Sex and Social Media by Katrin Tiidenberg Emily van der Nagel

Author:Katrin Tiidenberg, Emily van der Nagel [Katrin Tiidenberg, Emily van der Nagel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Media Studies, Technology Studies, Prostitution & Sex Trade, Health & Fitness, Sexuality, Sociology, General
ISBN: 9781839094088
Google: OQLuDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Published: 2020-07-10T05:11:25+00:00

Dick Pics

To finish this chapter, we want to address another fairly prevalent form of sexually explicit photography, which is interestingly discussed as both – a form of sexual content creation and a form of sexual social media interaction, or rather a form of response to sexual social media consumption. We are talking about dick pics, or the practice where men send photographs of their (usually) erect penises. In fact, Fig. 3, which we've already dragged through a variety of contexts to make our point, did in fact elicit a response in the form of a dick pic. There are broadly two categories of dick pics that have received their fair share of media and some scholarly attention – the welcome dick pic, and the unsolicited dick pic. The expected, accepted, or welcomed dick pics are pervasive in dating and hook up apps used by men who have sex with men and in sexting or other mediated interactional sex situations. The second category is defined by Laura Vitis and Fairleigh Gilmour (2016) as online sexual harassment similar to revenge porn, and gender-based hate speech. Sophie Gallagher gathered stories from men who have participated in unsolicited dick pic sharing for her 2019 piece in Huffington Post. These men reported frustration with online conversations or rejection, a desire to offend, a toddler-like plea for attention, a rush of adrenaline from doing something taboo, as well as being confused about what the acceptable rules of interaction are on social media as reasons for “cyberflashing.”

Dick pics were quite common in the realm of NSFW Tumblr blogs, and an erection is often present on the tributing images and videos on Reddit as well. Let's briefly discuss the nuances of the practice of sharing dick pics to illustrate, once more, how situated sexual practices and meanings are. Kat's male research participants said they had posted and sent pictures of their erections to people they presumed to be willing recipients. The female participants in the same NSFW study all reported to having seen and received both welcome and unwelcome dick pics, some of which they interpreted as lovely, and others as aggressive or disgusting. Why? The simplest way to describe this, perhaps, is to say that some dick pics are interpreted as telling a sexy story, while others are understood by recipients as symbols of misogyny. As Simon, one of Kat's participants described:

Most of the time when guys send cock shots, or use them as avatars on NSFW sites, it's telling the same story that a trench coat flasher is telling, or the guy who yells “hey baby, nice ass” out of a moving car. They don't seem so much an attempt to turn a woman on as they do an in-your-face assertion of boy sexuality or something?

The women in Kat's NSFW study agreed. Many said they felt that some men enjoyed knowing they are forcing an image of their erection onto someone who does not want to see it. This interpretation has been linked by bloggers and

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