My roommate is astoundingly hot. Her room is being repaired (the ceiling fell in), and, at her request, I’m letting her and her boyfriend sleep in my room while I take the couch. I’ve been able to contain my attraction just fine up to now, but the minute she entered my space I had this feeling that all bets are off. I’m considering spying on her with a hidden surveillance cam. If I had video of this girl naked, let alone being fucked, I could happily beat off to the footage for the rest of my life. Obviously it’s a breach of trust, and I’m a shitty roommate for considering it. I have a few concerns. Is this normal? Assuming that there’s no way she could find out and that I kept the video to myself and myself only, would it be so wrong? What is her reasonable expectation of privacy once she enters my room?
Thanks In Advance
Before we get to your tech-related queries, TIA, a word about a young man in Florida with tech-related troubles.
America’s current teen-sex panic—it’s always something—is about “sexting,” teenagers sending each other pictures of their sometimes-underage junk, their frequently underage racks, or their young and dimpled/pimpled rear ends. (Oh, if only we could return to the comparatively innocent and entirely fictional days of “rainbow parties”!) Shortly after the kids went crazy for sexting, the authorities went crazy for prosecuting kids for sexting. Take Phillip Alpert, an 18-year-old in Florida who got mad at his girlfriend and forwarded a digital photo of her naked to dozens of her friends and family.
This Alpert kid (he had only just turned 18) pulled an asshole move—the gaping asshole of moves—and he owes his girlfriend, her friends, and her family an apology, restitution, and a pound of flesh. (And I mean that pound.) A just, proportionate punishment might involve, say, nude pictures of Alpert being displayed on a billboard in Times Square. For a year. Instead, Alpert was convicted of distributing child porn and “sentenced to five years probation and required by Florida law to register as a sex offender,” CNN reports. “You will find me on the registered sex offender list next to people who have raped children, molested kids, things like that,” Alpert told CNN.
A message for concerned parents, outraged school officials, and teen-sex-obsessed prosecutors: We’re gonna have to either make it illegal for teenagers to own camsphonescomputers, or we’re gonna have to give them drugs to delay the onset of puberty until after they’re 18. If we’re unable or unwilling to do those things—technology is hard to contain, and delaying puberty could have unwelcome health consequences (although it would have spared Levi Johnston’s DNA from the ignominy of mixing with the Palins’)—then the intersection of horny teens and newer technologies is going to require us to rethink the simplistic application of laws that criminalize the possession and distribution of sexty (ugh) pictures, particularly in cases where they were created by teenagers, for teenagers.
Yes, Alpert was a douchebag; yes, it was wrong for him to forward that picture to embarrass and humiliate his girlfriend. But if Alpert is a child pornographer and a sex offender, so are millions of today’s teenagers. They’re all e-mailing each other pictures of their junk. Making an example of one unlucky asshole who got caught isn’t going to stop teenagers from sexting each other anymore than making an example of hundreds of thousands of unlucky pot smokers stopped people from smoking pot.
Okay, TIA, on to your question: While it’s normal to contemplate, even obsess about, something you know is wrong, secretly videotaping your roommate, even if she’s “in your space,” isn’t just an asshole move. It’s an illegal move in most places, and the consequences for asshole moves involving digital images, as illustrated above, can be dire. And until submitting to
videotaping is widely understood to be a known risk of sleeping in someone else’s bedroom, your roommate and her boyfriend have an entirely reasonable expectation of privacy.
As for no-way-she-could-ever-find-out, I could sneak into your house and use your toothbrush as a sound, and you’d never find out. And although it would hurt me more than it would hurt you, TIA, it would still be wrong—even if there was no way short of DNA testing that you would ever find out. And while you may intend to keep the video to yourself—such the gentleman—what if your laptop gets stolen? What if you take your computer in for repairs and someone makes a copy? Digital images—photos, video, whatever—are too easy to lose control over.
Don’t do it, TIA.
I am a 30-year-old female with a live-in boyfriend. While we’re not without our problems, the relationship is wonderful. My only big issue is that I don’t enjoy cohabitation. Before living with my boyfriend, I lived in a studio apartment, my little castle, and I relished having my own space. I would love to go back to us each having our own domicile, but I am afraid of losing him. The thought has been met with such criticism by my friends that it makes me wonder. Is it unusual to want your own space?
Independent But In Love
I know a nice, loving couple—married, straight, with kids—who each have an apartment in the same building. The kids’ rooms are in mom’s; the meals are prepared and eaten at dad’s. They decided to live like this because, like you, they both liked having their own spaces.
You can do it, too, IBIL. Stop worrying about what other people think and start being honest with your boyfriend about your preferred living arrangement.
As you’ve proven in the past with “santorum” and “saddlebacking,” you have considerable influence. So to reward the Vermont legislature’s recent decision to override the governor’s veto and legalize same-sex marriage in that state, why not encourage your listeners and readers to purchase products made in Vermont? And Iowa? Think of it: Your millions of fans could trade in chocolate body paint for maple syrup as the sexy edible substance of choice, all the while supporting this legislative victory and (we hope) spurring others like it.
