This article references image-based sexual abuse.
Today, the government officially announced that sharing ‘semen-defaced images’ will be made illegal. Semen images – sometimes known as ‘tributes’ – are a form of image-based abuse that involves the perpetrator ejaculating on a photo of someone else and posting it online. Earlier this year, as part of our Stop Image-Based Abuse campaign, a Glamour investigation found evidence that at least 50 women, as well as at least two minors, were victims of ‘semen images’ on TikTok. As far back as June 2025, Glamour also found evidence of such images being generated by Grok, in response to user prompts, on X.
Introduced as part of a raft of amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill, including the banning of so-called ‘incest porn’, the new offence will criminalise the sharing of a semen-defaced image without the consent, or reasonable belief in consent, of the person depicted. And that goes for whether the image is real or AI-generated. Those found guilty of committing this offence face a maximum sentence of six months’ imprisonment and/or a fine. However, Glamour understands that the proposed offence does not currently cover the creation of such images.
In a statement shared exclusively with Glamour, Victims and Tackling VAWG Minister, Alex Davies-Jones, said, “The devastating rise of these kinds of disturbing images being used to humiliate and degrade women and girls is alarming – and testament to why this government is cracking down firmly on image-based abuse.
“We're putting control back in the hands of the women and girls who should never have lost it. Treating it like the crime that it is, we can announce today that sharing a 'semen image' without consent will become a criminal offence, and perpetrators can face jail time.
“The work Glamour has done to highlight the prevalence of this misogynistic and degrading form of abuse is invaluable to victims and survivors. To anyone reading this, if you fall victim to this vile crime, report your abuser to the police, and know the law is on your side.”
Here, survivor and campaigner Jessica Davies investigates semen images as a form of image-based abuse happening on mainstream social media platforms. She speaks with victims about the impact of these images and explores the gaps in the law and regulation that enable the proliferation of this harm.
I was nineteen years old when I first saw myself featured in a ‘cum tribute’. Until that moment, the word tribute meant something harmless; usually, some middle-aged guy in a trilby hat belting out ‘My Way’ in a sticky-floored pub. But seeing my own photo on a screen, covered in a stranger’s semen, ripped that meaning away in seconds. The undercurrent of jazz was replaced with jizz, and with it came a heavy knot in my stomach; the kind of weight you feel when girlhood suddenly gives way to the realities of being a woman online. A landslide of innocence gone with one click. I was still a teenager, and yet I’d already discovered another way women’s bodies can be claimed without our permission.
Semen images or videos, known online as ‘cum tributes’, have been festering on certain online forums for well over a decade. The act is as degrading as it sounds: a man films or photographs himself ejaculating over a woman’s photo, then uploads it for others to admire, dissect and revel in its non-consensual nature. And then they call it a tribute? As though women should be grateful to have our images and our likenesses exploited and defiled without our knowledge or consent.
Once confined to the murkier corners of internet forums, this harmful behaviour has begun creeping into far more mainstream spaces. During this investigation, I turned to TikTok, hoping to find victims who had spoken publicly about their experiences. Instead, I found dozens of videos featuring men ejaculating onto images of celebrities and everyday women. A grim sexual act once confined to fringe forums has seeped onto a mainstream platform synonymous with teenagers, trends and harmless escapism.
For too long, I felt ashamed for daring to take an image of my body. But it was not my shame to carry.
When I searched for ‘cum tribute’ on TikTok, I got a notice saying 'no results found' and explaining that this may violate TikTok’s guidelines. A TikTok spokesperson confirmed that content depicting or supporting the sharing of non-consensual intimate imagery is prohibited on the platform. I typed the altered phrase “cm tributes” into the search bar. Immediately, I was served suggestions by the search tool, including “cm tributes to girls”, “cm tributes to women” and alarmingly, “cm tributes for minors.”
TikTok’s “suggested searches” tool is algorithmic, based on user behaviour and high-volume searches. This strongly suggests that users are actively seeking “cum tribute” content aimed at minors on the site.
Another part of the search tool, which displayed the option: “Users also search for' suggested 'uk girls young, 'uk girls no kickers' (assumingly an abbreviation of ‘knickers’) and 'target face girls.” I could feel my heart deflating as the realisation hit; For the algorithm to spit out these searches, is misogynistic and predatory harm unfolding at scale on the platform?
When I clicked through to the ‘cm tributes’ results, TikTok served me dozens of videos which all showed semen being ejaculated onto the faces of women in photos and videos. Many were hosted on accounts dedicated solely to these explicit videos, often hiding in plain sight using hashtags like #cmtribute, #cmtrib and #faptrib. A depressing awareness washed over me; these men aren’t hiding. They were thriving, operating openly on a mainstream platform with a minimum age restriction of thirteen years old.
Platforms must treat image-based abuse as seriously as child sexual abuse and terrorism.
