Dear dick pics,
Oh, it’s you again. I hoped you might have seen sense, since you first dropped onto my phone, a few years ago. But here we are, living in a world where three-quarters of girls aged 12-18 have seen you - an unsolicited photo of a penis. Great.
I was heading home from work that evening, minding my own business on the Tube and messaging my flatmate, when you popped up on my screen. An image I can still bring to mind now: close-up, purple, unmistakeable. I remember the shock of it. The embarrassment of being sat shoulder-to-shoulder with other commuters who might look over and see you. The fearful knowledge that your owner was among them and probably getting off on my upset face at that very moment. Who was he? Should I miss my stop and stay around other people? Get off early and take an Uber? Was I in danger?
I hadn’t even realised the Airdrop function on my phone was turned on. It hasn’t been since that day and, lucky for me, there haven’t been any more of you that I’ve seen. Instagram DMs that start with words like ‘Hey sexy’ or ‘Nice smile :)’ are deleted and blocked, without being opened. Who knows whether you’re hiding there, waiting to be uncovered. It nauseates me. No wonder it’s easier to disassociate from the idea of whoever sent you and try to forget.
So you probably think you’ve won. I can see why. A third of women are subjected to cyberflashing every year - sent an unwanted sexual image on social media or via a dating app. That number grew during the pandemic. When the actor Emily Atack made the BBC documentary Asking For It?, last year, about the thousands of dick pics and explicit videos she receives every single day on social media and the distress she feels, well whaddya know? It got worse, she admitted this week. Now, she just doesn’t really look at her Insta. As though that’s the answer to dealing with you.
No wonder women are angry about this. As much as we’re scared and distressed, we’re also effing furious. How dare you invade our phones, our daily lives, our minds.
We're angry and we're coming for you. The fight back has begun. This week, the first person (a man for, let’s be real here, it is mostly men doing this) to be convicted under the new offence of cyberflashing in England and Wales - which was introduced as part of the Online Safety Act, on January 31st - was sentenced to 66 weeks behind bars. This follows Grazia's campaigning to make cyberflashing illegal.In February, he sent a picture of his erect penis to a 15-year-old girl and a woman, who took a screenshot and reported him to Essex Police. The crime is now punishable by up to two years in prison and up to 10 years on the sex offenders register.
The joke is that this man - 39-year-old Nicholas Hawkes from Basildon - was already on the sex offenders register. Of course he was. By now, we’re not naive enough to think that these are isolated incidents, or mistakes. We’ve seen what can happen when cases of indecent exposure are left unchecked. We know that if Wayne Couzens had been stopped from flashing years earlier, Sarah Everard might never have been murdered.
We could and should have been fighting back against your existence for years. We should already have changed the narrative from what women and girls can do to ignore you, to how men and boys can be prevented from sending you.
Even the introduction of this shiny new law is unlikely to wipe you off the face of our phone screens. It demands proof that the person sending you intended to cause distress, or was seeking sexual gratification. Just hitting ‘send’ isn't enough. Had the man being sentenced this week not pleaded guilty, this ‘landmark’ moment might not be taking place at all.
Maybe, just maybe, that’s why so many girls and women don’t report you. Because the burden of proof is on us. Because it’s hard to identify the perpetrator anyway. Because, although some police forces do seem to be taking it seriously, many more aren’t - or don’t have the resources to. Because we’ve seen revenge porn cases fall apart when the defence has been able to successfully argue that they didn’t mean to cause any harm. Why would this be any different?
But at least we’ve begun in some small way. At least, a boy or man might now think twice before dropping you - a horrific, unwanted, upsetting image - onto someone else’s phone. Invading their space, privacy, mind and body.
You’ve been normalised, but sending you - and, believe me, receiving you - is anything but normal. Oh and don’t bother replying, we’ve seen too much of you already and, besides, my Airdrop is off.
Claire
If you’re cyberflashed on public transport, text the British Transport Police on 61016
This piece was adapted from Claire’s Substack newsletter Tell Me About It