Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Dick Pics: The History

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

Depictions of dicks have been an obsession in art for as long as art has been around, but the act of sending a real life image of ones penis is a cultural phenomenon all of its own. Additionally, the implications of receiving a dick pic nowadays isn’t just the image itself, but the context of it being one that you maybe didn’t ask for - a form of sexual harassment and violence in and of itself. So why do men send them? Is there an equal culture of a female equivalent? And what have images of dicks meant to different cultures historically? Today Kate is joined by Andrea Waling, researcher and author of Exploring the Cultural Phenomenon of the Dick Pic, to look long and hard into all of these questions and more. Senior Producer Charlotte Long. Edited and mixed by Tom Delargy.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians like Kate Lister, Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Mary Beard and more.Get 50% off your first 3 months with code BETWIXT. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up at historyhit.com/subscribe.You can take part in our listener survey here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely betwixters. It's me, Kate Lister. I am here once more, and hopefully for a while longer, with your fair do's warning. I hope to be issuing these warnings

when we're both old and frail and looking across each other in the care home, giggling about the insanely rude things that are going to come your way. I'm all for that. But we'll start off with this one today. Here's your fair do. Who's warning? This is an adult podcast spoken by adults to other adults about adulty things

in an adulty way and you should be an adult too. Today, you're going to love this. We are talking about the dick pick phenomenon. So that's the topic of conversation guys. I can't dress that one up for you anymore. It's going to be offensive and you just might not want to listen to that today, in which case, give us a swerve. Don't listen. Scroll on and we'll catch in next time. Quiet, quiet. Quiet, We're in a communal men's bathroom in sunny ancient Turkey. Mm, lovely. Watching a mosaic artist at work,

placing tiny tiles down to create a beautifully intricate mosaic wall. What is his masterpiece? What has this artist created? Let's look closer. Oh, yeah, he's created a mosaic of his own dick. Of course he has. But could this be the first historical dick pick? These second century Roman mosaics will only

be rediscovered by archaeologists in 2018. And by then, dickpicks are already something of a cultural phenomenon. Dickpicks and online dating, well, just being online, go together like salt and pepper. It is almost impossible to have one without the other. Isn't that sad? And dick pics don't just pop up on dating apps. Oh my God, they're everywhere. You should see my email inbox. But how did we get to this point. From prehistoric penis paintings to obogeen emojis, today we are looking long and hard at the history of the dick pick. What do you look for a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect confidence of whatever my boss needs by just turning a knob and pushing the button.

Yes, social courtesy does make a difference. Goodness, for beautiful time. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derry. Oh, and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex, Scandal and Society. With me, Kate Lister. I don't know how we ended up here, but dickpicks have become a core part of internet culture, haven't they? Along with memes and trolls. Well, today, I am talking to Dr. Andrea Walling, whose actual job it is to research the cultural phenomenon of the dick pick. That's right.

This is the woman with the research you didn't know you wanted, but you absolutely need. She is here to answer the questions such as, why do they send them? Why is the lighting always so bad? How are they received? Often, not well. Is there a double standard in how men and women are treated for leaking their nudes? And what led us to this point in time? Yeah, all right, we're living in the age of the dick pick,

but fascination with the willie is as old as willies themselves. Would dickpicks by tapestry a thing? Dick pick papyrus pictures? I don't know. Let's find out. Hello and welcome to Betwixt the Sheets. It's only at Andrea Walling. How are you doing? I'm good, thank you. How are you? Ridiculously excited to talk to you because you have done the research that in the back of my brain, there was always like a, I want to know more about that. I'd like to do that research or read that research. And you did it. You researched dick pics.

Yeah. It's a crazy one, I know. I know it's funny because this is one of those subjects where it's inherently funny and mad and a bit bonkers because the subject is, but actually really important, I think, of like what on earth is the dick pick about? What's going on? Why are they being sent? Who's receiving them?

I think that is so important and hilarious, but mostly important. Yeah, I think it's a really interesting area of research. And it's one that I think people like to laugh at, but there's actually. quite a lot of nuance and complexity around it that I've been really trying to uncover. I'm so glad that you have been doing this. I suppose my starter question has got to be, what led you to do this research? Was it just one too many dickpicks that you'd received? Or what was the moment when you go, I need to research this properly? So what had happened was way back in 2016, I was a research officer working on a project

that was actually looking at men's bodywork practices. So going to the gym to look good. And I was asked to come on a radio show to talk about this new thing, Dick Picks, and talk about it in ways around cyber flashing. And I was on this radio show and I was paired with a journalist. And they were talking about how Dick Picks are all forms of sexual violence, all the women she had spoken to, had experienced violence from these Dick Picks. And nobody wants them. Nobody likes them. And I said, all that's really interesting. And I asked her, I said, how many men have you interviewed?

And she said, I've only interviewed too, but that's enough. And I thought, oh, that's not good enough. Like, how can we understand dickpicks if we're not talking to the people who create, produce, and send them? And so, and that kind of was an interesting interview because I felt very steamrolled. And I didn't really get much out of it. But I walked away going, there's something here. There's something here I want to explore more. So that kind of started that little trajectory into Dick Pick research way back in 2016.

