Did someone just say sex, because that's my forte, everybody, I'm sex educator, Shambu Dream, and I'm hosting a new show called Sexology Streaming now on Weibe. No, no, no, no. Wehbe is not a vibrator. Cubie is a brand new streaming platform that offers an entirely new way to consume content with episodes released every single day. Check it out. Download on the App Store.

The cut, the cut, cut, cut, cut, the cut. The cut, this episode is for mature audiences for as long as dick pics have been a thing, I guess I have received them.

Allison P. Davis is a features writer for The Cut and New York magazine.

I've always been really open and desirous of dick pics within the right confines. So I'm I'm a big fan again when the circumstances are right and the circumstances are often not right.

A lot of people with penises don't photograph them well, we're talking gastly use of flash, a terrifying angle, gross backgrounds.

Why is the toilet always involved? I don't understand. Also, like, cheats should be clean. If you're trying to make us think of sex, no toilets, clean sheets, that's bare minimum here. Alison said she once checked her phone quickly while she was driving and caught a glimpse of a text from a guy she had met on a dating app. And it was like a truly grotesque dick pic to the point before, like I went through a stop sign.

I was so shocked, just like I could have gotten a ticket, I could have got killed, all because this guy sent me a dick pic with, like, poor lighting. And the angle was weird. And he was clearly like sitting on the toilet and it looked like a snuff film. And I didn't ask for it. And it was like, I don't know, 11:00 a.m..

And to reiterate, Alison, like sticklebacks, it's not that she wants to rule them all out categorically, it's just the way some people go about it.

I feel like the sort of compulsive, like trading card way of of sending out dick pics is not attractive to me. And if I'm generalizing, you can definitely cut this. But I do feel like straight men don't have the artistry.

I don't know, Alison. I think you could generalize even more.

I think that a lot of gay men lack the artistry to break color is the assistant to the editor in chief at New York magazine.

And they also write for the cut.

If you have a penis, then you probably aren't very good at taking good pictures of it.

These days is swiping on Grindr, which de facto makes them very well versed in dick pics. They're just like their standard. It's not even surprising anymore. So standard, in fact, that Brocke would classify a few main categories of Dick Pic.

There's the default.

It's always like as if the guy is lying down on his bed and he takes his like smudgy iPhone camera and shoots an above shot of his cock. And that's the pick.

Another common variety is the comparison shot the genre of I'm going to stick this next to something so that I can prove to you how big it is. And it usually is like a weird toiletry items, like a shampoo bottle or, you know, God forbid a toothbrush or a hairbrush. There's also the inexplicably soft dick pic, like, why did you send that to me? It makes no sense. This is it's not a pretty thing to look at.

And then there's the like genre of people who put a lot of time into that, that picture with the thought and the care and the staging and the effort. I wouldn't call that a dick pic, even if it does have a dick in it. That is a nude I think that nudes imply that you like at least took some time to think about it, you know, maybe you sat up 10 minutes or put something specific on or waited for a certain lighting to happen in your bedroom.

But dick pics are like hastily shot. And that's the difference.

Like, you don't necessarily need to have a penis to send a proverbial dick pic. The difference between a nude and a dick pic is about the amount of attention and care that goes into it.

Here's the thing. When I send a nude or I sound like a like a selfie or like a tit shot or whatever, I it is work. And like, I artfully compose myself and I look, I check the lighting and I check the mirror and like whatever, I want to look as good as possible. And I do think that if you're coming at it from a place of power where you've never been thought of as the sexual object, of course you're not going to know what looks good.

You're just going to think, here's my dick. That's all you need. You know, I do know I'm normally not a Sexta at all, but in the early days of lockdown, a friend had been flirting with sent me my very first dick pic. It was totally out of the blue at eight a.m. and mercifully, it wasn't, like, terrifying. It wasn't a snuff film.

