Abstract
A range of important studies have recently explored adult women’s experiences of receiving unwanted dick pics (Amundsen, 2020). However, to date there has been limited research that has explored teen girls’ experiences of receiving unwanted penis images in depth. To address this gap we draw upon our findings from a qualitative study using focus group interviews and arts based drawing methods to explore social media image sharing practices with 144 young people aged 11–18 in seven secondary schools in England. We argue that being bombarded with unwanted dick pics on social media platforms like Snapchat normalises harassing practices as signs of desirability and popularity for girls, but suggest that being sent unsolicited dick pics from boys at school is more difficult for girls to manage or report than ignoring or blocking random older senders. We also found that due to sexual double standards girls were not able to leverage dick pics for status in the same way boys can use girls’ nudes as social currency, since girls faced the possibility of being shamed for being known recipients of dick pics. Finally we explore how some girls challenge abusive elements of toxic masculinity in the drawing sessions and our conclusion argues that unwanted dick pics should always be understood as forms of image based sexual harassment.
Highlights
A decade ago, Ringrose et al (2012) conducted one of the first qualitative studies on youth sexting in the UK
A decade later, it appears that the central shift that has occurred in the relational dynamics of youth sexting is the normalisation of the dick pic in the social media ecosystems of young people (Ricciardelli & Adorjan, 2018)
While the majority of stories we will consider involve known or semiknown senders, such as friends or boys known at school or in peer network, it is important to point out that the majority of unsolicited dick pics first received by participants came from unknown senders
Summary
A decade ago, Ringrose et al (2012) conducted one of the first qualitative studies on youth sexting in the UK. At the time of that research, speaking to young people of secondary school age, we explored pressure upon boys to ask girls for sexual images (Ringrose et al, 2013), and to prove they had garnered these by showing and sharing them as a part of a "homosocial reward" dynamic in which status correlated with heteronormative masculine sexuality We did not spend much time discussing nude images sent by boys; as they featured less in the findings They did appear when boys could capture evidence of "blow jobs" for instance, but the practice of randomly sending one’s penis uninvited (colloquially known as sending a dick pic) was still relatively rare in the research data collected in 2011 (Ringrose et al., Sex Roles (2021) 85:558–576. We argue dick pics must always be understood through dynamics of consent and when they are unwanted they need to be reconceptualised as forms of image based sexual harassment (McGlynn & Johnson, 2020)
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