Jess Davies – No One Wants to See your Dick (Book)

We chose Jess Davies’ ‘No One Wants to See your Dick: A Handbook for Survival in the Digital World‘ for our discussion group because the title addressed us as men and boys directly and because we are acutely aware of the vast amount of violence is perpetrated online by men against women and girls (MVAWG).

We thought that the book was very easy to read and that it contained some great statistics surrounding male violence against women and girls. We also thought it was useful, though saddening, to hear so many personal stories from women about how men’s behaviour and violence had impacted them from girlhood into womanhood. Highlighting the prolonged and devastating effects of male violence on the lives of women and girls is one way of helping men and boys understand the consequences of our behaviours and hopefully help to prevent them either by stopping men to engage in such behaviour and also by calling other men out.

We also felt that the book contained some very useful suggestions about what men and boys can do to tackle sexism, misogyny and MVAWG, particularly on pages 300–302 and in the final chapter titled ‘The Solution’.

Something else we found very useful is that the book provided a history of sorts of the digital landscape and the history of MVAWG this has fostered and how the men who perpetrate the abuse have continuously outrun us as a society in preventing abuse and safeguarding women, girls and children.
The book was also useful in introducing us to some new terms and concepts, e.g. the Brannon Masculinity Scale, online games such as ‘RISK’ where men expose personal information about women and girls online as well as the concept of ‘e-whoring’, which is probably better described as financially motivated image-based abuse by personation.

The book also contained some great tips for how women and girls can protect themselves better online and what specific actions they can take if they are subjected to image based sexual abuse from males.

Davies certainly did a lot of research for this book, not just in terms of providing statistics and data but also in speaking with various organisations and experts in the field. Although this was really useful we felt that it didn’t necessarily fit neatly into the books aim of being a ‘survival handbook’. Based on this we collectively expected there to be more focus on the harms and potential harms of the digital world, how women can protect themselves, possibly what men can do and also how we can collectively take action to make change. We felt that the book lost some energy in the way that it was structured and the intertwining of the interviews and that it may have worked better as two separate parts, each with a specific and more detailed focus.

On consent

One of the things that stood out was the time Davies spent on writing about consent in the beginning of the book and how this didn’t really translate to a more in-depth exploration of her lack of enthusiastic consent when she sent a nude picture of herself aged 15 to a boy, who had asker her for one or when she was photographed topless to produce pornographic photos for men’s sexual gratification.

Although Davies revisited the impact of these two experiences a number of times, she didn’t explore cultural pressures surrounding the sexual objectification of women and girls or her own sexual exploitation by adult men in the pornography industry in detail. We were of the opinion that Davies, who was 19 at the time of her first topless shoot, seemed to find herself in an unfamiliar, professional and male-dominated pornographic world in which she lacked sufficient information and perspective to provide informed consent for the shoot. We also felt that Davies at that time probably lacked the power in that situation to be able to say ‘no’ and this being accepted by the men unconditionally. As a result the incident that Davies described on page 97 as a “compromise” she made due to a “misunderstanding”, felt to us like adult men coercing and grooming a vulnerable young woman into something she doesn’t really want to do, for their and other men’s sexual gratification. We wonder if anyone else read the situation in the same way that we did.

The reality of sexual exploitation

We really value Davies’ activism and work so were disappointed that Davies referred to nude images, such as the ones she posed for, as ‘glamour modelling’, rather than pornography and that she normalised men’s sexual objectification of women without providing a more in-depth structural and contextual perspective. Despite Chapter 4 being titled ‘Leaked 2.0’, it at times reads like an advert for the sexual exploitation industries, particularly OnlyFans when Davies, despite pointing out some drawbacks, basically endorses and promotes OnlyFans as “a unique opportunity for women…to make a decent wage creating and sharing amateur pornography” and referring to OnlyFans as a “success story” (p.103).

In this regard Jon noted that exploitation will creep in where there is a market and where there is money to be made and that this is a point that the book disregarded. In a way we understood what Davies was saying as it is OK for women to ‘monetise’ their bodies for men’s sexual gratification as long as they are fully in control of where the images end up and the women receive an adequate amount of money in exchange. Björn then made a comment about other factors that were absent in the discussion surrounding the sharing of explicit images that have been taken with consent (i.e. images taken for a pornographic magazine or website), namely the scale and ease of sharing, the financial impact and what drives the sharing.

The following ONLY applies to sexualised images taken with consent in exchange for money, but shared without consent<

Imagine that in the 1990s a man bought a copy of Nuts to look at with a few of his male friends together. After a few weeks that man is bored of the magazine and passes it on to one of his mates. In this case only 1 copy of the magazine would have been sold when perhaps up to 10 men would have seen the content. Money would have been lost and explicit content would have been shared without consent if we accept that consent is made through purchasing the magazine.

At the same time the women in the magazine would have retained some of their privacy, as 10 men seeing their images would not really affect their day to day lives. There was no way in which 5 years down the line someone would be able to access the content from the magazine in any way or anyone would have been able to find out everything about anyone who was in the magazine as the internet enables men to do now.

