[Female Presenting Nipple]

He said to his Dad “I didn’t hug her because she said no, but I told her I liked her sweater!” And his dad said “Cool buddy!” And they went on with their shopping trip.

If you’re glad Tumblr is doing this just because “it won’t affect you because you don’t consume adult content”, you’re a selfish asshole. Don’t compare this to the LJ and ff.net bullshit, this is not “I wanna see smutty art of my favs uwu” drama, there’s people who get their food on their table with this platform. People who haven’t hurt anyone and really depend on Tumblr to literally LIVE.

If you’re super against sexual work because it’s usually exploitation of people who aren’t doing it voluntary, let me tell you Tumblr is probably the only place where sex-workers do it freelance and because they want to do it. So, yeah, bold of you to assume that licking Tumblr’s ass on this censorship policy is the virtual equivalent of punching PIMPs and ruining their business. The only business this will ruin is the one that belongs to regular, innocent people. And if you oppose to sex-work not because it’s abusive, but because you’re “más papista que el papa” (like we would say down here), let me tell you that taking others’ way of living away from them must be the least christian thing ever.

But if you still don’t care, well, they’re not the only people who will get hurt by this decision. A lot of porn blogs belong to people who can’t express their sexuality freely in the place where they live, who deal with sex-related mental illness such as sexual repression, who are sexually frustated and can’t do anything about it. For a lot of people, this new policy means giving up their only safe space to enjoy and embrace their sexuality.

How do I know this? Because I’m one of them. I have been dealing with my sexual repression for years. I might never have sex in real life because of how heavy it is. I developed anxiety, body dysmorphia and depression because of this. My body is just too weak to have sex (I could get really hurt if I did it wrong), I can’t stand nudity and intimacy, and my germaphobia turns any activity involving body fluids into a nightmare.

Lately, my panic attacks have been getting worse. A bad experience with someone I loved but who was extremely toxic to me fucked me up completely. I stopped eating and I can’t sleep at night.

My 18+ blog was the only place where I could express myself and feel better with myself. It was the only place where I could feel wanted. Just one follower’s praise could change my day fully and make me think, even for just one second, that I deserved love and pleasure, that there was nothing wrong with my body and my head.

Now I’m going to lose all of that. I can’t just move to another adult content platform. Have you ever been in one of those? Those are real hellsites. The only place where I knew I wouldn’t run into something I didn’t want to see, where I could talk and enjoy my body with respectful people who cared about my boundaries and encouraged my progress… it’s Tumblr. And now I won’t have it anymore.

Do you honestly think this will help? Then maybe you aren’t old enough to be here at all. The only things that will happen are:

Pedos and other disgusting people will find more subtle ways of get their shit pass under the radar (and we’ll probably run into them more unexpectedly.)

Sex-workers, artists and people who really need to express themselves sexually will lose their job/safe space.

Again, pedos and other disgusting people will probably move to another platform. A far less popular and far more private one, where they can share their shit without the fear of getting caught/exposed.

Without a safe mode around, you might run into gorey/triggering stuff, including the adult content that will unavoidably pass under the radar. (Monitoring and giving people the tools to keep sensitive content out of sensitive audience’s eyes is always better than banning.)

People will start moving to other platforms. Even your favorite writer or artist who doesn’t post adult content might shut down their blog to give Tumblr a middle finger. Fandom death itself.

Tumblr will lose one of the only things that made it different from any other social media platform.

So, yeah, if you go for the “lol this won’t affect me” approach, you’re a selfish person who needs to re-think a lot of stuffn If you think this will help any real life child/victim of sexual violence/forced sex-worker, I feel bad for you. If you think Tumblr is doing this for the users, you clearly haven’t heard of the App Store drama and you’re too pure for this world. And if you feel as angry/hurt as me with the difference that you have money, move to Pillowfort (it looks amazing) and donate to AO3.

Seriously, if you want to keep just one thing of this rant with you, donate to AO3. Even if it’s just one dollar. They genuinely care for their users and try to protect their right to express themselves. Show them some fucking love.

we have reached the twilight zone… or black mirror

I’m gonna be honest here, I don’t post a lot of explicit content. I’m not the person who is consuming it, either. If that were all tumblr had in mind with this, it wouldn’t honestly make a huge difference for my browsing experience. I work in an adult store, I see enough of people doing the frick-frack on the daily while dusting video bins and reorganizing the rental room.

If this would get rid of the porn bots I’d be fine with it, but that’s not what it’s doing. It’s removing art, it’s removing years and years of content and a decade-plus of people’s hard work building up a clientbase, a niche in a fandom, a livelihood. But there are either too many flesh-colored pixels or someone doesn’t like the content and spam-reported it, so these users have to go.

Terms of service like this are absolutely ridiculous, not because we all want to look at porn all day, but because that’s absolutely not what’s being targeted. I’ve been through this before, on more than one occasion; it’s never about porn. It’s usually about a bunch of people in a group deciding that their opinion is the only valid opinion and doing whatever it takes to get dissenters removed. It’s staff that doesn’t care about the userbase they’re supposed to be working with and will just kill everything that seems slightly controversial rather than do the necessary footwork to keep younger users safe.

They’re not doing this because of social extremists, they’re not doing it because there are literal Nazis on the site, they’re not doing this because young people are starving themselves to look “better” so that maybe someone will love them, they’re not doing this in the hopes that it will remove the toxicity from fandom that has literally made it impossible to talk to anyone on this site like an adult for years. 

They’re doing it because it’s the easiest, simplest way to excuse the systematic shutdown of one of the most vocal subcultures on their site, and it makes them look better to their shareholders.

Tumblr doesn’t care about explicit content. They don’t care about protecting anyone. They don’t want to foster a safe environment for younger users. They want to kill their own social network so they don’t have to do the work it would require to actually clean it up.