Bondage is Just Yoga With Chains

It’s been a fun ride. Over a million notes generated.

I’d like to take a moment to thank @swindleleather and @slavebondageboys for showing me that such a thing was possible. I’d like to thank @pupthraell for getting things rolling and express my heartfelt gratitude to @boundtobounds, @tinyfearlessleader and @littlebondageboi for offering such inspiration. A special acknowledgment to @leatherkin, my husband, for tolerating the madness. To every single boy who has appeared on my Tumblr, a sincere thank you for allowing me to capture a glimpse of your beauty. And thanks to all of the 47K followers who have supported and encouraged me along the way.

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.

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.

Thank you to everyone who supported my journey of radical self love through thottery. Thank you to everyone who helped me discover an identity and a community within BDSM. All 9,167 of you, my followers, have helped me along this journey of self-discovery, fetish exploration, and learning to love myself and others. It's a damn shame that @staff redoubled down on its efforts to demonize safe, sane, and consensual relationships among sex-positive and kink-positive people.

I'm not entirely sure what I'll do now with the void that Tumblr is leaving. I'll still be posting on Instagram (TinyFearlessLeader) and I might revamp my Twitter (GayPunography), but I'll dearly miss the unique sense of community that Tumblr fostered.

With love,

TinyFearlessLeader

http://Instagram.com/TinyFearlessLeader

I’ve found that photographing myself has helped me with some of my body issue problems, and if it’s possible I can help other people with theirs I really want to do it. this offer doesn’t only stand for larger gay men, but I know we tend to have image problems a lot. anyone who’d like to setup a photoshoot with me.

my dms are disabled for people I don’t follow right now, but you can reply to this or send me an ask to get started if you’re interested.