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.”
Context matters a lot. However, in general, it's a far lower crime than many in that category. Critically, it's not of the level to be desirable to destroy their future over. The punishment should be enough to deter and correct, but not more.
Many/most of us have been idiotic teens before. Society's goal should be to correct and improve. Not go in with sledgehammers aimed at skulls. In many cases, the embarrassment alone would be enough to do the job. The law just needs to drive that point home.
which is why underaged are charged differently. Dismissing shit as "Idiot teens" when talking about deliberate exposure of your genitals to unwilling parties really smacks of Stubenville though.
This is a crime that we let get normalised. Don't continue the normalisation.
Idiot teen is an explanation, not a dismissal. Nowhere did I say to ignore it. My point is that there is a gradient of both crimes and intents. If there is no matching gradient in legal response, then it can lead to injustice.
An idiotic crime will often need fairly minor corrections. A malicious crime requires FAR more of a response. Treating all crimes as malicious ends up diluting the view on truly malicious crimes. It can also drive individuals into the very situation you want to move them away from.