“Bottom line: There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content.”

This? In particular? Pisses me off. I hate it.

I hate the implication that all porn is interchangeable and devoid of cultural value, so it’s no big deal when a decade’s worth of creative endeavor produced by a vibrant subculture is destroyed, because, whatever, it’s just dirty pictures.

I hate the disingenuous inability to see a distinction between a website that is about porn only, and a website that allows people to blog about all of their interests and aspects of their lives including sex and porn because those are normal parts of the human experience.

It’s the most tone-deaf bullshit.

It’s like closing down all the artisanal bakeries and then say, “Don’t fuss.  There’s plenty of bread at the Aunt Millie’s factory outlet.”

I despise it as well, in large part because it’s nothing more than a flat lie.

And they always include it in proclamations like this; there are always “plenty of sites out there for that,” stated in a condescending, infantilizing way, with a tone one reserves for children asking more than they’re allowed.

If there are so many places out there that we can do exactly this, why not mention a few of them? If you’re showing us the door after so many years and ruining everything from careers to personal blogs, why not give us the other options?

Because there aren’t even remotely plenty of sites out there, and these same people claiming there are have never done any work to actually confirm the truth of that. They don’t care about us. That statement right there makes it 100% crystal clear that they have not a single fuck to give for anyone who wants to have control over what they enjoy on their dashboards.

I like the sites with adult focus, because that usually means you can do anything up to and including adult material. But it’s not like Tumblr was originally. It’s a real shame that they’re doing this, and it means we’re going to lose so very, very much in terms of art and creation. Destroyed by a poorly-run company who don’t even realize they’re destroying their own platform, and who don’t care that they’re hurting, even ruining, people who relied on them to be honest and forthright and upstanding.

But they don’t care about that. They do not care about us, and that letter made it very clear.

Censorship is a tool that gives power to abusers

Thread here. 

Read  Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women’s Rights by Nadine Strossen

Excerpts:

“In the late 80s and early 90s there was a vocal group of radical feminists who believed that pornography inherently harms women, not just in its production but also in its consumption… These anti-pornography feminists teamed up with the religious right and managed to get anti-porn laws passed. In particular, a law was passed in Canada preventing the importation of “obscene” material”..

…. Guess what was seized first? “The Joy of Gay Sex” and the like. Guess what businesses started finding all their shipments seized or delayed – sexually explicit or not – to the point where they were being put out of business? Gay bookstores.  Guess what wasn’t seized at all? Mainstream porn made for straight men…..

Here’s the key point: Strossen is a legal scholar who’s looked at a lot of attempts at censorship, and you know what she found happened every time? When you try to censor pornography, even in the interests of protecting vulnerable people, that censorship will be applied first, and hardest, against the people who are most vulnerable. They won’t come for actual abusers, they’ll come for the abused, and prevent them from accessing resources, education, talking to each other, creating art to express themselves, or organising against those who are actually causing harm. 

This is old, old business, we’ve seen it more than once before, and it never goes the way the antis think it will. Censorship is a tool that gives power to abusers and lets them inflict more harm on those who are abused, vulnerable and discriminated against. Don’t fall for it.

Water is wet, the research is done to confirm that water is wet, and some jerks out there are still going around saying that this time it’s different, our new authoritarianism is OK, don’t mind the screaming disenfranchised LGBTQ+ people!

Let’s circulate this post far and wide. People should know the consequences of what they’re doing.

Yes, Virginia, Tumblr is important for all those other reasons and also...

There is a particular take on the destruction of Tumblr that I keep waiting for someone to write, but no one has yet. Which means I apparently need to do it myself.

The take is, essentially, that not only should adults have access to adult content – in itself, valid and true – but also it is important to cultivate SOME social spaces where the overtly/explicitly sexual overlap with the non-sexual. (Not all spaces; I still think it should be illegal to have sex on the sidewalk. But SOME spaces that enable the sexual and the non-sexual to exist side-by-side)

Part of what I think leads to the dehumanization of sex (and subsequently allows the stigma and shame to cling so heavily to it) is the complete bifurcation of life into SEX and EVERYTHING ELSE and never the twain shall meet. When we – at every turn – put all aspects of human life into one sphere, and sex into another, we dehumanize it. We remove the full subjectivity of people from it, which is a problem. 

