It happens more often than it should. A nude appears in your DMs. You didn’t ask for it. You didn’t consent. You didn’t even see it coming. Yet, you’re now holding the evidence of someone else’s boundary violation, along with the decision of what to do with it.
Do you delete it, share it privately for emotional backup, or do you go public and expose the person who thought their entitlement wouldn’t carry consequences?
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The line between accountability and revenge is blurrier than many want to admit, especially in the digital age. As image-based abuse becomes more visible—and more legislated—the stakes are shifting, particularly for those most often left to defend themselves online: women, and especially Black women.
We All Have a Story
In 2025, it feels like being the recipient of unsolicited nudes is a weird milestone in adulthood. In a U.S. sample of 2,045 women of all sexual identities and 298 gay/bisexual men, among those who had ever received a nude from a man, nearly all (91%) had received an unsolicited “d–k pic.”
A few years ago, someone I’d known since childhood slid into my DMs. He’d always had a playful crush on me, and when he heard I was newly single, he reached out. I kept it light, but he escalated. When I stopped responding, he sent a full-frontal video, with his face visible. There was no warning or conversation to warrant it. It wasn’t even filmed for me. Based on the metadata, it was just a recycled clip pulled from his phone’s archives.
I was stunned. I laughed—mostly out of disbelief. Then I sent the video privately to two close friends who also knew him. It helped me process what had just happened. Later, I let him know the video wasn’t received the way he thought it would be. He blocked me on Facebook and Instagram immediately—disappeared like he knew he’d crossed a line and feared I might take it public. When you’ve known someone for nearly three decades, you rack up a lot of mutuals, which could create a sure scandal.
He wasn’t wrong to worry, but I didn’t post it. I didn’t even threaten to. Still, the fact that he preemptively vanished speaks volumes about how these exchanges are framed—even by the men who send them.
When Posting Feels Like Protection
Recently, rapper Azealia Banks posted what she said were unsolicited nude photos and threatening messages from UFC fighter Conor McGregor. The images—screenshots of messages and explicit photos—were shared on McGregor’s birthday, in the middle of his Irish presidential campaign.
Banks, who has a long and complicated relationship with the public, didn’t mince words. “How you gonna send a bitch some crooked d—k pics then threaten her not to tell?” she wrote in one post. In another, she called the incident “HARAM,” referencing the Islamic concept of something being forbidden or sinful.
The posts were removed shortly after, and Banks was temporarily suspended from the platform. McGregor did not confirm or deny the authenticity of the messages but publicly addressed the situation as a “distraction” from his campaign.
Public opinion, predictably, was split. Some saw Banks’s decision to publish the images as a bold stand against digital harassment. Others accused her of engaging in revenge porn. While the facts are still being sorted, one thing is clear: under new federal law, her actions sit in legally risky territory—even if her motivations came from a place of protest.
