[Disclaimer]
There was some recent unpleasantness regarding that midwestern gambler guy and his misogynistic posts, which were often sexual in nature. Also, the last time I discussed a personal relationship issue, I was fairly criticized for being too gratuitous. It is my hope that we can discuss an interesting sociological phenomenon without being disrespectful.
Oh, and if you remember my last threads about my dating life: she pretty unceremoniously dumped me. But I’ve been dating somebody new for a few months!
[/disclaimer]
Have you ever sent racy photos while dating? I ask because it seems to have become a common phenomenon.
I can personally attest to the fact that the last 5 women I’ve dated - ranging in age from their 20s to 50s - have sent me naked pictures as part of flirting back and forth.
And I’d venture that I’m not alone.
I noticed that IPhone makes it easy to squirrel away selected photos into a private (password protected) folder.
And in many jurisdictions new laws have been passed protecting against “revenge porn” (I.e. posting of naked pictures on the internet without the subject’s permission), a seemingly tacit admission that this has become a normal part of dating culture.
And it has historical precedent. Sarah Goodridge was known to have sent a painting of her breasts to statesman Daniel Webster in the 1800s
Thoughts? Concerns? Do you find it disgusting, perfectly cromulent, or something in between?
An obvious reality is that one can take and store whatever pix however one chooses.
But the instant one sends that pic to somebody else via any mechanism, one has lost all control over it. That somebody else can do anything with it and one’s recourse is darn close to nothing. (With a small nod towards the revenge porn laws, but good luck getting that invoked for a nude still voluntarily provided).
Nonetheless, it does seem to be a feature of modern dating.
Some people are cagey enough to obscure their identity in their pictures (maybe with a flash that covers their face, or just not having their face in the picture at all).
That doesn’t prevent the other person from abusing the photo, but it would seek to lessen the chance of it being identifiable.
Of course, one feature of dating is trust. Theoretically you wouldn’t send it to somebody you didn’t trust to not abuse it. In practice, of course, people are often bitter and vindictive after a breakup, and some people are not even honest and respectful when in the relationship.
This has been a thing forever. I had a friend who worked at a photolab in the late 80s and early 90s, before digital took over the world. He saw naked pictures a lot. One place he worked was Japan Camera, and their stores featured the developing machine in the front window of the store, so you could watch the process as it happened. So every now and then, he had to casually go block the window until all the nudie photos had passed, so as to not frighten the horses, as it were.
Since you no longer have to develop your pictures, and get another person involved, it would seem to me that the percentage of people willing to take such photos has only increased over time.
I’ve worked on cases where a threat to send naked photos resulted in felony extortion charges.
The law has been written (at least here in Florida) to not even require a demand for money: tell the woman “you better call me and talk to me or I’ll share your photos” can be charged as a felony punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
It’s common, people enjoy it and it should be considered normalized. Which is to say, there should be no shame attached if such photos become known for whatever reason. It should be no more shaming than having a button pop off your shirt at work.
Yeah, I know. “Should” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. But I have not yet been put in charge.
I had just started seeing a girl. The first photo I sent her was of a shirtless torso closeup wearing low rider jeans. At the bottom middle of the torso was the top of a head & over each hip bone was the top part of an ear…an elephant’s ear! I’m sure you can figure out the rest of that complete tattoo.
She’s years in the rear view mirror & she didn’t last long but probably too long as that was the best memory I have of her. I don’t remember where I got the pics from but sadly, wasn’t able to find them again when I tried Googling them a couple of years ago.
Even moreso is the modern smartphone &/or action cam (GoPro, etc) with their front facing screen to allow you to frame the photo before you take it. One could have taken them with early digital cameras or flip phones but one couldn’t see the framing of the photo. The short distance of an arm in a selfie coupled with a little bit of an angle off & she only has 1½ breasts but a lot of wall/bed space next to her.
There’s also the option of aiming the camera at a mirror, to frame the picture properly. Which also has the side benefit of partially obscuring your face.
There were, of course, Polaroids long before digital photography became widespread. I never got any myself, mostly because I didn’t date much, but anecdotally I have heard of other people in my age group (went to high school in the 1990s) getting nude Polaroids from their girlfriends back then.
This is a huge thing these days. There’s a “sextortion” support subreddit that has a daily stream of people, mainly age 14-24 males talking about how they met some girl on an app, she offered to get frisky on camera then as soon as he’s showing the goods he’s hit with an extortion demand. Usually there’s not a woman at all but just some dude overseas doing the text chatting and then playing a video of her “undressing”, etc while he’s reciprocating. Other operations may use a stand-in woman in on the scam.
The guy is hit with an image of him doing his thing next to a list of all his contacts on social media and told to pay hundreds/thousands of dollars to prevent the video from being sent to everyone. Sometimes they pair it with a photo of an underage girl and threaten to say the guy was sending nudes to her. Paying invariably just results in demands for more payment a day or two later. The scams (like many industrial scale internet scams) are usually hosted out of west Africa or southeast Asia making recovery or law enforcement very difficult.
There is sextortion of women, of course, but it tends to be more directly targeted and aimed at demanding increasingly explicit/degrading images and video. The wide-scale extortion for cash mainly targets men probably because it’s a lot easier to convince them to go along with the initial steps.
I worked at Japan Camera! We had a strip of mundane uncut pictures that we would tape on the side of the machine to cover the pictures coming out if we had printed anything spicy
What movie was it where the two leads (Bill and Ted? Wayne and Garth?) were working at a photomart and they were looking at the latest developed pics, and upon seeing they were nudies, they looked at each other and yelled “Reprints!”?
As for the OP, I never have sent or been the sendee of dating nudies. I would never let nudes of me into the wild, and besides at my age they’d scare any ladies away. Best to let them be surprised.
Like many at the Dope my demographic would have put me in the Polaroid Age for the wilder content. Never exchanged any such.
Did however c. 1990 receive some very nice tasteful “boudoir studio photos” as a gift from my lady at the time, quite a lovely gesture.
Back to sending nudes, as long as it’s between consenting peers and there’s established intimate trust (so, we’re not talking unsolicited surprise d¡¢kpics), I do not have an objection as long as everyone involved understands and can and does consciously accept the risks. Namely of a leak or a grudge release. I am a bit amused when people seem to just not consider at all that literally exposing yourself leaves you, well, exposed, to carelessness or to nalice.
Individuals should have the right to own their likeness and restrict who shares it for certain purposes so I do favor “revenge porn” legislation in the latter case.
First neither I or my wife have send nude pictures, but while not as old as some, we’re in our early 50s, and came to cellphones comparatively late (Yes, I know, Ironic, since I worked for a cell carrier). As for the merits and ethics of such, I find it perfectly cromulent as long as sent between consenting adults but unwise.
As others in thread have posted, very little is completely secure once it’s online, or in Google Photos/iPhotos. These things can get compromised far easier than many people realize. And then it’s anywhere the accessor wants it to be. Sextortion is a particularly ugly part of it, but if your account gets hacked, well, now you have a brand new worry. Probably far down the comparative OMFG between financial data and identity theft, but not fun either.
Heh, I didn’t think you were serious, and while I’m not happy about my late-middle-age bod, I’d worry far less about any hypothetic pics of me being exposed, while my jealous nature would be livid over pics of my better half being exposed, which, well, likely would be on either/both phones depending on how you saved them.
These were often passed around in High School ('78-'82), but none of the girls were recognizable and they looked more college-aged. I always suspected these were acquired from older siblings.
