. The netnanny is weird.
It wasn't a locker-room issue, because the prof was male, but I found it kind of odd to run into the guy who taught my sociology class in the UofC weight room. (Actually, I surreptitiously snooped on how much he was leg-pressing, and then felt all self-impressed about lifting more. Being slightly stronger than a skinny academic in his mid-forties is a really sad basis for an undergrad to be proud of herself.)
But not a reason not to do it, it was just weird. Actually, I had the same feeling about seeing the head of the Schmebevoise litigation department in the weight room at a nearby gym we both went to, although part of the weirdness there was finding out that he was truly unusual in the matter of body hair. Suits hide a multitude of sins.
But I can't see weirdness-avoiding like that as any kind of sufficient reason for not changing at the gym.
AWB, my thinking having been in an Extremely Similar situation was that the question reveals more about the person's anxieties (well-founded or not -- I preferred to show at home) than it does the risk of any forceful repercussions. I used to get the question concerning what students would think about my lifting heavy weights, and I usually responded with some variation of "well, I'm hoping for, 'if I'm lucky, my ass will look that good when I'm thirty.'" This was usually met with giggles because of course, the real anxiety is that our students will see that in the gym, we are truly dorks.
Do what you like. No one cares that much.
Thanks, Cala. Frankly, I don't give a shit what colleagues think; if they don't use the locker room, they'll never even know I'm there. But yeah, the bigger question is if the students live in some kind of world where briefly seeing your same-sex prof put a bra on from the other end of the room is the emotional equivalent to walking in on your parents mid-cowgirl.
seeing your same-sex prof put a bra on from the other end of the room
I wouldn't be shocked or traumatized by this, but I have to say I'd be impressed as all get out.
I really wouldn't worry about the students being freaked out by you; it seems beyond implausible that it could be more than a moment's oddness.
I have a friend who was a student of mine one semester when I was a TA for an undergrad course. She says to this day that she's glad she didn't attend a particular drunken, debauched dorm party that year, as it featured a stripper stage and pole and volunteer strippers, of which I was one. Admittedly, the explicit sexual context of that makes it different from seeing somebody naked in the locker room.
We need pictures to really get your point, Larry.
I didn't mean that you should worry about students' reactions! You shouldn't. I just feel so much like a big ol' dork with my students all the time that I don't like adding nudity to the mix. I'm pretty shameless about prancing around in the nude otherwise -- there's just something about the student-instructor relationship that makes me not like it, and I thought I'd try my hand at explaining why.
73: then they can learn about growing the fuck up already. I think the relevant question here is what your comfort level is and where you want your boundaries. If you don't care, well, hey, look, it's a locker room meant for changing! look at that!
Only parts of 79 have been established to my satisfaction.
Yet another reason why I need Russian, Japanese, or Korean baths more conveniently located with respect to my house.
seeing your same-sex prof put a bra on from the other end of the room
Twin towers indeed!
82 -- Or Idaho. (pool pic in pool)
where at retreats the older partners and younger associates would sometimes have to share a room, yadda yadda ... which meant that you got to see your supervisors naked
wha? Show me, on the doll, how this was inevitable, Rob.
Coming out of the shower in a towel in the morning situation.
Gotta go with seriously creepy on the OP. There's a big difference between noticing someone while going about your business and carefully positioning yourself for hours to stare up skirts. I also can't be the only person to find it awkward when I'm in a situation where it's rather hard not to suddenly find oneself looking down a blouse, as sometimes happens on a crowded subway. On the other hand the women who are obviously deliberately flashing their pussies, not awkward, but not particularly arousing either, at least not in a random on the escalator type situation.
Can we draw a distinction between someone who's obviously leering up women's skirts and someone who's looking but not making it obvious? Because the problem with the first guy is that the staring is harassment -- it's unpleasant and making people uncomfortable, and should be socially censured and anyone in a position of authority (parks employees, cops) should firmly encourage guys doing that to move along.
