What I received in my Instagram inbox on Monday morning was not my first unsolicited dick pic. They are quiet common, when you're a women on the internet. Especially when you have somewhat of a following on social networks such as IG. Although it wouldn't make a difference in my argument, I'd like to note that I never shared any explicit pictures of myself. My account (@istillloveherdotde) reflects my business, my Hip Hop blog, my life and love for music and a selfie here and there.
Unfortunately, the lack of skin shown has not stopped random strangers from popping up in my inbox and sending me pictures of their exposed penises, along with lines such as "what can you do with this" or "u sexy animal". I'm sure any woman reading this has received one before and any man who has enough respect for themselves and the women in his life knows that sending unsolicited nudes is not the way to go.
I'm not looking to get into what's so wrong with these pictures, but rather question why social networks aren't more protective of us.
Since they aren't, in order to put out a warning myself, I decided to share screenshots of unsolicited dick pics and explicit messages publicly for my followers to see. I first started doing this a few months ago, and after that I hadn't received any new ones just until Monday morning. Apparently my method worked.
So when Paul decided to send me a picture (which I suspect he got off the internet) of an erect penis, after I hadn't responded to his "Hi beautiful" and "u sexy animal" advances, I decided to once again let the world in on what we go through as women online. I even let Paul know that I was going to do so, and he seemed very excited, saying that "it might get me alot of women".
Obviously you can't post a penis to Instagram (I mean, come on that would be crazy!), so I made sure I censored the image by using my incredible photo editing skills.
I mostly received encouraging comments from my followers, both men and women. Many of them couldn't believe that there are actually people who do this sort of thing.
Unfortunately there were also a few men who were very upset with me sharing the screenshot and told me I should've had more class than doing so. I found this baffling, but not utterly surprising, living in a society that loves to blame the victim. So apparently, if it was up to them, a woman who is sexually harassed online should just report the person and move on. I did report him, and so did a good amount of my followers. Unfortunately nothing ever comes of these reports because it seems to be ok to send nudes privately, no matter if the recipient gave their consent or not.
I left the screenshot up on my profile for approximately 20hrs and then removed it because I never intended for it to permanently be on there. A few hours after that I found my account to have been disabled by Instagram for "violating community guidelines". My best guess is that a few of the gentlemen who weren't happy with my choice of operation reported the post and Instagram acted on them.
An account with 35k+ followers, with a great community of people and many personal as well as business connections is hard to let go of. So I've been trying my hardest to get it back up but sadly the Instagram customer service is as dry as a desert. I have submitted numerous complaints, via Instagram, Twitter and Facebook but have yet to receive a response.
I'm still hopeful to get my account back but in the meantime i'm pondering on the question of why our society protects the abusers more than the abused? As a woman you learn to dodge unwanted advances from a young age on and even become kind of numb to it. We constantly are told how to act in order not to attract it, or how to deal with when it happens or how to get over it in the aftermath. Society acts as if men were animals who have no control over themselves, their actions and erections. I know many men who prove that to be untrue and are perfectly aware and respecting of women's boundaries.
Why protect those that aren't?
Why does Paul get to go on with his day and call more women "sexy animal" and send more pictures of penises? While I'm over here trying to save my account?
UPDATE:
Two days later, my account has just been reactivated after the story was spread online: @IstillLoveHERdotde
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