Naked Picture Etiquette

I could never take naked pictures. What if someone saw them?

Seriously though, I think naked pictures are great. If you love your body, everyone else should love it too. I think there may be a time down the road where that sentiment will somehow haunt me, but that is a problem for future Roxanne.

 

Dick pics are an issue, let's talk about them.

For a minute, there, I wondered why a guy would send a picture of his dick to a girl he didn't know. Seriously, what the hell does she care about the dimensions of your penis, relative to a water bottle, or a clutched fistful of pens, or a Wii remote? What would possess a guy to think that sort of thing was going to get her hot under the collar?

Then I realized that the answer is: virtually everything.

Open up your spam folder, sometimes. Or glance at the sidebar of a streaming porn website. Or watch any number of sitcoms, and you'll notice that you're constantly being bombarded with the message that penis size is a necessary and sufficient condition of sexual happiness. Hell, look at the constant tittering over Fassbender's semi-erect penis -- there's a cottage industry surrounding making men feel insecure or anxious about the size of their junk, and it's really easy to internalize. Hell, raise your...hand...if you've ever seen a porn movie where the actress spent more time cooing about how big the dick was than how good the sex actually was?

It's a systemic thing. When a dude's bombarded by images that say that all women want or need for sexual pleasure is a big dick, it stands to reason that he'd think he was giving the lady what she wanted.

 

This is why every morning upon waking I recite the Rifleman's creed, but as pertaining to my penis.

 

I'm sure there are guys who are thinking exactly that. But I'm not sure if that is what produces the majority of dong shots. I can understand that mentality for people that are new to the game so to speak, but to me it seems like the majority of the dick pics aren't being sent for the very first time. I assume that the people who do it, do so often.

I can't imagine a guy putting themselves through such rejection time after time unless A) it paid off occasionally or B) something about the act itself was gratifying.

I don't know how effective it really is, but I do know a girl who has had sex with a dude primarily based off of a dong shot. Never heard about it working online, because a dong presented without any prior attraction would probably do nothing for a lady. However, in this case she gave her number to a guy after casually flirting with him. He then sent her an unsolicited pic shortly thereafter that used a coke can as a spatial reference (Clarence Thomas was an inspirational figure to him apparently). And it worked. They even dated for a while. I bring this up, because I can't imagine trying that move more than once if it didn't work. Somewhere along the line I'd assume the strategy had to pay off in some form (sex, compliments, parades in your penis' honor, etc.).

That or, like a flasher, the act itself is what turns their crank. The idea of it turning into sex is secondary to actually doing it.

 

The other thing I assume is that if it didn't work some small percentage of the time, the practice probably wouldn't exist.

Even if they don't expect to get laid, they probably figure, "Hey, why not?" based on the mere chance, because negative consequences for them are also pretty rare.

So maybe they know a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who sent the girl at Starbucks his dick and got laid. Then an idiot thinks to himself, "Well if he can do it, so can I" and decides to subject some poor woman to his dick.

 

Gravy and the Cowboy, your points are well-taken.

Many dudes sending unsolicited cock shots are probably beyond the point where you can shame them by giggling about it with your friends, so even if it has a 1% chance of working (which could legitimately be true), they're willing to take that risk. Easy and potentially high reward, maybe?

I think the difference between a pic sender and a regular flasher is that most of what I see from pics is guys trying to make it look as large/attractive/menacing as possible, where I don't think flashers are often turned on by the horror or revulsion.

 

OKCupid, Facebook, the email address connected to my Tumblr.

I'm not asking for it. Neither is Chellie, for that matter, but this practice is everywhere. It's only a matter of time before it happens to the Pinterest community.

EDIT: Gravy, I think you're onto something. I sincerely believe the act of taking a dong shot and sending it to a lady actually turns some men on. And in the context of a relationship where that is expected/NBD, more power to him! It's when some men prioritize the thrill of cockshot-sending over the wishes of their target that it becomes a problem.

 

I asked my friend Sarah on gchat and this is the unadultured conversation, copy and pasted.

I guess that makes sense. Nom has an interesting point, but I'm just against the belief that the industrial complex of persuasion has THAT much effect on people.

 

You left out fetlife AND adult friend finder.

AFF is specifically about finding people to have sex with purely based on certain superficial characteristics. I once went to the website to see what it was about and it asks guys how they are hung when they sign up. You can't say "eew penis" on AFF. You just can't.