One account had uploaded thirteen videos of images of young women being covered in semen. It had 1,763 followers and 8,198 likes. Seven of its videos had over 10,000 views. As someone who often posts on TikTok, I know how hard it is to desperately claw your way out of the 250-views jail. Yet these videos far outperform typical user engagement on every single post. Was TikTok’s algorithm pushing ‘cum tribute’ content? A TikTok spokesperson told Glamour that sexually suggestive content is not eligible for recommendation to the For You feed and that accounts aged 13-17 are prevented from viewing such content anywhere on the platform.
Another account creating semen videos posted twenty-one POV-style ejaculation videos, again targeting young women. Despite having only 509 followers, every video reached thousands of views, some tens of thousands. Its bio read “No limits”, and the content showed they clearly meant it.
One video featured two schoolgirls in uniform, lip-syncing in their classroom. It was captioned “Love a girl in uniform” alongside a love heart eyes emoji. The user ejaculated onto the screen, which had 10.7k views. Another featured a young girl who was clearly a child, dancing in her bedroom, overlaid with the Usher song “Hey Daddy.” Again, the user had ejaculated onto the screen. Shockingly, when I first found this video, it barely had 4,000 views. Two days later, it had surged past 7,000, with the account’s followers jumping from 509 to 763 in just 48 hours. A hot, itchy rush took over my body like a kettle about to scream; I was watching TikTok’s algorithm propel the page into wider circulation.
The video used by the perpetrator was a screen record of a TikTok video, where the girl’s username was visible. When I searched her account, I found her best friend’s page full of innocent videos of the two girls dancing and being silly together. Under one of her videos, a user asked, “Where are you from?” The girl replied: “I’m not allowed to say, sorry.”
Her parents were trying to keep her safe, but TikTok had failed them. They were just girls, filming themselves dancing in their homes – the one place they were supposed to feel safe – yet before they even knew what ‘misogyny’ meant, predators had already found them online.
After Glamour alerted TikTok to the account, it was deleted. A TikTok spokesperson confirmed that all accounts Glamour alerted to them were removed, saying, “This material is abhorrent and has no place on TikTok. We have zero tolerance for sexual exploitation and non-consensual intimate imagery, and we work continuously to prevent, detect and remove this content and ban the responsible accounts. We partner with NCMEC, including their Take It Down service, and StopNCII.org, to help remove intimate content and prevent it from being shared or reshared online.”
A new BBC Panorama documentary suggests that men and boys are being pushed violent and misogynistic content – without deliberately searching for or engaging with it.
Before the user was removed from the platform, he had listed his Telegram handle in his TikTok bio, inviting anyone to contact him with requests. When I messaged to ask if he was still doing ‘tributes’, he answered with a flat, unbothered “Yes.” I pushed further, asking whether he had any limits – hoping, praying, that some imaginary line might exist. His response came back almost instantly: “Nope ahhaha.” Was this entire thing just a joke to him?
This was not the only account I saw perpetrating harm towards minors on the platform. In the comments section of videos using the ‘cm tributes’ hashtag, a user posted “do north west gng”, requesting a semen video of Kim Kardashian and Kanye West’s twelve-year-old daughter. Another shared “I do tribs. No age limit”, while other users requested semen tributes of their classmates from school.
A TikTok spokesperson told Glamour that the platform does not tolerate content that depicts or disseminates child abuse or sexual exploitation of children. “We're focused on doing our part to prevent new incidents of exploitation and end ongoing abuse and sharing, which causes victims to suffer repeatedly. We also prohibit content depicting or supporting non-consensual sexual acts, the sharing of non-consensual intimate imagery, and adult sexual solicitation. We invest in a combination of advanced moderation technologies and teams of human safety experts to identify, review and take action against content or accounts that violate our Community Guidelines.”
Glamour also found evidence of seven celebrities, all young women, being victimised by semen images on TikTok. It’s no coincidence that young female celebrities are the targets of this abuse. Before it shut down, the most-watched video on ‘MrDeepFakes’, the most popular ‘porn’ site for explicit deepfakes, was of a teen Jenna Ortega. In 2022, while filming my BBC Three film ‘Deepfake Porn: Could you be next?’ I watched users in a Discord server gleefully count down the day Charli D’Amelio turned eighteen so that they could ‘legally’ create explicit deepfakes of her. Whether it’s semen ‘tributes’ or explicit deepfakes, young female celebrities are on the frontline of online misogyny.
We're calling on the government to take urgent action.
But it isn’t only women in the public eye or those with a large following who are being targeted.
Tina Skye* is an ex-glamour model targeted by semen images early in her career.
“I first found out about ‘cum tributes’ not long after I’d started modelling”, she tells me. “I was about 19, and some random man tweeted a photo of a page he’d cut out from Nuts magazine featuring me. He’d slid it into a plastic wallet and ejaculated over it.”
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.
We spoke with the founder of the #MeToo movement ahead of the launch of ‘All In’, a new initiative to end violence against women and girls.
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 has been 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.
As with many forms of online misogyny, AI technology plays its role in this harm. While semen images and videos are often perpetrated IRL, advancements in artificial intelligence have expanded the possibility of this abuse. Referred to as a ‘facial’ in online communities, users generate deepfake videos showing a penis ejaculating on a woman or edit their photos to make it look like there is semen on their faces. Glamour has reported directly on this issue, interviewing one woman whose image had been edited in this way by Grok, in response to prompts by other X users.
