She continues: “Since then, men have sent me photos of their iPad screensavers – images of me – that they’ve done the same thing to. It’s really, really grim.”

Skye remembers how blindsided she was at first:

“It honestly took me by surprise because I’d never seen or even heard of semen images before. I was so new to modelling, and it wasn’t something I imagined would happen, let alone something I was prepared to see. Maybe I was just young and naïve to the bad characters of this world.”

She pauses before adding deflatingly, “Depressingly, it doesn’t shock me anymore. But it’s still disturbing.”

In messaging boards dedicated to online misogyny, the tone around semen images shifts into something even darker. While some men cling to the delusion that these acts are a form of admiration, many openly revel in using ‘cum tributes’ to humiliate, harm and degrade women. For these men, it’s an act of dominance. It’s about taking women’s power and stripping them of their consent.

I scroll through some of the forums where the requests are chillingly blunt:

“DM FOR PRIVATE TRIB. GIRLFRIEND/WIFE/FAMILY MEMBERS”
“Sharing my gf. Tribs very welcome.”
“Trib my mum.”

A search for ‘cum tribute’ on 4chan’s archive returns over 10,000 results in under three seconds. What follows is an avalanche of pages filled with images of penises, semen and smiling, unsuspecting women whose photos have been hijacked by these men. One of the most common threads involves requests for tributes of family members: mothers, aunts, cousins, and overwhelming requests for sisters.

Each mention of ‘sister’ made the saliva gather at the back of my throat, my body physically choking on the men’s sick betrayal.

Some users boast about building “collections,” eager to gather as many tributes of their girlfriends as possible; their own twisted library of abuse. Others talk about wanting their ex-girlfriend to be “owned” by the internet, a term used in these spaces to describe the deliberate mass-spreading and doctoring of a woman’s image to destroy her digital footprint. They use ‘cum tributes’ as a weapon.

Professor Clare McGlynn, a world-leading expert in image-based abuse and one of Glamour’s campaign partners, shares her thoughts on this harm:

“This is another example of men exercising their power online to abuse and humiliate women. They create and share these images because they can, safe in the knowledge that there is little women can do about it.”

She adds:

“Just as we condemn voyeurs filming women without their knowledge or agreement, we can still challenge these behaviours even though many women will not know they are victims. We have long criminalised voyeurism – even where there is no recording of an image and the victim is unaware. Therefore, we must act against the proliferation of this behaviour.”

In the UK, there is currently no specific offence criminalising non-consensual semen images and videos. Perpetrators exploit this gap, degrading women online with little to no consequences. When these videos are created using images of minors, it’s likely to fall under criminal law as child sexual abuse material.