See who I am,
break through the surface.
Reach for my hand,
and show them that we can
free our minds and find a way.
The world is in our hands.
This is not the end.
Steam, Itch.io and the banning of explicit and LGBT+ Content. What can we do?
[All images in this post have alt/id text if you need it or want to copy paste anything]
With no warning, Itch.io, a site where many host their indie games, comics, books and more, has started purging and shadowbanning explicit and LGBT+ works. Creators got no warning. And if they were still owed payouts from these works, Itch.io is saying they won't give them their money as they 'broke the rules'. Rules that were only just set in place, with no warning, and therefore no way for creators to try and draw out their money or delete these 'offending' works before they got banned under the new rules.
So Itch.io has been the most recent to fall to the demands of a group that's been contacting Visa and Mastercard and convincing them to threaten sites/businesses with 'stop selling what we consider to be explicit content on your sites of we'll stop allowing your site to have transactions with Visa and Mastercard'. Steam folded, and now Itchio has too. And a reminder earlier this year Gumroad also stopped allowing explicit content, further back than that Patreon banned some kinks and fetishes even if it's depicted in fiction not real life, and I don't have to explain to you guys the great Tumblr explicit content ban of 2018.
And as always remember this doesn't stop with sexually explicit work as LGBT+ stories and people are often labelled as explicit and already we're seeing works being taken off Itch.io that are about LGBT+ and especially trans stories. Other non-sexually explicit works I've seen already getting shadowbanned, delisted or deleted are SFW games featuring furries/anthros, SFW dress up games (because when you take the clothes the model is nude), and the aforementioned SFW games that include LGBT+ characters and stories.
I'm compiling here information I've seen around various social medias, mostly Bluesky, because I haven't seen all these things shared over here.
I don't personally have explicit content on itch, but I had been considering one day selling things on there and I do currently have explicit content on my Patreon, my main source of income, and am terrified that Patreon is going to fold next (if anyone knows alterative for hosting audio content behind a paid subscription service please let me know so I can start maybe making a back-up in case the worst happens). Because for me personally if Patreon goes next, it's not like I can go out and easily get another job. Not only because in general finding and getting a job is difficult enough, but I'm autistic and have chronic pain and have been constantly getting sick or new pains over the last few years and don't feel safe being trans in the UK right now and all of that combined rules me out of a lot of jobs and makes me feel unsafe to apply to any. I'm so grateful I've been able to make a community around my work, but if Patreon caves next and I just leave my SFW posts on Patreon... 10% of my Patreons are signed up to the SFW tier, 90% are signed up to the explicit tier... I know if Patreon caves I will go from someone living comfortably who's searching to move out of my parents so I can live in a safer environment to someone who can no longer even afford the rent I pay to my parents. I'll try and get an alterative found and set up in case that happens and I can only hope you guys will follow me to whatever other site I have to set up... but it feels unlikely that people will get a whole new account on a whole new payment provider just to support me on a website they might never have heard of...
But what can we do right now?
A petition you can sign (international but you do have to give your name, email, and postal/zip code):
Mastercard's new policy unfairly targets the adult content industry, making sex workers more vulnerable, especially Black trans women. It mu
Get calling:
Mastercard (US): 1-800-627-8372
MasterCard (UK): 0800 964 767
Mastercard (International.): +1-636-722-7111
Visa (US + Can): 1 800 847 2911 / 1-800-VISA-911
Visa (AUS): 1 800 125 440
Visa (UK) : 0800 891 725 or use their international call collect +1 303 967 1096
Visa (International): (call collect - it costs them $): +1-303-967-1096
PayPal (US): 1-888-221-1161
PayPal (UK): 0800 358 7911 from landline, +44 203 901 7000 mobile
PayPal (International): 1-402-935-2050
(numbers gathered from these posts X X X )
Don't know what to say on the phone? Here's a script written by timidtanuki:
Creators have had their work removed off Itch.io with no warning and since it's been removed for 'breaking the rules' (rules that were suddenly in place with no warning) they aren't entitled to get their payouts. Just like other sites such as Youtube and Twitch and Etsy, Itch.io hold onto money from their users in a wallet and then give them payouts. So there is money creators have made, are owed, that Itch.io is not giving to them.