 

I left those off because they didn't pertain to my experiences with unsolicited cock pics. I'm not on AFF or PoF (yet).

And, actually, you can say "ewwww penis" on AFF. Since you're not intimately acquainted with what Chellie is looking for on AFF, it's entirely possible that she's not in the market for dick. OR she's evaluating potential sex partners on superficial characteristics that don't include cock size. Furthermore, even if she is looking for dick, you've said some really fucking disturbing things about "asking for it" that you need to rethink immediately. Unless she says, writes, types, or texts some variation of "I would be interested in viewing your genitals, sir" then she hasn't, in fact, asked for it. Period. There is no platform anywhere, anytime, IN THE HISTORY OF EVER, that makes unsolicited, nonconsensual genital viewing okay.

 

Alright, ease up there tiger. I think you took the "asking for it" in the rape sense. I wasn't talking like, "she was dressing all sexy and asking for it."

 

By the way, I wrote exactly the opposite of what I meant to here. Womp, womp.

I DO think flashers like the shock and horror.

 

No, you were talking about it in the "She belongs to AFF, therefore she's asking for dick pictures simply by being a member of that site. And she has now forfeited all right to complain to about receiving cocks in her inbox" sense.

I didn't misunderstand you, tiger.

 

On sites like fet or aff, is it somewhat expected? Yes. Should it have to be? No. Putting up a profile that says 'I'm Chellie, I'm into A, B, C, and I'm looking for people into D, E, F' does not equal 'send me a picture of your genitals'. I'm not shocked when it happens, but really, what kind of mind frame does a guy have to be in to think 'I'm just going to assume this random woman I've never met or messaged wants to see my dick'?

You may be surprised to know that on the more sex oriented sites like fet, it's much LESS common than on 'dating' sites like POF. In my experience, it's been a rule of thumb that the sexually focused communities are a great deal more conscious of respect and appropriate boundaries.

 

And thats exactly my point. Its fetlife and AFF. If it was Christian Singles, THEN, I would be surprised.

 

I think we're all missing one of the most valuable uses for this thread. Like most everyone that is on this board, I come to TiB for two things: entertainment and feedback. Whether it's advice, solicited or unsolicited, or general educational reading, this site is very informative. Now that we've discussed some etiquette and rationale, I suggest all you ladies take advantage of the power of TiB. Simply post your naked pictures here, and let us give you feedback. When you're ready to email them out - boom, you'll have already avoided common mistakes and been able to highlight your strong points. (It's also a really easy way to snag some major rep points!)

What?

 

I think this is more of a gray area than you're suggesting. Although, that's generally an easy position to take in response to your black and white opinions about everything in the history of ever (supply your own caps).

I haven't been on AFF a ton, or recently, but I have been on it some. First of all, I'm unconvinced that the custom there is not, in fact, to send genital photos unsolicited, especially as part of a photo album with pics of your face and other body parts. There's nothing predatory about it; it's much more analogous to being hit on in a way that you don't like, but other girls might.

If there are guidelines on the site that say "do not send explicit photos without permission," I'll take back my point and admit I'm wrong. Are there?

Second, there's something inherently safe about communicating through a website with blind anonymous emails. You may not like getting a genital pic, but to feel outraged and violated is a bit much, and feels a lot to me like a double standard.

This isn't primarily about feminism; it's about empathy. Instead of assuming that a person is evil or stupid, step back and think about why they might have thought their behavior was appropriate.

Personally, naked photos aren't my thing to send, or collect. If we're seeing each other, we're probably getting plenty of each other naked in person.

 

Well, the cover your ass agreements of today made this easy.

(a) upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortious, defamatory, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable;

 

I'm going to mostly disagree with you here. I think it's important and relevant to figure out why a guy would send a picture, and I don't think it makes a dude a monster or anything.

But the idea that there's a disconnect between what women are saying sexually (we don't really want unsolicited pictures) and what men are hearing/doing? Yeah, that's a feminist issue, and a big one. The idea that women should be allowed to have their sexual rights respected is like, a tentpole of feminism, and while this might like a 3 on a scale from 1-rape, it's part of the same sort of ideology.

As for the outrage, think about it in the context of this board, even. Have you ever tried posting a penis in the WDT without preparing people for it first? If you ever do, check out what goes on in your rep, and it might help you understand the feeling.