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"Dick Pics": Why do men send penis pictures? - Column by Samira El Ouassil

2020-10-15T15:21:54.014Z


In Finland, sending "Dick Pics" is now considered sexual harassment. Regarding the result of a study on the motivations of senders, one can say: Why is it actually said that women are irrational?


Icon: enlarge

A Dick Pic is not shown here for obvious reasons

Photo: Hemin Xylan Mahzan / EyeEm / Getty Images

On the high-performance retina screen of her phone, which she held out to me in disgust, I immediately recognized the penis that was sent to her without being asked.

Color, size, length, shape, hairs.

It was actually that of a former affair and he finally answered the question: Who are these men who are sending unsolicited pictures of their sexes into the world?

Samira El Ouassil Right Arrow

Photo: Stefan Klüter

Born in Munich in 1984, is an actress and author.

In 2016 her book "The 100 most important things" (with Timon Kaleyta and Martin Schlesinger) was published by Hatje Cantz Verlag.

In 2009 she was the candidate for chancellor of the PARTY, which at that time was not admitted to the federal election.

She was recently awarded the Bert Donnepp ​​Prize for media journalism for her media critical column "Wochenschau" (uebermedien.de).

Aha, I now officially knew one personally.

The fact that it was no longer some anonymous internet exhibitionist with phallic fantasies of omnipotence, but a polite, sociable person I knew, with life, payback card and hobbies, made this riddle about the creepy scampering into other people's devices even more incomprehensible to me.

Especially since the digital tearing of a coat is already forbidden in Germany - it falls under the condition of the distribution of pornographic writings, which also includes penis selfie.

Finland now wants to punish senders for sending unsolicited penis pictures with up to six months in prison, and this attack is also prohibited in France.

However, harassment remains widespread online.

A survey by the children's rights organization Plan International, which was presented on Monday for World Girls' Day on October 11, showed that almost 58 percent of the 14,000 girls and young women surveyed worldwide were sexually molested on the Internet.

In Germany it is even 70 percent.

Genital hero's journey as a three-act act

I got and get them too, I could bring out dick calendars - some try to create skilful stagings: some put their penis next to a coin or a set square so that I, as a woman, can better assess the standards that I apparently feel are impressive (" You girls are not that good with lengths "), some even present their erections as a photographic triptych of their genital hero's journey in the form of a three-act act - including the fight against the hydra, which is strangled to death in the climax (end of the second act) until it bleeds white.

The most famous case is probably that of the former US MP Anthony Weiner with the stair joke of surnames, who did not deceive himself to want to impress young women with the volume of his virility that he apparently realized too late that he was publicly tweeting the first picture , instead of sending it as a direct message, on the second his four-year-old son can be seen and the third was sent to a 15-year-old.

Incidentally, this penis image brought Hillary Clinton down indirectly and paved the way for the dickhead Trump into the White House, what a hard irony.

The affair, strangers on the internet, successful politicians: why do men do this?

In search of answers, I came across a study by Pennsylvania State University, Kwantlen Polytechnic University, and the University of British Columbia, published earlier this year in the Journal of Sex Research, in which the motivations, personalities, and sexuality of men who send Dickpics, were examined.

The researchers analyzed the responses from an unrepresentative sample of 1,087 men.

Half of them admitted that they had already sent penis pictures without being asked.

Every second.

In addition, the interviewed men between the ages of 16 and 75 were asked about their self-love and their attitude towards women.

Hold on tight: men who send unsolicited "Dick Pics" are more sexist and narcissistic.

The motivations behind the dispatch are actually a little more differentiated, especially since multiple answers were possible:

  • A third of the respondents sent the pictures believing they could seduce the harassed with harassment.

  • Every second person sent a photo, and I think that's particularly funny, "in the hope of receiving a similar picture in return" - as if we were in the schoolyard and naked pictures were the new Pokemon cards.

    Significantly, the study is called "I'll Show You Mine so you'll Show Me Yours".

    I find the fact that the whole Internet is full of breasts without having to go in advance with a picture, I find the fact that this transactional thinking is even funnier.

  • One in five felt that "it's a normal way to flirt" or that "if you send enough of it, someone will eventually respond benevolently".

    Yes.

    That's how I looked.

    (Which man gets his penis out while flirting in the bar?)

  • One in four people sent their piece around without consent because they "are proud of the appearance of (their) penis and want to share it with others".

    Admittedly, an entire platform is based on this feeling and celebrated its 10th anniversary last week, but Instagram at least sublimates it in fitness and travel photos.

  • And one in ten do it because they "do not trust the appearance of their penis and hopes that someone will react positively in order to strengthen (their) self-esteem".

Unsettled men send photos of the most intimate and vulnerable part of their body in order to be sure of their masculinity by having it validated by a complete stranger, who in most cases will understandably react negatively.

And there it is said that women are irrational.

On the other hand, this consideration is again consistent in a completely screwed-up mechanism: Since men have not been socialized in old role stereotypes, at least not constantly as being desirable, i.e. they do not know whether their bodies are or can be objects of desire, they channel their narcissism ineptly in these photos.

Sexualized form of visual manipulation

The French psychoanalyst Caroline Leduc goes one level deeper with her consideration of the "Dick Pics" and explains that an unconscious mechanism is being operated with the dispatch, in which the man wants to enrich the woman with his penis because she has none - in a sense he wants to equip her with it.

Furthermore, the penis picture sender forces the other to become a voyeur, that is, the sender has the feeling of broadening the view of the recipient, even enriching it, because he forces him to be a reactive, an active voyeur have to.

Basically, the penis image is also a sexualized form of visual mansplainings, because the man wants to show a woman, without being asked, how great and beautiful all of his uninvited manhood is.

If you look at the phone as an extension of our own body, as a communicative prosthesis, so to speak, but also as an extension of our ego, it again represents a more intimate reception space for the penis in the form of images. The psychoanalyst Leduc even goes so far as to say that the penis when unasked Shipping symbolically invades us as the phone is a part of us.

Interestingly, this fits in with Finnish efforts to soon make mailing a prison sentence by expanding the Finnish definition of sexual harassment to include "verbal harassment, harassment through pictures or messages, taking photos of others or through self-exposure" .

Currently, under Finnish law, physical contact is required to be considered sexual harassment.

This affects you at least as much: You have to be able to open your digital mailbox without your genitals falling towards you.

Icon: The mirror

Source: spiegel

All life articles on 2020-10-15

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