The internet has caused the biggest social shift in society over the last 12 or so years and although it is a fantastic tool for interaction, it is also rife with trolls and unsavoury people looking to use it for their own sexual gratification.
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The internet can be bleak, particularly for women, and from a man’s perspective it can be hard to understand just how much abuse women have to endure online. In order to highlight this issue, researcher and writer Jessica Eaton conducted a social experiment with her husband, to teach him what it’s like to be a woman online. Here’s how it went down:
Just did social experiment with my husband to teach him what being a female online is like (THREAD) pls RT
— Dr. Jessica Taylor (@DrJessTaylor) August 24, 2017
1. I got him to enter a generic non sexual forum as a 18 yo male with boring chat name and guess what? NOTHING HAPPENED
— Dr. Jessica Taylor (@DrJessTaylor) August 24, 2017
2. I got him to log out after a while and make a 18 yo female account with boring name
— Dr. Jessica Taylor (@DrJessTaylor) August 24, 2017
3. Within seconds he had 8 inbox messages from men and the first one he opened was a full pic of a guy's dick
— Dr. Jessica Taylor (@DrJessTaylor) August 24, 2017
4. The other men were asking him if he was really 18 or if he was a child and then started asking him to do sexual stuff
— Dr. Jessica Taylor (@DrJessTaylor) August 24, 2017
5. One account sent him porn gifs relentlessly
— Dr. Jessica Taylor (@DrJessTaylor) August 24, 2017
6. He got hundreds of messages in a few minutes and couldn't keep up
— Dr. Jessica Taylor (@DrJessTaylor) August 24, 2017
7. He then turned to me and said 'this is shocking – this has opened my eyes Jess, this is horrible'
— Dr. Jessica Taylor (@DrJessTaylor) August 24, 2017
8. I said to him – 'that's what you get for being female online' and he just stared as hundreds more messages poured in
— Dr. Jessica Taylor (@DrJessTaylor) August 24, 2017
9. One guy said he was a teacher and tried to get him to meet him
— Dr. Jessica Taylor (@DrJessTaylor) August 24, 2017
10. He learned a valuable lesson tonight and eventually his phone actually died from the amount of messages blowing up his phone
— Dr. Jessica Taylor (@DrJessTaylor) August 24, 2017
11. My husband actually said to me 'oh my god babe there's so many dicks' and he *dreaded* opening the next msg or photo
— Dr. Jessica Taylor (@DrJessTaylor) August 24, 2017
Although the findings were pretty grim, the silver lining is that this story has gone viral and as such, has inspired other people to share their stories of unwanted messages they’ve received online.
1 reason I left Warcraft, play a male char with a female name. Same sort of abuse. female char w generic name, presume you're male, no abuse
— Tony Sheppard (@grumbledook) August 25, 2017
I got a dick pic on Words With Friends. I went hard on tearing him up for it & he called me a bully who didn't know how to have fun
— AlisonGymble82 (@AlisonGymble82) August 26, 2017
As said, they might not be able to stop these perverts from sending their disgusting messages, but at least Jessica and her husband have raised awareness about the issue, which should help those who are working towards cracking down on online abuse. There are a lot of creeps out there – stay vigilant guys.
