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Photo: DK Images/REX USA.

They think you want a dick pic, even if you didn't ask for one.



Many of the guys I talked to expressed basic confusion over how to know whether a woman wants a dick pic. (Pro tip: If she asks you for a dick pic, she wants one.)



Apparently, guys blame porn for this lack of clarity: They watch a lot of porn on their laptops, smartphones and tablets — the very same devices they use to meet women online — and claim to conflate these two visual and sexually charged online modalities. Gerry, a 23-year-old from Frederick, Maryland, said: “I’ve mostly sent [dick pics] after a few flirtations back and forth with girls I’ve met online who seemed to want to hook up. Who wouldn’t want to be sent free porn?”



Roger, a 31-year-old from New York, put it similarly: “Any guy who’s watched porn would not be fazed by random boob and vagina pics. So, why are women so offended by a random dick pic?”



House agrees that porn plays a role: “Porn culture has evolved with smartphone culture: It’s really hard to unravel the two. With the increased accessibility of porn and the simultaneous ease of communicating with people digitally, some guys think it is totally normal to send dick pics. Nudity has become so pedestrian."



But, House cautions that just because it may feel pedestrian for the sender, that’s not necessarily true for the receiver. “When a woman receives an unsolicited dick pic, it feels more like being exposed to a creepy flasher than being given the gift of free porn. If a woman saw a flasher on the street, she would immediately call the police. It’s a visual assault.”



