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Tumblr Bans Porn, Women and LGBTQ People Impacted the Most

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Tumblr staff headerThis post will not contain photos that could be considered not safe for work (NSFW). However, it will discuss porn, sex, female-presenting nipples, and even male-presenting nipples, which you may want to read at home. I’ll keep large text SFW, in case you’re worried about someone seeing your screen.

On December 17th, Tumblr is banning all “Adult Content.” This is significant because, as it turns out, many people don’t use Tumblr for their tech blog, as I do. No. Many people use Tumblr for porn. Later this month, Tumblr will ban photos, videos, and GIFs of “real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples.” Yes, Tumblr, like Instagram, is joining in on shaming women’s bodies and banning the nipple, which is not genitalia. They will also ban photorealistic recreations of humans. Tumblr will not ban art, newsworthy, or political content, but this will be up to their discretion. Finally, Tumblr is banning anything that depicts a sex act.

A site that people largely—if not primarily—use for porn is banning porn. But that’s far from the only problem. The sexism of going after women’s nipples is an issue, one that Instagram has struggled with as well. Furthermore, and perhaps worst of all, is the kind or porn Tumblr was used for. Tumblr allowed women and LGBTQ people to take control of their porn, creating their own and depicting themselves realistically. It was liberating. Now, that, too, is gone, leaving queer people (once again) without a place to spend some quality alone time with themselves.

Why is this Happening?

"Gee Tumblr, you're the first platform I've ever gotten popular on! Thanks for letting me express my creativity, originality and sexuality in a way that helped me build an audience. If this keeps up, I might even be able to launch a real career!" The tumblr man then punches them.

Source: Vince Marcellino Art (Tumblr)

In November, Apple removed Tumblr’s iOS app from the App Store. Neither Tumblr nor Apple gave reason. However, Download.com had sources claiming that Apple banned Tumblr because they discovered child pornography on the service. Tumblr fessed up. Apple removed Tumblr because child pornography got through their system.

Tumblr works diligently to ensure that porn depicting minors does not make it to their platform. They use third party software to review every photo uploaded against vast databases, including missing children photos. These are third party services that Facebook, Twitter, Google, and others use as well. If Tumblr could fall victim, so could anyone else. After removing the content, Tumblr was back on the App Store, but they decided to make a big change.

Car meme. Invest in and fix all the problems with NSFW content or delete everything. Tumblr chooses delete everything and the car explodes

via Tumblr user warakami

Tumblr had likely been considering this move for some time. They’re beholden to their advertisers. If their advertisers say they don’t want to work with them if they have adult content anywhere on the site, then Tumblr will cave. Of course, they could also work to make a solution that could keep everyone happy. They could spin off the NSFW blogs on Tumblr into their own section of the site, forcing all posts to be tagged as such. Then, they could forbid advertisements from businesses that object to adult content to show on those pages. A company like Disney, then, could feel comfortable using Tumblr for their advertisements.

Instead, Tumblr made a symbolic gesture, banning all adult content. This doesn’t actually give advertisers any greater guarantee that their ads won’t show up next to porn. Tumblr is still a user-generated site. But it makes it seem like there’s greater control than a quarantined section would. Basically put, it’s a marketing move to advertisers, a hollow gesture to win over companies that will likely see right through it anyway.

Women, LGBTQ People, and POC Left Out Again

https://twitter.com/sasugayuchiha/status/1069660114141892608

“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.”

– Tumblr CEO Jeff D’Onofrio

 

“I’m completely at a loss. Tumblr said there are many places for us to go, but there aren’t.”

– ReaperSun, Anonymous Tumblr Erotica Artist

I started this section with three quotes to really nail this point home. The Tumblr CEO, Jeff D’Onofrio, doesn’t understand the plight of women and LGBTQ people. These are people who went to Tumblr for porn not because they wanted to, but because they had to. As Avenue Q pointed out, the internet is for porn, but that porn isn’t for everyone on the internet.

If you’re a straight man interested in finding pornography of men being aggressive with women, there’s plenty of porn for you on the internet. However, if you’re looking for more female-driven porn, lesbian porn that doesn’t appeal to the male gaze and favors intimacy and realistic depictions of lesbian sex, or any porn involving transgender people that isn’t exploitative and fetish driven, then you’re out of luck. Most porn online isn’t made for everyone, it’s only made for a small subset of users. Sites that feature gross popup ads, images of male genitalia, or other exploitative videos from elsewhere on their site do not provide a safe space for these people to find the porn they like.

Tumblr (Formerly) to the Rescue!

“[Tumblr] was a safe space for me to explore things online that I would not necessarily want to try [in] real life, where that might not be safe realistically. More importantly, it was a way for me to connect with other like-minded people.”

– Mutabear, a gay kink erotica artist

This is where Tumblr came in. Tumblr was already a place where more liberal minded people were found. These people are, more frequently than not, women, LGBTQ people, and people of color. As a result, when they made pornographic material, whether it was self-shot or directed videos, images, gifs, or stories, it was coming from a place that was unique. They made content that was for themselves and people like them. Tumblr became widely known for its diverse collection of adult content that was perfect for everyone tired of male-dominated, white, cisgender, and abusive pornography. Finally, for perhaps the first time in human history, there was a place for LGBTQ people, women, and POC to find erotic materials in a safe space.

