Dick-pic (pronounced dik-pik)
A picture of a human’s penis, if taken and disseminated in a certain context.
Dick became the pet-form name circa 1550 (though some etymologists suspect it had earlier been in use) for Richard via being the rhyming nickname for Rick, Richard's original affectionate diminutive. Richard being (1) among the commonest English names and (2) exclusively male, it quickly become a synonym for "fellow; lad" and thereby a generally used word to refer to men, individually and collectively; from this connection came the use of dick as slang for that exclusively male body part. Anything claimed to be an authoritative list of the slang senses must be viewed with scepticism because many forms are very old and the surviving written records are not a comprehensive catalogue of what was often an exclusively oral dialect so the date of origin is uncertain. The meaning "penis" is attested from 1891 in a dictionary of farmer's slang and was said (predictably) to have been well-known British army slang but, perhaps regionally, the use could date back a century or more. Most sources note "dick" in this context is thought now less offensive than once it was but for those still disturbed, there's a goodly number of alternatives.
The vulgar slang nouns dickhead & dickface (a stupid or contemptible person) are attested only from circa 1969 so Richard Face’s parents can't be accused of making what might now be thought an unwise choice. Interestingly, although presumably not unaware of the linguistic possibilities his name offered, Richard Face was either indifferent or saw some political advantage in brand-name awareness because he chose to remain a Richard despite actually being christened Jack Richard Face. Whether he ran the usual focus groups to find which worded best (Dick Face or Jack Face) isn't known. In time, he did live up to his name, in 2004 fined Aus$2500 for lying to the NSW Independent Commission against Corruption (ICAC), the magistrate's rationale for not imposing a custodial sentence being (1) he was no longer a police officer and therefore "not directly involved in the administration of justice", (2) had an "exemplary record of public service", (3) had been under stress, was depressed and a heavy drinker at the time of his lie, (4) had shown remorse and pleaded guilty, (5) had "not committed perjury" or "sworn false evidence" and (6) "did not engage in persistently false swearing over sustained periods of time."
Pic was first recorded circa 1885 as a shortening of picture (image, likeness, photo, etc). Picture was from the Middle English pycture, from the Old French picture, from the Latin pictūra (the art of painting, a painting), from pingō (I paint); a doublet of pictura. The plural is pics but pix is common in casual & commercial use so the accepted alternative plural of dick-pics would be dick-pix.
Slot-shot (pronounced slot+shot)
A picture of a human female’s genitalia, if taken and disseminated in a certain context.
Slot in the sense of a "bar or bolt used to fasten a door, window etc" entered Middle English circa 1300 from the Middle Dutch or Middle Low German slot, from the Old High German sloz & German Schloss (bolt, bar, lock, castle), from the Proto-Germanic stem slut- (to close). The anatomical use to describe the "hollow at the base of the throat above the breastbone" was a late fourteenth century adoption from the Old French esclot (hoof-print of a deer or horse) of uncertain origin, but this sense is probably obsolete except in historic references. Slot meaning a "a narrow, elongated depression, groove, notch, slit, or aperture, especially a narrow opening for receiving or admitting something" dates from the 1520s, the idea later developed to suggest putting something "where it belongs" but this seems to have been adopted only in the mid-1960s.
Shot (in the sense of the firing of a bow (later applied to firearms etc)) was from pre-900 Middle English, from the Old English sc(e)ot & (ge)sceot and was cognate with the German Schoss & Geschoss. It was related to the Old Norse skot and the Old High German scoz (missile). The sense of shot as the "view from a camera" isn't attested until 1958 although it had been used in the cinematic sense since 1922 to describe the process of recording movies (mov(ing picture) + -ies) since 1922 and may thus have enjoyed earlier use. As used to refer to individual pictures, printed usually on cardboard or special photographic paper, it dates from the late 1930s, the specialized use in law enforcement (as mugshot) began in the US in 1950.
Of context
The dick-pic, the practice of someone (usually male) sending another (usually female) an unsolicited picture of (what is usually their own) penis isn’t a recent invention but the extraordinary latter day spike in the numbers sent is a genuine cultural phenomenon. It’s socially and technologically deterministic, something made possible by (1) the permissive social attitude of the participating demographic, (2) the ubiquity of their possession of high-definition cameras, (3) the removal from the process of third-parties (especially those who once developed and printed the physical images), (4) the extent of digital connectivity between members of the demographic and (5), the marginal financial cost of the transactions. It’s an interesting development in that in the West, the history of the depiction of nudity is overwhelmingly female so “pictures of genitalia sent by phone” is a genre in the annals of the nude (technically probably the naked) untypically dominated by the male body.
