On a recent early morning jog in Washington D.C., I noticed a man facing towards an alleyway that ran alongside the drugstore I was about to pass by.  The man glanced over his shoulder at me as I approached.  Before I really even registered what was happening, he turned around to reveal that he was holding his man bits out for me to see.  I quickly darted my eyes away from the man, thanked God I wasn’t wearing my glasses and accelerated my jog into a strong run to get the heck away.  While the incident was unsettling, it wasn’t too surprising.  The man looked as though he had seen better days… like perhaps he wasn’t in his right mind and perhaps he had spent the preceding night downing a few bottles of something strong. 

Fast-forward just a week later, when I was on the metro to meet a friend downtown.  Two rows ahead of me sat a man in a perfectly tailored pinstriped suit, pressed handkerchief and polished shoes.  He was leaning out of his seat a bit, scrolling through images of naked women self-pleasuring themselves.  I looked around my section of the metro car.  There were several families, a few teenagers, tourists and then more of the business crowd.  One of the little boys had his eyes fixed on the man’s screen. 

I leaned forward, “Excuse me… do you mind putting that away… at least while you’re in public?”  The man didn’t seem fazed a bit; instead he laughed and asked if I was serious.  I was serious.  And also a bit angry.  This man appeared to be in his right mind; he was well groomed, well dressed and clearly wore the appearance of affluence.  I pointed out the kids in the metro car, and he reluctantly switched to checking sports instead of looking at pornography.  One of the moms in the metro car thanked me, but several people looked at me like a crazy prude. 

I clearly felt as though it was pointless to stop and negotiate with the flasher about putting his penis away, but I felt justified about talking with the porn peruser about putting his pornography away.  Clearly, he didn’t agree with me and thought he should be able to look at all the porn that he wanted to in public, but lately I’ve been wondering, when did it become socially acceptable to look at porn in public?

The situation is not all too different from what has been happening in libraries all across the country, but specifically covered in a San Francisco library, where some patrons began to complain that pornography was in clear view on the screens of many viewers as they and their families used the public space.  As a solution, the library has placed hoods around the computers so individuals can still watch pornography without exposing as many people to the content they are looking at.  Is anyone else troubled by how normal public porn viewing seems to have become? 

I think it’s important as parents to be aware of not only the content your kids may encounter in the privacy of your homes, but also the content that they may encounter in the world outside your picket fence.  I’m afraid that, unlike encountering a mentally ill flasher, more and more of the mentally sane are going to partake in public porn viewing, leaving your kids at risk.  As a result, it’s even more important to be in regular conversation with your son or daughter about healthy sexuality.  You’ll likely have to continue to work harder to reinforce sexual boundaries and the meaning and beauty of real sexual expression as opposed to pornified sexual exhibitionism.  In addition, I hope you put your kids above your own public acceptance; maybe some people in one metro car thought I was a bit of a prude, but when it comes down to protecting the eyes of those little ones in that car from pornography, I felt as though I had to speak up.  Would you?