Dr Rikke Amundsen on The Changing Nature of Misogyny: Dick Pics and the Online Articulation of Male Domination
‘The ‘unsolicited dick pics are often interpreted as an articulation of male domination, or a form of male gendered power in the intimate sphere, where those who distributed these images articulated their ability to share these as they please without regard for the consent, agency and autonomy of the people at the receiving end.’
Dr. Amundsen did her PhD in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge, and worked as a Teaching Associate in the Department of Sociology. Rikke’s research was concerned with the sexual politics of digital cultures, and with the increasing mediatisation of intimacy. Her PhD - entitled “Sexting as Intimacy Work: Exploring the Impact of Mediation on Intimacy” - was completed in 2019 and has so far resulted in journal articles and book chapters on the dynamics of risk, trust, and intimacy in the digital exchange of private sexual imagery.
Dr. Amundsen also worked as a Research Associate at the Trust and Technology Initiative (TTI). At the TTI, she contributed to Mapping Trust and Technology, a project that explores how the concept of ‘trust’ is imagined, used and approached in technology research. She recently joined the Department of Sociology at the University of York, where she works as an Associate Lecturer in Social Media and Society.
How did you enter academia in the first place?
My entry into academia was driven by an interest I had since my school days in media and culture. It led me to do an undergraduate degree in social anthropology at the University of Manchester, where I went after I finished school in Norway. I did an MA on human rights at UCL afterwards as well. I really struggled with this degree because it was equal parts law, philosophy, and politics, and I did not have any background in those fields. But I had a supervisor who introduced me to feminist approaches to pornography, and I remember sitting in the library and reading about it for the first time, finding it really fascinating.
When I graduated, I was not ready to leave this broader field of gendered politics and sexual representation. This led me to apply to the MPhil in multi-disciplinary gender studies at the University of Cambridge. Here I conducted a research project on the drafting Section 33 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act, which seeks to criminalise some forms of non-consensual sharing of private sexual images. That research indirectly led me to this topic of dick pics today.
What attracted you to research on the topic of unsolicited dick pics?
When I was doing my MPhil research on non-consensual sharing of sexual images, I became interested in the contexts that these images were initially created in. Private sexual images are often – but not always – created in the context of consent. For example, someone might be apart or away from the person they have romantic interest with and may want to exchange with them these images to express intimacy. When I started my PhD, I decided to focus on the experiences of adult self-defining women of creating, sharing and receiving private sexual images, because at that time at least, it appeared that most images that were subsequently shared non-consensually were images depicting women.
Some brilliant research in the field tended to focus on the experiences of children, youth, or young adults up until the age of 25, so I wanted to address a slightly different group than what was already being looked at. It was during my interview for the project when I spoke to adult self-defining women about their experiences of creating, sharing, and receiving private sexual imagery that the topic of dick pics came up. I did not really ask them explicitly about dick pics, but this was something that my participants usually brought up. More specifically, they talked about the dick pics that they received and did not want. I got really interested in that topic and started asking more questions. That was what resulted in the piece that we are discussing today.
Is it difficult to find funding in general on topics related to sex such as dick pics? What other barriers were there?
The reaction has been incredibly supportive and engaging. There is a significant, growing field of research in sexting and private sexual images that males create, as well as practices of consensual and non-consensual dick pics. Some brilliant scholars such as Andrea Waling, Susanna Paasonen and Jessica Ringrose have been doing ground-breaking research in that space. Whilst it is a new field, there are really prominent researchers that have paved the way for researchers like me.
It can be hard sometimes to convince someone who does not have much knowledge in these types of media and abuse about the significance of this kind of research; I would assume that perhaps there might be a slight generational difference here, in terms of how much one may use technology in their daily life. But, I think, especially after all these pandemic-related lockdowns, where we are forced to turn to technology to stay intimate with people we care about, there is a broader and growing understanding that this kind of imagery is an important part of the lives of many, and I think it is here to stay.
What have been the responses from your students and colleagues to your research?
