Sexuality
What does Voyeurism mean?
Arousal from watching someone in intimacy — naked, undressing or having sex — with or without that person’s agreement.
Definition
The turn-on here is looking. At a party, club, couple or agreed film, one person watches and the other knows and accepted being seen. The same word covers someone who peeped through a window, a keyhole or a hidden camera, without the observed person knowing. Whether the person being seen agreed is what separates the party from the peep.
DSM-5 names voyeuristic disorder the adult pattern of recurrent arousal from watching an unsuspecting person naked, undressing or having sex, over months, when there was an act with a nonconsenting person or distress that gets in the way of life. Watching or recording intimacy without agreement can be a crime under the law of the country.
Origin
Voyeur is French: one who sees, from voir, to see, from Latin videre. English borrowed it in 1889; voyeurism is attested in 1913. In everyday English the window spy is also a Peeping Tom, from the Lady Godiva legend — Tom who looked when he was not meant to.
History
In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries psychiatry used the word for pleasure in seeing without being seen. Novels and film took the figure. Agreed scenes — club, app, couple — took the same name for watching with consent. In 2013 DSM-5 split the interest from the disorder: only the pattern with an unsuspecting person, months, an act or distress. Fetish glossaries and “is voyeurism a crime” searches now show both senses on the same page.
How it emerged
Talk needed a noun for arousal that comes from seeing, not from touching. Medicine already used the French root for the peeper. Both senses stayed in one word; what changes in practice is whether the person being seen agreed.
Usage examples
At the agreed party, his turn-on was watching.
Filming someone who does not know is another story.
Translations
- pt voyeurismo
- en voyeurism
- es voyeurismo
Synonyms
- voyeur
- voyeurismo
- Peeping Tom