Flashers

Why do men (almost always men) expose themselves to strangers?

The redoubtable Diane Ackerman ( A Natural History Of Love ) suggests that what happens after the victim shrieks and runs reveals the motivations: “The flasher rarely runs away.  Flashing the woman fills only the smallest part of his need.  His real goal has many aspects, including the woman’s upset and disapproval; the humiliating arrest; the appearance in court; the embarrassment to his family; the risk of losing his job.  These are the critical elements of exposure for the flasher.  A flasher is nearly always someone with low self-esteem, a bankrupted version of his sexual worth, and a deep sense of failure as an individual.  In his own eyes, he is the unmanliest of men, a limp member of society, a worthless male.  By hauling out his penis in public and causing consternation, shock, chaos, he proves to himself how important his penis is after all, important enough to stop traffic, to make a woman faint, to get him arrested, to ruin his career.  That’s a mighty powerful penis; so he must be quite a man after all.”

Flashing allows the castrated to imagine himself a phallic god.