This week I've had a flood of obscene emails, supposedly from women. There's Camille, Natasha, Mrs Liberty, Marcia, Rosita, Mrs Palma and so on, and so on.
Today Erica offers to be my 'bang buddy.' She, if indeed it's a she, at least has alliteration on her side. Most often these 'women' call me 'little boy', 'big hunk', 'big boy', even 'little rabbit', and tell me they'll do all the rough, dirty things for me that other women won't. A couple 'know' I'll be turned on if they 'cheat' on their husbands for me.
They are avoiding any filtering by sprinkling their messages – and the graphic descriptions of their genitals – with cedillas, umlauts, numbers, asterisks and bizarre punctuation.
To begin with I dragged these unwelcome intrusions to my inbox into junk without reading them. But when the trickle became a spate I became more curious. Is this what women think men want? Are these messages enough to make a 'little rabbit' click on a link that will make him pay to see Jenetta's pictures, 'taken just for him' and his 'lovely dirty mind'?
Or is this men pretending to be women telling men or boys what 'real men' want as they already do with gonzo porn?
There's something very disturbing abut it. Especially just now when, in the UK, women are trying so hard to persuade men that even cat-calling can be a precursor to sexual violence. This depressing view of what might turn men on is dispiriting and backward.
I can't help feeling that these emails are a form of abuse to women. And to men too.
Obviously there's nothing personal here. What I'm seeing is seen by millions. It's a mass mailing. Whoever is sending it is directionless and doesn't care that his/her wares are seen by women, girls, boys, children, gays, straights, trans or others. But the real kicker is that this is still enough of a male-centred world and there are enough vulnerable males to make these enterprises worthwhile. Don't even get me started on the grown-up cousin, porn. Oh, I think I already did.