They're making women feel the need to be paranoid. And if this kind of thing becomes common, we men will face a shortage of pretty women in revealing clothing in public places. Nobody wins.

In all seriousness, though, this is a problem, and I haven't got a clue what the solution is, because as best I can tell, this is only going to become more common as it gets easier for perverts to pull it off. What will become of our concept of privacy in the years to come is anyone's guess.

On that subject, I read a sci-fi book once called "The Light of Other Days," by Arthur C. Clarke and Stephen Baxter, which was about what would happen if people developed technology that could use wormholes to make cameras appear at any place and at any time in history. The cameras begin to destroy the concept of privacy, and in one significant scene, the main character witnesses two teenagers having sex on the street. An interesting book. (There's a lot more to it than teen sex, of course, but that's the part that relates most directly to the topic of sexual privacy.) I hope nothing like that happens in my lifetime, though; I don't know that I could cope with that kind of a cultural revolution. Still, with technology continuing to move at a feverish pace, who knows what life will be like even for my own children (I'm 21), let alone the generation after?

I only hope jerks like those this article mentions don't ruin things for everyone.

"Privacy is based on an expectation and, in general, people don't have an expectation of privacy in public."

WRONG. Every one of us does indeed have an expectation of certain privacy in public, and that expectation is the one announced by wearing clothes in the first place. We do not have privacy as regards our acts, but we most certainly expect it as regards our persons. And if Ms. Gallagher believes we don't (or shouldn't), then I hope she doesn't freak out the next time some guy walks up to her and rips open her blouse.

Will he sell out to the center-right on the upskirting issue???

this is why i just about always wear what i've heard referred to as the "american burqa": a boatnecked, tailored shirt (so it can't fall away from my chest when i bend over and expose cleavage) and pants. i so rarely, if ever, wear skirts.

on the blue moons that i do wear skirts--just above-the-knee-skirts, mind you, the difference is amazing. i get whistled at, stared at, and sexually harassed at probably twice the rate, if not more, than i do in pants. it's really astonishing.

there are several problems with the argument that we don't have a reasonable expectation of privacy in public. for one thing, if we don't, and it's ok to leave the parts of us uncovered that a skirt covers, can i go to disneyland in my underwear? i mean, if a man can just look up there and it's legal, why can't i show him, or everyone else for that matter, without breaking a law, can i just skip the skirt and walk around in my underwear?

No you can't go around in your underwear - witness the laws used against say , women mowing the lawn topless. You are denied that right but if a guy wants to take a picture of your boobs while standing on the stairwell above you and publish , thats alright.

I think it comes down to the fact that men have perogatives with womens bodies that even women don't have with their own body.

And as I mentioned before it it was gay men shooting those pictures of mens crotches or say lesbians doing this there would be a major public outcry ,tough prison sentences and "justified" assaults

"I had to have my fiancé for about a whole year walk me in and out of our house," she said. "I have had a loaded gun next to my bed ever since. I constantly think someone is following me." She says she'll stare at a small sliver of her bedroom window that isn't covered by the blinds and become convinced that "someone is watching me, someone is looking."

Looking for some lawsuit loot?

No one is saying that women who put on a blouse or a skirt consciously intend to be gawked at. On the contrary, it is not a matter of individual choice precisely because these clothes are the norm. But isn't their revealing nature part of their very design? Isn't the whole intent behind low-cut tops and miniskirts not only to reveal as much as possible, but also in that process to make a suggestion of and arouse the desire for those very parts that it conceals? Imagine the metaphorical Martian observing this debate - the first question would be "if they don't want their genitals seen, why do they wear clothes that seems specifically designed for this purpose?"

I see your point, but from my reading of the article, it may be moot. Sundresses are mentioned, many of which tend to be longer, but loose--designed to be comfortable because they permit air to move freely. I am guessing that these could be around knee length, maybe longer, which would definitely be considered "modest" and "designed to cover the genitals," but under which some jerk could still get a photo if he was on the ground pretending to tie his shoe.

Hard to say if that would work or not without trying it or looking at one of the stupid sites.

I've thought about this for five minutes and have come to the conclusion I do not care about this issue at this time.

The interesting thing is that it is entirely the "hidden" that makes for the "revealing." What an upskirt photographer is going to display of a woman is always (one would hope) less than she might herself display on a beach. The context is absolutely everything for the fetishist, because it's all about doing what she doesn't want done.

The anatomizing feature of these people is one phenomenon, but pornography is always, ultimately, bits and pieces over people, a synecdoche, where the woman is used only to suggest her reproductive features, and the features are the stars. Part of this is so that the leering, lusting subject can re-project a fantasy onto the objects displayed and deny the ultimate freedom and separateness of the subject (i.e. deny the woman's reality by suggesting that she's feeling what he wants her to feel), but the forbidden clothing photographers are, one assumes, also trying to capture only the hidden.

It's hard to criminalize the boy with mirrors on his shoes. There is no doubt that what he is doing is an impulse that contains a form of rape, an attempt at taking, because if it were given (she were to display her underwear, or wear a bikini), it would no longer be hidden. The reason it's hard to criminalize this is that it is a state of mind most of all. It is the hidden and the taken that's at stake, and not really any degree of nudity. The women properly feel violated, and the voyeur feels triumph, but the law has to judge actions rather than intentions.

Until we can get empathy among our young men, we're going to have men wanting to strip women and convince themselves that, because it is not criminal, it is innocent.