People are recommending that if you still have works on Itch.io to turn down the revenue sharing to 0% so that Itch.io no longer takes a cut or your money if you no longer want to support Itchi.io finically but don't want to remove your works from their platform. X
Other Bluesky posts and calls to action I've seen:
radiantg.bsky.social is asking for anyone on Itch.io who got their game deindexed, removed , or payouts turned off to reach out to them (espeically if you make explicit and/or LGBT+ games) for a piece of journalism about what is happening.
sleepyhart.bsky.social is making a threat of all the games that Itch.io has censored/removed from their site search function. Obviously be aware this will include 18+ only games, games with sexual content and other dark or heavy themes.
thetransfemininereview.com wants you to reach out to them if you're a trans creator on Itch.io who is being affected by this so they can make an accurate report. they say 'authors' in their post and I'm unsure if they also want game devs to reach out.
dropdownbear.bsky.com wants you to reach out if you have purchased things on Itch.io that you can now no longer access because of this ban. they can include them in a report being filed with the Australian Consumer Commission as this may be a violation of Australian Consumer rights. If you are Australian you can no longer access things you purchased of Itch.io you can report directly with this guide.
It's a scary time for adult creators and sex workers. It's a scary time to be trans. Support creators. And if anyone knows of any alternate payment providers that allow explicit work, and/or alternate websites to Itch (and in case things get worse, also give me Patreon alternates please) where people can host, sell and/or offer paid subscriptions to writing, images, videos, audios, games and more please leave them in the replies. And please help share this post, the posts I'm linking too, and any other resources you can find.
Minors DNI. Ageless blogs DNI. I want resources and help but I don't reply to this post or follow this blog if you're under 18, this is an explicit blog and not for anyone under 18.
did u kno that president Lyndon B. Johnson set up a commission on obscenity in pornography in 1969? (nice) The supreme court had just ruled that people could view whatever content they wanted in the privacy of their homes, and the country was in a moral panic over it. (Stanley v. Georgia)
The commission was comprised of a wide array of scientists, who performed extensive randomized surveys of the country…and commissioned Berl Kutchinsky to study the legalization of hardcore pornography in Denmark. His report was titled Studies on Pornography and Sex Crimes in Denmark (1970). Kutchinsky’s findings showed that increased availability of pornography had not led to an increase in sexual violence. He found that the incidence of certain sex crimes had in fact fallen, including rates of child sexual abuse in Denmark.
As a result, the presidential commission published it’s report which recommended sex education, further funding into research on the effects of pornography, and we as restrictions on pornography access to minors…with free access for adults. The report also found:
-That there was “no evidence to date that exposure to explicit sexual materials plays a significant role in the causation of delinquent or criminal behavior among youths or adults.”
-That “a majority of American adults believe that adults should be allowed to read or see any sexual materials they wish.”
-That “there is no reason to suppose that elimination of governmental prohibitions upon the sexual materials which may be made available to adults would adversely affect the availability to the public of other books, magazines, or films.”
-That there was no “evidence that exposure to explicit sexual materials adversely affects character or moral attitudes regarding sex and sexual conduct.”
The report was met with disgust from congress, who denied the research results. Nixon, who had become president by the time the report was released, also rejected it. When Reagan took office, he appointed his own commission in 1984, headed by his own attorney general. Reagan’s commission released their own report in 1986 that claimed that there was a causal relationship between pornography and delinquency. Who did this research? No one did. The commission did not have any scientists.
Oh it gets worse and so, so much weirder. The 1984 Meese Report, named after Reagan’s Attorney General, was a purely ideological document absolutely divorced from fact and absent of any intellectual or scientific rigor.
The Commission included conservative judges, a Catholic priest, a media executive, and two other names you might might recognize - or at the very least are familiar with their respective legacies.
One of the Commission members, Alan Sears, is the CEO of the Alliance Defending Freedom, a far-right conservative Christian “legal advocacy” group that takes up cases involving anti-abortion activism, opposition to LGBTQ rights, prayer in schools; things of this nature. That Oklahoma clerk who denied a marriage license to a same-sex couple because it was against her religion? The ADF represented her in court. Hobby Lobby getting a religious exemption from funding birth control in its employees’ health plans? That was them, too.
Mike Johnson, current Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and grown man who has admitted that he and his son monitor each other’s browser history for porn, was once an ADF lawyer.
The other Commission member might be more recognizable: James Dobson, a psychologist and evangelical activist. Though Dobson is neither a licensed doctor nor an ordained minister, that hasn’t stopped him from acting like a religious and clinical authority when it comes to children, child-rearing, and families. Besides being a co-founder of the ADF, he is also the founder of the Family Research Council (tldr peddlers of conversion therapy) and Focus on the Family, a fundamentalist Christian lobbying organization and propaganda factory that is now pretending to be a church.
