It occurs extra typically than it ought to. A nude seems in your DMs. You didn’t ask for it. You didn’t consent. You didn’t even see it coming. But, you’re now holding the proof of another person’s boundary violation, together with the choice of what to do with it.
Do you delete it, share it privately for emotional backup, or do you go public and expose the one that thought their entitlement wouldn’t carry penalties?
RELATED CONTENT: Azealia Banks Allegedly Posts Nude ‘Crooked D—okay’ Pics Of Conor McGregor, Claps Again At Critics: ‘White Ppl R So Dry’
The road between accountability and revenge is blurrier than many wish to admit, particularly within the digital age. As image-based abuse turns into extra seen—and extra legislated—the stakes are shifting, notably for these most frequently left to defend themselves on-line: ladies, and particularly Black ladies.
We All Have a Story
In 2025, it seems like being the recipient of unsolicited nudes is a bizarre milestone in maturity. In a U.S. pattern of two,045 ladies of all sexual identities and 298 homosexual/bisexual males, it was found that amongst those that had ever acquired a nude from a person, practically all (91%) had additionally acquired an unsolicited “d–okay pic.”
A couple of years in the past, somebody I’d recognized since childhood slid into my DMs. He’d at all times had a playful crush on me, and when he heard I used to be newly single, he reached out. I saved it mild, however he escalated. After I stopped responding, he despatched a full-frontal video, together with his face seen. There was no warning or dialog to warrant it. It wasn’t even filmed for me. Primarily based on the metadata, it was only a recycled clip pulled from his cellphone’s archives.
I used to be shocked. I laughed—principally out of disbelief. Then I despatched the video privately to 2 shut pals who additionally knew him. It helped me course of what had simply occurred. Later, I let him know the video wasn’t acquired the best way he thought it might be. He blocked me on Fb and Instagram instantly—disappeared like he knew he’d crossed a line and feared I would take it public. Whenever you’ve recognized somebody for practically three a long time, you rack up a whole lot of mutuals, which may create a positive scandal.
He wasn’t flawed to fret, however I didn’t put up it. I didn’t even threaten to. Nonetheless, the truth that he preemptively vanished speaks volumes about how these exchanges are framed—even by the boys who ship them.
When Posting Feels Like Safety
Lately, rapper Azealia Banks posted what she mentioned have been unsolicited nude images and threatening messages from UFC fighter Conor McGregor. The photographs—screenshots of messages and express images—have been shared on McGregor’s birthday, in the midst of his Irish presidential marketing campaign.
Banks, who has a protracted and sophisticated relationship with the general public, didn’t mince phrases. “The way you gonna ship a bitch some crooked d—okay pics then threaten her to not inform?” she wrote in a single put up. In one other, she referred to as the incident “HARAM,” referencing the Islamic idea of one thing being forbidden or sinful.
The posts have been eliminated shortly after, and Banks was quickly suspended from the platform. McGregor didn’t verify or deny the authenticity of the messages however publicly addressed the scenario as a “distraction” from his marketing campaign.
Public opinion, predictably, was cut up. Some noticed Banks’s choice to publish the pictures as a daring stand in opposition to digital harassment. Others accused her of partaking in revenge porn. Whereas the information are nonetheless being sorted, one factor is obvious: below new federal regulation, her actions sit in legally dangerous territory—even when her motivations got here from a spot of protest.
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