I think we need to actively cultivate spaces LIKE before-time!Tumblr where we can be people, and talk about what happened at work today, and the funny thing our dog did, and how our parents make us crazy during the holidays, and how dare they do X thing on Supernatural, and here’s a great version of that distracted boyfriend meme, and ALSO be able to talk about being horny on main, as the saying goes, and find the right porn clip to fap to. Or post nude selfies. Or hunt down that sweet, sweet NSFW Symbrock fanart. 

Having spaces where the explicitly sexual and the non-sexual overlap is important to humanizing sex and, subsequently, de-stigmatizing it (which, it should go without saying, is particularly salient for marginalized people who often suffer way more heavily from sexual stigma) 

This. As someone who is half French half British I’ve forever struggled with the frankly pretty Puritan British attitude towards sex and our bodies and the open French attitude. I know which is healthy and which isn’t from personal experience. People not discussing sex, nudity etc in a safe environment leads to so many issues around lack of education, understanding and future deep emotional and physical issues for young adults trying to figure life out. It can last our entire lives if not addressed.

My friends and I got naked in front of each other as teens to change like it’s no big deal and yeah on occasion we looked and compared bodies, it’s thanks to this that I know that my nipples which I hated for being so huge are actually not that weird. My friends all have completely different body shapes and it made me comfortable in mine knowing it was ok to not look like a model/porn star and be different because we all were.

I’ve learned so much from tumblr just from discussion and I share this with others, it’s embarrassing how little people know about their own bodies due to a lack of a forum to discuss it. This is such a good place for it and I’m so sad it is so niche already let alone if that now collapses.

Due to lack of discussion of sex and just human bodies someone close to me didn’t address the pain he had every time he had an erection until he confided in me as an open friend and it turned out he needed a medical circumcision. He went 10 YEARS with this pain (and not having sex) because he had no one to talk to about it and nowhere to look it up. Fucking ridiculous.

So yes, even for non trans / queer folk it’s so important to have an open forum somewhere regarding these things let alone how hugely important it is for these communities.

While at the same time I’m also angered that sex and nudity is villainised while nazism and it’s ilk is fiiiiiiine.

This . Is . Wrong .

“also it is important to cultivate SOME social spaces where the overtly/explicitly sexual overlap with the non-sexual.”

This.

One of my favorite things about rl kink communities? That we also went to munches (get togethers at restaurants) and just hung out, and sure we’d probably casually mention/joke about being huge perverts at some point because it was safe to do so among people we knew wouldn’t be offended, but the nice thing was just being able to be around people and talk about anything.

God, yeah. I remember being wigged out at first when I got on tumblr and it was just this free-wheeling place where someone would complain about their bad day and their next post would be a reblog of pornographic fan art with graphic comments in the tags. 

You can follow people who make nsfw content (photos, fic, art) and get to know them as people. You can follow people that aren’t content creators and get to know their tastes in kinky shit. You can have friends you met because you liked the same kind of porn and find out all the other stuff you have in common and become real friends. 

I don’t talk about my sex life on fucking facebook (other than in very locked groups, lol). Hell, I’m not sure I’ll do it on twitter unless I start a separate one for that (which….tbh I might; I liked having a sideblog here for me to post nudes and sexual tmi). 

I’m really gonna miss the way that stuff was all mixed together here. 

I feel much the same way.

A ghetto approach to things -- and I mean this in the sense of “separating things into ghettoes by interest or shared traits -- tends to separate people, too. It also makes it much easier, especially in the case of adult-friendly content or any kind of sexuality, to get rid of a group of people quietly...most of the time, anyway.

And yes, it’s terrifying because this is the “then they came for me” situation. It’s that exact situation. And that’s yet another reason why people need not to accept what Tumblr is doing, and what countless other companies have already done, many times, to adult and adult-friendly, or even adult-accepting creators and users of their platforms.

This kind of nonsense is exactly the same kind of nonsense that perpetuates the profound infantilization of people today. You’ve got to draw a line in the sand and say no, you’re not going to just give it up because of x profit margin or y company policy.

