Abstract
Criminologists and psychiatrists have interviewed and examined flashers. Criminologists, psychiatrists and sexologists have theorised about flashing; they have even theorised about its effects on women. This chapter sets out to examine those effects by recording conversations with women.1 Victim studies, sometimes called ‘victimology’, have been the subject of much controversy, not to say notoriety, because of the tendency of the (usually male) authors to blame the victim.2 Here I have not set out to ‘study the victims’ but to attempt to see flashing through the eyes of women who were flashed at, and to examine the effects on women’s lives as they define and experience indecent exposure.
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References
A. M. S. McNeil, Flashing — It’s Effect on Women (unpublished dissertation, Social Administration Dept., University of York, 1982). A copy is also held by The Feminist Library, Hungerford House, Victoria Embankment, London WC2.
See the criticism of victimology in Clark and Lewis (1977). Also the ongoing debate in the American journal, Victimology.
rhodes and McNeill (eds) (1985).
See Radzinowicz (1957) and Rooth (1971).
R. P. Snaith, MD is Senior Lecturer in Psychiatry at St James University Hospital, Leeds. These and other quotations are from a lecture he gave at Leeds University in October 1980. Dr Snaith is the psychiatrist to whom flashers are referred in the Leeds area. Quotations are reproduced with permission.
See D. Hay, Crime, Authority and the Criminal Law (unpublished thesis, University of Warwick, 1975), quoted by D. Philips in V. A. C. Gatrell et al. (eds), Crime and The Law, The Social History of Crime in Western Europe (London: Europa Publications, 1980).
Dr R. von Krafft-Ebing, Psychopathia Sexualis (New York: Putnam, 1965). First published Germany 1886.
See, for example, West (1976).
This became clear during discussion at a meeting at Leeds University following a talk by R. P. Snaith, MD.
See, for example, Macdonald (1973).
Chapter 11 of the dissertation upon which this chapter is based (not included here), examines the effects of flashing on girl children.
See S. Jeffreys, ‘Indecent Exposure’ in rhodes and McNeill (1985).
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© 1987 British Sociological Association
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McNeill, S. (1987). Flashing: Its Effect on Women. In: Hanmer, J., Maynard, M. (eds) Women, Violence and Social Control. Explorations in Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18592-4_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-18592-4_7
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