And I kind of started to look into, well, how are we talking about Dick Pick? picks, who's creating dickpicks? Why are we so afraid of dick pics or why are they being positioned as a form of violence? And what does this mean? Because I was trying to mentally work out like, well, when did they start dick pics? But the answer to that would be like literally the day after they put cameras in phones, right? That's pretty, pretty soon after that. But the dick itself, images of venerations of sculptures of obsession with, that goes back as long as there have been willies to wave at people, right? Yeah, I mean, we've got centuries of phallic and penist symbolism across various cultures. So the idea of the dick pick as being this kind of new confronting thing,

I think is really fascinating because we actually have so much representation of the phallus across the globe, ancient Greek and Roman sculptures, in ancient Egypt hieroglyphics, just kind of everywhere. And in Aztec and Mayan sculpture, drawings as well. And so I think what's really interesting about the dick pick is it's taking representations. We're not seeing a representation of the penis. We're seeing the actual penis. The actual thing. Yeah. And I think that's what makes it really confronting for people is that we're so used to kind of seeing phallic drawings with little happy faces on them. And you know, you can go into like a sex shop and they've got all the Bachelorette stuff and it's all penis themed. Yeah. But then when you get the real thing, that's very different. It's very confronting, I think, for a lot of people.

And it almost hides the mystique, right? Like, we're not. not really meant to see the actual penis. We're just meant to see representations of it, but not the actual thing. I know that your research is about cultural phenomenon now and super recent history, but if you had a sense of going back through the records and the research of what penises have meant to different cultures, because it seems to be, it's like how long's a piece of string, isn't it? But in almost every culture, the penis is there on display somewhere, right?

It's about fertility, but it's about more than that as well. I'm just trying to get a sense of like, when did we go from like, oh my God, it's the penis, the mighty penis to suddenly like click. Ugh, that's fucking horrible. What was that journey? I couldn't tell you what that trajectory is. I can say that, you know, in a lot of different cultures, the penis has kind of represented fertility.

It's represented power and strength and potency. It's been a kind of sign, a stand in for masculinity, kind of even around warrior and strength. So those are the kinds of meanings that we often associate with the penis. And I think it's interesting because when you think about those meanings and then you think about the actual penis itself, it is actually quite fragile. They are, aren't they? I mean, you've just got a flick one. They're not all that strong, nope.

No, exactly. They're not strong. And they come in such diverse shapes and sizes as well. Quite a lot of them don't look like the ones that we kind of see revered. They're not super big and really phallic and seriously. circumcised. And so I think there's a lot of tensions between the ways in which we represent penis imagery and what it actually looks like. And others have kind of already suggested that it is related to ideas about power and strength and masculinity that we can't really see

the actual penis because we're taking away that mystique of masculinity and power and strength, but that the representation kind of gives us. When you look at Roman statues and Greek statues, they're quite famous for having quite little winkies, aren't they? Like they didn't seem to favour the enormous porn dong that everyone seems to be after today. I've always wondered why that is. I have read that it's because a large penis was associated with beastial and animal-like. I don't know if that's true. I don't know if that's just something that I've randomly read online somewhere. Have you got any sense of penis fashions throughout the ages? Yeah. I haven't got a sense of the fashions throughout the ages, but that would make a great study,

wouldn't it, to look at the historicising the penis. Oh, I love that. actually got a colleague who does more penis genital look at stuff. I should chat with him because he's actually very into that kind of stuff looking at the history around that. But yeah, I mean, that's not untrue. And I know that when we think about certain marginalized cultures, you know, for example, black men are hypersexualized and they're perceived to have very large penises, which are viewed as a threat to whiteness and as a threat to white culture. And they get very hypersexualized in that space and they're automatically deemed not just hypersexualized but violent and animalistic and of course we know that's a really problematic and really harmful

stereotype that they experienced that results in quite severe discrimination and violence against them so there could be some truth around what you're saying around that kind of notion i know that when we think about things like circumcision and i can't remember what time period this is it might have been the dark ages but an uncircumcised penis was also seen as kind of representing animalistic desire, hypersexuality, and that circumcised was a controlled sexuality, a controlled penis as well. So there are some things around that, but those are a little bit outside of my expertise, but I am aware of some of that around, even just whether or not foreskin articulates a particular kind of notion of identity and power and strength. I know that the foreskin was

strongly associated in the 19th century with the anti-masturbation movement. It was this sort of weird idea that if people masturbated too much, they would lose vital essence. And there was this idea that if you circumcised penises, it would cut down on that. It's a complete nonsense, of course, but maybe that kind of links into it too. Potentially, yeah, it's quite not my area. So I'm not sure. I just kind of had periphery knowledge around it as I was doing the more dick pick research. It kind of came up a little bit. Do you think that like deep picks are only new because the technology's new? Or do you think that maybe there was once dick pick by tapestry or like, you? dick-pick oil paintings. It wouldn't surprise me. And again, I wish I knew the history around this,

but I think there is a history of sexting that goes beyond contemporary digital media. That must be right. And it depends on how we conceptualize it. It might be seen as art. Like we see erotic art as art, but maybe for them it was something different. There's all ways in which we can interpret and understand that. I think what technology does is it makes it very immediate. So people were taking Polaroids. You know, in the 70s when you had the Polaroid camera, people were taking dickpicks and mailing them. And apparently that was a thing. And it was just hilarious.

