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 feel like I'm in a different universe to most people. Only chance I get to call anyone out for anything is littering and playing music loudly in public. Honestly feels like confirmation bias, but I'm sure I'm wrong.
If it makes you feel any better, I can ping you next time I encounter misogyny on Lemmy? It's far less toxic than a lot of online places, but it's definitely got corners where offensive takes get upvoted.
I mean, if you went to 4chan you could presumably call out more, but it'd be kind of like yelling into a hurricane. Toxicity is self-concentrating in really anonymous online spaces.
IRL bigots tend to hide their shit from non-target non-bigots.
The cause of and consequences of The Man-o-Sphere in a nutshell. People get drawn in by the promise of gamified easy answers to relationships (via PUA community, evangelist trad-life influencers, and other self-help gurus). But it's a bait-and-switch, with "advice" drifting from "how to find an easy relationship" into "why women are awful and you should hate them."