While all of the Commission’s member had their own agendas, Dobson in particular has been waging a war on pornography - as well as violence in the media, abortion, same-sex marriage, LGBTQ rights, or very idea that you shouldn’t hit children as a form of discipline.
For Dobson, porn is his real bête noire. He thinks that much of the world’s evils, real and imagined, could be attributed to pornography. This anti-porn obsession culminated into one of the most unexpected and frankly bizarre ways possible:
James Dobson was the last person to interview Ted Bundy.
For those not in the know, Ted Bundy was a serial killer who kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and murdered dozens of young women and girls in the 70s until he was finally captured. We do not even have a precise count of his victims, because there were so many and Bundy himself was a consummate liar.
He did that a lot: lying. He often changed stories about his life and his deeds and his motivations depending on who was talking to him. This is an important thing to know, as when James Dobson came to videotape the last interview Bundy would do in 1989 - on the eve of his execution - Bundy started blaming pornography and violence in the media as the root cause of his crimes. He even told a story to Dobson about how he found a dirty magazine in the woods as a child and how it affected him.
Dobson, of course, uncritically ate this all up. Doesn’t matter that Bundy was an untrustworthy mass-murderer with a history of lies and manipulation who might have had something to gain from all this (like a delay in his execution). Nope, Dobson heard everything he wanted to hear: seeing a titty in a magazine once made Ted Bundy into a monster.
Dobson quickly called a sensationalist press conference after the interview. He also disseminated edited footage of the interview to Christian television channels and also through his own growing propaganda apparatus in Focus on the Family. It was a real feather in his cap, and really helped elevate Dobson and the organization to new heights.
James Dobson, a man with a frightening amount of influence and connections in the US government (including the CIA), truly believes in his heart of hearts that pornography kills because he was too arrogant and willfully stupid to realize that Ted Fucking Bundy was lying to him.
I'm reading Textual Poachers properly for the first time for a research project and even in the first few chapters its insane how much of this applies to antis. In the 70s-90s, the mainstream was looking down on fans as a whole (using Trekkies as an example) as weird, perverse, unable to differentiate fiction from reality, unacceptable... now fandom culture has become normalised and antis are using these EXACT arguments but within fandom.
Which is why those of us who were in fandom prior to AO3 completely ignore the antis. We've heard it all before. It's not about protecting minors; it's not about preventing crimes--it's all about insisting that normal is righteous and unusual is dangerous.
I tossed these scans into google to transcribe them for screen readers and general ease of reading (emphasis mine):
Concepts of "good taste," appropriate conduct, or aesthetic merit are not natural or universal; rather, they are rooted in social experience and reflect particular class interests. As Pierre Bourdieu (1979) notes, these tastes often seem "natural" to those who share them precisely because they are shaped by our earliest experiences as members of a particular cultural group, reinforced by social exchanges, and rationalized through encounters with higher education and other basic institutions that reward appropriate conduct and proper tastes. Taste becomes one of the important means by which social distinctions are maintained and class identities are forged. Those who "naturally" possess appropriate tastes "deserve" a privileged position within the institutional hierarchy and reap the greatest benefits from the educational system, while the tastes of others are seen as "uncouth" and underdeveloped. Taste distinctions determine not only desirable and undesirable forms of culture but also desirable and undesirable ways of relating to cultural objects, desirable and undesirable strategies of interpretation and styles of consumption.
…
The boundaries of "good taste," then, must constantly be policed; proper tastes must be separated from improper tastes; those who possess the wrong tastes must be distinguished from those whose tastes conform more closely to our own expectations. Because one's taste is so interwoven with all other aspects of social and cultural experience, aesthetic distaste brings with it the full force of moral excommunication and social rejection. "Bad taste" is not simply undesirable; it is unacceptable. Debates about aesthetic choices or interpretive practices, then, necessarily have an important social dimension and often draw upon social or psychological categories as a source of justification. Materials viewed as undesirable within a particular aesthetic are often accused of harmful social effects or negative influences upon their consumers. Aesthetic preferences are imposed through legislation and public pressure; for example, in the cause of protecting children from the "corrupting" influence of undesired cultural materials. Those who enjoy such texts are seen as intellectually debased, psychologically suspect, or emotionally immature.
