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.”
Agreed. Assistance, implementation of which requires understanding of why they’re not leaving those assholes, worse, returning to them, or fall into the same pattern with a different asshole, all on their ostensibly free will.
The question is “how can the capability to leave the abuser be built”. It involves, in one way or the other, a change in the victim. Getting better at leaving pieces of shit.
Seriously I have difficulty, and this might be male perspective, to equate “need to get better at” with the frame “you’re at fault”. At some point, I needed to get good at cooking. Was it my fault that I couldn’t cook? Nope. It’s not like I didn’t show interest as a kid, it’s that noone ever bothered to actually teach me anything, so I didn’t know anything. Still had to get good at it. It’s a problem so you solve it. Why would I care wasting my breath blaming my upbringing it only distracts from learning. It can provide an excuse, but excuses don’t make dinner.
Ah, fuck it, let’s risk it. My edgetake on why some women end up again and again with assholes: Because noone told them (early enough?) that they can go to a kind guy, start a tickle fight, and get all the thrill they’ll ever want. It’s a function of attraction to the capability to throw down.
Unfortunately this is a very gendered/male take, I agree with that. You’re falling into the same pits I described above. You’re essentially saying “just nut up and do it.” Comparing it to overcoming the inertia of not cooking for yourself is, frankly, bizarre to me. That isn’t the same situation at all. Your kitchen isn’t some force conspiring against you. Your cookware isn’t changing tactics and emotionally manipulating you or taking away your phone.
No. I said that the question is:
I didn’t ever compare what’s necessary for that with learning to cook. The cooking thing was about how it’s silly to go from “doesn’t know how to” to “you’re at fault”. I used, specifically, an example far enough from abuse so it could be a general point, not tangled up with the dating assholes bit.
Where I did get into “How can it be built” was my edgetake later: Figure out why assclowns are so damn attractive that some women go back to them, put up with them, and then don’t blame the woman for having that attraction, but find a safe outlet. I’m sure that’s not the whole of the solution but I do think that it’s a necessary component.