I just can't imagine taking a dirty photo and then mailing it to someone. I think one of the things technology does now is like the immediacy of it. And like when you're horny and you sort of all caught up in that moment is you do do stupid stuff. And like, you know, watch stupid stuff. And like you said, but to actually go through the process of taking a Polaroid and, like, and then wandering off down to the post office to get a stamp and post that's commitment, isn't it? I just think it's crazy. And it's the same like when you think about homemade porn. You had to get like a massive camera set up and you'd film it. It was on a VHS.

Whereas like nowadays you can just set your camera up and do a live stream and there you go. Yeah. You don't you? The legwork that goes into that. Lots of legwork. Another study I'm working on, we're talking to people about their production of adult pornography in the house. So like what they're doing for themselves. We had a lot of older part. who talked about the difference between then and now and around, you know, back in the day, you would do Polaroids, you would do VHS film, and you'd have to set it up, and it was a whole thing, and you couldn't check it back either because it was film. It wasn't actually digital. And so digital technology is really fascinating because it allows you to take photos immediately. You can check them immediately and make adjustments immediately and then send it immediately to somebody else. And I think that's what makes dickpicks really interesting and not just, dick pics, but you know, any kind of erotic or nude or sexual imagery because it's so immediate and you can check it and change it and you're not kind of being held hostage to, did the camera

get the photo right? Or is it blurry? And did it come out and film, right? And like, you don't have to worry about some random person at the photo office getting the film and doing the photos for you, right? Oh my God, yeah. I mean, I'm just trying to like cast my mind back here because I was too young to be sending and receiving dick pics, but just as the internet was kind of in its infancy and share images. And we all know that porn and sex is a huge motivator in technological innovation. If something can be used for sex purposes, it will be. And Stan's a much bigger chance of being rolled out. And the internet is a perfect example of that. But before we had cameras in phones, in between polaroids and dickpicks, like were people sharing penises on internet chat rooms and

things like that? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I don't know if you remember chat roulette, right? So chat roulette. Oh, God. Yes. on chat relay and supposed to chat with someone random. And it was literally just penises. And that's why I think South Park did a really hilarious episode around it where I cannot remember if it was Cartman or somebody was on chat roulette and they were like just clicking through penis, penis, penis, penis, penis, like it's quite funny because it was really true. Like it was very much like that. And any kind of webcam sort of thing. And then I think as digital technology evolved, we've got more sophisticated capacities to send dickpicks and send nice dick picks or funny dickpicks

or edit your dickpicks or put little illustrations on your dickpicks, that sort of thing. I'd forgotten all about that. What about things like Tumblr? Was there dick pick accounts there as well? Oh, yeah. So before Tumblr had its ban, it had so many really amazing dick pick accounts. I quite like Tumblr for that. They had some really creative ones. So some of my favorites that I looked at that I talk about in my book one is called Your Dick Looks Great in those heels and it was a Tumblr account and I kid you not it was literally just men putting their penis in a pair of heels

like in a heel and then taking a photo and then putting like a witty caption so one of my favorites there's one in a pair of heels and then it says Mercury is in retrograde and I loved it like I just thought how funny and clever and they looked great in these shoes as well like I think there was something really amazing

in the way they looked so that was a really good blog there's another one that I loved which is a really interesting one. It was where you sent a dick pick that you didn't want. And it was meant to be a blog for people to shame dick pick senders. But what was happening in this blog is that men were posting their dick pics. Often men who have micro penises or very small penises and they wanted to be shamed.

And they were asking for people to shame them and said, I want you to shame me. Humiliation. Hashtag humiliation. Hashtag submission. They wanted people to tell them how gross and disgusting their penises looked as well. It was really interesting. So that was a really good one. And then I think the best one, though, is Madeline Holden had a really great blog

called Critique My Dickpick.com. She'd invite people to send in their dickpicks. And you didn't have to be a cisgender man. You could be any gender, anybody. So she had a lot of really great creative stuff like cis women using strap-ons, trans men showing their penises. It was really quite inclusive. And I loved it.

But it was really good because she would do a kind of really amazing artistic approach. So she'd talk about the lighting and she'd talk about the body positioning and the setting and what is the penis doing. And she would provide this critique in a really nice kind of way. And it was very artistic like using artistic language and then she'd give it a rating. So she'd give it like a B or an A plus. And if it wasn't as good as it could be, she would give suggestions on how you could improve it. And the idea behind it was she was trying to make Dick Pick's erotic and trying to get men and everybody to think about the dick pick as something that can be visually pleasing and erotic and for the erotic senses rather than just something random.

