What can you do if people send you unwanted explicit photos online? It's complicated

Before Charlotte Morritt-Jacobs moved to Yellowknife to work as a reporter for a Canadian media company, she was warned about the explicit photos she would receive when making new contacts on Facebook. 

"It came fairly swift. I remember receiving messages almost immediately when I moved here, followed with some photos," Morritt-Jacobs said.

The phenomenon, sometimes referred to as cyberflashing, involves accepting a new friend request on social media and shortly after receiving an unsolicited picture of their penis. 

Sharing her experience with other reporters in the Northwest Territories, Morritt-Jacobs said it was commonly discussed between women in the North, but never labelled as harassment. 

"I don't think ever within conversation that I've had with others [people], whether they're journalists or other women, we've used the term harassment," Morritt-Jacobs said. 

"Unfortunately, the language kind of betrays the severity and with that, I've never necessarily felt like a victim or a survivor, and I don't think many [other] women have necessarily felt that way either because it's not chalked up to harassment — it's just you know, something that women experience."

Great Slave MLA Katrina Nokleby is also no stranger to receiving unwanted explicit photos since joining politics in the Northwest Territories.

"Two years ago, my Facebook Messenger pops up on my computer screen and I can see that it's a video, and I can see it's a video of a man's erect penis," Nokleby said, noting the video was sent on her birthday. 

In February, the MLA gave a member's statement in the Legislative Assembly about the issue.

"It wasn't until I started speaking about it, and almost joking it off, that people coming back to me were saying, 'You know that's an assault,'" Nokleby said, comparing receiving the unsolicited photos to a stranger flashing their genitals in public.

"I had definitely become almost, like, desensitized to it or feeling like it was just part of my job that I was going to get this kind of attention."

There is a belief that because the photos are shared through social media, and it is an online interaction that it is not as violating, the Great Slave MLA said, but that is wrong.

"It is actually, in some way, more violating. because when I leave my home, I leave with my armour up and my politician face on and I know that I'm going to be subjected to these things," Nokleby said.

"But when I'm sitting in my home and it's Saturday night and I'm relaxing with my cats, the last thing I expect is to get something like that."