“There were some frightening moments early Wednesday in Seattle’s Lake City neighborhood for two young women sharing a house. One of them woke up to find a naked intruder lying right beside her. Police are calling the crime ‘burglary with sexual motivation.’ ‘My girlfriend called me around 6 a.m. screaming that there’s a man in her bed and to get out of my house because the police were afraid he had been watching both of our residences. She was hysterical,’ said a friend. That man was naked, and once the screaming started he apparently grabbed one of the women’s silk robes and took off on a bicycle. Neither of the victims was physically harmed, but both were emotionally thrown for a loop. Investigators looked at some window screens that had apparently been cut out and took away samples of potential evidence, including from a chair that had been pushed up against the side of the house. There’s speculation that the man was already inside when the two women came home late Tuesday night and went to bed. Making matters even more bizarre, friends of the women say the suspect left behind pornographic magazines and some of his DNA. ‘He wasn’t afraid. He was in and out of the house taking things and doing things, watching them, putting up pornographic material in their rooms. He wasn’t afraid of getting caught,’ said the friend. The two victims gave the following description of the suspect: white male, 20 to 30 years old with a thin and wiry build, brown, receding hair that ‘looks like a bad dye job,’ and ‘pasty white skin.’” — King5 (US)

The interesting thing about this case is that, like another recent incident in which a stalker hid beneath a woman’s bed for two days, it defies easy categorization. Is it stalking? But the guy didn’t appear to know his victims. Is it rape? Well, the guy didn’t physically molest his victims. Is it indecent exposure? The guy exposed himself to strangers, but he did it in a private place. Is it voyeurism? It may come closest to that, and yet it leaves you with an oddity. Usually a voyeur remains on the other side of a window or camera lens. But in this case the guy pierced the veil, stepped through the looking glass, progressed from staring to sharing a bed. Even the official charge against the man indicates some difficulty in deciding what the crime was. What the hell is “burglary with sexual motivation?” It’s as senseless as “sex with the intent to rob.” Or is it?

Even more ironically, this act — whatever it is — may be ballsy but it also seems pretty natural. It’s rare because it takes gumption, but at the same time you can easily imagine this being a tempting thing to do (for a sex criminal, anyway). So how can something so natural defy categorization? Is it because the categories we use to consider perversion are too rigid or ill-defined? After all, many of them date from the late 19th century and were formed under other pressures, moral and historical. Do they remain appropriate for our pervy internet age?

Perhaps this case requires a new category, then. If voyeurism describes the kick you get when ogling somebody, then we need a new word to describe what happens when you cross the line, break into her house, climb into her bed, soak up the orgones from her sheets. Intruderism — breaking and entering “with sexual motivation.”

VideoBox

It's like the iTunes Music Store for Porn. Download unlimited high-quality video for only $9.95/month.