That's a tough challenge. I think digics can be really erotic in the right ways. Like some of the ones I've looked at, I'm like, oh gosh, that's quite good. This is one of the many issues that I have with dick pics is put some damn effort into it. I mean, if you're going to send me this crap, like me and my girlfriend's on the top, but when we send nudes and you take and source your pictures of yourself to send, And with consents to another person, the lighting is spot on and there's positioning and they really go to town to make it look as good as possible. And then by contrast, is the dick pick

arrived and it's just like, oh, right. Yeah, and it's usually pretty shit. And it's kind of up close and the lighting's weird and it doesn't look very good. It doesn't look very sexy. It's not really getting you there. There's no real effort into it. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean. It's just a strangled penis. That's what I'm looking at. Yeah. What Madeline was trying to do was to get men to really think beyond that. I like that then. Yeah. And some of the ones she got, I have to say, are just beautiful.

They're sexy. They're erotic. You look at them and you go, wow, that's really sexy. You know, like a guy laying in a bed and he's got his hand on his penis and you can see the full torso. And it just looks really sexy. You know, the bed sheet kind of slung low under his hips. Like, you know what I mean?

Like, that's quite sexy. It's erotic. One of my favorites was one where a guy's standing. And you actually don't see his penis. You see the shadow of it on the wall. And then he has a lovely bum as well. So you're actually kind of perving on the bum more than you're perving on the dick. But people can do really wonderful creative things with dick pics.

It doesn't have to be this random shot. But it's an interesting thing where we're kind of expecting that level of care now. We are expecting things to have some effort. And I think it's that kind of shift around women have had to kind of put effort into their bodies. If we're going to send a pick to somebody, we're kind of expected to put as much effort as we can. So we're having those same expectations now of men. which I think is really interesting. I think that that is interesting.

The Tumblr account there that you talk about, like that's making penises look pretty, which is like a whole valuable mission in and of itself. But I suppose what I think of when I think of a dick pick is it's not really a picture of a penis, although that in essence it is. But when I think of it, it's one that I didn't ask for. Like if you're sending pictures of your dick

to a Tumblr account to be rated or to be humiliated, there is a level of consent in that in that the invitation is there. What I think of when I think of a dick pick is the one where you just open up your DMs or your email and oh look it's a penis staring back at me and I don't know who that penis belongs to or why it's there quite frankly that's kind of what I think when I think of a dick pick yeah so I think what's interesting there is that a dick pick by definition is a picture of a dick but what's happened and that's what some of my research has shown

is that we've created this discourse around what dick picks are and that idea that a dick pick is just a picture that's sent non-consensually is how most people think about dick picks. And then what that does is that we forget that actually, at the core of it, a dick pick is just a picture of a dick, and how it's sent or the context in which is sent will vary. So there is a whole area, as we know where it is sent as a form of harassment, as a form of sexual violence towards other people. And it's intended to do that. The motivations behind that are about intimidation, about making women feel uncomfortable about making women feel like they don't belong in certain spaces, particularly internet spaces, because we know the internet can be such a hostile space for women.

But the other side of that is that there are people who love sending and receiving dick picks in a kind of more consensual manner. So there's that kind of thing that we need to think about as well and create space to talk about that. Yeah. If I'm consenting and we've got a bit of a thing going on, I'm very happy to receive dick pics as long as I'm on board with it, that that's part of what we're doing here. And I'm fascinated as to like, what was the psychology leading up to that? What was wrong with high? Where's like that disconnect? And the other thing that I really want to know, and you can maybe answer this with your research,

is do women do this as well? People with vaginas, do they, as an opening gambit, skip hello and just go, I know what I'll do, and just randomly take a picture of their genitals to say hello. Do they do that? Do they do that as much? So I don't know. I know that people will send Velvet Picks. Like that's a thing, whether or not they would do it in the same kind of way as unasked for.

Yeah. I'm not sure, to be honest. That would make a really interesting study in the valve of itself. I would imagine it would be much less common because of the way in which we kind of position our bodies that if you have a vulva, we're told to hide our bodies. We're told that it's shameful. It's disgusting that nobody wants to see it. So to take a vulva pick, I think has a very different set of meanings and expectations

than a dick pick where we are surrounded by dick pick imagery and phallic imagery. So a dick pick is like an extension of that, whereas we don't have that same vulva imagery, right? Like you can't go into a store and find a whole bunch of vulva themed things. We're starting to see that now. We're seeing a lot of really cool creatives and artists putting that kind of stuff together and selling it. So like nowadays you can find really cool feminists and kind of vulva themed things

like on sex education. Amy makes her vulva themed. cupcakes, which are really great, and they're all different. And we're starting to see more of that push towards representation of the vulva. But because we don't have that, I think normally, it kind of impacts, I think, how we might potentially send a vulva pick. It doesn't mean it's not happening. It may be happening. But I don't know if it's happening to the same extent because it's almost with the dick pick. We expect it to happen and it happens. And then because it happens and we expect it to happen. It creates this kind of cyclical thing where we're told that if you go on