We have every right to enjoy, share, and discuss topics and content that is not going to be “family friendly”. It’s not going to fit in at every work space (but don’t get me started on the “work safe” bullshit as a term), but guess what? Our work is not our lives, and it shouldn’t be. Even as an artist, who basically lives work, I have to take time to myself and I can’t let my work govern every single thing I do, to the point where I have no time to live, no time to myself.

We have every right to demand and insist on spaces where we don’t have to make harsh distinctions between “adult” stuff and just plain stuff. Because every time shit like these Tumblr shenanigans happen, that makes people think it’s how it’s supposed to be. It makes them think those things have to be separate, and we can’t be honest with each other and ourselves about how we live and who we are.

Speaking as someone who has lived most of his life around and in queer communities, it’s infuriating and frightening to see how hard these antiquated, puritanical standards are pushed upon everyone “for their own good” when that’s far more questionable in terms of legality than any pornography. Freedom of speech and expression doesn’t seem to mean a lot when they point at adult entertainment, or anything that isn’t neatly able to be pigeonholed as “family friendly” or “work safe”.

Vote with your money and your support, and speak out with your presence. Sometimes the best thing to do is to leave...and make sure no one you know goes there, does business with them, or supports them in any way. If they want to say you’re unwelcome because of who you are, then you make sure that decision costs them where it hurts.

Fuck Tumblr.

You can find me at Pillowfort (URL forthcoming once I get set up there), PaperDemon, my Twitter, and of course my Patreon. I post personal updates on Patreon, and please don’t worry because I make them public. That means you don’t have to pay anything to see them. I know some people think everything on Patreon is behind a pay wall – it isn’t! Please follow me on these sites for updates on my work and my life. This couldn’t have come at a worse time, but that’s 2018 for you.

Please spread the word, and I hope you’ll all find your way to me again. I hope to see you on the next site.

A better, more positive Tumblr

Since its founding in 2007, Tumblr has always been a place for wide open, creative self-expression at the heart of community and culture. To borrow from our founder David Karp, we’re proud to have inspired a generation of artists, writers, creators, curators, and crusaders to redefine our culture and to help empower individuality.

Over the past several months, and inspired by our storied past, we’ve given serious thought to who we want to be to our community moving forward and have been hard at work laying the foundation for a better Tumblr. We’ve realized that in order to continue to fulfill our promise and place in culture, especially as it evolves, we must change. Some of that change began with fostering more constructive dialogue among our community members. Today, we’re taking another step by no longer allowing adult content, including explicit sexual content and nudity (with some exceptions).  

Let’s first be unequivocal about something that should not be confused with today’s policy change: posting anything that is harmful to minors, including child pornography, is abhorrent and has no place in our community. We’ve always had and always will have a zero tolerance policy for this type of content. To this end, we continuously invest in the enforcement of this policy, including industry-standard machine monitoring, a growing team of human moderators, and user tools that make it easy to report abuse. We also closely partner with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the Internet Watch Foundation, two invaluable organizations at the forefront of protecting our children from abuse, and through these partnerships we report violations of this policy to law enforcement authorities. We can never prevent all bad actors from attempting to abuse our platform, but we make it our highest priority to keep the community as safe as possible.

So what is changing?

Posts that contain adult content will no longer be allowed on Tumblr, and we’ve updated our Community Guidelines to reflect this policy change. We recognize Tumblr is also a place to speak freely about topics like art, sex positivity, your relationships, your sexuality, and your personal journey. We want to make sure that we continue to foster this type of diversity of expression in the community, so our new policy strives to strike a balance.

Why are we doing this?

It is our continued, humble aspiration that Tumblr be a safe place for creative expression, self-discovery, and a deep sense of community. As Tumblr continues to grow and evolve, and our understanding of our impact on our world becomes clearer, we have a responsibility to consider that impact across different age groups, demographics, cultures, and mindsets. We spent considerable time weighing the pros and cons of expression in the community that includes adult content. In doing so, it became clear that without this content we have the opportunity to create a place where more people feel comfortable expressing themselves.

Bottom line: There are no shortage of sites on the internet that feature adult content. We will leave it to them and focus our efforts on creating the most welcoming environment possible for our community.

So what’s next?

Starting December 17, 2018, we will begin enforcing this new policy. Community members with content that is no longer permitted on Tumblr will get a heads up from us in advance and steps they can take to appeal or preserve their content outside the community if they so choose. All changes won’t happen overnight as something of this complexity takes time.

