To this day, she remembers the racing thoughts, the instant nausea, the hairs prickling up on her legs, the sweaty palms. She had shared a photograph of herself in her underwear with a boy she trusted and, very soon, it had been sent around the school and across her small home town, Aberystwyth, Wales. She became a local celebrity for all the wrong reasons. Younger kids would approach her laughing and ask for a hug. Members of the men’s football team saw it – and one showed someone who knew Davies’s nan, so that’s how her family found out.
Her book, No One Wants to See Your D*ck, takes a deep dive into the negatives. It covers Davies’s experiences in the digital world – that includes cyberflashing such as all those unsolicited dick pics – as well as the widespread use of her images on pornography sites, escort services, dating apps, sex chats (“Ready for Rape? Role play now!” with her picture alongside it). However, the book also shines a light on the dark online men’s spaces, what they’re saying, the “games” they’re playing. “I wanted to show the reality of what men are doing,” says Davies. “People will say: ‘It’s not all men’ and no, it isn’t, but it also isn’t a small number of weirdos on the dark web in their mum’s basements. These are forums with millions of members on mainstream sites such as Reddit, Discord and 4chan. These are men writing about their wives, their mums, their mate’s daughter, exchanging images, sharing women’s names, socials and contact details, and no one – not one man – is calling them out. They’re patting each other on the back.”
I know a lot of guys in the comments are saying they don’t see it so they don’t have the opportunity to call it out. And some of those guys are making good points! These communities probably don’t interact much with men that treat women with respect.
But I also wonder how much of that stuff happens and they don’t realize it’s harmful to women. Obviously sharing photos isn’t okay so that’s an easy one to call out.
It’s not a man’s fault that he doesn’t see it, necessarily. You don’t have the same experiences as women and it just doesn’t occur to you as often. Women are on alert 24/7.
Kinda like that thing about the number of guys who feel safe walking to their car at night vs the number of women. (I know some men are anxious in that scenario too, but nearly ALL women are.)
When I was an elementary school aged kid, I was afraid to play outside at my grandmas house because a man drove by yelling cat calls. This actually happened a couple times growing up.
At 14, a random man followed me home from school.
In my college there was a flyer in the restroom about how something like 1 in 6 women will experience sexual assault or rape. But really that’s just the number reported.
Every single woman I know has experienced sexual assault or rape of some kind. (I didn’t ask my coworkers to be fair).
That’s bonkers.
But I do appreciate those of you that are trying to be better! The comments here are reassuring and give hope for the future!
I don’t interact with anybody who does this. Really, outside of my wife and my close family I don’t interact with anybody. Partially due to being assaulted multiple times, my anxiety goes through the roof.
It’s horrible how some people treat each other, but understand just because I’m perceived to be part of a specific gender doesn’t mean I have meaningful opportunity to do anything about it. I’m just a human, and while I agree other humans are often bad, it’s out of my scope to do anything really impactful. I understand what is happening. It’s much much worse than you state. It’s worse in ways I probably would get banned for typing out on this site. Worse than you can possibly imagine. That’s something society needs to address, and as an individual I cannot convince other people how bad it is or how extreme of action we need to take. And not for lack of trying.
It’s good threads like this spread awareness, but reduction will not further the cause of improving the situation.
It’s not just about how you’re treated by these communities, it’s how they work mechanically.
For example, on reddit if you engage with these people, you will not only be deleted and banned from their sub, you will also be auto-banned by a bunch of opposing subs. You get one chance to participate before you need to circumvent the platform by creating a new account.
It’s simply not feasible to engage with them online in this way, and that’s ignoring the time and emotional energy you need to spend to do it in the first place.
The issue needs to addressed at a societal level. As a society we value all the wrong things in men and few of the right things. A lot of these guys end up in these communities specifically because they feel they can’t meet the ludicrous standards created for them, and place the blame solely on women instead of our wider culture.
And that was shown to be complete horseshit arrived at by defining ‘sexual assault or rape’ in a survey more broadly than any reasonable person ever would.
It’s similar to the survey in the 80s all the ACABers cite to claim 40% of cops are domestically violent–in that survey, even if a voice was raised one time in the past six months, and it was the cop’s spouse yelling at the cop, that survey dumped the relationship in the domestic violence bucket. Big surprise that 40% figure has never been replicated since, lol.
One example: at the end of a first date that you weren’t really feeling, the guy goes in for a kiss and you decline? Guess what, even if he ‘graciously’/completely accepts the denial and the date ends without incident, that went in the “sexual assault” bucket, regardless of whether the woman herself felt anything bad had happened.
Ever had sex while less than stone cold sober (keep in mind the entirety of the surveyed considered to arrive at this figure were college students)? Survey says you were raped. Doesn’t matter if you were just tipsy, doesn’t matter if you and your partner were equally drunk, doesn’t matter whether you think you were raped/assaulted, nope, we decided you were.
Stuff like that is the only way to get to a figure so absurd.
First of all, the Washington Examiner is a right-wing news outlet. They have a bias in there reporting and it shows.
Second, the number of sexual assaults on campus is likely significantly higher according to more recent information.
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/04/news-campus-sexual-assault
Last, if someone assaults a person who doesn’t believe they were assaulted, does that count?
What is that person had passed out drunk and doesn’t remember it? Is it rape now? What if that person has a learning disability or communication disability? Do you think that’s rape?
My point here is that something can be true if the person isn’t aware of it. I presume people are also more likely to say they’ve received unwanted physical interactions than to say they were raped.
You know, society used to think you couldn’t rape your wife either.
Why are you proposing scenarios other than the ones I used to specifically exemplify the fact that the measure of sexual assault/rape was massively overinflated?
Do you think “but what about the situations that are rape” is a counterargument to that? My point is that they counted a lot MORE in ADDITION to those legitimate scenarios, and that’s why such a scary number was arrived at.
The bottom line fact is, no survey etc. that doesn’t massively dilute the definitions of those terms has ever or will ever reach a conclusion like “1 in 5 female college students have been sexually assaulted or raped”. There is a reason that figure isn’t being thrown around anymore these days–it’s been debunked thoroughly.