the internet, be prepared for Dick Picks. You go on a dating app, right? Be prepared for Dick Picks. So it's like a self-serving prophecy. I'll be back with Andrea and Dick Picks after this short break. Hey, I'm Don Wildman. And on American History hit, my expert guests and I journey across the nation and through the years to uncover the stories that have made the United States. From first flight to First Ladies, from stitching the star-spangled banner to striking gold in California, to shooting for the moon with Apollo. We've got you covered. Catch new episodes of American History Hit, a podcast by History Hit, every Monday and Thursday

wherever you get your podcasts. I mean, that makes sense, I suppose, because it's almost like created a permission-based to do it. And you can tell me from the research that you've done, but a dick pick seems like it's something with pride. It's like, behold, I have this. Are you interested in this thing? I have?

Whereas a vulva's very much caught up with shame still today, despite the fact that there's people doing amazing work to try and unpick that. But they don't have quite that same, ha, ha, I am here with my mighty schlong, did they? They just... Can you imagine? That'd be amazing. If we just stopped saying hello to people we fancied and just went,

here's my vulva instead. But your research, what you've pulled out of this, is you have got some really interesting ways of framing the dick pick of how it's sent and how it's received. And it seems that what's going on here a lot of the time is miscommunication. I think part of it is that for sure. So I think for some people, I'm going to say men here. I think for some men, they genuinely believe that if they send a dick pick, it's what women want

and that they'll get a dirty photo in return. And they genuinely believe that. So they don't recognize that actually they should probably have a conversation with the woman. Right. first. And I think, you know, this is the other issue, too, that we don't necessarily create a lot of space for women to be interested in casual sex, to be interested in kind of more visual forms of pleasure. And so we need to create that space, but it needs to be done with consent and consensual ideas in mind. So we've got that issue. So they're like really excited about their penis and just assume that you would be too. Yes. Or they just think that that's what you desire. And they're probably functioning off a bigger thing. thing where we know in pornography, so much pornography is so penis focused and penis-centered. Right. And so they think, okay, women need a good penis to have good sex, but actually for a lot of people with Volvo, that's not necessarily the case. Good sex doesn't come out through penetration.

For some of them, definitely it does, but for a lot of others, it doesn't. And we don't see that a lot in pornography. Or if you want to see that in pornography, you have to know how to look for that. You have to know what the language is being used and then you have to find examples of it. So you don't see that a lot in pornography. That makes sense. So there's that kind of expectation as well. And then for some men, it's about feeling actually a little bit insecure and they've got this penis and they don't know if it looks okay. It probably doesn't look like what you see in a porno, right? And so there is actually some body image stuff happening there too that we're not necessarily talking about a lot of, but we should talk about a little bit more

because in the same way that pornography can kind of represent unrealistic bodies, particularly mainstream pornography and body types and things that a lot of people may strive to get but never achieve, you know, unrealistic vaginas, all of that kind of stuff and involve us. We have the same issue with penises.

It can be hard to find pornography that showcases a diverse range of penises unless you're actively looking for it. I was talking to one guy and he said, well, my penis kind of bends to the left and I'm worried that women might think that's weird or they won't like it. And another guy's like, well, I'm not circumcised, but I don't know. Do women like uncircumcised?

I've got no idea. There's like this kind of underlying thing for some of them around insecurity and needing reassurance that their penis is okay. Okay. And that's also probably a product of the fact that we are so shit at talking about sex and sexual relations in any kind of capacity. So we're kind of just going off of what we've been told by porn and snippets of information and sex education and some of these men don't really know what to do or how to go about

it. And so they're just trying their best. That's not to excuse what they're doing because it's not okay to send dick pics without any kind of form of consent. But there's other stuff happening there as well alongside the kind of violence narrative. See, I spoke to my lovely gay friend, Gads, who's just lovely and gorgeous about this because I knew that this subject was coming up. And he was talking about what it's like in the gay community on Grindr or Scruff or any of those. And I was talking about dickpicks and he was like, you said, but Kate, for my people, it's just a way of saying hello, which I thought was quite interesting. Have you done research? Not that, you know, I want to stigmatize all gay people for doing this. My friend Gals is quite slutty. But like, have you done

research on the gay community as well? Because like, presumably if you've got men who are maybe a bit insecure or if they think that this is what you really want to see and then the person that's sending it to is also a man with these same programmings, it must just be a dick pick bonanza over there, right? I haven't done the research, but I'm aware of the research that's been done in that space, and that is correct. It's kind of, like you said, a way of saying hello. But there's a lot of gay men who are frustrated by that because they may be also looking for something more. Fair. I haven't thought of that. Yeah. And so they can get a bit frustrated with that because they're like, well, I'm not necessarily looking for a hookup. I'm looking for something more and I'm just getting