I have learnt just as much from students as I have been able to teach with my articles, because this is a field that has been growing so quickly. There are new things and new technologies coming up all the time. For example, TikTok was not really a thing when I was doing this research. Students are generally very interested, and we have fascinating discussions about the new things that are happening in this field.
In terms of other academics, there have been some instances where you have to explain yourself, like the choice of such a colloquial term like ‘dick pic’, rather than ‘imagery of penises’… but there has been so much going on with technology, intimacy and drafting of new laws, that I have not had any bad or negative experiences in relation to that, ever. I have been very lucky, at least, in my experience.
So, what are the harmful effects of unsolicited dick pics and what does it mean to the women who receive them?
I want to stress here that dick pics are not always harmful. It can be a welcoming and important part of people’s intimate lives, and dick pics can have a range of meanings. My piece focuses on the ‘unsolicited’ part. It gains its meaning depending on the context – whether it is consensual or not. The unsolicited dick pics that are sent, they violate the receiver's right to decide for themselves, if and when and what kind of sexual material they see. Simply put, it is a non-consensual sexual act.
My research participants often talked about it [unsolicited dick pics] as ‘hurtful’, because it took away from them the ‘control’ of what did or did not happen in their own intimate sexual lives. The ‘non-consensual images’ are often interpreted as articulations of male domination, or a form of male gendered power in the intimate sphere, where those who distributed these images articulated their ability to send these images as they please without regard for the consent, agency and autonomy of the people at the receiving end.
With regards to other forms of sexual, digital abuse or harassment, this regard for consent and the gendered nature of the struggles of power, is something that unsolicited dick pics and other [forms of] digital media sexism have in common.
How has the digitalisation of sexism altered understanding of consent in younger generations?
Consent is a really complex and debated topic because people often disagree on where we stand on consent. One thing that is particular about online spaces is how easily they blur the boundaries between what is private and what is public.
In offline spaces, when we want to say something private or intimate, usually we already know them somehow, ask them to come with us into another room, close the door behind us, and then sit down, and then have that private intimate conversation.
In an online space, we can skip all these paths and immediately send a direct message to someone without having to ask them whether they are interested in having this intimate and private conversation with you in the first place. This boundary between private and public spaces can be easily transgressed in other forms as well.
For example, the privacy settings on social media might be changed by you, your partner, the company behind it, or it can be hacked publicly. Or the person we share private material with can for whatever reason share it with other people without asking us what we want. It does not take much for these transgressions to happen, and they spread incredibly easy and quickly online; it can be quite easy for people to forget and stop to ask themselves if they actually have the consent of someone affected. The ease with which we can share material without engaging with the person affected beforehand has changed how we think about consent, and perhaps altered the extent that we even think about consent in the first place.
Could you tell us more about the intersection of the social and the technological, and what it really means to you to study the sociology of social media and the internet?
Let us start with social media. Broadly speaking, social media refers to digital media and technologies that enable us to communicate with other social media users by creating and receiving content. Social media is a relevant and interesting place for sociologists to do research; it is a new sphere for humans to socialise and engage and express themselves, a new place to look at society, humans and how we engage. But what is particularly interesting and relevant when we study social media and socialisation is to think about the fact that social media platforms are not blank canvases where we humans socialise with each other; it is not a neutral nor objective ground.
Social media is shaped by humans who already have their own points of view, prejudices, and biases, and it is also created under particular economic or geographical contexts, like the Silicon Valley. This means that social media itself is already marked by bias, experiences, and prejudices. When we humans go into these particular spheres and engage with the technology and each other, it creates a particular context for digital sociologists. What fascinates me is that we think not just about the inter-human connection, but also about the way that humans engage with technology itself, and how it encourages or changes certain human behaviour.
What are some examples of gendered conventions that facilitate digital sexist behaviour?
In developing the ideas I have about the role of gendered conventions in this paper, I draw on Rae Langton’s work on speech act theory to argue that the meaning of a representation is determined by the context of where it is happening. The main social conventions, norms, expectations, or social understandings within that context inform how humans make sense of that particular representation and consequently the meanings we assign to that representation.