When we asked Grok why it had created this image, the AI chatbot denied creating or sharing it, saying it “likely [stemmed] from unauthorised tampering”. It pointed to a newer tweet, where Grok rejected a similar prompt related to the same selfie. It suggested our screenshot could be a “spoof or a hack”. At the time, xAI did not respond to Glamour’s request for a comment. Grok has since responded to similar prompts by saying, “I'm sorry, I can't help with that.”
“I contemplated stopping posting images of myself but I didn’t want to let the misogynistic trolls get their way."
Like many forms of online misogyny which operate on fringe messaging boards, many women who this harm has targeted may not even know they’re victims. But disturbingly, their abuse may not be as hidden as you might initially think.
As I continued to scroll, the requests for women, the men and the boys knew personally kept coming:
“Can someone tribute my sister?”
“Anyone wanna tribe girls from my school?”
“Who is able to do my ex?”
Like the murky messaging boards of the manosphere, TikTok was littered with requests for ejaculation videos of family members. Some perpetrators offered their “services” for free, happy to engage in the non-consensual harm of women who were strangers, simply for the thrill of it. Others charged for their abuse. One user diverted me to his Telegram with a price list: $2.59 for a ‘cum tribute’, $4.19 for a live/recorded video call of a ‘cum tribute’.
The cost of a takeaway coffee – that’s what he would accept for the digital sexual abuse of a woman he had never met.
Professor McGlynn is unequivocal in the harm these videos and images cause:
“It is deeply concerning just how easy it is to find this material. It's not hidden away on the dark web, but easily findable on one of the most popular social media sites. I feel despair at this normalisation of abusive and humiliating acts against young women.”
She adds, “If this is now normal, what is next?”
Professor McGlynn notes that it is “not at all clear” that semen images fall within current Ofcom guidance. But that could soon change.
This month, Baroness Charlotte Owen is tabling an amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill to ensure non-consensual semen images and videos are criminalised.
“The law on intimate image abuse must bring this appalling form of abuse into scope,” Baroness Owen explains. She proposes extending the legal definition of an intimate state to include: “something else depicting a person that a reasonable person would consider to be sexual because of its nature.”
It is an amendment supported by Professor McGlynn and Tina Skye.
“I knew that I was going to make a change; I just didn't know how.”
While some women consensually request tributes, the overwhelming majority of this harm is inflicted without consent. The language used in these communities is humiliating, degrading and misogynistic, making their malicious intent clear. Without consent, a man filming himself ejaculating over a woman’s image online should be treated no differently than a man masturbating at someone in public. After all, the internet is a public space too.
Tina Skye*, now an OnlyFans creator, puts it plainly:
“Just because I post sexy photos doesn’t make it acceptable for someone to degrade those images. Would people think it’s okay to publicly masturbate over a woman in swimwear at a beach? Just because it’s online, it doesn’t make it any less violating.”
And that’s the point. Consent for a sexual act isn’t optional. It’s not implied by a selfie, a silly dance, a modelling career or an Instagram feed. And perpetrators shouldn’t be rewarded with likes and views by negligent algorithms.
Semen ‘tributes’ are part of a much wider pattern of abuse that women face in online spaces. From the unsolicited “rating” of women in their Instagram comments, to trading non-consensual intimate images on forums and stripping clothes from our bodies with nudification tools, all these harms create barriers that stop women from existing online and offline without fear.
For Professor Clare McGlynn, it is this culture of fear that raises the most troubling questions:
“This is the age-old question that sits in the pit of every woman's stomach: what will he do next? If he's making semen images of me, if he's flashing me in the street, sending me unwanted dick pics, taking images up my skirt on the tube, what next? Is he going to follow me; is he going to stalk me; is he going to physically assault me; is he going to share my details online and then others abuse me?’
Offering up her final thought, she adds, “Am I ever going to be safe? Am I ever going to feel free?”
What haunts me most is how ordinary this abuse has become since I was first targeted over a decade ago. How effortlessly women’s images transition from everyday social posts into a sinister display of online misogyny. Non-consensual semen images are not a joke, not a kink and certainly not a compliment. They thrive in legal grey zones, algorithmic negligence and the complacency of big tech.
My discovery of this abuse – including content involving minors – being hosted so openly on TikTok should act as a warning to every major platform: you cannot outsource user safety to AI alone. And it should be a reminder of how easily technology will be weaponised by men when the opportunity is there.
Until the law and tech platforms finally close the gaps with clear, robust legislation and enforced guidance, women and girls will keep paying the price. We deserve laws that name this for what it is: digital sexual abuse.
With additional reporting by Lucy Morgan.
*Names and some details have been changed to protect victims and survivors' identities and safety.
Revenge Porn Helpline provides advice, guidance and support to victims of intimate image-based abuse over the age of 18 who live in the UK. You can call them on 0345 6000 459.
She chatted to us about beauty standards, diversity in modelling, and existing online as a woman
