Exposing Phallacy: An Exploration of Flashing in a Contemporary Context

While others flirt with the accoutrements of romance and sexiness for lovers, flashers confront the spectator with sex organs. They ask no consent, baring the genitals of which they are so proud, convinced their spectators will desire them. But they rarely do. Instead, they are more likely to object to the imposition of the male flasher and leer at the female flasher. While softcore porn is fashionable and ubiquitous, the flashers public full frontal display is still forbidden. Criminalized by the legal profession, pathologized by psychiatrists, banned under ecclesiastical law, objected to by the body politic, and deemed an urge too powerful to resist by flashers, the act is interpreted in diverse and, often, opposing ways. There are no easy conclusions to be drawn about flashers and their urge to expose, but wry, forceful and without humourless moralising, this book tries to draw out some sense of what these men and women do, what it means and why.