Another thing, filtering this type of content versus say, a political protest with nudity or the statue of David, is not simple at scale. We’re relying on automated tools to identify adult content and humans to help train and keep our systems in check. We know there will be mistakes, but we’ve done our best to create and enforce a policy that acknowledges the breadth of expression we see in the community.

Most importantly, we’re going to be as transparent as possible with you about the decisions we’re making and resources available to you, including more detailed information, product enhancements, and more content moderators to interface directly with the community and content.

Like you, we love Tumblr and what it’s come to mean for millions of people around the world. Our actions are out of love and hope for our community. We won’t always get this right, especially in the beginning, but we are determined to make your experience a positive one.

Jeff D’Onofrio CEO

Fuck you, Jeff.

No, seriously, fuck you.

I’m leaving, and everyone I know is going to be leaving too. Why? Because you founded this place on free expression, which includes adult content.

Because you and your pathetic staff can’t seem to manage bot accounts without ruining the rest of the site, you have officially and very stupidly killed the viability of Tumblr going forward. But you know what really especially chaps my ass about this?

You’re killing careers. You’re killing jobs. And you don’t care.

You’re just like the same fucking worthless sites that build themselves to renown off the work of creators who work in adult-oriented entertainment...then you turn around once you think you’re popular enough, and you decide they’re not what you want.

You couch it in poisonous language, like painting people as “safe” if they’re not “tainted” somehow by the nasty evil wicked adult content, because heaven forfend we do anything but dumb ourselves down so that straight people baby daddy problems can look at any and every site without feeling the obligation to do their job as parents.

So thanks very much for a half-assed site that you have now driven the last, absolutely final nail into the coffin of -- I will be laughing and sipping my drink as I watch you burn. And I’ll have never enjoyed a fire more.

If you’re thinking you’re going to rely on the amazing power of community support...on Tumblr...I am going to be laughing even harder.

So thanks for dicking artists and creators by either driving us away and making us unwelcome, or forcing us into a narrow “family friendly” box. You’re not an artist or a creator of any kind. You’re just a tool, and that’s sad. Go back in the box with all the other tools.

I’ll be at PaperDemon and I’ll be trying Pillowfort. At least they are real artistic sites and seem to be better run than this spastic parade of incompetence, censorship, and outright bullshit that Tumblr has become. It’s become a joke, and it’s not even funny. Tumblr is toxic.

The proof is right here. Instead of handling their spam bot problem, they make the users suffer, the people who made the site what it is today. And it’s the artists who suffer the most, which especially sucks since the artists were the only ones it was worth coming to this miserable site to see.

Good luck with your terrible, poisonous communities that devour themselves and turn on each other at the slightest provocation. That’s a really healthy way to build a site. I’m sure you’ll get plenty of income from that.

A sincere FUCK YOU,

Hushicho

PS - I also love that you went with the old chestnut of “there are plenty of places online for you to post your shit” -- even though there aren’t, and you can’t name three offhand, I will bet real money on that.

So thanks, too, for wrecking my comics, because they contain adult content, and there is no other place I can put them presently. Thanks for that. You’ve fucked my career over, and there’s nothing I’m able to do. So thanks a lot, I hope you choke.

Bebeh and mamafox!

Al Williamson

Edmund Dulac  __  The Snow Queen, 1911

Tanuki line!

Fluffy outlooks!

“Frost grows on the window glass, forming whorl patterns of lovely translucent   geometry.                                                                                                             Breathe on the glass, and you give frost more ammunition.                                   Now it can build castles and cities and whole ice continents with your breath’s   vapor.                                                                                                                       In a few blinks you can almost see the winter fairies moving in …                         But first, you hear the crackle of their wings.”

     Vera Nazarian

#throwback to Coco’s birthday🎂🎈last week. This time we moved Lele to one side, check out his expression😜😂 #hilarious #SideEyeGameStrong #eyeonthecake #sideeye #funnyvideos - - Constantly checking his🍰is not eaten by Coco😂😅 https://www.instagram.com/p/Bq1D706hJJe/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1jn1omt2hwps2

Photo by Henrik Nilsson

Jack Kirby

Happy Place 🌷

#Christmas #SantaClaws