Contrasting Experiences: Two Case Studies on Teenage Boys’ Perceptions of Unsolicited Dick Pics and Gender Dynamics at Two Schools

Abstract

The present article examines teenage boys’ perceptions of the practice of sending unsolicited dick pics and gender dynamics among peers at two lower secondary schools in Sweden. Drawing on focus group interviews as well as individual and pair interviews with ninth-grade students (14–15 years) from a rural working-class area and an urban middle-class area. The study indicates that class habitus has a significant influence on the boys’ perceptions and practices. In the rural working-class school, the boys had a humorous attitude towards the practice of sending unsolicited dick pics and were not aware that unsolicited sexting could be experienced as sexual harassment. In the urban middle-class school, one the other hand, the boys clearly distanced themselves from and expressed their strong disapproval of unsolicited dick pics, mainly due to their fear of girls’ power to portray boys as sexual harassers.