There wasn't a toilet in the background, but it was just so plain. It was underwhelming. It was that standard default framing that Barack was talking about. He was lying on a bed. And so it was just kind of like, yeah, there you are, that's your penis. While I'm having coffee and getting ready for my first Zoome call of the day. And I was especially surprised because this friend of mine is a cinematographer. He knows what looks good in a camera and how to spark certain emotions.

But it was like he couldn't see himself or he couldn't imagine what I would want to see what would be hot to me.

You know, it speaks to this larger issue of how they grow up and how they're socialized into masculinity and how they're socialized into how they think about sex.

Peggy Orenstein is the author of Girls and Sex and more recently, the author of the book Boys and Sex.

And over the course of both of those books for those books I interviewed, oh, gosh, about one hundred and seventy hundred and eighty young people between the ages of 15 and 20 to about their expectations and attitudes and experience of sex and all its forms.

A lot of the teenagers, Peggy spoke with our queer and or have queer friends and they throw around phrases like the male gaze and toxic masculinity. They're very enlightened and still even in 20, 20 somethings missing. When you ask them to talk about what and I describe the ideal guy, they still would channel like nineteen fifty five. And it was all about dominance and aggression and athleticism and sex as status seeking for men, and particularly about emotional suppression and what they would say all the time, particularly the younger guys.

But the older ones too would say that what they felt aloud was happiness and anger and not much else. Just because someone has an academic understanding that gender is a construct, it doesn't mean they get presented with a lot of alternatives. Peggy found that people socialize as boys weren't given room to explore, touch or caress or find ways to feel sexy in their own skin or to learn what a partner would want.

And maybe that's partly because of the way they learn to masturbate. You know, if you're constantly masturbating to this really tight feedback loop, pulling up like 30 video clips and jerking off as fast as you can with the death grip on your penis, your sense of what constitutes sexual pleasure gets really narrow.

And we can see that narrowness very clearly in the narrow cropped frame of the dick pic.

What does it mean to a male to self objectify? What does it mean to want to be desired by by somebody? What does it mean to want to express that you want to be wanted or want to be desired or to want your attractiveness or sexuality affirmed?

Sex education, if it exists at all in American schools, tends to focus on consent and health and safety, which are extremely important and necessary.

But we're still not really having a lot of conversation about what sexual encounters could, should, might look like about who has agency in those encounters and who doesn't, but whose pleasure is prioritized.

It would be kind of hot if instead of an unasked gastly snuff film dick pick someone would instead. Hey. I'd like to send your picture. What would you like to see? That would be exciting, even though admittedly, I wouldn't know how to respond and I wonder I wonder how many people would even be able to really answer that, because nobody ever asks, you know, this is the catch 22 of desire, right? To be able to communicate about what turns you on.

You have to have an idea about what turns you on. And it's hard because in movies or advertisements or porn, they don't really show a long, drawn out, multi hour, genuinely sexy text conversation.

You. Yeah, what if what if that was what happened? What would that be like looking like it might be like this.

It literally was like is this what it feels like to be electrocuted? Corrine's a Cadenas is the culture editor at The Cut and lately she's been getting really good nudes.

It was just weird because I, I have never had a bodily reaction like that to a picture that someone sent me like that.

It wasn't always this way for her and said she used to hate sexting or thought it wasn't for her until a woman she was dating showed her that it could be different and it was sexy and fun and like the pictures were good also.

So I think that also helped, too, because she knew how to take pictures of herself.

These were nudes. They required thought and effort. And best of all, this exchange was kind of a reciprocal back and forth thing. Corrine's and her girlfriend were each inspired and encouraged by each other.

He sent me a picture of herself, like in the bath. And so then I felt inspired to like I went into the bathroom and took a picture of myself to send to her. And it felt like a natural outgrowth, I guess, of our conversations.

They ripped off each other and both parties knew the power in the images they were making. They were both desiring and feeling desired. It was about being game and wanting to please each other.

The willingness to do it almost means more than the picture itself.

And listen, you don't have to be a lesbian to do this. The guy says seeing now is doing a very good job.