For example, when I talked to my participants about sexting and dick pics, I would ask what they would or would not include in their own private sexual images. Almost all of my participants, who are all self-defining women, mention how they would hardly include an image of their genitals. They would talk about how an image of a woman’s genitals could be considered coarse, crude, overly sexualised; that was not something that any of them wanted to be seen as; and they thought that if someone saw that image and identified themselves in it, they would think less of them.
When it came to dick pics, however, male depictions of their genitals were generally considered to be not just ordinary but even expected. This general view among these participants resonates really well with research by other researchers working on sexting, like Jessica Ringrose and Kaitlyn Regehr. People respond much more negatively to private sexual images of women when they appear non-consensually and publicly, than they do to similar images of men. A woman’s a private sexual image in public, will lead to that woman worrying about losing friends, being fired from jobs, being subjected to extensive sexual harassment; if a similar incident happened to a man, there are [usually] less severe social sanctions.
It is not to say that these things cannot have harmful consequences for men. Most research also find that non-binary people, trans men and trans women are particularly vulnerable to these forms of online harassment and abuse. But these examples illustrate how there are gendered conventions that inform how we read and express sexuality, and the meanings that we attribute to these representations. These conventions can facilitate gender-based discrimination, which is grounded in how we respond to and understand private sexual imagery.
You mentioned in your article that post-feminist discursive frameworks, which promote notions of individualism, free choice and empowerment can have unintended detrimental effects sometimes, leading to these dick pics to be seen as individualised acts, and are dissociated from the broader social structure that they occur under. Could you tell us more about this?
In the article I quoted Sara Ahmed who talks about sexism as [part of] a wider social system. If we understand sexism in that way, it can be seen as an articulation of broader social structures, especially those that are rooted in discriminatory understandings of gender. Instances of sexism should not be seen as isolated phenomena, but rather, as cases that feed off and into the broader social structures that have made them possible in the first place. When I raised that issue in the article, I wanted to draw attention to the fact that to prevent any form of discrimination, it is necessary to situate it to the broader social, political, economic, and technological forces that make it possible to take place from the outset. It is not enough to just have a ‘bad egg’ approach; we need to identify and address these enabling forces for it to happen in the first place. Whether it is offline or online spheres; these two spheres come together, and we cannot have one without the other.
The highly individualised accounts of sexism or other forms of discrimination, like racism, classism and ableism can prevent us from fully acknowledging the range of forces that inform all aspects of society. If we are scrutinising a single form of sexism, we really need to think about how we situate it into the broader context of where it is happening, and how it has made it possible to create that form of discrimination.
What different technologies make possible is to share these kinds of material, but it does not always make it possible for people at the receiving end to block them. Why do people who created this technology not think about a filter to have these taken out? These are small little forces that we really need to think about; why is it like this, where did it come from, and why is technology designed this way?
What do you think of women’s use of humour, irony, and wit to challenge and subvert articulations of sexism online? Is it an effective means of resistance, or is it a coping mechanism that is unable to affect existing sexist power structures? Are you optimistic or pessimistic about it?
I am somewhere between an optimist and a pessimist – a classic academic answer! I think humour, irony and wit can be incredibly useful tools to challenge articulations of sexism online. Again, I draw on Rae Langton’s work on speech act theory [but also Octavia Calder-Dawe’s work on everyday sexism] to suggest that humour can operate as a form of counter-speech, and they can really challenge the meaning of sexual representation. I also noticed how many of my participants turn to conversations, such as joking with friends about dick pics that they receive, as a means to challenge articulations of sexism.
However, some of them also downplay the significance of their experiences with this imagery as sexism, talking about it as ‘just something to laugh at’. These examples show that while dick pics may be laughed at, that does not make it just a laughing matter, bearing in mind that laughing matters can also be deeply serious, painful, and hurtful. Our choosing to laugh does not rule out the need for us to have these kinds of discussions and debates, neither does it rule out the gravity of the matter.
How do you think feminism can move from a current individual focus to an effective call for collective action? What sort of collective action can combat the form of online sexism as exemplified by unsolicited dick pics?
