Sexual Harassment in the Age of Social Media: Receiving Unsolicited Pictures and Their Effects

Written by Eliane Ramos

​​If I am being honest, I struggled for quite some time to come up with the perfect set of words to introduce such an unsettling topic. After taking some time off and mindlessly browsing Twitter (as one does), I was struck by a thread that popped up in my feed:

“I’m 23 years old and when I was 15/16 there was an adult that sent me photos and asked me to do it too. He’s a known Twitter user that is trying to do the same thing with other young girls and he is X. Open thread.”

A correspondence of texts and screenshots followed this initial statement, many people decided to express their support, and some others, even though in the minority, criticized the fact that she hadn’t blocked her harasser in the first place. As I prevented myself from initiating a heated argument with the latter group, I was left to wonder: why should she, or women, be held accountable for his, or men’s, wrongdoings? Moreover, why does there seem to be no escape from sexual harassment?

Statistics on unsolicited pictures sent through social media are still in an incipient phase. Yet, one study conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2017 reported that over half of women ages 18 to 29 have received an explicit image they have not asked for. All the more worrying, 35% of these women considered the experience to be either extremely or very upsetting. What this depicts is a reality already known to us, women that regularly use social media, and whether or not ciphers have caught up with the trend should be the least of our worries. Multiple articles have been written intending to uncover the real motivations behind the men who send these pictures (newsflash: it isn’t that surprising - narcissism and more so, expecting reciprocal treatment from women). However, not many tackle the direct effects that this type of sexual harassment causes to their receivers, which is why the rest of this post will be precisely devoted to that.

There is no clear-cut way to respond to unsolicited pictures, meaning that how this will affect each woman will vary widely according to a set of distinctive factors in our lived experiences. Nonetheless, there is merit in trying to recognize the usual manners in which women react. A recent study identified three types of defensive strategies that women commonly deploy after experiencing online harassment: normalizing it, self-censorship, and withdrawal. They found that many women said to themselves that they should just “brush it off” and “keep going”, trying to ignore the harassment. Others acted by self-monitoring, avoiding posting pictures, or generally doing anything that might attract online attention. Lastly, some women recurred to exit social media. And women who confronted their harassers? Only a handful of respondents said they confronted or reported them to social media platforms or the police. This last reaction was not part of women’s typical mode of action, which might be related to the high inefficacy rates of authorities dealing with the matter. What we can say is that these responses do seem to resemble what happens on a larger scale. Who hasn’t resorted to any of those alternatives or knows a friend that has? However, the bigger questions remain: why should we accept it as part of our normality, self-censor or leave social media all along? Why should we take the blame?

Social media sites and the corresponding authorities have the urgent imperative to address and mitigate harassment but the people behind such inexcusable and outright nefast activities have the most work to do: men. Men that send unsolicited pictures must be held accountable for their actions, and they have the fundamental responsibility to engage in open discussions with their peers about their stance on the issue. We must not underestimate the hold that a simple: “dude, that’s not ok, stop” has on the minds of impressionable men.

Overall, I think the usual conclusions continue to ring true. Men, do better. Women, if you decide to come forward with your experience, we are here for you and if you are not able to do so, that is also totally fine. But if you change your mind and decide you just want to scare them off (you would be surprised by how many have fallen for it):

“AUTO-REPLY: We have detected the transmission of unsolicited pornographic images of potentially illegal nature [code:36489-a] and your device’s IP address has been forwarded to the police department pending an investigation. If you think this is a mistake, reply STOP,”