Jess Davies’s No One Wants to See Your D*ck is a sharp, urgent and deeply personal examination of the violence women face in digital spaces. From cyberflashing to deepfake abuse, Davies points out the realities of online misogyny and why we can’t keep treating it like a background issue. This is a vital read for literally everyone.
Trigger Warning: This review discusses topics including online sexual abuse, cyberflashing, deepfake pornography, image-based sexual violence, and misogyny. Please take care while reading.
The internet is no longer a place we visit on the family computer once or twice a day. Instead, it is embedded into our existence – a place we’re lockjawed onto through our evolutionised new appendage that’s forever attached to what used to be an empty hand. The screen we carry around has become part of our daily lives, with young people averaging more hours of screen time than sleep.
With a tech boom so extreme that we went from sending glittery YOLO’s on MSN to getting our therapy from a robot all within a decade, it’s no surprise that we are permanently online. We can work, date, protest, parent, break up and make money all within the magic box that sits on our desks and fits in our hands. The internet is amazing, right?! Well, if you are a woman, then you already know that the answer is not so simple.
The threat of digital misogyny is one of the most pervasive issues in a modern woman’s life, and the people in charge of protecting women and girls, namely parents, teachers, police and lawmakers, often don’t understand the full scale of what the digital world looks like and what it is now capable of. That generational gap of knowledge leaves a gaping hole, one where harm is festering at an epidemic scale.
Despite its severity, I have only seen fragments of discussion about it spread across the occasional two-minute TikTok and feminist media; rarely does it make enough noise to be a front-page story unless attached to a celebrity ‘scandal’.
Presenter and women’s rights activist Jess Davies has spent years at the forefront of this issue, and her debut book No One Wants To See Your D*ck is a flawless accumulation of her own experience and years of research on online misogyny.
Davies describes being 15 when intimate images of her were shared around her school, eventually reaching the (adult) local football team. She talks about the shame she felt about this experience and the shame that attaches itself to girls so young and so quickly, particularly girls who develop early or get sexualised before they even understand what’s happening. Her body became public property before she knew how to claim it as her own. In her words: “I had been forced to mature far beyond my years by a body that signalled to the outside world that I was a woman, when inside I was still just a girl.”
Davies handles the intersections of shame, consent, and blame so graciously throughout. The moment where she reflects on how long it took to understand that none of what happened to her was her fault reflects this. That even though she laughed it off at the time, the damage lodged somewhere deep and stayed. It’s something so many women will recognise: the internalisation of blame, the silence, the shrug of ‘maybe I brought this on myself’. Her story, and her ability to unpack that experience, gives language to something that is usually pushed into the corners – something unnamed but widely felt.
Davies opens the book by talking about consent, which beautifully sets up what she has to say throughout. By emphasising both the importance of consent and society’s failure to acknowledge it, she gives everything that follows a clarity and depth. It does justice to the severity of the digital abuse she discusses.
She breaks down the law’s current definition of consent and explains why it’s not enough. In digital spaces, consent is constantly ignored, blurred, or outright deleted. She emphasises that sending a nude doesn’t mean you’ve agreed for it to be saved, reshared, uploaded to a forum, or put through an AI generator that strips your clothes off.
Throughout the book, she seamlessly flits between staggeringly horrific information from her research in the manosphere, personal anecdotes, and insights from grassroots activists and organisations. As a young, chronically online person – especially one who is leading a feminist publication – I thought that I knew everything there was to know about the scourge of misogyny that lives online, but reading Jess’s book has made me remember just how vast the online world is. And just how many ways men can use it to take advantage of us.
Arguably, the most frightening chapter is on deepfake image abuse. By now, we’re all aware of the dangers of deepfakes, but Davies shows just how far the technology has come – and how much further it’s going to go. She makes it clear that you don’t need to have sent a nude to become a victim of this kind of sexual abuse, recounting several real-life stories that left a lingering, harrowing chill down my spine – one I’m not sure has fully gone away yet.
And yet, rather than feeling totally hopeless, I was left with that activist fire inside me burning even stronger. Davies reminds the reader that, as modern women, this is a violation of our rights. Society now exists digitally as much as it does physically – it is quite literally our way of life. To have the threat of abuse constantly surrounding us is to oppress us, and that must change. Thanks to Jess, I’ve come away with a renewed sense of urgency and an even deeper determination to fight back.
I truly admire Davies for her bravery and dedication to her research, it is very clear how long she has spent in the trenches of the manosphere, watching and cataloguing everything she sees. And I want to emphasise that some of what she recounts is genuinely distressing. On one forum Davies shares several ‘deepfake requests’ posted by a litany of anonymous basement dwellers: “Nudify my cousin anyone? I’m dying to see her naked. Her ass is so yummy bros.” reads one.
