“A Calgary man has admitted he surreptitiously took pictures of 15 male co-workers while they used a urinal at their office building. The photos were taken over two years, as Jason Michael Weinmeier, 31, sat in a toilet cubicle with a digital camera in hand. Through a gap in the stall, Weinmeier snapped away, capturing images of his unsuspecting victims’ genitals, provincial court Judge Allan Fradsham noted in a written decision released Thursday. Weinmeier was caught after a man noticed the camera while using the washroom on Feb. 13, 2006. He later pleaded guilty to two counts of voyeurism, a relatively new charge under the Criminal Code… In a subsequent search of Weinmeier’s home, police seized photographs of 15 men using the same urinal, together with the names, birth dates, addresses and insurance account numbers of the victims, which had been downloaded to his computer. He also made notes regarding their ‘genitals and their urination habits’ and used the photographs for sexual gratification.” — Ottawa Citizen (Canada)

Admit it. How many of you presumed when reading the title that this was going to be yet another case of heterosexual voyeurism? It has become so common for guys to commit acts of video voyeurism against women that the word voyeur practically implies straight guy. But of course everybody — hetero, homo, male, female, black, white, whatever — has a streak of voyeurism. And it is particularly easy to involve yourself in it when you lust for someone or something unavailable, as Mr. Weinmeier’s presumably straight coworkers were.

While nobody likes to be subject to sexual harrassment of whatever sort in the workplace, it is almost difficult to understand why this became a legal matter. Firing the employee is a logical response. But calling the police? Given the setup — i.e. a man taking pictures of urinals, which are usually situated across from toilets, through a stall door — it would have been clear that the guy couldn’t have gotten very good shots of genitalia. And even if he did, so what? A dick, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein, is a dick is a dick. Who cares if some guy ogles a blurry half-blocked picture of your dick? You should worry more about your face, which is photographed twenty times daily by security cameras.

The creepy thing about Mr. Weinmeier’s voyeurism is not that he took pictures. Rather, it’s more disturbing that his voyeurism extended into the collection of personal information: names, birth dates, addresses, account numbers. He was building up identikits of people he was fantasizing about. Did this personal information merely give more reality to his fantasies? Or were they the locus of sexual energies unique unto themselves? It would be fascinating if he were pleasuring himself with his blurry images and, in the stead of whispering the usual things (”I’m gonna fuck your ass hard”), recited account numbers instead. 006418879, yes, 006418879, yes, yes, 0-0-6-4-1-8, yes, oh my God, 8-7-9, oh! yes!

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