I couldn't resist looking at the beautiful man-body chopping wood next door so I did something I think (I thought?) is really, REALLY wrong: I took sneaky pictures of him without his knowledge or consent. And now I'm doing something even MORE wrong: I'm posting one of them here:



He's not our neighbor, he just delivers and chops wood for our neighbor. And I HAVE to watch him do it, because the guy is incredibly beautiful. Not his face, just his whole old-fashioned working-man's body with that wedge-hourglass shape. The thick pants with the shiny metal details, the gloves, the white tank top, the cap, the scraggly mullet and those pale muscles built up in the shade and from working outside when it's raining, because it rains all the time where he works. He's like an 80's version of the guys in old propaganda posters like these:



I have always been in love with watching men do physical labor. Even though I felt sort of dreadful about it, I was compelled to run and get the camera. I stood in the kitchen and snapped a few pictures where he could have turned around and seen me. But before that happened, I ran into the bedroom and took pictures of him through the crack between two panels in our shoji screen so he couldn't catch me watching him through the magnifying lens of our camera. My desire to capture his image forever outweighed the voice in my head reminding me I was doing something wrong. Something I've seen/heard of other people (men) doing that sickened me, but that memory didn't stop me from doing it myself.

You shouldn't spend time on fetish-oriented forums online if non-consensual voyeuristic photography (and other stuff) bothers you. You'll find out things that you just don't want to know and see things you weren't meant to see. Like pictures of used maxi pads guys steal out of public restrooms or photos a foot fetishist surreptitiously took of his neighbor's niece's bare feet while their family unwittingly enjoyed a barbecue in their driveway. The woman was probably in her twenties and the guy who took and shared the pictures described his sneaky method for capturing them and the type of camera and settings he used and how he managed to not get caught.

The freaky part is the way these people usually don't even acknowledge the line they're crossing, or worse, act like they're ENTITLED to snagging these things that belong to other people. Of course, half the time someone with common sense will challenge these people or point out the err of their ways, but most people don't bother to post any opposition, instead just showing their appreciation for what the voyeur-thief has "created"/salvaged for the members of the board. Or they will critique the spoils, like the guy who complained that the neighbor chick with the bare feet was so fat, how in the world could the spy-photographer possibly think anyone would be interested in seeing her or be aroused by her himself? So not only is this woman with the arched foot and a BBQ rib in her mouth being displayed on the internet without her knowledge or consent, she's ALSO having her weight criticized. AWESOME, right?

I pretend that I'm not quite as bad as these sociopaths because I know what I'm doing is wrong. But I guess that actually makes me worse because I know it's wrong and I'm doing it anyway (and those guys on the forums might know it's wrong too, they just don't waste time making a big show of acting guilty about it the way I am in all of my gross hypocrisy).

I can pretend I'm conducting an experiment or research. That I'm a writer. That the end result of provoking thought about these important issues of privacy, consent, and all SORTS of interesting things is worth the negligible or nonexistent "damage" I'm doing. And after all, it's a really REALLY grey area, right? I mean, how many people would even think me taking and posting the picture of the axe man is wrong if I didn't tell you that *I* think it's (maybe) wrong? And this isn't really a blog entry about that guy, it's about me or the collective us and the image is actually a snapshot of me -- the voyeur -- and my thoughts, not him. It's entirely possible to intellectualize it that way. He could be anybody. You can't see his face. No one will ever know who he is. Probably not, anyway.

And would he care if people DID know? Maybe he'd WANT to be credited and known far and wide as The Woodsman Who Got Trixie Hot. Of course, that brings me back to the obvious trespass of not asking for his permission to photograph him in the first place, but speaking of consequences, *I* certainly don't want to pay them. I don't want *him* to know he was chopping wood next to TASTYTRIXIE and therefore knows about our websites and where I live and can tell everyone how to find me (I'd have to tell him about our sites in order for him to give INFORMED consent, though that disclosure would be out of ethical, not legal obligation; you don't have to specify where or when something will published on a consent form, just that you as the photographer have all rights to the photos which legally you don't REALLY need to do anyway since in our country the photographer automatically owns the photos, not the model). I don't want to tell a big strong stranger with an axe and a cock that he gives me a boner and I want to take pictures of him -- LOTS of pictures. Well, I do sort of want to tell him that, but I know it's not such a good idea/could cause problems. He might be weird or scary or even if he isn't, then our neighbor (a decent neighbor, not our scary neighbor) would know about us and that would make everyone on the block uncomfortable. Most of all us.