Some men share pictures of their pregnant wives, of their teachers and aunts – all asking for lewd and grotesque deepfakes, nudes or ‘captions’ – and no, captions is not referring to a caption for a cute IG post. Actually, that, and many other parts of Davies’ insights into these forums, meant I frequently had to put the book down and just breathe while disassociatively staring at the wall in front of me.
I asked Jess if she gets affected by spending so much time in these forums: “Of course, it can get quite overwhelming sometimes. It sounds crazy, but I quite enjoy spending time in these forums because it feels like they’re not getting away with it. I’m there watching, and they are not as protected from their anonymity as they think.” Icon behaviour, if you ask me.
As an activist, I was most affected by the concept of cyber mobbing. This is when a group of strangers come together and coordinate to harass someone through verbal abuse and threats – or, in some cases, by creating deepfakes to really hit you where it hurts.
In her research, Davies found that men with a particular hatred of women will actively seek out those who make content about feminism or women’s rights and organise a cyber mob in order to silence them. I asked Jess what she would say to someone like me, who wants to put themselves out there but is afraid of this exact thing happening. “You have to think about the importance of what you have to say. Often, I’ll make videos or content that has an important message for women or for the cause, and I think it’s more important to get that out there. They want to silence you.”
This is, unfortunately, a concept Davies knows all too well. She often recounts her own experience of being mobbed online, particularly after transitioning from her modelling work to speaking out as a victim of image-based abuse and beginning to share women’s rights content.
There’s a very intentional thread of intersectionality running through the book, too. Jess is up front about her privilege, but she’s quick to point out that for Black women, queer women and trans women things are much, much worse. She reports that Black women are twice as likely to be victims of cyberflashing than white women – stats like these are essential when discussing a collective solution, because as we all should know by now; to create change, your feminism must include all women.
Amongst all the (very valid) fury and fear, I must commend the ‘Tips’ sections at the end of each chapter, that is filled with genuinely useful advice. Not “stay strong” or “take a break from social media.” Actual, step-by-step tools for staying safer online. Securing your accounts. Reporting image-based abuse. Talking to your kids. What to do when the worst happens. When speaking to Jess for our podcast, she explained: “It felt a little ironic writing this section of the book because it shouldn’t be the victim’s responsibility to protect ourselves, but unfortunately, this is the reality we live in and we need advice like this right now.”
And honestly, as much as it’s a handbook for survival, it’s also a hand reaching out to say: “You are not alone.” That matters. Especially in a world where victims are often gaslit into thinking they’re overreacting, or worse, somehow to blame. Jess Davies gives space to voices that are usually drowned out – from girls who’ve had their school photos turned into porn, to activists who are burnt out from years of fighting for change with little institutional support. This book makes you feel seen, even in the most invisible of harms.
Crucially, Davies doesn’t just use this as an opportunity to info-dump – the final chapters tackle misogyny at the root. She explains that, despite popular belief, influencers like Andrew Tate aren’t the cause of this epidemic of violence against women and girls – they’re a symptom of something much bigger.
She shares her conversations with the incredible men working with young boys to challenge toxic masculinity from the ground up. She also shares her hope for a better future, grounded in the fact that at least now, we know where the problem is coming from. Davies offers genuinely realistic and thoughtful advice on how to speak to the men in your life who might be falling into incel or red pill culture. She wants you to think about what happens next. Who’s accountable. What needs to change. It becomes clear that silence is part of the problem and that refusing to look away, even when it’s uncomfortable, is the first step towards dismantling the digital structures that allow this abuse to thrive.
I truly believe No One Wants to See Your D*ck is one of the most important books you’ll read this year. The issues it tackles aren’t niche, peripheral, or part of some distant future; they’re happening now, every day, in the digital spaces we live in. And yes, we do live there. The internet isn’t just a place we visit anymore; it’s where we experience so much of our daily lives, from work and relationships to activism and identity. The fact that online misogyny is still treated as a side issue, or worse, something women should just learn to navigate, is exactly why this book matters so much.
This is an essential read, not just for feminists but for anyone who cares about the safety and dignity of women and girls. Davies writes with such clarity and purpose, offering space not only for anger but also for understanding. While the subject matter is heavy, what sets this book apart is how accessible it is. Davies manages to make complex issues feel digestible without losing their weight, largely because she writes from a deeply personal place. You feel her experience in every chapter.
If we’re serious about creating a safer digital world, then engaging with this book is exactly where we all need to start.
We have a podcast episode with Jess Davies coming out on Monday 19th May, where we’ll be discussing the book, her experiences, and the wider impact of online misogyny. No One Wants to See Your Dck* is available now from Amazon, Waterstone’s, and most major bookstores. You can also find the audiobook on Audible, Spotify, or wherever you usually listen.
