Fiancee wants to ban racy photos
DEAR ABBY: My fiance is in a group chat with a dozen of his friends. They are all professional men in their 30s with families. They regularly send each other pornographic images.
I think my fiance should tell his friends not to send these images. My fiance disagrees. He says it hurts no one and it’s OK to do in a private chat. I don’t think it’s so private since this is on the phones they use in public and it’s in a group chat. It also hurts women by distilling their worth to looks.
Hasn’t the #MeToo movement and ongoing shift in our culture shown it is sometimes men’s responsibility to end this “boys’ club” culture? I want my fiance to talk to his friends since they all live apart, but I want to convince him he should take a stand against this degrading attitude toward women’s images. — TIRED OF BEHINDS
DEAR TIRED: Your fiance is not going to change his friends’ behavior by doing what you are pushing him to do. I have it on good authority that this is not uncommon behavior among “guys” these days, the equivalent of old-time barbershop talk, reading men’s magazines and looking at Playmate calendars — all of which have been transported to the digital platform. The members of the chat may talk about sports, cars and tech gadgets as well as about women — typical things men discuss when they’re together. Unless they are using their phones to solicit extracurricular sex, I don’t think you should be censoring their use of them.