Sarah Koldehoff’s ebook about “Dick Pics” | EUROtoday

There are photos that you just want you had by no means seen. For most girls, this consists of “dick pics” – these undesirable penis photos that all of a sudden seem on the cellphone display, typically despatched by full strangers. According to statistics, each second lady between the ages of sixteen and twenty-four has had a photograph of an erect penis in her digital inbox. In the twenty-five to forty-four age group, it’s one in 4.

The creator Sarah Koldehoff has written an essay about dick pics, revealed by Wagenbach Verlag within the “Digital Image Cultures” collection – in it she advocates not trivializing unsolicited penis photos, however relatively clearly naming them repeatedly for what they’re: sexualized violence.

Dick pics have develop into a mass digital phenomenon. The senders not often present an aesthetic sense when photographically staging their genitals. The digital camera is solely held on it; the dick pic, a uncooked snapshot of sexual pleasure. The recipients’ reactions vary from disgrace and disgust to amusement and concern. The pictures are sometimes skilled by girls as a robust transgression of boundaries and are not often understood as a profitable invitation to interact in an erotic recreation. As Koldehoff writes, it’s precisely what the senders typically hoped for: that somebody would reply to them with a unadorned image.

Sending bare photos with out asking is punishable below Section 184 of the Criminal Code. Anyone who receives it may possibly file a grievance. However, based on Koldehoff, this solely occurs not often, in round one p.c of circumstances. The creator doesn’t need her evaluation to be understood as overzealous sexual morality: she will not be excited by evaluating penis photos – so long as they’re despatched consensually whereas flirting. Koldehoff focuses on non-consensual dick pics.

Precisely as a result of males typically ship their genital self-portraits with out asking permission, all the pieces revolves primarily round satisfying their very own wants. The custom of sexual entitlement continues, with which males display energy and dominance. This is nothing aside from misogyny, based on the creator’s thesis. In her essay, Koldehoff breaks down the deep ranges of violence that genital selfies can produce.

The perfidiousness is obvious, for instance, in the truth that the pictures could possibly be reinterpreted in some ways: playful, offensive, humorous or threatening. As dick pics have develop into a digital style of their very own, they’re more and more shedding their shameful that means. They develop into a oft-quoted ironic gesture with which the assault can simply be disguised. Because of their “symbolic flexibility,” the sender can at all times declare that they merely didn’t perceive the joke. Koldehoff describes this growth because the “logic of patriarchal body politics, in which male nudity can seem threatening and funny at the same time.” The sovereignty of interpretation is handed on to the recipient: she ought to perceive it in the way in which that’s bearable for her or in the very best method wherein the motif could possibly be understood.

Of course, phallic representations are not a contemporary phenomenon. In her essay, Koldehoff undertakes a cultural-historical excursion: from penis chiseling in ancient Rome to secretly hidden drawings of genitals in the Victorian era to explicit depictions à la Andy Warhol and the photographic work of Robert Mapplethorpe: “Cock”. However, the looks of at present’s dick pic can not merely be defined as the results of iconographic continuation, argues Koldehoff. Only the digitization of the pictures makes it attainable for the penis portraits to be distributed en masse in a matter of seconds.

But how do you take care of the dick pics? The American artist Whitney Bell selected the offensive technique in 2016: Under the title “I didn’t ask for this: A lifetime of dick pics,” she exhibited greater than 100 penis photos that she had acquired unsolicited from strangers on the Internet for years. Influencer Shauna Dewit responded by sending again a dick pic of her personal that she had beforehand acquired from another person. The senders reacted like their recipients: shocked and disgusted.

Koldehoff additionally addresses the counterpart: However, the unsolicited “pussy pic” is an unknown phenomenon in digital tradition. Women had been extra prone to ship vulva photos after being requested to take action. In addition, girls are sometimes conscious of the dangers related to sending such pictures, corresponding to stigmatization or objectification. While vulva or vagina pictures are particularly used as an act of self-empowerment in feminist and creative contexts, the dick pic within the digital sphere stays related to energy, border crossing and sexualized violence.

With her essay, Koldehoff warns against trivializing penis pictures. Their calculation is clear: the more such images flood young women’s mailboxes, the faster the social habituation effect occurs. And with it the danger that the violent dimension of the penis pictures will be trivialized – often combined with the same phrases like: “Boys will be boys”.

Koldehoff requires a change within the that means of depictions of penises, a special method of speaking about genitals and sexuality. The duty shouldn’t be left to girls who can be confronted with how they take care of pictures of different individuals’s genitals of their digital mailboxes. The creator sees society, particularly males, as having an obligation to comprehend “the absurdity of the entire situation”: that many males dropped their pants and pulled out their cameras to be able to “demonstrate power over another person with a blood-filled erectile tissue.”

One can solely hope that Koldehoff’s compelling evaluation sparks a brand new debate about dick pics. One that takes severely what many younger girls – typically already youngsters – are anticipated to do daily within the digital sphere.

Sarah Koldehoff: “Dick Pics”. Digital picture cultures. Wagenbach Verlag, Berlin 2025. 80 pages, illustrations, br., €12.