Our attention is captured by visual information throughout our lives for a variety of practical, automatic purposes, on a daily basis. We have all probably blinked or ducked at just the right moment to avoid being hit by a wayward cricket ball, or stepped back onto the pavement when we have noticed a motorcycle out of the corner of our eye. Visual information is crucial to our individual survival. Evolutionary psychologists tell us that it is also central to our species survival as it is used in the process of mate selection, providing at least some of the information that helps us identify sexual partners who are healthy and fertile (Fink, Hugill, & Lange, 2012; Puts et al., 2013), and this is true of both genders (Singh, 1993, 1995). In addition to these survival processes, we can consider that novelty, possible utility (what Gibson referred to as “affordances”; Gibson, 1966), and individual biases and interests can play a part in both attracting and holding our attention as we negotiate the world. Basically, people with functioning visual systems look for information and less obviously to provide information (such as, are we attending to a speaker? [Ho, Foulsham, & Kingstone, 2015]; determining if the direction of our gaze is suggesting there is something interesting or of survival value to attend to [Mathews, Fox, Yiend, & Calder, 2003]). So, looking is not, by definition, dysfunctional or pathological; it is not necessarily indicative of anything unusual.
Similarly, that looking is linked to sexual behaviour will be of little surprise, but the complexity of it and the variability are perhaps less well known and less well understood. Sexual attraction and sexual behaviour are a mixture of perinatal and postnatal influences (Gagnon & Simon, 2005; Laws & Marshall, 1990; Woodson, 2002) and reasonably we can hypothesise that what we find visually sexually interesting may be so influenced. The body genders, body shapes, and body parts that attract us are likely to be a combination of our cognitive biases (from both nature and nurture) and social conformity, resulting in the experience that some people, some things, just are “sexy”. Although it might be interesting and useful to determine if there are some shared, underlying factors that imbue sexiness to something or someone, this level of analysis has not been undertaken and may prove fruitless given the breadth of people who experience sexiness and the range of people and objects that are experienced as sexy. As such, the focus of much research in understanding the features that may result in something being identified as sexy is not so fine grained but rather is on objects, animals, people, parts of people, and people’s acts.
Even at this level do we understand why we are sexually attracted to particular people? Studies have identified that symmetrical faces are more attractive (Jones, Little, Burt, & Perrett, 2004), that particular body shapes are more attractive (Swami, Jones, Einon, & Furnham, 2009), that particular smells are more attractive (Thornhill & Gangestad, 1999) but is it really the combination of these component parts that result in sexual attraction? Swami et al. (2009) found that the attractiveness of a body shape is at least partly culturally determined (although other studies do not find a cultural effect, e.g. Cunningham, Roberts, Barbee, & Druen, 1995; Langlois et al., 2000); studies have suggested that lower levels of facial symmetry might be associated with ill health, such as lung problems (Thornhill & Gangestad, 2006); smell is more attractive if the man who is smelled has a symmetrical face and the women doing the smelling are not using the contraceptive pill and are at the highest point of fertility in their menstrual cycle (Thornhill & Gangestad, 1999). Thus, even when we can identify component parts the story is far more complex than the simple addition of the components and also, as yet, the research in many areas is not consistent in its findings. Given this situation how can we hope to understand the attraction of those who are attracted to features that do not fit with social norms? Perhaps the best method is to look for those events that can act as triggers, responses to events that are unusual or catastrophic, and develop a narrative that makes sense, being mindful of Occam’s razor to prevent us going too far off track and recruiting explanations that do not allow for testing and further scrutiny.
The fact that we identify people who are sexually attracted to features of the body that are less generally agreed as being sexual (that attraction is known as partialism ) as being somewhat unusual or deviant, such as the person sexually aroused to feet, is evidence of the power of the prevailing social norms in focussing sexuality in its broadest sense to a range of shared norms. Similarly with the individual who is unable to be sexually satisfied unless their partner wears a particular pair of shoes during sex (the strict definition of fetishism is restricted to non-living objects). Legal systems, as expressions of social authority, also act to define how behaviour is understood and where on a continuum it lies in relation to acceptable, tolerated, and forbidden. Within this, it is also important to accept that society takes some responsibility in defining the value of some visual information. Advertising, pornography, and celebrity media expose us to images emphasising both the aspirational nature and the societal power of sexuality along with it being taboo and a valid area of public interest and scrutiny. Some of Tom Ford’s campaign for their first male fragrance presented images of naked women with bottles of scent carefully placed to prevent the images being more pornographic than erotic. This is not to make any moral judgements about what is happening, that has been and continues to be covered by scholars, rather having awareness that our behaviour has to be understood within a much broader context if we are to understand it at all (Shoveller, Johnson, Langille, & Mitchell, 2004).
