Voyeur

What is a voyeur?

A voyeur is someone who gets sexually aroused from watching another person’s nakedness, undressing or sex. The word names the person; the preference itself is called voyeurism. In the scene someone chooses it as a role, outside it it’s almost always a reproach.

Where the word comes from

From French, and it existed for the person before it existed for the preference.

Etymonline dates voyeur to 1889 as a French word in English, literally “one who views or inspects”, from voir “to see”, from the Latin videre. The oldest citation with it is five years older and comes from La Prostitution Contemporaine by Léo Taxil, 1884: “Je ne puis pourtant omettre une catégorie de sadistes assez étonnants; ce sont ceux qu’on désigne sous le nom de ‘voyeurs.’ Ceux-ci cherchent une excitation dans les spectacles impudiques” (I cannot, however, leave out a rather astonishing category of sadists; they are the ones designated by the name “voyeurs.” These seek arousal in immodest spectacles). So the watchers were filed straight in with the sadists, which set the tone of the word for the next century.

The word for the preference came much later. Etymonline dates voyeurism to 1913, voyeuristic to 1919 and voyeurist to 1955, with the note that this last one is a needless variant. So for twenty-four years there was a name for the kind of person and not for what he did.

In Dutch the word never settled into the dictionaries that describe present-day language. The Algemeen Nederlands Woordenboek of the Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal has no entry voyeur and no entry voyeurisme, while gluurder (peeper) is in it. Dutch already had its own word, and the loanword stayed the fancy alternative.

Why people call themselves this

Because in the scene, watching can be a role instead of a getting-caught.

In a space with house rules, for instance at a play party, watching is one of the ways to take part, and someone who likes that best needs a word for it. That’s exactly why voyeur does work there as a self-chosen label and doesn’t on the street: in the one case the people being watched chose it, in the other they didn’t.

Where this fits on this site

Watching without joining in is one of the most often named wishes people bring me, and usually it isn’t a fetish but a way to start somewhere. How such an arrangement is built up is on the page about the BDSM date.

Sources

• Voyeur. Douglas Harper, Online Etymology Dictionary. Supplies the dating of voyeur to 1889 as a French word in English, the literal meaning “one who views or inspects” via the French voir from the Latin videre, the citation from La Prostitution Contemporaine by Léo Taxil from 1884 in which voyeurs are presented as a category of sadists, and the later datings of the derived words: voyeurism 1913, voyeuristic 1919 and voyeurist 1955, that last one with the qualification “a needless variant”.
• Gluurder. Algemeen Nederlands Woordenboek, Instituut voor de Nederlandse Taal. Used as a negative control and as a counterpart: the ANW lists gluurder as a personal noun derived from the verb gluren (to peep), while for voyeur and for voyeurisme it answers that the article isn’t in it. So the Dutch word is lexicalized and the French loanword isn’t.

Related terms

A voyeur is the person behind voyeurism, and that page has the figures, the law and the agreements.

• Voyeurism. The preference itself, with what is and isn’t punishable about it in the Netherlands.
• Exhibitionism. The other side of the same question: who has chosen to be seen.
• Public play. The broader term for playing with an audience present, and what the law thinks of it.
• Play party. Where standing to the side isn’t standing outside.
• Cuckold. The role where the watching itself is the core of the arrangement.
• BDSM test. Where this kind of role word comes from for many people, and what such a result does and doesn’t mean.