A picture that I got from him recently. I think it was just like kind of the perfect balance of everything. Like it was suggestive and sexy.

Yeah. It was just kind of felt like weirdly like the perfect image. My body felt like it had been electrocuted and it was strange, just like reaction. Anyone can learn to send nudes that will make their partner feel electrocuted and then hopefully they can receive ones in return to keep the electricity the circulating. You know, we got tips on how to do it after the break. It's Sân here, all fans of the court are going to love sexology, my new show on Kibbie that helps you navigate dating, modern relationships and all things sex.

In each episode, we open up the dialogue and discuss topics like quarantine, romance tips, VR porn and how to find the best nighttime accessory. Yes, I'm talking about vibrators. Every day we release a new episode and every episode we cover a new subject. I'll see you there.

Wow. Where did you get your information from? When I was living back in Oakland, I went to the park with a thoughtful, considerate, straight male friend of mine. Like, is there a culture where, like men talk about how or when to send a check? Well, there is definitely a schoolyard joke about springing a dick pick on someone like really unexpectedly to gross out women.

Rafael grew up around boys who sent pictures of their penises around. It was this very juvenile power flex.

I never really saw the appeal in that. I actually thought it would be incredibly vulnerable.

But there weren't really any other models for Rafael to engage with images of himself. And he learned to lazily snap and send pictures of his penis with whatever was in the background. But how I was feeling has changed. I think that I feel far less sheepish, taking them far less ironic.

In my delivery into his 30s, Rafael has gotten more comfortable with his sensuality and his art practice. Rafael is a photographer, so he's learned to take much better nudes. If I'm sending someone a dictator. I've probably taken 10 to 15 takes.

There's no excuse for careless, thoughtless nudes anymore from anyone. And hopefully there are new dick pic archetypes emerging.

I guess I try to make it look like what I've heard called like boyfriend, solid, sensible. In other words, it's not like a stunt porno deck where you're just trying to make it look like some huge, like, monster cock. Right. Like it's more like the dick you can settle down with a respectable dick.

Our producer, Bob Parker had a chat with Miles Clear from meall magazine. He did a fairly novel experiment when it came to his dick pics.

I basically just put it out there on Twitter that I would send a big picture to anyone who asks for one, but they had to solicit it first and to be over 18 and all that stuff. OK, and I got maybe like three hundred, four hundred fifty people asked for it both. And it's all of them.

Three hundred and fifty people have a picture of your dick at least. Yeah. Because, because I also said that they were for you to share it with anyone they wanted. Did you watermark them. No. You know the file itself, it's just a picture of a dick out in space. And the response was pretty, pretty good. I mean, I even had people who said, you know, I've only ever gotten them like and it's like unsolicited bad way.

And so it's nice for me to be able to feel like I can be in control and dictate, like when I want to see a dick.

Miles also mentioned something that isn't often recognized, the platonic nude sending dick pics to friends out of sort of anthropological curiosity.

Yeah, sometimes it's sometimes just a curiosity about your friends bodies and almost trying to destigmatize like each other's nudity and when they're willing to share their body with you and and you're sharing with each other and you're not really judging each other or really even compared against one another, you kind of see that at all. It's all pretty much the same. You know, like at the end of the day, like a dick is kind of just a dick.

Well, it's just that in a platonic support network, friends can be a little more overt with artistic analysis.

What kind of like constructive criticism have you gotten from your dick pics?

I think I sent one to some friends and they were like, oh, you should should shoot it lower so you can see, like, the base. And if you want to go full body shot, like I say, open the laptop comes in handy, but natural light is always better than light. Harsh light bulb. Yeah. Sometimes you're just trying to take it up and not the next level and seeing what you can do.

Was there a moment where you were just like this is this is the greatest dick pic I'll never take. This is like the Mona Lisa of Dick six thousand one four.

I thought this is really good. I, I definitely have the thought this might be my best work. So I think yeah. I mean in theory I'm in theory I'm just getting better, you know, like anything else, like I think practice makes perfect.

