Lion Blood

For at least as year now, I’ve been listening to Alie Ward’s podcast Ologies (and recommending it to everyone). Soon I discovered that she had spent years dreaming of making Ologies a reality, but for a long time was too afraid of releasing her ideas into the world to get started. One of favourite episodes is this short one, in which Alie discusses what made her finally start, and includes some…

My two cents are that porn bots annoy the hell out of me and even trigger me sometimes BUT real people posting porn, or nudes, or body positivity, or ART, or any intersection thereof, are exercising free speech on an ostensibly free internet. Tumblr’s own inability to control those who have posted illegal child pornography or spambots should not affect those who use this as an artistic platform (or use it for anything else).

Hate speech is so much more problematic (and violent) than (legal, consenting) nudity/sex acts. And please let us grow up and remember that nudity is not inherently sexual, and that in many many cultures worldwide, the female breast/nipple is not sexualized the way that it is in the West.

To prostelytize more, take it from a sexual assault survivor - I can choose who to follow and who to block, but I want to be able to see a partially nude Christ on the cross, I want to be able to see Mary with her tits out giving life, I want to be able to see nipples on the runway, I want to be able to see dick if it’s on posters protesting the patriarchy or protesting CENSORSHIP. We’re at a crux in society where women are shamed for feeding their children (let me declaim for you how without women there would be no men, no people, sorry for using the traditional gender binary). I could write about 300 theses about how nudity objectifies sometimes, clarifies others; can do both.

For months I’ve been contemplating moving to an actual “adult” blog where I explore thoughts and actions rather than repost others’ pictures that make me feel sentimental or safe or excited. But tumblr was a place where, beginning something like nine or ten years ago, I first felt safe and understood and appreciated, where I have made actual friends, where I met someone for whom I moved across the world, across hemispheres. I’ve known this was a sinking ship for a long time, and that it wasn’t so helpful for my mental health, but I am enraged that this is the way things are going on this platform. The most damning line of the @staff post is “we’ve given serious thought to who we want to be to our community moving forward”. Why have they not felt about who they want to be to their community, and the larger community, before now? Why have they not felt this way about the Nazis who post on this site? Why have they not felt this way about the TERFs? Despite all the complexities of the internet, why can they not go after child pornographers and spambots and NOT the creators and casual users that have made this site into the viable, money-making monster that it has become?

The sale to yahoo was a disaster. The main reason I despise using this site is the advertisements. I get enough of that already. The second is the infighting, the uneducated masses (read: youth). But I’ve grown and aged and this is not my anchor anymore. For others, it’s a way to stay alive. I know it has been for me before. And our bodies and our art and our histories and our being are rooted in our muscles and sinew, our bones and our genitals, our tits and asses and cocks and vaginas. Give me ladies who will use be word cunt, give me men who understand that a vulva is not a vagina. Give me non-binary people, trans people, people who are both afraid and unafraid of their bodies and of others’. If our generation is doing anything, it’s teaching the world to be less afraid of bodies. Not always in the most foresighted way, but everything always happens more quickly than we can keep up with.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Everything you need to know