But calling the people doing this 'peeping Toms' implies that the core of the problem is the invasion of privacy or something, as if they were peering through a grating into a women's locker room. And that just seems inapplicable -- I don't think it's blaming the victims to say that someone sitting on shallow steps in an above-the-knee skirt isn't terribly concerned about how much of her thighs is visible. Someone who's generally concerned about that kind of exposure wears pants, a longer skirt, or doesn't sit on the ground. Doesn't mean that she's fair game for harassment, but I think it does mean that looking at her, even while harboring carnal thoughts, isn't particularly an offensive thing to do.
(Camping out for hours to stare, even if it could be done unobtrusively enough so as not to amount to harassment, is still kind of gross, but it's gross in a way like spending too much time with internet porn, not actually doing anyone any harm.)
Agreed with 88. I guess my fundamental objection is to the idea that what is happening in one person's mind is harmful to another person, whether they ever become aware that it's happening or not. If I think a dirty thought while looking at someone, I don't really feel bad about it. If I subtly shift or turn to see something I want to see about a person, especially if it seems obviously on display, does not hurt them.
It starts to be threatening and possibly harmful to that person the instant I make my presence known or demand some kind of response.
This is all tainted by being bi and single, but sometimes I see a dude notice a chick and I don't think, "Avert your eyes, sir!" I usually think, "What is he looking at? Oh, nice."
hey, look, it's a locker room meant for changing! look at that!
I got extremely annoyed in the locker room at my Y the other day because I really had to pee before my yoga class started and the only bathroom stall in my half of the locker room was being used by someone to change clothes. But then I told myself that maybe this person was in the middle of transitioning or had some other similarly good reason not to change in the open.
someone who's obviously leering up women's skirts and someone who's looking but not making it obvious? Because the problem with the first guy is that the staring is harassment -- it's unpleasant and making people uncomfortable
A person can also stare at you in a harassing way without looking at a particular body part. I've been made incredibly uncomfortable by someone who was very obviously staring at me in a weird attention-paying way who was not looking up my skirt or down my shirt. Enough so that I left the café where we both were.
IMO, staring at a woman and not giving a shit about whether or not you're making her uncomfortable is extremely, offensively rude.
Calling out that behavior is a lot more socially acceptable to me than the idea that any not-technically-illegal behavior is a-OK.
@33 I don't get it. Reminds me of how when my kids (male and female) played on high school sports teams, none of them nor their teammates showered at school, they all waited to come home. 40+ years ago when I was in high school, we would have thought it was weird that someone didn't shower after practice.
My gym locker at my old school was right next to the university president's, who was a Jesuit (it was a Jesuit university). Showers, sauna etc. everybody students faculty administrators used them.
Re the storiy of women without underwear going shoe shopping. On the RR train some years back I was idly looking around and saw a woman sitting down, legs spread slightly apart, who was not wearing any underwear, lady parts clearly visible. I was shocked, looked up at her, saw that she was -- I dunno quite what the word is -- leering aggressively at me. Some type of payback? Totally not stimulating. I got off at the next stop and moved a couple of subway cars away.
You shouldn't sit on stone steps without underwear because it gives you haemorrhoids, and then you have to look up how to spell them.
When I was at school staff didn't change in the same locker room as the kids; when I went to college they occasionally did. The unspoken logic of this was that the adults should be careful about freaking out minors (specifically a room full of smelly seventeen year olds comparing their wangs, whose sensibilities were clearly delicate), but when everybody's a grown up then if they're still freaked out, tough shit. I get the impression that this worked similarly for girls. If the situation has changed as AWB describes it it looks like another aspect of the infantilisation of young adults that we deplore here from time to time.
Might the problem with professors and showering be that the students would prefer not to be seen naked by the professor rather than concerns about seeing the professor naked? There is already a huge power imbalance, and for lots of people allowing someone to see you naked has implications involving power dynamics. It's like drawing the line at a certain age with your parents where they no longer get to see you undressed as part of the separation and self empowerment process. The student/professor relationship has lots of child/parent overtones, so maybe there's some carry over? Just a thought.