Take it to Carnegie Hall. Yeah. But really in all seriousness, everyone should practice.

I guess I'm not I'm not really interested in, like, coddling boys and men. Sangeeta Singh Kurtz is a senior writer for The Cut. She wrote a guide about how to send better nudes. So if you're getting mediocre, unexciting pictures from someone you like, you can say, hey, like try harder.

Whoever you are, whatever kind of body you have, the more creative, considerate nudes you can send, the more creative, considerate nudes you'll receive.

Yeah, I think now's a good time if you're interested in exploring this. And I think people are simply because the article I wrote on it has been like one of my highest trafficked articles since I. Been a journalist ever, step one always, always is consent because it feels like harassment, otherwise, say hello, build up a rapport.

I'd like to send you a picture for you to see, which is sexier and more fun than something sent out of the blue.

My friend calls this a dramatic arc, some sort of lead up to sending a nude step to download apps like Photo Vault or signal, although the best bet for safety and privacy is to just leave your face out, which might be a fun prompt to find new angles like you can take a selfie that shows just your lips and your shoulder and maybe your throat. There's sort of a pout. There's like an erotic suggestion there. And part of the power of sending a nude, I think is suggestion.

Step three suggestion foreplay tease. Like a friend of mine showed me this video she made of her running her finger along a tulip. It's very hot. And it inspired her Bo to respond with a video of his hand slowly caressing a mattress. They're just showing things other than proverbial dicks in addition to Dick.

During quarantine, I kind of busted into a new genre of dick pics, which was the selfie in the Mirror Dick Pic with the Mirror.

Rafael is putting more of himself in the picture, literally and emotionally. It was a really vulnerable experience. My whole body was in it and I was sort of holding my dick.

And I'm like looking around and, you know, sometimes you're like really feeling yourself. And I shot like a bunch of photos and I sent all of them. And, yeah, it was really, really hard.

He's also been experimenting with slow caressing videos, which is all new stuff. Rafael's been trying in self isolation. And it's really kind of fantastic just to explore and to step into, like, the just infinite possibilities of being really sensual and slow with your dick pics. You know, I got a microphone from my face right now, and if I have the opportunity to broadcast, please go explore slowness in your dick pics. Sexting like sex is an exploration, figuring out what gives you and your partner pleasure in new ways.

It sounds simple, but it's ultimately monumental. Raphael was letting himself be adored not just by the person on the other side of the phone, but by himself. I think that in talking with you, I have sort of realized the spectrum of dick pics. There's like a really blatant flippant dick pic that in many ways is a vie for acceptance from someone. And then there's one that you send out of mutual consideration, but also out of a deep love for yourself.

It's all sort of, I think, in the spirit of trying to build intimacy now when we can't really have it normally and Allison Davis is never looking back.

I do think people will will not settle for crappy dick pics anymore.

Who's going to go back to, like, a weird angle with a toilet in the background? No more media critic picks is the future. Bob Parker is our show's lead producer, production and editorial support from Allison Barrenger, special thanks.

This story to Hannah Krissie, Hayley Perkins, Ari Fishman and E.J. Dixon. Thank you so much. This episode was engineered and scored by Gautham Shriekers, an original music by Brandon McFarland special thanks to Carrenza Cadenas and Sangita Singh, Kurts, Stella Bugti and the Shock Koloa are the show's executive producers. The cut is made possible by the team at New York Magazine. Subscribe today to support their work at the cut dotcom slash subscribe. I'm Avery Friedman. Thanks for listening.

OK, guys, Ishant, again, check out new episodes of my show, sexology playing now only on Kibbie, that is spelled Cucu Ibai. And if you download the app right now, you'll get a two week free trial. Once you're on Quarmby, you can watch other bad ass shows like Dommy, a comedy adventure story featuring Anna Kendrick and her BFF who just so happens to be a feminist sex doll. But not all the shows involve sex.

I mean, there's this one with Liam Hemsworth.