When Jess Davies was 15, a boy leaked pictures she’d shared with him. At 18, she was a glamour model. A few years later, another man violated her trust. Then she fought back

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.”

  • randomnameEnglish
    288·
    28 days ago

    99% of men are disgusted by this type of thing, but with billions of people and instant communication. this type of thing is bound to pop up. and because normal people aren’t looking at this type of thing, they’re echo chambers of degeneracy. but it really bothers me when people use sex based generalizations for things like this. millions of people isn’t very much on a global scale.

    • floofloof@lemmy.caEnglish
      321·
      28 days ago

      I think it is more widespread than you imagine. If admiration for Andrew Tate is an indicator of seriously misogynistic attitudes, then the statistics (for the UK) are quite shocking:

      Nearly a quarter (23%) of 15-16-year-old boys have a positive view of Andrew Tate compared to only 10% of girls at this age.

      Furthermore, one-third of dads (32%) view Andrew Tate favourably compared to 10% of mums. This positive view is even higher among young dads: 52% of 25-34-year-old dads compared to 19% of mums.

      Additionally, 49% of 25-34-year-old dads believe their child has a positive view of Andrew Tate.

      Source: https://www.internetmatters.org/hub/research/research-into-online-misogyny-and-image-based-abuse/

      • aeshna_cyanea@lemm.eeEnglish
        112·
        28 days ago

        Man these numbers are horrific we need to bring back McCarthyism but for these people

        Are you or have you ever been a supporter of Andrew Tate

        • UniversalBasicJustice@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          22·
          28 days ago

          bring back McCarthyism

          Fuck outta here with that authoritarian bullshit. You truly want to hold millions of people responsible for falling victim to Zuck getting high off Cambridge Analytica and globalizing the flood-gates of shit spewing? Content serving algorithms have torn communities apart, promoted violence and hate world-wide for most of the past 20 years. That’s plenty of time for ‘re-education’ and here we are reaping the benefits.

          Hurt people hurt people. Human billionaires hurt society. Generational wealth oppressing generational trauma. Authoritarianism leads to the same power imbalance, and purging ideologies is anti-human.

      • randomnameEnglish
        101·
        28 days ago

        Maybe my opinion is influenced by my geographic position. I never would have imagined that many people of my generation support him. Where I live, saying you like Andrew Tate would be like saying you support Putin, maybe worse.

    • Bazoogle@lemmy.worldEnglish
      12·
      28 days ago

      As a man, it’s also reasonable to say this is nearly non existent among women. Does it happen? Of course. But not nearly to the scale it happens among men.

      It’s moreso a matter of semantics. If someone says “Men are disgusting”, you don’t have to take it literally. It’s conveying the meaning that there is a large enough amount of men that are doing this that it is a massive problem in nearly every woman’s life. The saying would be a bit less valid if it was so extremely prevalent. But as it stands, I can go up to just about any young woman, and they more than likely would have (at least) been sexually harassed by a man.

      So sure, with as many people as there are, it’s “bound to pop up” but saying it that way seems to undermine just how prevalent it is. And correcting a statement that expresses the sentiment that this is a large problem by saying “But not all men are bad” is counterproductive. They are talking about the systematic issue among men. You could instead respond with “Yea, we need systematic changes” or something along the lines that address the concern they are raising.

      • ubergeek@lemmy.todayEnglish
        92·
        28 days ago

        But as it stands, I can go up to just about any young woman, and they more than likely would have (at least) been sexually harassed by a man.

        Thats’s most certainly accurate, since in the US, 1 in 5 women have been raped over the course of their lives.

        So, Sexual harassment would be far more likely. I’d guess, 4 in 5 women, if not 5 outta 5.

      • randomnameEnglish
        2·
        28 days ago

        When I said it’s “bound to pop up” I was talking specifically about the online communities mentioned. I don’t disagree that there are systemic problems but I think that they were focusing on a specific and small subset of a larger problem.

        I might be wrong about this, correct me if that’s so. but because most men aren’t rapists, yet a surprisingly high number of women get sexually assaulted/raped, It seems like the problem is not that most men are predators, but that our society is letting the minority that are get away with it repeatedly.

        • Bazoogle@lemmy.worldEnglish
          8·
          28 days ago

          because most men aren’t rapists, yet a surprisingly high number of women get sexually assaulted/raped, It seems like the problem is not that most men are predators, but that our society is letting the minority that are get away with it repeatedly.

          It’s much muddier than that. Most cases of rape are someone the victim trusted. And most of those cases don’t ever get reported to authorities. So there are many men may have taken advantage of a woman, and that woman see’s him as an abuser, but nearly nobody in that mans life even knows about this. The victim may stay silent for any number of reasons. There are almost definitely cases like that involving men you know, but are unaware of what they did. As for the solution to these cases? Societal norms need to change. Consent needs to be required every time no matter what. There should never be pressure for sex, and peers should not encourage pressuring a woman into sex. Instead, the man will say the person stepping in is “cock blocking” when in reality they’re defending someone who doesn’t want to have sex with them. Men will back up other men in an attempt to help their bro “get their dick wet”. They will get women drunk in hopes they will have reduced inhibitions, or perhaps so drunk they don’t even remember the night. This is not as simple as “lock up the bad guys” when very few cases of rape involve being snatched up off the street.

          When I said it’s “bound to pop up” I was talking specifically about the online communities mentioned.

          Gotcha, I misunderstood what you were saying. I do still disagree that groups like that are bound to pop up, at least not as much as they are right now. I think womanizing groups are far more common than dedicated racist groups online. Racism has taken a massive downward trend over the last hundred years. Of course, it is not fixed, very far from it. But I also think it is undeniable that racism is less of a problem than it was 50 years ago. That is the kind of societal change we want. If the internet were around 50 years ago, the insane number of group chats dedicated to racism would have been far larger than they are now. Bringing awareness to these issues, and especially men standing up to other men, is what will help bring a decline to the number of vocal sexist pigs and their echo chambers.