agonyaunt | (no subject)

Dear Prudence,

Back in January, my husband and I purchased a lovely two-story home in a quiet neighborhood. It has a large balcony above the backyard that is perfect for entertaining, which we do often. It also affords an expansive view of our next-door neighbor’s yard as well. Initially, this was not a problem. But when the weather grew warmer, things changed.

Our neighbor has a pool and he often sunbathes and lounges by his pool naked. Anyone who is on the balcony has a clear view of him wherever he happens to be. I have told our neighbor what we are able to see, and asked him to either cover up or postpone his tanning sessions for when we aren’t using our balcony, especially when our two kids (son, 7, and daughter, 10) are there. He responded that it’s his yard and he can do whatever he pleases in it, and if we have a problem with that, we should wait until he goes back inside before using our balcony. We feel this is an imposition on us and that we shouldn’t have to schedule our lives and those of our kids around his stubbornness. We are considering seeing an attorney about this if we can’t resolve the issue amicably. Do we have any recourse here?

—Involuntary Jaybird Watcher

Dear Involuntary Jaybird Watcher,

It’s certainly unusual and a bit weird that your neighbor doesn’t care at all about his privacy. Whether he’s actually free to do what he wants by his pool legally depends on the state you live in—some crack down on nudity when easily seen from a neighbor’s home, while others say it’s your yard, your rules. You could see an attorney about it, sure. But it’s worth asking yourself whether that’s worth it, and what exactly you fear will happen if your kids catch a glance of this guy unclothed, from a distance, while safely supervised by parents on their own patio.

They must know what male genitals are at this point. And it’s not as if he’s filming pornography by the pool or making obscene gestures. He has one penis, which is just sitting there while he reads his Kindle. That seems like something that, while certainly surprising and even jarring to see initially, would get old pretty fast. When you’re entertaining on the patio, my assumption is that your children will be eating, running around, fighting with each other, and begging for dessert and screen time—all things that are certainly more interesting to them than your neighbor’s body. That said, I get it—we do not normally see strangers naked and your discomfort is understandable. How about you make a trip to your local home improvement store and ask about things like screens, curtains, lattice fences, and plant barriers? Then hang in there until the end of swim season.

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We feel this is an imposition on us and that we shouldn’t have to schedule our lives and those of our kids around his stubbornness.

That is literally how that dude feels, LW - and this can all be resolved much more cheaply and amicably with a simple trellis and some fake flowers than with the long arm of the law.

Why do people make up problems for themselves?

I do not know.

I wonder if LW is being intransingentt because there's nudity involved. There's a cute essay that goes around Tumblr that starts with "the problem with Americans is that they haven't seen their grandmother's tits." It discussses how Americans, as a culture, consider nudity always sexual and usually shameful.

It took some excavation, because the OP, along with a lot of the Tumblrs involved in the transmission, has deleted, but here you go.

anonymous asked:
boobs shouldn't sag like that

asirensscng answered:
what a funny way of admitting that you've never seen a pair of boobs outside of porn

that1betch:
I always think of one of my co-workers at a husky farm near Inari, who told me apropos of nothing while we were clearing out dog shit together that he thought the reason Americans are "like that" ("like what, Veikka" got the response "you know what I mean") is because "they never see their grandma's tits." His logic was that "in Finland, you go to the sauna with your grandma from when you're a baby, and you see her naked, and this is years and years before you ever see any porn, so you know before you see any of it that it's temporary and fake. And when you get a girlfriend later, you know it's only a matter of time before her tits look like that too, you accept this. And Americans don't know that! They don't! They look at porn, and then they get a wife, and then they're surprised and bitter when she gets old - it's true!"

Like, to be clear, I think Veikka's analysis might have been missing more than a bit of nuance, this is the same guy whose motto was "Driving 600km south to Rovaniemi to get therapy is expensive, chopping wood till you don't care about it anymore is free", but I do occasionally still look at some British or American take online and think to myself, in his voice, "they've never seen their grandma's tits"

Preserved on this relevant Reddit discussion:

https://www.reddit.com/r/tumblr/comments/okuyro/the_things_you_learn_in_a_finnish_sauna/#lightbox

Edited (to adjust some links.) 2024-07-30 01:36 (UTC)

Yes this! I think he has a very good point!

Good god. Use the backyard rather than the balcony during the times when your neighbor is out sunbathing, or just learn to avert your eyes from his space. It’s really not hard with some practice.

It looks like LW is concerned about their kids seeing the neighbor sunbathe. And telling children to avert their eyes when the children don't want to? Wastes your time and annoys the child. (On second thought, it teaches the children their parents' values oppose watching naked sunbathing, and that looking at naked people should be done with discreet glances rather than overt staring. Learning that isn't a waste of time.) I agree with C&F that a visual barrier on LW's side of the balcony would be useful. Engineering controls!

I’ve been a parent so long that that didn’t even register with me. Some parents get so weird about stuff sometimes. Your kid points out that someone’s naked, you just tell them that some adults like to do that and then move on as if it’s totally uninteresting. Kids will gawk a little and then realize it’s no big deal and lose interest. But if the parent makes it a big deal, then the kids will usually become obsessed. Some parents are genuinely their own worst enemies when it comes to getting their kids interested in stuff that the parents don’t want them to get interested in.

Gosh, LW, how will you ever have people over for dinner without a view of your neighbor's backyard!?!? /sarcasm.

Get some screens and grow up.

Imagine wanting to call the cops or hire an attorney because your elderly neighbor likes a little sunlight on their private parts. Who thinks of that before, like Prudence suggests, a lattice with some nice climbing ivy? It'll keep your house cooler in the summer, too!

You know, I understand not *liking* this or finding it uncomfortable, and I don't think it's way out of line to have one polite conversation along the lines of "Hey, we didn't know if you knew we could see your bits from our yard, are you open to negotiations on the subject?" But if the answer is "I like to be naked in my yard and I think you should just not look," you have to accept that! It's just a part of sharing the world with other people sometimes.

There's a guy who lives opposite us who (I assume) thinks his bathroom window glass is much more opaque than it actually is, and we have a ringside seat to his morning shower from our living room. I mean, he's in his own bathroom so it's not quite the same thing as nudey sunbathing, but it's on the same spectrum. That's life, man. When you live near other people, sometimes privacy has to be maintained through a certain amount of mutual pretence. That's not a bad lesson for your kids to learn.

And I think minoanmiss's point is a good one. A lot of people seem to feel that nudity is always sexual, and therefore if you happen to see someone naked you're somehow being involved in a sexual act against your will. And...you aren't. That's just factually not the case and you need to adjust your thinking on the subject. That's also not a bad lesson for your kids to learn.

Edited 2024-07-29 23:36 (UTC)

Yes,

sometimes people are naked because

a) they like sunshine on their skin

b) they are desperate for Vitamin D (especially in Winter)

c) they have psoriasis or a fungal infection, which sunlight can help

d) they've run out of clean clothes

I spend a lot of time at home naked, and I'm not a nudist, and it's not at all sexual - I just keep running out of clean clothes, because laundry is Hard.

(My skin demands all natural fibres or it gets very angry. All natural fibres take 2 or 3 days to dry on the indoor washing line in Winter.)

There's a high, completely solid and opaque metal fence between me and my next door neighbours, and they can't see me from the ground level of their backyard,

but if they step out of their back door (which is on a raised set of steps), they can look into my kitchen window.

After one initial loud muttering of "Wear some fucking clothes!" or "Put some fucking clothes on!"

you know what they did?

They grew a hedge to screen my kitchen window from their back steps!

(My next door neighbours are two adults and a small barky dog, no children)