In a way it feels like we are playing catch up in terms of how fast the internet has enabled information, data and media to be shared freely and it feels important to tease out all the different factors to completely understand what is going on. I.e. what is actually driving the men to share explicit images of women without their consent? Of course it is driven by men wanting so gratify their sexual urges and underpinned by sexism and misogyny, but which other factors might play a part?

Björn was interested between the overlap between non-consensual sharing of explicit images and piracy, which led to a discussion about how men’s disregard and lack of understanding of online rights and privacy may contribute to non-consensual sharing of images.

For instance some men may think that “if it is on the internet, it is in the public domain, so it is fair to access, have and share with others”. Some men may be more inclined to disregard the harm and violence inherent in distributing images shared without consent and justify it by focussing the theft of images being the crime and not the subsequent accessing or owning them. In other words, these men may feel that it is ‘OK’ to access images shared without consent as long as they are not the ones sharing them, almost with a ‘no harm, no foul’ attitude that is obviously incorrect. Another group of men may put the blame with the victims of non-consensual image abuse for not doing enough to protect themselves from the images being shared. None of these attitudes justify non-consensual image sharing of course, but a deeper understanding of drivers may support measures to prevent image based abuse.

We felt that the book normalised sexual objectification of women without analysing the structures surrounding it or how the availability of women’s bodies to satisfy men’s sexual urges feeds into misogyny, male violence towards women and girls as well as the inability of many men and boys to see women and girls as human beings. On page 108 Davies normalises men who buy images of women for their sexual gratification by saying “there are many millions of male fans who clearly admire the women who are producing content on [OnlyFans], showing an interest in their artistry and seeking out their exclusive nudes to add to their collection with the same enthusiasm as a baseball card collector” (p. 108). It was very surprising to us that  the sexual motivation inherent in the collection of nude images of women and the fact that the men will undoubtedly masturbate to those was completely ignored.

Jon pointed out that the relationship between the women on OnlyFans and the punters who buy their sexualised content is like any other employment relationship. Employers are mainly interested in whether you are doing the job you are being paid to do and not interested in you as a person. So they are only interested in the aspect of you that means you get the job done. In that sense the men who go onto OnlyFans are similarly only interested in getting the sexualised images they are paying for. Whilst there may be some other aspects of the women that appeal to them it is unlikely that they are very interested in the women as human beings. The women on the other hand are interested in retaining the customers of the men and will therefore try their best to make sure the men buy more sexualised images of them.

A structural analysis also appeared to be absent in the way degrading violent sexual practices including “slapping, ‘choking’, gagging or spitting during consensual sex” were considered. Davies clearly stated that she wanted to be careful not to “kink-shame” (p.269) anyone. We felt that in doing so Davies, like many others, turned a blind eye to the high risks involved in normalising the degrading violence men inflict on women for sexual gratification, both physical and emotional. In a way this comes back to consent. Can I really enthusiastically consent to someone spitting in my face or strangling me? Do we really want to intertwine acts that we socially deem degrading into our sex lives?

Recommended reading about the sexual exploitation industries and sexual violence:

OnlyFans porn performers competing for adolescent school leaver market by Collective Shout

Everything you need to know about OnlyFans by Nordic Model Now

Institute for Addressing Strangulation (UK)

Action points for men

Towards the end of the discussion we focussed on what we as men can do, an aspect that was covered in the book to some degree. One of the things we considered is how we can do things more proactively rather than reactively (i.e. when something has happened already). One idea that we discussed was opening up conversations with other men, rather than waiting for them to broach a subject. For instance if we have a friend who we know is on a dating app we can ask them how they are getting on, what the conversations are like and mention that we have heard that it involves a lot of sending of pictures nowadays and ask them what they think of that.

Similarly if you have a male friend who has been single for a while you could start having a conversation with him about what that is like and hoe he deals with his desires, which might lead to conversations about loneliness, fears of not finding someone but might also highlight that he watches a lot of pornography and is getting concerned about that.

We felt that this early intervention approach would be useful because it will enable us to have different kinds of conversations with the men in our lives, leading us to build more meaningful and honest relationships. At the same time it may also help us unearth unhealthy attitudes or behaviours, particularly because the vast majority of men’s sexism, misogyny and violence can be quite hidden.

Conclusion

Davies’ book provides a detailed exploration of women’s experiences supported in the digital world and supports this with pertinent statistics that bring home the extent of violence we (as men) inflict onto women and girls. The book also provides women and girls with useful tips on how to prevent abuse by men and how they can find support for survivors.

Despite these merits we feel that that other organisations and resources (some listed above) are preferable to Davies’ book, because it neglects to take into account broader structural and cultural contexts in which men’s sexual exploitation and violence towards women and girls takes place. MACS does not want a society in which men and boys sexually exploit women and girls ‘more ethically’ or ’more safely’. We want a society where men and boys don’t sexually exploit women and girls.

Next time…

To prepare for this months discussion Jon watched Davies’ video about Louis Theroux’s manosphere documentary. Jon’s recommendation of Davies’ takedown led to a discussion about the documentary, which was quite a hot topic in March. As not all of us had seen it yet, we decided to make Theroux’s ‘Inside the Manosphere’ the subject of our next meeting.