inundated with dick pics. I think it's that thing where we kind of have these expectations that all men are going to be super hypersexual, regardless of their sexual orientation. there's a lot of men who aren't who are looking for romance and intimacy and connection as well and we're not creating space for that in the same way that there are women who we see differently we expect that all women want intimacy romance and connection not all women do some of them just want a good fuck and then to move on right and we don't create a space for that I've often thought that is there's been this narrative for centuries that women aren't as horny as men and I'm thinking of heterosexual cis men and women here the idea that they're not as horny and I've often thought

it's not that they're not. It's that it's actually quite dangerous to express that. Yeah, it is. The person that you fancy is much stronger and aggressive than you are. And probably most women have had experiences where they've gotten danger or been hurt by a man. So the person that you're trying to be horny with is this kind of like giant aggressive bear type of thing. And it's not always safe for you to be like, hey, I kind of fancy some sex. because there's not a space for that because it's either judged or shamed, stigmatized, you're a slut,

or the person that you actually fancy could be quite dangerous. Yeah, definitely. There's that issue. There's also the issue that I know a lot of women have talked about this, but that they go into these encounters and the sex is really shit because the guys don't care about their pleasure or they don't know what they're doing and there's no communication. Yeah. I'm going to rock your world, baby.

I'm going to make love to you all night long. Oh, four seconds later, right? Thanks for that. That stuff. So there's like that narrative as well. And then something interesting that was coming up that I've noticed just kind of like in experience and talking with friends and things. But the women who are looking for casual sex and encounters are not the ones getting picked up

because the men are actually trying to pick up the women wanting romance and intimacy and connection. Look at that. Because then it's more of a chase. It's easier to manipulate. And they're kind of getting the girlfriend experience without committing to the girlfriend. Wow. that is interesting. Yeah, even though there's lots of women

who are like, I don't want a relationship, I just want to have good sex and move on. And it's interesting that I've talked to several women now who are struggling to hook up with that upfront straightforwardness and then you've got a whole other group of women who are looking for relationships and the men wanting casual sex are going for them instead.

That's really, really interesting to see those dynamics play out. I was fine, like really, you know, I'm talking about my more slutty days, but I was always really perplexed by the fact that I'd be quite upfront of just like, I'm not into a relationship. We're just going to have some fun. They'd be like, yeah, it's amazing.

And then literally the next day they'd freak out and they'd run away from you like a million miles an hour. You wanted to chase after them just to inform them. I don't want to marry you, dickhead. You always really irritated me of like, you know, they'd be like, yeah, it's all like, you know, I've got to go now. And it was that always irritated me of like, how ego driven are you that you now think because we've had sex, I must want to make babies with you and get married, you prick. Sorry, you've touched a nerve now.

I'm unloading now. I'm sorry. But that's that thing. And it's a really interesting space because of that there's this idea that we're not allowed to like dick pics that it's not okay to like them. When that discourse was coming out, that old dickpicks are bad. They're all gross. You know, women don't like them.

Then there's a group of women going, well, wait a minute, I actually love dick pics. Where do I fit in? That's not my experience. And so they're being shamed for liking dick pics. And in fact, some of the research that I've done showed that not only were women being shamed, but they were being blamed for other women experiencing dickpicks. because if one woman liked a dickpick, she's made it so the man thinks all women do, and it's her fault. So there's that kind of blaming that's happening as well.

So women are really caught in this really kind of crappy space where they can't like it because then they're not being feminist enough or they're making it harder for other women. So there's that difficulty. And then you've got other women who are being violated by it who are experiencing a barrage of dickpicks that are forms of harassment and violence. It's really difficult to kind of work through a lot of those tensions. It really is. So you've spoken a bit about what's happening on the giving end of this. But let's talk a little about the receiving end, because you touched a bit on it there, is how are they being received? Which I presume it must be quite broad from what you're saying. It's very easy to think that anyone getting a dick pick would be horrified and would drop their phone in disgust and then call for the smell insults.

But generally from your research, what's happening on the receiving end of this? It depends really on the context of the sending. So when I spoke with men about, I said, you know, how are your partners engaging with these photos? And some of them said, well, they really enjoy it. They really like when we're sending these photos back and forth. And it creates sexual tension. It creates intimacy. And one of my participants talked about how, because he'd been sex seeing a lot and sending dick picks and they were sending picks back and forth with a partner that he was long distance with. And they hadn't known each other very well. He said the next time they saw each other after doing that sex scene, he said the sex was so much better because they felt more comfortable. and confident with each other and each other's bodies, and they felt more in tune with each other because they had kind of done all of the sex theme prior. So for him, it actually created some additional intimacy that may not have been possible to create a better sexual encounter. And for other men that I spoke to, they said, well, one guy talked about, well, sometimes he likes to send a dick pick to his girlfriend when she's in a situation that he knows she can't do

anything about it. So he said that she was a lawyer. And so he'd be like, I'd purposely send her a dick pick while she was doing legal counsel. Now, there's a couple of ways you can take that interpretation, right? One way could be it's about being dirty and sexy and being cheeky and putting someone in a situation where, well, you're at work now, so you can't do anything. But later, we can have some fun. There's that interpretation. The other interpretation would be that he's being quite harmful and disrupting her work narrative, right? So there's both. And so you have to take both in mind. It's not either or it's both. And because I didn't talk to her, I can't get her perspective on it. So I'm having to just go with what he is saying.

