On Indecent Exposure

One of the things I hate about flashers is that whatever they're trying to flash me is usually totally uninteresting.

I don't know if you or someone you know has ever encountered a flasher. I sure hope not. I have, unfortunately—once in San Diego, and almost a second time a couple of nights ago.

(And man, it irritated me so much that I had to create a teaching moment out of it in my Anime class. My poor students. They were probably wondering why we couldn't just get on to talking about Akira. But the good students they are, they bore with me. Thanks, everyone.)

I've heard people talking about incidents of indecent exposure before—and often in those talks there are people who find the incidents to be funny. They laugh about them and make jokes. It's a light-hearted topic to them.

Often those people are men. That's not to say that all men find crimes of indecent exposure to be funny, or that women never find them to be amusing. I think it's just a social tendency. And I realize that different things count as "indecent exposure" depending on the social context. All I know is that, in past conversations I've heard, some people find indecent exposure to be funny, and most of those people have been men.

But you know what? That one time I was a victim of indecent exposure—that shit wasn't funny at all. Nope. At first I didn't know what had just happened. It only hit me later just how emotionally violent the act was toward me. And I was left with this strange feeling of shame and guilt. What had I done wrong? Was it my fault? Should I not have been walking there, at that time? Was I wearing something strange? Did I have a sign on my face that said, "Please jerk off in front of me"?

You wanna tell me I can't walk down Gilman Drive alone at 3 PM in the afternoon? You wanna try to blame the victim? Try again. Or better yet, you wanna try and tell me this is funny? Well let me tell you—being forced to see someone's body parts—any part—is as violent as having one's clothes ripped off and exposed, steps before being penetrated against one's will. It's sexual and emotional violence, undeniable and yet not recognized enough for its gravity.

So next time you hear people making jokes about flashers exposing themselves, I hope you have the courage and decency to tell them that that's not right. Because it's not right—neither indecent exposure nor making light of it. And next time you're going to Target on Yorba Linda at Placentia, and a dude in a motorcycle helmet tries to get your attention behind the 7-Eleven by saying "Psssst" the way Peter Pan does to Wendy, be sure not to give him the time of day.