Peeping Wang: A Bird’s Eye View on Video Voyeurism among Chinese Men Attracted to Men

ABSTRACT

Developments in technology and the Internet have made modern lives more convenient, yet they also created new mediums and means for sexual offending. Video voyeurism, for one, gained increasing research attention; however, most research focused on male-on-female perpetration, where heterosexual men take photos of female victims’ private parts in public places without consent or acknowledgment (e.g., “up-skirting” and “down-blousing”). This study was the first to examine male-on-male video voyeurism in the Global South. Postings (N = 226) were collected from a large web forum dedicated to Chinese men attracted to men and its sub-section on non-consensual voyeuristic images. Neutralization theory was used to guide the data analyses. Preliminary findings suggested that 1) perpetrators obtained voyeuristic images largely through taking photos of strangers’ private body parts in public restrooms; 2) perpetrators justified their behaviors most commonly by denial of victim, such as victim-shaming, victim-blaming, claiming that the victim “had fun,” the illusion of domination, and objectification; 3) perpetrators also used metaphor of the ledger, by claiming relative inexperience or that they had become a different person since the perpetration.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Dr. Steve Gold for his guidance and constructive advice. The author would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable input.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ Video Voyeurism Prevention Act of 2004, 18 U.S. Code § 1801 (2004).

² Sexual Offenses Act 2003, c. 42, s. 67 (3).

³ Rep. Act No. 9995 (2009), § 4, Anti-Photo and Video Voyeurism Act of 2009.

⁴ Public Security Administration Punishments Law of the People’s Republic of China, art. 42 (2005).

⁵ Because of IRB restrictions and concerns over the subjects’ privacy, this research did not collect any visual data.