re: most men don't expect strangers to take a snapshot of their package when they wear shorts in public

That's because men generally wear fairly long and baggy shorts, not crotch huggers. Besides, from what I've heard, women are much more interested in checking out a man's ass. No?

re: There's a vast difference, though, between slipping a camera between a woman's legs and taking a poignant photo of the homeless man sleeping in a doorway

Perhaps you should ask the homeless man how "poignant" he thinks your snapshot is. He'd probably tell you to fuck off, then embark upon an incoherent rant about the space aliens that have taken over his brain.

re: While checking out the lizard exhibit...

Freud would have a field day with this one.

re: On the other side of this online trend are women who are also publishing photos of unwilling subjects -- only their subjects are the men who sexually harass them in public.

Or so they may claim. How many of these "harassers" might actually be ex-boyfriends, who previously took the pics of their formerly quite willing girlfriends? Or who are perhaps even completely innocent bystanders who, doing what men naturally do, merely scoped out the babe in question? That's why the burden of proof is always on the accuser.

I'm afraid that we live in a society where the government has us all under constant surveillance, and where technology has now advanced to the point where citizens themselves have joined in. Everybody is watching everybody. Walk down a street in most major cities, or walk into a shopping mall, bank, etc., and Big Brother is photographing your every move -- and everyone else has a digital camera at the ready.

I'm also reminded of the opening scene in Steven Segal's B-movie epic, Under Seige 2, where the camera from a high-tech space sattelite zooms in on a babe sunning herself topless on a beach, while the guys in the control room drool. In fact, aren't all movies and television shows innately voyeuristic? Particularly when we watch "love scenes"? I mean, not many of us would otherwise be watching a strange couple in bed. Or watching some babe that we don't know take a shower, for that matter. Etc.

Is there an answer to the loss of privacy we all suffer? Well, I guess we could go "Unabomber" and roll back technology, or perhaps women could adopt a Taliban-like dress code. Barring any of this, I do not see any practical way to stop sicko paparazzi from operating in public.

Martial arts lessons might be helpful, though.

give people a peek, but nobody wants to see them on me.

I just don't think, as evidenced by some of the posts on this board (I'm talking about you Mr.E and Brightstar despite all of the good sense you've evidenced since your resurrection) that men can really understand what it's like to be a woman walking down the street of a big city.

In all respect to you, they DO understand. They understand exactly. That is what they get off on. They don't care how women feel. What do you think that makes them?

No, YOU must understand, completely and totally, that women are quite selective at who gets to see what, and where. Your idea that women love to have their privacy violated is quite the standard old perv notion that women somehow (in the mind of a perv they justify it this way) like this. Yes, some women let their boyfriends or husbands see their bodies, but understand that THEY choose who sees what, sir, not you.

If you gain some insight into someone, regardless of gender, is this good or is it bad?

If what you find out about that person turns you on, is this good? or bad?

Do men like it when women ascribe to the men certain traits of behaviors? Traits the women might not be privy to were they not already in a position to find them out?

The reason I say all this is that women say they choose who sees what. That is all fine. If this were truly the case, then it justifies either physically blinding all the men or making women wear burkas, or alternately, what they want, but with no criticism when a man rightly chooses to look her way and get turned on, even if what he sees is a glimpse of something normally covered.

I cannot help that women despise men and only use us and pretend they get turned on by us when it pleases them to be getting favors from men.

That's a good trick about the purse. It might buy you the seconds that save your life.

And "don't get in the car" is sage advice. Do you remember this recent story, about a woman with a dog and a martials arts background, who fought, but was killed and decapitated when she got into his van?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-03-23-hikers-last-days_N.htm

The car is a coffin. Better to die out in the light.

I just don't think, as evidenced by some of the posts on this board (I'm talking about you Mr.E and Brightstar despite all of the good sense you've evidenced since your resurrection) that men can really understand what it's like to be a woman walking down the street of a big city.

Since before I hit puberty (12 years old) grown men have either groped me on the street and/or the bus, catcalled me from their cars, or put their hands on me in an aggressive manner because I didn't respond to their advances.

It is exhausting and when I'm in city mode, I am a complete and utter bitch; a few male bad apples has pretty much spoiled the bunch for me when it comes to actually responding to guys who come up to me on the street or in clubs.

And I don't dress like a hooker. No short skirts (god forbid) though I prefer to wear skirts for all of the reasons AKA outlined. Wearing pants, actually, is worse because all of the times I've had my ass grabbed it's because I'm wearing a pair of jeans. Not tight jeans, so thats not the reason, but jeans do show off my womanly trunk, in which there is a fair amount of junk. Skirts are actually more modest (for me) than pants, and now I have to worry about some perv looking at my panties.

The worst groping experience I ever had, I was wearing velvet pants. They looked good, but that doesn't mean I want a 6'5" Australian giant to grab me by my ass when I'm walking by and force me to talk to him because I didn't respond to his hand gestures across the pub. (In that situation, I chose not to fight back physically because, umm, he was a giant. At least a foot taller than me and outweighed me by a hundred pounds and incredibly drunk at that. And I was in Australia, out with a bunch of American girls who wouldn't be much help in a fight.)

So yeah, what ya'll don't understand is that it doesn't matter what we wear. If you are a woman, between a certain age, and aren't deformed, (and even if you are) you have been on the receiving end of some sort of street harassment, nasty comments, up and to including sexual harrassment and physical intimidation. Look, I don't care if a guy looks at me. Looking is fine, but seriously, women have to put up with so much crap just walking around that it would be nice if they didn't have to worry that their granny panties were going to be on some pervy website. It may not seem like nothing to you, but it is to us.