The stereotypical conception of the fan, while not without a limited factual basis, amounts to a projection of anxieties about the violation of dominant cultural hierarchies. The fans' transgression of bourgeois taste and disruption of dominant cultural hierarchies insures that their preferences are seen as abnormal and threatening by those who have a vested interest in the maintenance of these standards (even by those who may share similar tastes but express them in fundamentally different ways). As Bourdieu (1980) suggests, "The most intolerable thing for those who regard themselves as the possessors of legitimate culture is the sacrilegious reuniting of tastes which taste dictates shall be separated"
…
The fan, whose cultural preferences and interpretive practices seem so antithetical to dominant aesthetic logic, must be represented as "other," must be held at a distance so that fannish taste does not pollute sanctioned culture. Public attacks on media fans keep other viewers in line, making it uncomfortable for readers to adapt such "inappropriate" strategies of making sense of popular texts or to embrace so passionately materials of such dubious aesthetic merit. Such representations isolate potential fans from others who share common interests and reading practices, marginalize fan activities as beyond the mainstream. These representations make it highly uncomfortable to speak publicly as a fan or to identify yourself even privately with fan cultural practices.
Even within the fan community, these categories are evoked as a way of policing the ranks and justifying one's own pleasures as less "perverse" than those of others: a flier circulated at a recent science fiction convention categorized Star Trek fans as belonging to the "G.A.L." ("Get a Life") club, part of an ongoing struggle between literary science fiction fans and media fans…"
+++
I've been wanting to read Textual Poachers for a while, and even though it was published in 1992, I'm not at all surprised to see behaviors that fit in with anti/purity culture described in it. That was around the height of the 'video games are making our children violent!' moral panic, whose primary claim has been disproven by countless research studies.
Like with many other US-centric moral panics (such as the comic book panic of the 1930s-50s, the War on Drugs, the Satanic panic, Qanon, and every anti-queer movement like the current 'LGBTQ people are groomers!' bullshit going on now with trans folks in particular), it was driven by conservatives using 'think of the children' as a tool to smother anything they saw as progressive or transgressive—anything they saw as threatening their white cisheteronormative way of life.
Many, many moral panics involve conservatives and social reactionaries slinging accusations of "pedophiles! groomers! freaks!" at any group they hate, so it's especially bizarre to see so many young queer people on the internet attacking other queer people in the exact same way. They really have been duped by the Right's obsession with 'moral purity.'
And regarding antis in fandom, in particular, I think their spread really shows how many of these boring, unimaginative 'normies' have shoved their way into fandom spaces. I suppose we have wider internet access and the fairly recent 'being a geek is not only acceptable but cool!' trend to thank for that. But anyway, antis mostly seem to have extremely conformist, vanilla sensibilities, which is of course fine, but it's a problem when they spend all of their time trying to force those sensibilities on others. They are certainly the minority in fandom but they are often very loud and aggressive, which makes them intimidating to some people.
Fandom is and has always been inherently transgressive, yet antis come into the spaces made by and for 'the freaks' and expect them to be bland, corporate, and sanitized. Then they're shocked and outraged when they discover that fandom doesn't cater to their tastes. It does make me wonder what even attracts people with such limited, authoritarian mindsets to fandom in the first place—they are clearly incapable of being around people who don't share the same exact opinions as them, so why seek out the creative and varied ecosystems of fandom at all?
14 year olds shipping discourse is inbreeding with itself to make the discourse equivalent of a brachycephalic bulldog at this point. They're inventing new extremely vague moral purity categories at a rate nearly equivalent to the Mormon church
* For the record btw a paraphilia by definition is just any sexual desire classed as "unusual" by the dsm, which can include anything from apparently getting horny about imagining yourself as a vampire (?) to being attracted to fictional characters, to being attracted to trans people. It's not an issue unless it has the capacity to cause real harm to yourself or others, at which point it becomes a paraphilic disorder
#this has gotta be like. really bad for your brain i think. like if this were about anything other than shipping i'd think it was undx ocd
It is indeed literally just a form of OCD!! I used to have these kinds of thoughts where I'd read a fic and immediately after have long depression spirals thinking that I would be arrested and everyone would hate me for being a terrible person! Now I am on medication! Please seek help if you're a teenager and deep into this way of thinking for real
by Zachary Appenzeller, Psy.D. & Patrick McGrath, PhD If you think about it long enough, it should not come as a surprise to you that some p
⚠️ URGENT ⚠️HELP FROM THE PRO-SHIP PRO-FICTION COMMUNITY!!
