Others described wanting to turn up the sexual excitement in a messaging conversation they felt was flagging. Not even sexy or incredibly handsome – just OK.” We are just desperate for someone to tell us we’re OK. OK, sending an unsolicited dick pic is really not the way to do it, but I do think that’s the driver. So, unconsciously, we just want someone to say we look nice, or that we are attractive. Although most men will never admit to it, we are very insecure about our bodies, especially down there. One Reddit user, Jake, told me: “I’ve done it a few times in the past, and I think it’s mostly about validation. Some who shared their experiences anonymously wrote about not feeling confident with their bodies, and wanting praise. But the reality is that there are many different motives that people have, some of which are perhaps more troubled and troubling than others.” Stephen Blumenthal, a consultant clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst at the Portman – an NHS clinic that offers specialist long-term therapy to patients with disturbing sexual behaviours – says: “There’s always a tendency with these issues to provide one kind of formulation a one-size-fits-all explanation. The most important thing I learned is that sending pictures of one’s genitals has different meanings for different men – and different meanings for the same men at different points in their lives. When I checked back a few hours later, I discovered more than 500 comments, and the moderators had shut the thread down. Shortly afterwards, I went to the cinema. So I set up an account on Reddit, where users can post anonymously in forums on a range of topics, and I asked the question again.
Yet the question that plagued me after hearing Holroyd’s story was: why? What happened in the mind of that man between talking about books, inviting a woman for coffee and a walk – and sending her a photograph of his penis? Unsurprisingly, I did not get very far by asking men in person if they had ever sent unsolicited photographs of their penis. Research reflects the world we live in, and I just don’t think this problem has been taken seriously until relatively recently.” The term ‘cyberflashing’ wasn’t even in widespread use until about a year or so ago. I think this blind spot says something about how society and the law tends to think of the problem: that dick pics are an annoying internet phenomenon as opposed to ‘real’ flashing. “The research in this area is really limited. Laura Thompson, a researcher at City, University of London, whose work examines harassment over dating apps, says the issue has until now been trivialised. The problem has become widespread enough that MPs and campaigners are now calling for a law targeting “cyberflashers”. Anyone, of any age, who has AirDrop turned on at its most unrestricted setting is at risk of picking up their phone to see a graphic image that was sent anonymously by someone in the same restaurant, cinema or train carriage. Some men have used the AirDrop function on their Apple devices – which allows users to share files with other nearby Apple devices – to send unsolicited pictures to women. (Only 5% of men in this age group admitted to having sent one.) Nor does this just happen through online dating. A 2018 YouGov poll found that, shockingly, four in 10 women aged between 18 and 36 have been sent a photograph of a penis without having asked for one – colloquially known as an unsolicited “dick pic”.
Holroyd’s experience is worryingly common. If the conversation had some potential, but was becoming boring, I would sometimes send a dick pic
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