If you're not familiar with Dr. Marty Klein, sex therapist and author of Sexual Intelligence, one of the few blogs I give my wholehearted recommendation to, he's one of the few members of the human species I know of who actually promotes a thoroughly healthy, rational, and sex-positive approach to human sexuality, cultivated through years of helping people through their various sexual issues and problems. As far as I'm concerned, he's one of the good guys, and there are far too few of those. I can't think of any time that I've come across anything he's said that I disagree with. I praised him on my blog once before, two and a half years ago.
Anyway, I was reading one of his excellent blogs, and I came upon a passage that really stood out and spoke to me. I'm going to pull it out of context (as such, try to ignore the fact that it's a sentence fragment), because the context isn't so important to the meaning it has for me:
"Giving yourself permission to...get aroused going braless in public"
[description: a man pulls at the waistband of his swim shorts, subtly exposing his penis]
When I read this, I realized that this is exactly what I'm seeking: permission to enjoy exhibitionism. I mean, I already enjoy it, but sometimes I feel guilty about it - because it hasn't yet been subsumed under the heading of "acceptable sexuality" (which tends to include only those acts that can be isolated to people's private bedrooms, a form of marginalization at odds with a more sex-positive approach that embraces sex as a potentially wholesome and shared element of society) - and that has a way of eating away at you over time.
Look, I'm not flashing people on the subway. I approach my interest in this sexual "diversion" with a rational concern for the concept of communal ethics. At the same time, I expect society to give me a little bit of leeway to enjoy myself (the pursuit of happiness and all that). It's a two-way street, and I expect something of a compromise. I curb my impulses to a reasonable degree, and society gives me some room to breathe. Because my goal is neither to commit any crimes, nor to become a social pariah. I just want to find a way to indulge myself, without having to feel like I'm doing something wrong.
My feelings of guilt are certainly exacerbated by things I read from both religious conservatives and faux-progressives, who feel that anything one does in public with a more or less sexual motivation is violating the "consent" (very loosely defined, and in opposition to the belief that a free country demands a public square that will be challenging, rather than comforting to its citizens) of unqueried strangers, even when it does not involve anything explicitly sexual (because we're talking mainly about mental stimulation, and not the physical kind, here).
[description: a man poses in a skimpy pair of swim shorts, outdoors in a rock garden]
As an example, suppose I want to wear a skimpy swimsuit to the pool that shows off a lot of my body, and then revel in the attention it brings me. You know, like it is acceptable and even expected for women to do. Not to make this an issue of sexist discrimination, but I think it's a relevant concern. Women are permitted to be sexual objects (however individual women may feel about this, especially feminists), while men who are in touch with their sexuality are more likely to be viewed as perverts or, worse yet, predators.
I'm not out to harm anybody. If your views run conservative, you may be somewhat offended by my choice of attire, especially if you haven't been exposed to very many men in this way. But it's not going to hurt you. And we live in a free country. Tell me why your sensitivity to exposed flesh is any more valuable than my belief that covering up is an affront to nature (and/or the god who created us this way, if that's something you believe in). You wear what you like, and I'll wear what I like. We may encounter each other in public, but neither one of us gets to dictate the other's choice of dress.
I feel justified in this stance, but I still want somebody to reassure me that what I'm doing is okay (because how else can I know that I'm not a lunatic with a warped sense of logic, who can't see how or why I'm wrong?) and that I'm not being insensitive and a menace to society because I refuse to repress my enjoyment in the sensual pleasures of life - keeping in mind what I said earlier about being reasonable and seeking a compromise; I'm not talking about adopting a philosophy of "if it feels good, do it". I just want to be given a break.
And I want us all to be happy and able to live together, by allowing each other our pursuits of pleasure, instead of insisting that everybody follow rigid rules of propriety catering to the sensibilities of the majority. I want society to tell me it's okay to be an exhibitionist; that there are acceptable outlets for my sexual desires; that I don't have to feel guilty about indulging them; and that I'm not skirting dangerously close (one dumb mistake away) to ending up on a sex offenders list.
I suppose I should take the fact that I haven't been hassled yet as evidence that I'm doing alright, although that's no guarantee of safety, and it could result in overconfidence, leading to potentially dangerous escalation. I want to feel like part of a legitimate community, not one associated with fringe acts of antisocial perversion. One that's built upon mutual understanding, and not a regimen of self-loathing. Because when you're isolated, in a minority of one, it's easy to fill up the space in your head with all the fears and anxieties your imagination can conjure.
[description: a man in a swimsuit sits atop a jungle gym, silhouetted by a stormy sky]
Addendum: As a postscript, I could make a very similar argument about voyeurism as I've made about exhibitionism here, as regards the taking of pictures of strangers in public (this is where the compromise comes in - this is a legal act; we shouldn't disparage people for engaging in it just because they have a sexual motivation), a pretty harmless activity (note that this doesn't excuse stalking/undue harassment) that people tend to overreact to.