D.J.’s Fellow Gayby
P.S. I have absolutely no stake in Vermont’s economy. I just want my dads to be able to marry
one day in the state where my family lives.
That day may come more quickly than we think, DJFG, thanks to the bravery of elected officials in Iowa and Vermont. As for rewarding those states: Like most Americans, I consume way more corn syrup than a person should (that shit’s in everything), so Iowa is covered. And I will make sure the next bottle of maple syrup I purchase is from Vermont—but I’ll be pouring it on my pancakes, thanks, not my boyfriend. Food is for after sex, people, not before, and never, ever during. Food is not a sex toy, not even chocolate.
ATTENTION JOURNALISTS: The deadline for this year’s Sexies—the Sex-Positive Journalism Awards—is approaching. The Sexies recognize writers “who stick to high journalistic standards” while reporting about sex “in a climate of repression and misinformation around human sexuality.” More info at
www.sexies.org.
Miss Jaded: ‘My problem is that Dan is a respected and heeded sex advice columnist who . . . stated that food is not a sex toy as if it were fact, and one which could bring hell and damnation upon any (even thoughtful) transgressor. It isn’t. It won’t. And I believe Dan was negligent in his wording.
I would agree with you about the wording. Ideally people would not state subjective feelings as if they were objective. But people do that all the time (“that movie/concert/restaurant was horrible” instead of “I hated that movie/concert/restaurant”) and I’d sure like to think that the readers of Dan’s column are intelligent enough to understand that when he writes “Food is for after sex, people, not before, and never, ever during.” he is not stating a fact, but merely expressing his opinion in the manner people frequently do.
Since you appreciate precise wording, you might be interested in Googling “E-Prime” (short for “English-Prime”). Proposed by D. David Bourland, Jr. in a 1965 essay, E-Prime is a very interesting idea: a modified form of English which eliminates all forms of the verb to be: be, is, am, are, was, were, been and being (and their contractions). Writing in E-Prime communicates the writer’s subjective experience (or feeling) rather than the writer’s judgment. Therefore, it makes it harder for a reader to confuse a statement of opinion with a statement of fact.
Inviolable Rule of Nekkid Pictures #1:
Somebody other than the person the pictures are intended for WILL see them. Period. World without end, amen. If you’re not prepared for that inevitability, don’t take them/pose for them.
I love the way you don’t even address that if he had a modicum of respect for her as a human being he wouldn’t invade her privacy – you clearly divined right off that he has no respect for her as a human being (to him she’s a thing he wants to fuck and that’s all), so you knew that would be a wasted argument. Well done.
Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo lived in adjacent houses with a sky bridge between the second floors. This has always sounded like the perfect set-up, less the adultery.
About the Alpert, WTF are the parents doing! Seriously why is everybody so gun-ho to blame the the kids, media,laws or celebs. When the parents are doing Sh#t.
I’m glad at least one person mentioned “Tampopo.” Chocolate sauce and whipped cream as sex toys may be better suited to a John Waters film than the bedroom, but a live prawn? A live prawn!
Hurray for recognition that being together does not have to mean living together! I’ve been with my man 8 years, and we would still rather live in our own places – now, if only house prices were low enough that we could actually achieve that….
IBIL,
This automatically reminded me of Eric Idle and his book “The Greedy Bastard Tour” when he explains that his marriage is successful because he and his wife share separate bedrooms. The rooms are decorated completely to their own tastes and they wake up at different times and just do their own morning routines and it’s great for them.
Thought I’d share.
I have a friend who lives ‘with’ her boyfriend but they each have their own rooms on the property. She hates the idea of cohabitation and I respect her choice.
Your ‘friends’ are douchebags. They should be supportive of what makes you happy. Maybe they are just hating because they didn’t think of it first…
“Side note: Dan makes a curious comment that even if the peeper intends to keep these videos to himself, what if his laptop is stolen or if his computer repairman posts them on the internet? I find that curious, because don’t those dangers apply equally to all dirty videos/pictures? Is Dan suggesting that nobody take consensual x-rated shots either?”
When it’s consensual, the people being filmed get to decide for themselves whether THEY want to take that risk. When it’s forced, there is obviously no such choice.
Stolen or not, it’s an awful violation of privacy. Rape and peeping aren’t the same, but they require the same kind of mentality — that the offender is somehow entitled to use women’s bodies for his pleasure, and that the women’s opinions, desires, and RIGHTS are irrelevant. (Women are people, you know, and have a right to privacy just the same as men.)
The most ironic thing about some of these bs teen sex panics is that they often become a case of reality following fiction. Kids in my school would hear these news stories and think OTHER kids were doing them and start the practice themselves. The colored bracelets fad that was all over the news comes to mind.