Women appear to be targets of online sexual harassment. Photo / 123rf
For men, the internet can be a wonderful place.
But for a lot of women, it can be a breeding ground for harassment and online abuse.
From a male point of view, it may be hard to understand just how many violating and disgusting comments and actions are aimed at women.
So one sexual violence researcher asked her husband to conduct an experiment to expose online behaviours and the implications being on the internet has for women.
The results were startling.
Firstly, sexual violence researcher Jessica Eaton asked her husband to join a non-sexual chat room and register as an 18-year-old boy.
According to Eaton nothing happened. Her husband didn't receive any surprising messages from the forum.
She then asked her husband to change his account to show an 18-year-old girl with a "boring name".
This is when things started to get vile.
Within seconds of changing his appearance and identity to a female, Eaton's husband received eight inbox messages with one of them being an image of a man's penis.
Following the influx of disgusting messages, Eaton's husband was shocked at the treatment women receive online.
He revealed he didn't understand the vastness of sexual harassment online toward women, saying "This is shocking - this has opened my eyes Jess. This is horrible".
After receiving hundreds of messages Jess's husband signed off.
Jess said it was a valuable lesson to men on how tough women have it online.
She said her husband dreaded opening the next message and hopes the experiment is a wake-up call to men who engage in online harassment.
Her thread has since gone viral with more than 720 retweets and 480 likes.
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