Jessica Eaton recently conducted an online social experiment.
She asked her husband Alex to set up two profiles for a random chat room she found on Google.
Both profiles were pretty nondescript – non-sexual and generic online user profiles the average person would create.
First, Alex logged onto the chat room using his 18-year-old male profile.
As Jessica puts it, unsurprisingly, “nothing happened.”
It was only when Alex logged on using his 18-year-old female profile, that chat room users started to pay attention.
Or rather, started sending explicit messages and a tonne of unsolicited dick pics.
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
— Jessica Eaton (@Jessicae13Eaton) 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
— Jessica Eaton (@Jessicae13Eaton) August 24, 2017
Jessica shared her husband’s experience on a thread on Twitter.
She went on to say that Alex received hundreds of messages within minutes and that he found it impossible to keep up with them all.
One user sent the ’18-year-old’ porn gifs “relentlessly.”
Another said that they were a teacher and that they wanted to meet up.
Alex lasted just 30 minutes in the chat room before he had to give up.
It was hard to keep up but from he was contacted by about 40 men as they sent hundreds of messages / he was only on there for 30mins
— Jessica Eaton (@Jessicae13Eaton) August 25, 2017
Jessica ended the thread by saying that her husband learned a “valuable lesson” through her experiment.
We can only assume that he had made some sort of comment suggesting that women online don’t really have it that bad.
He was, of course, proved wrong. By an abundance of dick pics.
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
— Jessica Eaton (@Jessicae13Eaton) August 24, 2017
According to Pew Research Centre, women on the internet face far more sexualised abuse online.
21 percent of women between the ages of 18 and 29 reported experiencing sexual harassment online. Just nine percent of men reported experiencing the same.
Similarly, over half of women in this age bracket said they have received an explicit picture they did not ask for.
Over a third of women surveyed said that they were upset by their experiences.
