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Exhibitionism is a practice of exposing one's – such as the , Sex organ or buttocks – in a public or semi-public environment. This can be done live or virtually as with nude selfies using technologies like to take nude pictures of oneself for show.
Such a display may be innocuous: to friends, acquaintances or strangers for their amusement or sexual satisfaction. It may also be to a bystander to shock them. (2025). 9780761479062, Marshall Cavendish. ISBN 9780761479062 In the latter case it classically involves men showing themselves to women and goes by legal terms such as indecent exposure or exposing one's person.
Psychologists and psychiatrists are solely concerned with this case and speak of an "exhibitionistic disorder" rather than just "exhibitionism". This is specifically an uncontrollable urge to exhibit one's genitals to an unsuspecting stranger. It is an obsessive-compulsive paraphilic pathology requiring psychiatric treatment. (2025). 9780890425541, American Psychiatric Publishing. ISBN 9780890425541
The DSM-5 diagnosis for exhibitionistic disorder has three subtypes: exhibitionists interested in exposing themselves to non-consenting adults, to prepubescent children, or to both.
When exhibitionistic sexual interest is acted on with a non-consenting person or interferes with a person's quality of life or normal functioning, it can be diagnosed as exhibitionistic disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (DSM-5). The DSM states that the highest possible prevalence for exhibitionistic disorder in men is 2% to 4%. It is thought to be much less common in women.
In a Swedish survey, 2.1% of women and 4.1% of men admitted to becoming sexually aroused from the exposure of their genitals to a stranger.
A research team asked a sample of 185 exhibitionists, "How would you have preferred a person to react if you were to expose your privates to him or her?" The most common response was "Would want to have sexual intercourse" (35.1%), followed by "No reaction necessary at all" (19.5%), "To show their privates also" (15.1%), "Admiration" (14.1%), and "Any reaction" (11.9%). Only very few exhibitionists chose "Anger and disgust" (3.8%) or "Fear" (0.5%).
A case of what appears to be exhibitionism in a clinical sense was recorded in a report by the Commission against Blasphemy in Venice in 1550. John Wilmot, 2nd Earl of Rochester was an early libertine in England, who was known for his exhibitionism.
In the United Kingdom, the 4th draft of the revised Vagrancy Act 1824 included an additional clause "or openly and indecently exposing their persons" which gave rise to difficulties because of its ill-defined scope. During the course of a subsequent debate on the topic in Parliament, the then-Home Secretary Robert Peel observed that "there was not a more flagrant offence than that of indecently exposing the person which had been carried to an immense extent in the parks ... wanton exposure was a very different thing from accidental exposure".
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