But people do do that. We do send sexy images and texts to partners and things while they're at work and be like, hey, I'm thinking about you and you send a dirty photo or whatever. Or you send cheeky text messages and talk about what we're going to do later. Like that is part of relationality. It's part of sexual relationality. And digital technology has allowed for that in a way that we haven't had previously because, you know, back in the day you'd write a bloody letter.

And you'd wait, you know, three, four, or even a month, right, to get these sexy letters. You know, and people might do it not safe for work, and they'll put the little tagline so that you know when you're going to open it, you need to do it somewhere private. And it can be a bit fun and risky and sexy. What I'm kind of taking away from you is something that I hadn't really considered before is that dickpicks are not just unsolicited dickpicks. You have to consider all of the dick picks. And sexting in itself, like a lot of people find that very enjoyable and that's fun and that's cheeky. and it would be a shame to throw all of that out as well, wouldn't it? Or maybe that's just me.

Oh, for sure. I agree. Like, I think sexine can be a real enhancement to your relationship. I think it can be a really great way to maintain intimacy. It can let you kind of explore fantasies in a way that you may not feel quite ready to do in person, but it lets you kind of test them out, right? So let's say you're not sure if you're interested in something and you start sexting. That can be an indicator.

Is it turning you on? Are you getting an indicator? to it or are you feeling uncomfortable with it? And that could be a really great safe step for some people who may not want to jump into things to play out that. And then if they do the fantasy in real life, great, or it could just always remain a fantasy. That's okay too. I think that sexing can be a really great enhancement as long as it's being done consensually, that people are being respectful to each other. And of course, that people aren't engaging in things like revenge, pornography or kind of sharing those sex outside of the dynamic. Well, I mean, that's always the

danger, isn't it, with the tech? You know, you get all steamy and hot and you're not thinking straight and you start sending pictures. And then suddenly there's pictures of you out there now in the hands of somebody that perhaps you just met on Tinder. It's the best place for them to be. And then we often blame the person who created that photo and we've created this idea, well, once it's on the internet, it's forever and that's your fault. But it's not the person who broke your trust and shared it without your consent. It's their fault. It's their fault. which is why we've had to shift around, I'm not sure in the UK, but I know in Australia we have malicious sexting laws now

and we have revenge pornography laws. So people can be charged for that. So I don't think there's anything wrong with taking a dirty photo. You do you. It's great. You need to do what's best for you, what makes you feel good. And there's nothing inherently wrong with dirty photos. The issue is that the person you're sending it to, if they're sharing it. And the only exception outside of that,

which we're not going to get into is, of course, around young people and child abuse, which is a whole separate issue, right? So taking that out of the equation, if it's between adults, that's when it's an issue. There have been some high-profile people whose dickpicks have made it into the public arena, haven't they? And tick picks as well. Jennifer Lawrence's pictures were leaked a while ago, and there wasn't, didn't Jeff Bezos have his penile picture made public? Yeah, he did, and he didn't care. Why would you?

Why would you, though, Jeff Bezos? Like, yeah. And I think that's the difference too, right? Like so when men have their nudes leaked, they're not held to the same scrutiny or stigma or shame that women are. So if you get a celebrity like Jennifer Lawrence or if you get kind of just an everyday woman, if your nudes get leaked, it's your fault. You're Jezebel. You're someone who's a slut. You're a whore. It's your fault.

It got leaked. What are you doing? You should have known better. And in a lot of education settings, we kind of teach young girls in particular, you know, don't take sexy photos because they're up on the internet and it's forever. but it's not their fault. Like the fault is the person who's shared it. Whereas with men, someone like Chris Evans, he accidentally shared a penis pick a while back.

I didn't know that, did he? Yeah, he did. I know. I know I missed it too. I missed the actual photo. But here we're laughing about it. Like, we think it's funny. And he thought,

and he played it as a humorous thing. And he was like, oops. And then he goes, don't forget to vote. Like, he kind of tied in voting for the next US president with it. That's a good saying. It was funny. And people thought it was hilarious. And he didn't really.

get in trouble for that or he wasn't shamed for that. And it's the same with other men. Like they're not getting shamed necessarily. When they do get shamed, they have to be in certain positions of authority. So a politician is more likely to be shamed for sending a dick pick because of the position he occupies. Yeah. Whereas a celebrity, he can get away with it, no worries. And even then with the politicians, unless you're someone like Anthony Wiener who was sending it to underage girls, of course, he was prosecuted for that. They can see. still kind of get away with it and get around it because they're men of power, whereas women in the same positions, forget it. They don't have that same power. The amount of stuff that