I’m being attacked and doxxed on instagram becuase I own and read BL manga that some have said has some “dark themes”
I’m getting hundreds of thousands of comments a day calling me a pedophile.
❌I AM NOT A PEDOPHILE FOR READING MANGA SET IN HIGH-SCHOOL. ❌
These are the manga I showed in a video that has made millions of people online think I’m a pedophile.
You can BUY THESE AT ANY BRICK AND MORTER MANGA RETAILER.
I CANT KEEP UP WITH THE COMMENTS ANYMORE GUYS I NEED HELP DEFENDING MYSELF.
My instagram is LINK
Please if you can leave some nice comments/help me deal with these people. If you don’t think this is serious please read this email an anti went out of the way to send to my business email.
TW: JUST TRIGGER WARNING
All of this is because of BL manga.
MY LIFE AND SAFFEY ARE AT RISK BECAUSE I READ SILLY BOOKS ABOUT BOYS KISSING
Please reblog if you can I’m at a loss for what to do at this point.
OP I'm sorry this is happening to you and the comments on your posts are absolutely disgusting and vile. You don't deserve that and no one should have to go through that.
Please listen to what others are saying and implement moderating tools on your posts, or just straight up restrict comments. And don't fight with them anymore. You defending yourself is, unfortunately, exactly what they want and it's making them more bloodthirsty. The only way to get rid of antis like that is to ignore them and block them.
They don't care about reason. They don't care about facts or science. All they want is to harass and bully. They want attention. They want to feel superior. Replying to them and arguing with them is feeding into their game. I suggest you go radio silent and stop replying to them, stop acknowledging them altogether. Block them, use the other tools instagram has to hide or moderate comments, and continue focusing on yourself and the content you want to make. Also, don't hesitate to report any violent threats or other TOS-breaking comments. These reports mean a lot more when they come from the person who is being harassed!
Only reply to positive comments. Only post things about you and what you like. The best way to make them seethe is to go on and keep living and doing exactly what you want to do. Pretend like they don't exist. Do not give them what they want!
With how much they're attacking you right now, I would suggest disabling comments entirely or only allowing friends to comment for a while. Often this will make antis get bored and leave. They won't stick around if they don't have a platform to spew their hatred.
Saying "incest and underage fics are ok because it's usually CSA survivors recontextualizing/processing their own experience" is just purity culture lite. It's like saying "Birth control should be legal because some people use it for non-birth control related purposes" or "abortion needs to be legal because women can die without it."
Yes, these are TRUE and IMPORTANT things. But kind of... not the point?
Kind of giving way to the antis, the puritanical right, the misogynists who just want to control women (because you KNOW they aren't thinking about trans men or nonbinary people when they legislate abortion).
Lemme see if I can explain: by saying "look at this VALID and IMPORTANT reason someone might have for doing the thing you don't like," you are saying that there are invalid reasons for it. That some people shouldn't do it.
You are saying that it is objectively wrong, and that exceptions must be made for it to be okay. And putting aside the fact that NO ONE should have to disclose their personal trauma for judgement, that no one should have to disclose their personal medical history to a judge or legislator before receiving treatment... you are conceding the point.
I refuse to concede anything on this.
I like fucked up fic, I like being able to fuck without getting pregnant, I like that if my birth control fails I can still make a choice about whether or not I want to be pregnant and give birth. I WILL NOT go into my reasons on ANY of this. Because YOU do not have a right to that information, and I am also protecting the privacy of everyone else who does not want to share their reasons.
Yeah, I really don't enjoy the idea that I have to flash around a detailed description of my trauma so some random internet stranger will approve of a story I wrote. Who are they to say I need their permission to do things that don't involve them? Why should I beg for their approval?
I feel like trying to justify things like this assigns authority to people who don't deserve it. Especially when we're bending over backwards justifying common fantasies that literally no one else gets shit fot. Things like student/teacher or incest are super common in mainstream porn. The idea that those things can't or shouldn't be in fanworks without a full five paragraph disclaimer justifying it makes no sense.
#also#all this can be true and you can still be personally uncomfortable with whatever you deem to be fucked up fic#all of this can be true and you can curate your own fandom experience and you can leave other people alone about their own fandom experienc
And here's my second piece for @rivalszine, a collaboration with @malevolentmango. I had the pleasure of making an illustration for their beautiful fic, all the words i couldn't say.
baratheonpilled
stormborns
snowghoul
yousharknotpass
kaledo-art
gummygunk
origamiaround