The feminism that I discuss in this article has a really strong focus on the individual person and their particular experiences. There are many types of feminism out there; not all feminism interactions are marked by the form of individualism that I address in this piece. It is also worth mentioning that these interviews were conducted before #MeToo, a social movement that on the whole operates really well as a means to show how individual experiences of sexism and abuse constitute part of a broader social power structure. The kind of sexism exemplified by unsolicited dick pics is particular because it is socio-technical. In many ways it links to this issue of offline flashing, which has taken place a long time before the invention of the internet. Now, digital spaces have opened up new articulations of sexism that have been hard to imagine not that long ago.
In terms of the type of action that we can take to challenge forms of digital sexism, I would say there are probably two things: firstly, the need to address the sexual and gendered conventions and expectations that encourage and enable these behaviours. Secondly, it is so important to hold technological companies through which this harmful material is shared, accountable. Companies like Twitter, or Facebook, they make huge profits from us using their services, seemingly for free, so they can harvest our data and do targeted advertising, selling out our information to advertising companies. They play such an important role in providing platforms where we play out most of our intimate and political, social lives these days. It is really about time that they start owning up to the responsibilities that come with their being providers of these public and private spheres, to ensure that all humans who use these platforms can use them freely and equally, so that everyone can speak out without fear of harm or harassment or other repercussions, like sexist or racist language.
How do you draw the balance between content-moderation and free-speech?
That is an excellent question that has been on my mind as well. If there had been an easy answer, we would have come a lot further. I often think that everyone should have the right to be free -speech, but when we get to the point where the free-speech of some limits the free-speech of others, that is probably where we can draw the line. So, you can have free speech, but you do not have the right to say anything if it means preventing other people from saying what they want to say.
For example, sexist, racist harassments online, is not a kind of free speech that is okay, because that will prevent people who are subjected to this harassment from participating in the debate online and freely expressing what they say without fear of repercussion.
Practically, deciding who gets to draw the line gets really difficult. But generally speaking, we should always draw the line on something hateful, such as sexist or racist discourse.
What advice do you have for our readers with regards to effectively addressing and combatting both online and offline sexism? How can we adjust to the changing forms of misogyny in our contemporary world?
I would probably point to the two elements from what we were discussing before. There is the need to address head-on sexual conventions and expectations that we have, that encourage and enable this behaviour in the first place. Doing so means having to keep having these open, honest, and difficult conversations about gender, sexuality, and discrimination. To draw on these findings and thoughts, we engage with the aim of influencing policy, economics, and education, all of these foundations that our society is built on. I think listening, learning, and speaking out, are really key to combat new forms of misogyny as well. The nature of misogyny and other forms of discrimination is not static; it keeps developing with the society that it occurs in. It is important that we listen to those who are affected by it, so that we can come to think about how it can be challenged.
How has your optimism/pessimism towards change in society regarding sexism been affected by studying this phenomenon?
First of all, I am just so grateful for all the women I have been interviewing in my study. My participants taught me so much about how sexism operates and showed me how they were constantly working to rise above that by challenging that in many ways, from humour, to directly calling someone out, to speaking to their friends or even speaking to me. Beyond that, following recent social movements and having the possibility to supervise so many pieces of work on precisely different issues relating to sexism, I am actually really optimistic about the possibilities that we can have to bring about change in society!
Obviously, there are so many problems that we still need to address, but seeing this much work and dedication among students, activists, and my participants, to really challenge different articulations of sexism, makes me really excited!
I do not think it will be easy or think that it is anything we can do quickly in any way, but there is a lot of exciting stuff going on at the moment; it is a great indication that we have a great incentive and so many people dedicated to it. For that reason, I choose to be quite optimistic.
Do you have any advice for young scholars?
In terms of choosing what you want for your own studies, just follow your own heart. Do not be afraid to study issues that not many people have looked at before you, that is possibly the best recipe for making the research process fun and meaningful to you. If you feel that it is important to study something, it probably is, so just go for it.