Q: My roommate is
astoundingly hot. Her room is being repaired (the ceiling fell in),
and, at her request, I’m letting her and her boyfriend sleep in my room
while I take the couch. I’ve been able to contain my attraction just
fine up to now, but the minute she entered my space I had this feeling
that all bets are off. I’m considering spying on her with a hidden
surveillance cam. If I had video of this girl naked, let alone being
fucked, I could happily beat off to the footage for the rest of my
life. Obviously it’s a breach of trust, and I’m a shitty roommate for
considering it. Assuming that there’s no way she could find out and is
I kept the video to myself, would it be so wrong? What is her
reasonable expectation of privacy once she enters my room? Thanks In
Advance
A: Before we get to your
tech-related queries, TIA, a word about a young man in Florida with
tech-related troubles.
America’s current teen-sex panic—it’s always something—is about
“sexting,” teenagers sending each other pictures of their
sometimes-underage junk, their frequently underage racks or their young
and dimpled/pimpled rear ends. (Oh, if only we could return to the
comparatively innocent and entirely fictional days of “rainbow
parties”!) Shortly after the kids went crazy for sexting, the
authorities went crazy for prosecuting kids for sexting. Take Phillip
Alpert, an 18-year-old in Florida who got mad at his girlfriend and
forwarded a digital photo of her naked to dozens of her friends and
family.
This Alpert kid (he had only just turned 18) pulled an asshole
move—the gaping asshole of moves—and he owes his girlfriend, her
friends and her family an apology, restitution and a pound of flesh.
(And I mean that pound.) A just, proportionate punishment might
involve, say, nude pictures of Alpert being displayed on a billboard in
Times Square. For a year. Instead, Alpert was convicted of distributing
child porn and “sentenced to five years probation and required by
Florida law to register as a sex offender,” CNN reports. “You will find
me on the registered sex offender list next to people who have raped
children, molested kids, things like that,” Alpert told CNN.
A message for concerned parents, outraged school officials and
teen-sex-obsessed prosecutors: We’re gonna have to either make it
illegal for teenagers to own camsphonescomputers, or we’re gonna have
to give them drugs to delay the onset of puberty until after they’re
18. If we’re unable or unwilling to do those things—technology is
hard to contain, and delaying puberty could have unwelcome health
consequences (although it would have spared Levi Johnston’s DNA from
the ignominy of mixing with the Palins’)—then the intersection of
horny teens and newer technologies is going to require us to rethink
the simplistic application of laws that criminalize the possession and
distribution of sexty (ugh) pictures, particularly in cases where they
were created by teenagers, for teenagers.
Yes, Alpert was a douchebag; yes, it was wrong for him to forward
that picture to embarrass and humiliate his girlfriend. But if Alpert
is a child pornographer and a sex offender, so are millions of today’s
teenagers. They’re all emailing each other pictures of their junk.
Making an example of one unlucky asshole who got caught won’t stop
teenagers from sexting each other any more than making an example of
hundreds of thousands of unlucky pot smokers stopped people from
smoking pot.
OK, TIA, on to your question: While it’s normal to contemplate, even
obsess about, something you know is wrong, secretly videotaping your
roommate, even if she’s “in your space,” isn’t just an asshole move.
It’s an illegal move in most places, and the consequences for asshole
moves involving digital images, as illustrated above, can be dire. And
until submitting to video surveillance is widely understood to be a
known risk of sleeping in someone else’s bedroom, your roommate and her
boyfriend have an entirely reasonable expectation of privacy.
As for no-way-she-could-ever-find-out, I could sneak into your house
and use your toothbrush as a probe, and you’d never find out. And
although it would hurt me more than it would hurt you, TIA, it would
still be wrong—even if there was no way short of DNA testing that you
would ever find out. And while you may intend to keep the video to
yourself—such the gentleman—what if your laptop gets stolen? What
if you take your computer in for repairs and someone makes a copy?
Digital images—photos, video, whatever—are too easy to lose control
over. Don’t do it, TIA.
qI am a 30-year-old female
with a live-in boyfriend. While we’re not without our problems, the
relationship is wonderful. My only big issue is that I don’t enjoy
cohabitation. Before living with my boyfriend, I lived in a studio
apartment, my little castle, and I relished having my own space. I
would love to go back to us each having our own domicile, but I am
afraid of losing him. And the thought of being “with” someone then
going back to your own home has been met with such criticism by my
friends that it makes me wonder if there may be something wrong with my
relationship that I just can’t detect consciously.
But I want my own space. Is it unusual to want your own space?
Independent But In Love
aI know a nice, loving
couple—married, straight, with kids—who each have an apartment in
the same building. The kids’ rooms are in mom’s; the meals are prepared
and eaten at dad’s. They decided to live like this because, like you,
they both liked having their own spaces.
You can do it, too, IBIL. But you won’t be able to have what you
want until you stop worrying about what other people think and start
being honest with your boyfriend about your preferred living
arrangement.
qAs you’ve proven in the
past with “santorum” and “saddlebacking,” you have considerable
influence. So to reward the Vermont legislature’s recent decision to
override the governor’s veto and legalize same-sex marriage in that
state, why not encourage your listeners and readers to purchase
products made in Vermont? And Iowa? Think of it: Your millions of fans
could trade in chocolate body paint for maple syrup as the sexy edible
substance of choice, all the while supporting this legislative victory
and (we hope) spurring others like it. D.J.’s Fellow Gayby
P.S. I have no stake in Vermont’s economy. I just want my dads to be
able to marry one day.
aThat day may come more
quickly than we think, DJFG, thanks to the bravery of elected officials
in Iowa and Vermont. As for rewarding Iowa and Vermont, like most
Americans, I consume way more corn syrup than a person should (that
shit’s in everything), so Iowa is covered; but I will make sure the
next bottle of maple syrup I purchase is from Vermont—but I’ll be
pouring it on my pancakes, thanks, not my boyfriend.
Download Dan’s Savage Lovecast (his weekly podcast)
every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage.
Email Dan at mail@savagelove.net.
This article appears in Apr 16-22, 2009.