I agree with LB in 88.
At my old gym, the men's showers were all open (8 shower heads in one open room).
A local judge was in the shower when a defendant said "Hi Judge!"
Now, that is uncomfortable.
Also, regarding the staring/looking issue:
A guy got kicked out of my old gym bc he was WAY other the line about staring at other men's junk in the sauna and steam room.
Normally, I would be suspicious about such a complaint, but this guy was horrible. So far over the line that I am surprised he hasnt been arrested for some other behavior.
Take a look. Take a second look. Even a third. I dont care. But please do not get on the step below me and stare the entire time. That isnt about getting a good visual. That is about something else entirely.
Just watched a video all about Disney's subliminal sex and freemason messages in their movies and was totally freaked out. The shit you find on the internet.
There is a word for taking pictures up women's skirts. It is "upskirting." I know this because of my damn job.
p.s. I once saw a dinner theater production of Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up? in like Cicero or Berwyn or somewhere. That is all.
Wow, I would not want to be on either end of the seeing/being seen by my students/professors (were I a professor) dynamic. But then I have this policy of nudity only being ok around either complete strangers or people I am having sex with and nothing in between. I had assumed this was not unique to me but I'm coming to find maybe it is.
When I was in hs, there was a waterpark-amusement park in (far) northern NJ called Action Park. One of the attractions was a very-steep, very-fast waterslide that . . . took a toll on girls' bathing suits. No one wore two pieces (maybe they weren't allowed?), but your one piece ended up fully jammed up your ass crack. Men would plant themselves at the foot of this slide all day in order slake their thirst for teen and pre-teen ass, I guess. They probably ought to have been moved along as well.
The showers at Heebie U aren't actually communal. Just the changing area is.
I'd probably be shy about being totally naked and scrubbing myself in a place where students could see me. I wouldn't fault other people who showered communally, though.
I don't know what's with my browser. Personal info is not sticking.
I'd actually be kind of shy about communal showers with other women generally. Naked in a locker/changing room, no problem, washing myself seems awkward. But probably just because it's unfamiliar -- I've never had a communal shower situation. I'm sure I'd get used to it.
I wouldn't want tampons thrown at me and kickstarting my evil telekinesis.
I would guess that a leerer of this sort is (because if it was only the view he was after, he could look at the Daily Mail or Huffington Post) specifically turned on by the non-consensual nature of the thrill, and thus would also guess that every leerer is basically a harasser waiting to work the courage up to be more obviously unpleasant.
Exactly. We bust the guys with shoe cams and such from time to time and needless to say they're a bit fucked in the head. IME a good way to move creepy but not blatantly law breaking people along is for a cop to start openly taking pictures of them.
My freshman dorm had a smallish two-head shower and we went in it two at a time. I found out that the next year's lot would only use it one at a time. The same went for my sophomore dorm. Apparently some kind of zeitgeist determines whether the group is going to semi-communally shower or not. (For rob and/or molly, the dorms in question were Randall and Pinkney.)
101: You are not alone. I think there are a fair number of us. We should have a secret handshake or something.
I'd actually be kind of shy about communal showers with other women generally.
IME, you need a critical mass of people acting like it's normal, and then it feels like no big deal. I used to go to a women's gym in Berlin where there were always at least 1-3 other women showering and walking around naked, which made it really easy. Whereas when I occasionally shower at my current Y, I have to force myself to be unselfconscious, and I still am somewhat carefully draped in a towel while walking to and from the showers.
At that Berlin women's gym there were also a lot of women of turkish descent who would shower while wrapped in those long cotton things. I have tried to use one of those at a turkish bath, and man, being graceful with this sodden strip of fabric wrapped around you in strategic ways is really difficult.
Oh, that I've done in Samoa; wrapped up in a sarong and washing underneath it. It was made easier by the fact that the locals were staring at us all fairly constantly, so being naked under a wet piece of cotton didn't make me any more conspicuous than I'd been fully clothed and dry.
Showering at my gym is fine, but we've got cubicles.