Now that safe space is going away, and there’s no replacement online for it. Some women have attempted to form communities on Reddit, but Reddit is a site that houses hate speech, incels, alt-right provocateurs, and regularly encourages violence against “leftists,” women, and people of color. At this point, Reddit has devolved to the point where some of its most popular subreddits are for hate speech, like those religiously dedicated to Donald Trump, attacking transgender rights, or jokes about killing immigrants and racial minorities in the United States. It’s a site rife with hate and Russian propaganda. It’s no place for women, gender and sexuality minorities, U.S. immigrants, or people of color. There’s truly nowhere to go.

Policing Women

https://twitter.com/ABCBTom/status/1069645544329539590

Here’s a way to look at this. If you post a photo of yourself naked on Tumblr, how many rules have you broken? If it’s sexual in nature, just one, if you’re a man. However, if you’re a woman, two rules. Women have to follow more rules on Tumblr than men. This is the male-dominated tech industry once again policing women and our bodies.

To Tumblr’s credit, they were at least transpositive, banning “female-presenting nipples,” meaning that, even if you live in a regressive culture (like the U.S. may become), and you are not legally defined as your actual gender, Tumblr may still ban you over your nipples. Tumblr is an equal opportunity sexist.

Of course, this also leaves non-binary people in a gray area. Would Tumblr ban a person who is non-binary but was assigned the female gender at birth? If they do, it’ll be horribly regressive and dismissive of these people’s identities. If they don’t, advertisers could object.

“I think the saddest part for me is Tumblr was the only place that all my work could be displayed side by side.”

– Corwin Prescott, photographer (NSFW Link to Quote)

Outside of the U.S., women’s nipples aren’t treated like genitalia. In some liberal cities and states, if a man can be outside in that space without a shirt, then a woman can too. This is how Tumblr should be.

Instead, Tumblr has taken from the same sexist rulebook as Facebook and Instagram, now policing women’s bodies out of a sense of duty to an ancient patriarchal and puritanical system. Women’s bodies are not sex objects. They are our own. Views that demand more policing of women than men are regressive.

We’re Damaging Young Minds

Sex in America is a taboo subject. I can already imagine my mother preparing to scold me over writing this article (it should be entertaining). One of her worries might be that a coworker or friend will see this, and judge her “sexually liberated” lesbian daughter, and, through me, judge her. And maybe that will happen. But it won’t stop happening unless we confront it head on.

Young girls are taught that, in order to be good, their bodies must remain “pure.” They’re taught to value their virginity, because their sexuality is tied to their worth. They’re taught that their bodies are taboo.

Men, similarly, are taught dangerous views on sex due to our patriarchal system. Society teaches them to tie their worth to the sex they’re having, that virginity is shameful. They become sexually frustrated and socially embarrassed. Many young men who go on to commit mass shootings cite this frustration. American puritanical beliefs are spilling over onto the internet, and those same beliefs fuel violence and depression in this country.

Algorithm Blues

https://twitter.com/john_overholt/status/1069923308437676032

In some preliminary research, I once found that Google tends to flag innocent images of women as being sexual more often than similar images of men. Tumblr’s new anti-porn algorithm seems to have a similar issue. While Tumblr’s ban doesn’t go into effect until December 17th, they’ve already begun flagging images that will be set to private after the ban goes into effect. Those images are often safe for work images.

https://twitter.com/TrashDadabelle/status/1069699381547413504

Tumblr’s photo recognition is flagging hands as penises and photos of women as explicit. Tumblr’s CEO admitted that their algorithms would take time to improve, but that doesn’t help the people whose posts are removed without a human-based audit. Humans are more expensive to hire than algorithms, and cash-strapped Tumblr is reluctant to do a good job if it means making their efforts more expensive.

Tumblr’s Business Problem

Tumblr is catering to advertisers, though it’s unlikely they’ll ever see Tumblr as a place for non-sexual (by U.S. standards) brands. As such, they’re scaring away a large part of their userbase, making the service less attractive to the few advertisers they already have. Tumblr had nearly the spread of Twitter or Facebook, but failed to capitalize on their unique slice of the market. Now they’re abandoning one of the features that made it unique, and users, even those (like me) posting safe for work content on Tumblr, will leave. Tumblr’s killing their brand, and their users will leave it behind.

censored tumblr logoWith both sexual and non-sexual content creators leaving Tumblr, a wide portion of their userbase will leave this month in droves. Many people use Tumblr only for porn, and many view porn as part of the primary reason they use Tumblr, even for their safe for work content. Without users, Tumblr won’t have a revenue stream. Tumblr, like other Verizon-owned companies under the Oath branding (Yahoo, Aol), will fall. Mismanagement and a refusal to recognize their market segment killed their business.

Tumblr says they want “a better, more positive Tumblr.” But when did sex—the very reason for human existence—pleasure, happiness, or body positivity become negative things?

 

#TumblrIsDead

Sources (Warning, no guarentee of SFW posts, but I’ll attempt to warn NSFW ones)