Another element of this context that must be appreciated is the complexity of investigating sexual behaviour beyond that particular behaviour and the physiological responses it engenders and relies on. Firstly, do adults have the introspective powers to accurately describe their thoughts and feelings related to sexual fantasy, sexual activity, and sexual feelings? If the accuracy of introspection is available, then to what extent will people honestly report, particularly if they know or suspect that their thoughts and feelings and behaviours are outside societal norms? These issues have been identified in research that has sought to understand sexual offending against children, but they remain complex (see Walton & Duff, 2017). How difficult is it to really gather data on paedophilic adults who do not ever offend against children because of their own concerns about the focus of their sexual attraction and an awareness that society frequently maps paedophilia directly onto child abuse (our current research concerned with non-offending men who are attracted to children, being investigated by Harriet Dymond, also struggles with these issues)? The issue is further compounded if we are investigating children or childhood experiences. Do children have an understanding of sexual behaviour? At what point would we define any pre-adult behaviour as experienced or performed as “sexual” in the sense that the pre-adult understands it in this way? Is it possible for an adult to provide a description of their childhood experiences without interpreting those experiences and their thoughts and feelings through the lens of their adult sexuality, adult knowledge, and adult experiences? People change, society changes and both are crucial to be mindful of in working with individuals whose behaviour currently is troubling but its roots may lie in early experiences.
Within this broader context, what do we know of behaviour that is linked to voyeurism? Studies have shown that males and females view nude images differently and, possibly, counter-intuitively. In one such study (Rupp & Wallen, 2007), males were found to spend more time, and had a higher probability of, looking at female faces whereas women who were not using contraception spent more time, and had a higher probability of, looking at male genitals. This might suggest we would expect more women to be voyeurs, given they seem to have a greater interest in viewing genitals. However, the findings may really reflect the fact that society presents naked women far more frequently than it does naked men and as such for women there is a greater novelty and curiosity to view men’s genitals when the opportunity arises, as it were. It doesn’t necessarily mean women are more driven to seek out opportunities to see naked men. This research fits with the self-reported fantasies and sexual behaviours of women (see Friday, 1973, 1975) which includes the elements of voyeurism including what Friday refers to as “crotch-watching”. So women do engage in voyeurism, but care needs to be taken in how we interpret the relevant findings.
Recent research examining the prevalence of voyeurism in a sample of people attending to treatment for sexual behaviours supports the view that although women are voyeurs, far more men identify as, or have been identified as, voyeurs. In their sample of 3951 men and 541 women, Hopkins, Green, Carnes, and Campling (2016) found that 26 of the women were classified as voyeurs (4.8% of the sample of women). Unfortunately, the paper does not report how many men fit the voyeur criteria; they used a randomly selected sample of 214 from the total of voyeurs for statistical purposes, which is equivalent to 5.4% of the male sample. However, the total sample of voyeurs numbered 607 men (Green, personal communication, 2018), which is 15.4% of the male sample.
So we do know something of sexual looking. As suggested earlier, it informs decisions about sexual partners; we are aware of the use of sexualised images in advertisements (although research suggests that the focus can often be on the sexualised imagery rather than on the product; Simpson, Horton, & Brown, 1996), and visual pornography is aimed entirely at direct sexual stimulation, whether that leads to sexual behaviour within a relationship, solo sexual behaviour, or the possible motivation towards deviant sexual behaviours such as sexual assault or rape. Thus, much of our looking behaviour may be both sexual and entirely routine and socially acceptable. Where it isn’t socially acceptable, much of it will go unnoticed because at times we do look at one another in ways that are unacceptable in particular contexts or within particular relationships, sometimes clothes slip, or we don’t close a curtain or blind. Even when we do notice someone looking, the process of identifying that they are looking at us, or at anything specific, is complex. The exact direction of gaze and the focus of that gaze are hard to accurately assess for the observer. The ability to determine if something untoward is being looked at by another person, or if we are being looked at, is not trivial, as demonstrated by the studies identifying the key areas of the brain that appear sensitive to gaze (Carlin & Calder, 2013).
Sometimes, viewing that is not considered mainstream is encouraged through strip shows and personal Internet cameras, to name a few. Sometimes, we don’t know we are being seen, sometimes we know we are being seen but not by whom (and don’t mind, as Douglas and colleagues have suggested, is the case for some nude sunbathers; Douglas, Rasmussen, & Flanagan, 1977). The differences in prevalence between the genders described earlier raises some interesting and as yet unexplored issues. Firstly, we might wonder if, as the sample described by Hopkins et al. (2016) were attending a clinic for sexual issues, do fewer women engage in voyeurism? It is plausible that as many do but fewer identify it as a sexual problem, that fewer are caught engaging in voyeurism, or that if caught fewer are convicted or reprimanded? Perhaps we are less concerned if we are observed in private activities by women, but if that is true, why would we be less concerned?