Generally uncontroversial if either requested or
welcomed by a recipient with whom an appropriate level of emotional capital has
already been built, dick-pics are notorious for the negative emotions induced
in those receiving them as something unsolicited and unwelcome. So, unless the intention is actually to
shock, offend or upset (and among the demographic, that is sometimes a thing)
they’re best avoided; good rarely seems to come of them and in some
jurisdictions, there are circumstances in which sending a dick-pic can be an
offence which can result in the sender being placed for life on a
sex-offender’s register; it depends on the context.
Michelangelo’s David, a six-ton, 17-foot (5.2 m) tall symbol of divine victory over evil is art as a sculpture or in depiction and, despite the visible penis, in the West is usually thought not obscene. In another context it can be, the erection of some inventive interior decorating required to conceal the offensive bits when a 3D-printed replica was displayed at the 2021 Dubai Expo. It happens in the West too. In the nineteenth century the Grand Duke of Tuscany presented Queen Victoria with a full-sized replica of the original which she found so confronting that hurriedly a proportionally accurate fig leaf was crafted, kept in readiness for any royal visits to be hung from two strategically placed hooks. Even in the twenty-first century, replicas have attracted complaints, the argument being the context of a museum which people choose to visit being different for places where encounters may happen by chance. Obscenity and offensiveness thus are situational constructs and a dick-pic exchanged between consenting adults is different from discovered in other circumstances; it depends on the context.
It’s assumed because there are few reports of women sending pics of their genitalia that the practice is notably less common than the dick-pic and while that’s not an accepted way to draw a definitive conclusion from two data sets, few doubt it’s true. There are surely many reasons that’s the case and the paucity of examples is probably the reason a standardized female equivalent of “dick-pic” seems not to have evolved. Suggestions have included “gash-flash”, “trap-snap” and “clamagram” but the most phonetically pleasing are probably “pussy-portrait” and “slot-shot”, the latter a metaphor which references the slot on a machine which is a perfect fit for coins of a certain denomination. For women who find artistically limiting the idea of a static slot-shot, for US$149, there’s the Svakom Siime Sex Selfie Stick (SSSSS), a USB-rechargeable video-recorder-vibrator which offers, especially for those with basic video-editing skills, the chance to create a clip of an organism from the inside. Thus the "clit-clip", a bit of digital one-upmanship (that may not be quite the right noun) on any "dick-pic".
Available in violet, khaki & black, she can be connected to the USB port of a PC or Mac and there's a downloadable app for MacOS, Windows (XP SP2 onwards), iOS and Android. The camera is a seemingly modest .3 megapixel unit but given the environment in which she'll be operating, that's more than adequate; videos are saved in the mp4 format, the product & software manuals are both downloadable and there's an instructional video on the Svakom website. Whisper-quiet to ensure privacy, battery-life is said to be around two hours of "continuous use" so one can understand why women might prefer such a device to most men. The manufacturer refers to the SSSSS as "she" rather than "it" (or even "he"), an interesting assignment of notional gender given the anatomical emulation.
The recumbent female has, off and on, been a staple of Western art since Antiquity but there was something about French artist’s Gustave Courbet’s L'Origine du monde which was so provocative that publicly, it wasn’t exhibited for 120 years. A slot-shot writ large, it’s still a work which many institutions avoid, even those sanguine about female nudity (and nakedness) in artistic and other contexts, one columnist noting recently the painting “… if indeed it can be called erotic…” was “…still unsuitable for publication in a paper with a general readership.” Perhaps it’s because it so differs from the long traditions of the nude, a study more gynecological than artistic or maybe it’s the lush and untended growth of pubic hair, something which seems often to disturb though it may be anatomically accurate: One Russian gynecologist was asked whether the model was a virgin and, after casting his professional eye, answered with an emphatic “Nyet”. There’s also the objectification, the decapitation of the subject reducing the work somehow to a slot-shottish case-study for the male gaze, a reductionism which has for decades attracted criticism from feminists. When depictions of L'Origine du monde have appeared in bookshops and galleries, there’s often been controversy, sometimes requiring the summoning of the gendarmerie although the Musée d'Orsay reports the work appears on one of their gift-shop’s best-selling post-cards so there's that.
Commissioned by Ottoman-Egyptian diplomat Halil Şerif Pasha (Khalil Bey 1831-1879) as an addition to his famous collection of erotica, ever since first it was seen, historians of art have debated among themselves the identity of the model, their short-list with some glee referred to as Les suspects habituels de Gustave (Gustave’s usual suspects). No conclusion has ever been agreed although the factions promote their theories, one based on an analysis of the joining edges of the respective canvases, an allegedly matching upper-section displayed in 2013. The Musée d'Orsay issued a statement saying L'Origine du monde is, as it exists, a complete work and not part of a larger whole. The mystery continues.