Slake is such a great word. I have taken to saying* I am slaking the cat. I'm not even sure you can use it that way.
This is a really sad and gross thing to admit but it's about me at age 13 or something but I went to a camp** that had communal showers and I'm pretty sure I showered once in two weeks. I imagine I was what I have learned to succinctly term "malodorous" in progress notes. It is short-hand for "OH MY GOD."
*I don't know who I'm saying this to. Maybe just the cat. But I'm certain I've said it out loud at some point in recent memory.
**A German language camp. I like to joke about how thrilled my grandfather was to hear that I was going to German camp. And I didn't even mention the showers!
At the city pool, Margie and I were the naked women setting the unselfconscious norm (we hope). Alice was all the awesomer for joining us in that, fifteen years older.
I think I've told how it horrified a couple of the girls who came in at the end of the lap swim hours. And some of the 5-8 year old girls would stand and start, mouth open. But they should see us! We are a few examples of what they might look like one day.
"Do bagpipers have a problem with upkilters?"
Very much so. Especially with the whole "are you a true Scotsman" thing.
I am in the nakedness is normal camp. I spent so much time in and out pools and locker rooms growing up that now I just dont give it much thought.
I think the locker room rules are fairly easy:
No dancing while naked.
No staring.
No vigorous applying of lotion.
No spreading of legs.
No sauntering or wandering around unless covered by a towel.
No sauntering or wandering around unless covered by a towel.
This definitely didn't hold at my Berlin gym. The locker room had the area with the lockers, a big open shower space, and then a sauna in the back, with lounge chairs around the outside of the sauna for cooling down between sauna sessions. Lots of naked sauntering.
118:
Sure. There are different rules for the Europeans.
We belong to the JCC now. Relative newcomers to the US tend to saunter more.
114: You can be naked in a city pool?
There really isn't that much of a "power imbalance" between university students and their professors. Show me, on the doll, why you would think otherwise.
(I mean, a professor can't usually get you sacked from university, they can't withhold your bonus. These days they can't even give you a low grade if you don't want them to.)
Sure. There are different rules for the Europeans.
Germans, Dutch and Scandinavians seem to never wear anything unless they have to. I think it's a kind of Nordic machismo - we live in the frozen north and we don't care! Other Europeans seem closer to the American norm as I understand it.
I have taken to saying* I am slaking the cat. I'm not even sure you can use it that way.
There's a Sun City Girls song called "The Vinegar Stroke", and I can't see it without thinking that the title refers to some exceptionally perverse sexual move.
I now think the same about "slaking the cat". Can one slake the cat using the vinegar stroke, I wonder.
Chis, ttaM, Alex, are you going to tell him, or shall I?
It is British slang, yeah. See the profanisaurus:
http://www.milkinfirst.com/dictionary/v.htm
Somehow I was afraid it would sound sexual.
121: FFS they can destroy your entire academic career. I've seen it done. Don't be stupid.
Further to 128 - "seen" as in multiple credible sources giving the same explanation for an otherwise hard to understand change of career plans by a peer.
I believe the last comic here is on point about locker room nudity.
Wasnt locker room nudity an Ogged thread too? Something about him approaching young boys while naked. Maybe I am remembering it incorrectly.
It doesn't involve locker rooms, but there is this post by Becks on a related topic.
131: Nudity, It's Not Just For Old Guys Anymore
See also: Newcastle United FC supporters. Well, it's almost Scandinavia.
Other Europeans seem closer to the American norm as I understand it.
Saunas in French ski resorts are coed and nude. French people on beaches don't seem to have much in the way of nakedness issues.
135. Yeah, but... beaches and saunas. Probably those are relatively relaxed everywhere. What about bog standard gyms in bog standard towns and cities?
There are downsides to being naked in a bog.
137: Right, no one notices.
(I wrote that having read "bog" as "blog" but on preview see that I am wrong. But not completely wrong.)
140: GAHHHHHHHHH! Ow ow ow ow ow.
Ow.