If it were my actual neighbor out there making me hot chopping wood, I wouldn't have taken the pictures. Because that would be violating the good neighbor code of pretending each other doesn't exist. And I certainly wouldn't take pictures of his young daughter! Even if it were to record how she trespasses on OUR property, walking just three feet past me sitting in our window. Well, maybe I would (for proof of trespass only!), but I wouldn't post them on the internet. But maybe only because I'm a pornographer and could get in trouble for it just by virtue of that fact.

When I pondered these things aloud to Delia, she doubted my assertion that if it were a woman out there, hanging laundry or washing a car, I totally wouldn't have taken the pictures. She's probably right. After all, I took this picture (without her knowledge/consent) of a hot redhead fishing because she had a really great ass:



It's the kind of picture you can get away with taking in public and even sell prints of in local galleries that don't have any artistic standards. It's the kind of picture no one (except other wankers) would bat an eye at as long as you keep up the appearance of it being completely innocent. Even though I know that I took it purely out of sexual/sensual interest. And I know that any straight man with a camera would have taken it for exactly the same reason (or to prove to himself that he wasn't) whether he would admit it or not, and there are tens of thousands of men with cameras with hobbies or professions doing exactly that. I know a lot of people who take completely g-rated innocent-looking pictures and jack off to them later even if they didn't intend to when they snapped them.

Part of me feels justified in posting this because there are so many writers and artists and reporters and network television stations getting away with doing so much worse with absolutely no compunction. It's only people like me who openly call ourselves pornographers who are recognized for exploiting and objectifying others even though we play be much stricter rules and are faced with much harsher penalties for violating them than any other industry would be. But that train of thought is just another diversion from asking myself how *I* would feel if my neighbor were peeping through a crack in the blinds taking pictures of ME doing yardwork or thinking he's not home when I sunbathe naked on our deck when actually he's hidden behind a tree and rubbing his crotch against its bark. Of course, I'd feel totally different about it if I had a teenage son or daughter being spied on. But the guy chopping wood is clearly an adult. And he wasn't sunbathing naked. And again, I don't think I'd care if my neighbor secretly stood in his kitchen taking pictures of me as I walk around OUR kitchen at night topless (which I do sometimes with the blinds open, not because I'm an exhibitionist but because I just don't care) as long as he didn't hang them in the post office with our address printed on them or something.

Meh. Now that I think about it, I really don't care. As long as someone stays on their own property (not sneaking onto mine or a stranger actually stalking into the neighborhood to spy on us or putting on an obscene display of masturbating and shooting cum into our yard) and is only taking pictures of what I do outside or with the windows open then who cares. It's kind of fucked up, but not a huge deal. It's not like I'm lying in wait every day, conducting surveillance on everything that our neighbors and their visitors do.

After completely overthinking this, I absolve myself from guilt. It's harmless and legal. But I guess if I give myself permission to be an opportunistic voyeur-perv-photographer that means I have to stop being shocked and offended by other people who do the same thing. I'm reluctant to do that.

Here's a couple with a sleeping bag and no picnic basket that I shot entirely because I knew they were setting out to lie down together and *do things*:



If I hadn't admitted that and had posted the picture somewhere else, like on a stock photo site using woman-approved keywords like "young love" and "spring romance" (and cropped out our cracked windshield & wipers giving away that I'm like a dirty old man doing a drive-by) it would probably be perceived in a totally different way. It would just be a bad snapshot. But because of who I am and what my site is and my confession that I'm a voyeuristic pervert who sees sexual potential everywhere, it seems more DIRTY and exploitative than it really is. What if a local television station were doing one of those weather "stories" about how people were still going to the beach even though it's overcast, and those two lovebirds were in the background? Would the station be committing an evil deed? If not, why does it seem so evil when I do it and admit that I see erotic potential? And why would it seem so much grosser and more evil if I were a man instead of a woman?

Bah.

Speaking of double standards and being a horny woman, check out this post by Goddess Glory where she describes her friend getting mad at her for drooling over a waitress's ass at dinner:

". . . my mind was completely focused on fantasizing bout our waitress' beautifully ginormous ass sitting on my face, cutting off my air supply."

Labels: confessions, ethics, fetishes, gender issues, neighbors, PHOTOS, privacy, sexual consent, TURN ONS, values, voyeurism, wankers

posted by Trixie at 5/22/2009 12:47:00 PM -