people risk, especially really high profile people, when they're taking these images and send them, like, I can't help. Like, why are you doing that? And not the guy who's sent him to underage kids, he can get in the fucking bin, but if you're Jeff Bezos or Chris Evans, hey, you've got to be so careful with this stuff, don't you? But they're still doing it anyway. They're still out there. Well, because we're human and they're human, even if there's celebrities and politicians, they still have sexual desires and needs. And I don't think it's fair to ask a politician or celebrity to be super careful because they're human like the rest of us. Of course they're going to engage in practices and have a bit of fun and why wouldn't you? Absolutely. And when we hold them to those pedestals, it makes it really challenging for them to just be human beings and then for us to relate to them because we see them as so high profile and so. out of touch with reality. And then some of them are. Some celebrities we know are very much out of touch with reality, but a lot of them are just human beings like the rest of us. That is very true. You have just been so fascinating to talk to about this. The research is just amazing about the

psychology of it. And I sort of taken away from this is there's a distinct line, well, maybe it's not that distinct, but there is a difference between what we'd call cyber flashing, which is just exposing your genitals to somebody when you've had zero contact with them before. And just taking pictures of penises within different contexts. Yeah, there's all kinds of contexts that you might take a photo of a penis. And I think what I was really hoping to do with my book is just say, hey, actually, a dick pick is more than just a form of violence or medical pathology, which is still valid and legitimate. And those are legitimate ways to think about dickpicks. But there are so many other ways we can think about it as well. So I kind of conclude they're multiple, they're varied.

And there's a lot of nuance around how we might want to talk about and think about them and what they're doing and what they mean for people. Final question. Did anything surprise you when you came out of your research? I mean, apart from, you know, the photographs themselves and seeing pictures of penises and shoes and all of those things were like the actual research itself. Was there anything that you're like, I did not expect that. To be honest, like, I think I had a lot of ideas of what was going to come. So they ended up getting confirmed. I think the stuff around the guys wanting to be humiliated for small penises was what surprised.

surprised me the most. I kind of looked at that as an assumption around, well, all men want big penises so they wouldn't want to show that. That would be so vulnerable to share that and actually to find a blog where they were obsessed with wanting to be humiliated and shamed for it. I was like, oh, that's really interesting. I wouldn't have thought that. I hadn't thought that either, but I've got a lot of sex worker friends because I got a weird email from some guy asking me to rate his penis and say that it was tiny. And I mentioned it to them and they're like, oh, yeah, that's a whole thing. That's a whole thing. Men pay them to laugh at their penises.

It's a whole thing that one. And I didn't think about that. That was one thing that really came out to me that I was like, oh, why didn't I think of that as a potentiality? That's really interesting. I think the other thing, which I kind of knew but needed to confirm was just a vulnerability. Like a lot of the men I spoke to were really quite unsure about their penis and what it looked like and how it was working and they were quite nervous about it. and they worried about performance, they worried about not being able to keep it hard,

they worried about getting it up, they worried about how it looked. The aesthetic, was it thick enough? Was it long enough? And it wasn't necessarily that if it was big enough, it was more around other aspects of the aesthetic of the penis they were worried about. And I thought that was really interesting as well.

And I kind of thought that was going to come out, but to the degree of what you did, I found really fascinating. Andrea, you have been amazing to talk to. And if people want to know more about you and your work, where can they find you? Not to send dickpicks to, just, you know. You know, hilariously, I have not had people send me dick pics. Like, I kind of thought I would get a lot. I would have thought you'd have got loads. I mean, this isn't necessarily an invitation because that would just be bad for my

work inbox. But I haven't really received any random. It's been surprising, like not to my Twitter, not to my email, not to any social media. Like, I just haven't received dick pics that I thought I would get being a dick pick researcher. Wow. That is interesting. Yeah, isn't it? It's a bit disappointing, actually. Like, I can't have expected it. It's a part of you that's like, oh. Oh, it's a bit like that. I thought, oh, well, that would be great if people started sending me their dick picks and then I could put them in my book. But no, like, I just haven't really received much of anything. And I wonder if it's because I'm doing the research that they're like, oh, well, I'm not going to. I don't want to end up in the book. Yeah. Or, you know, it's that thing I said before around, you know, men chasing women who want romance rather

than casual sex. Like, they're not going to send a dick pick researcher who wants a dick pick. They're going to send it to somebody who doesn't want it. Okay, no. Are you on social media? I don't tweet much, but I am on Twitter. And then if people are really interested in my work, they can kind of reach out to my university profile.

They'll kind of find all the information there. And give us the full title of the book. So it's exploring the cultural phenomenon of the dick pick. It came out just a couple weeks ago by Routledge Press. Andrea, you have just been so much fun. Thank you for coming to talk to me today. Lovely. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for listening. And if you like what you heard, please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcasts. We have upcoming episodes on everything from the history of breastfeeding to forgotten women warriors.

You don't want to miss any of it. And if you want to explore a subject or if you just want to say hello, we don't want dickpicks, you don't need to do that. But if you just wanted to say hi, You can now email us and you can get us at betwixt at historyhit.com. This podcast was produced by Charlotte Long and mixed by Thomas Del Argy. This podcast features music from Epidemic Sound.