‘I’ve Been Receiving Unsolicited Dick Pics Every Week For Years – And Until Now, I Quietly Accepted It’

Three days ago I didn’t think seeing an unsolicited stranger’s penis was a huge issue. They’ve landed in my Instagram messages - from across the world - for nearly five years since I’ve had a public social media account.

I’ve seen them all. Big and small, straight and curved, wide and long. Usually with some variation on this sentence: “suck on that babe”. And until three days ago I didn’t bat an eyelid when another landed. Indifferent was the feeling or, perhaps, numb to the explicit deluge.

That was until I read the news in Grazia that someonesending unsolicited dick pics was soon to be a criminal offence. With up to two years in prison. Thanks to the unrelenting graft of this magazine, the actress Emily Atack and Maria Miller MP, this grim activity will soon be illegal. Not acceptable or to be quietly accepted.

It was like a switch flicked and I stopped in my tracks as every unwanted image of another man’s genitalia flooded back. These were X-rated images that landed among conversations around miscarriage. These were photos of an unknown man’s penis that confronted me as I grieved my grandmother’s death in lockdown. These were images I hadn’t requested and photos I can’t unsee. When I was in the depths of postnatal depression breastfeeding my daughter it hit its peak - around five would land a week along with every written version of what would be done to me. The more blocked, the more explicit it got.

To even have a name for this soon-to-be-criminal activity - cyberflashing - was confronting. Because yes, if this happened offline it would be reported to the police. There would be repercussions and the criminal would undoubtedly face prison.

As a 40-year-old mother of two it’s terrifying that for years I’ve accepted this as part of the job. That I assumed it was just the cost of having a public account. I’d block and delete on repeat and that was all I felt I could do. I’d report things initially to Instagram and the worst offenders were swept into the ether but the rate that they were coming through, I eventually gave up. There were times when I’d even make light to friends about how ridiculous it was an anonymous avatar telling me he wanted to call me ‘Mummy’ - with accompanying penis shot.

Two words hit like a freight train: sexual harassment. The news of this onslaught I’ve faced since launching @mother_pukkain 2015 being criminal landed. I had just dropped the kids off at school and I sat on a park bench and couldn’t stop crying. It was like something had been validated and equally released. I raked through some of the screen shots I’d saved in a folder, triggered by each one. It was like I subconsciously knew I might need the evidence one day. Not everything was there but looking at the relentlessness of it was nothing short of traumatic. I stopped looking but there was immediate relief in knowing I could at some point in the future take this to Court.

Looking at what I thought I had to accept, though, was painful. And knowing that I’d never allow my daughters to accept what I’ve accepted made me feel deeply hurt and - if I’m being honest - stupid and naive. I find it embarrassing that it took me this long to recognise how invasive this truly was. And it’s even harder to consider what younger women have faced if this is what I have been getting.

Research by Professor Jessica Ringrose at UCL Institute of Education found that 76 per cent of girls aged 12-18 have been sent unsolicited nude images of boys or men. So whatever your age as a woman or however many followers you have - 1 or a million - it’s a glaring issue.

But this is what legislation can do. This is why having people like Emily Atack, Maria Miller MP and Grazia fighting for something so basic like this can do. It wakes you up to what you should not - and cannot - accept. It validates the pain of an extreme invasion of privacy.

Three days ago it helped me draw a line in the pixellated sand and say enough is enough. I move forward armed with the legislative knowledge that no woman should numbly accept cyberflashing - in its most basic form, sexual harassment - as ‘part of the job’.