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!
There are some cultures that are so female unfriendly it isn’t funny, some of that has to do with religion and some of that doesn’t. That’s also one of the harsh realities of combating things like this because some people actually grew up and learn that women and worth less or some other kind of bullshit.
The other side of this coin is that in books and articles like this and heck even your comment only women get victimized or men get targeted. Yes statistically men are way more the cause of (sexual) abuse, misogyny or whatnot. Same with that women have it statistically worse partially because of some culture and partially because some people are just dicks and/or sick in their head. Some men (especially gay’s, minorities and insecure people) get (sexually_ abused by women or other men, but that generally flies under the radar way more since they are often not believed.
That’s why I always feel the need to mention it just incase it helps somebody down the line. Let’s do better together!
You’re absolutely right about sexual assault against men. I thought what Terry Crews did was heroic. Even when he didn’t want to speak out, he knew he needed to be a leader and he spoke up.
I didn’t leave it out from a lack of concern. I was just making a point by how unsafe women feel in every aspect of their lives, not just occasionally in a Reddit forum.
Trans people, especially black trans people, are targeted in at a whole other level and are often ignored in reporting. They don’t deserve that.
Crazy that we all can’t just respect each others right to live.
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.
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Choosing to fuck a piece of shit, when you know they’re a piece of shit, doesn’t make you a victim, and I’m not entertaining this pity party claim that everyone fucking a MAGA asshole is in an abusive relationship. They aren’t. But I feel for the ones who are.
Also you’re putting words in my mouth. I never said these men were “misunderstood”. I explained how they got there in the first place. Their beliefs and actions are clear as day. I do not sympathize with them more than abused women. But you don’t want to engage my actual points, you want to set up a straw man and pull your self-righteous, self-pitying manipulative bullshit instead, which is exactly what I knew would happen.
If you dine with a Nazi, you are a Nazi. If you befriend a Nazi, you are a Nazi. If you fuck a Nazi, you are a Nazi.
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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 violence–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 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.