Musings, ruminations and thoughts for the future...
I’m not sure who is still out there reading this, the Saturday before Christmas and a week after The Purge, but this is when I have time to set down some of the thoughts that are crashing around in my head, so this is when you get it. If it resonates with you, please comment and share…
By now it’s clear that Tumblr as we knew it is no more. Some dear friends (I’m looking at you, @instructor144) are still here keeping the light on for our community and continuing to provide us with a home and sense of belonging, which is a tremendous gift in and of itself, but there’s no escaping the fact that the heart and soul of this place have been dealt a mighty blow.
Even if we’re still here, the stripping of our very identities - our avatars, our headers, even our visibility behind that awful button - has made it clear that we are neither valued nor welcome on Tumblr. Their ham-handed attempts at censorship of a gloriously accepting and diverse community, and make no mistake, it IS a community, while leaving the pornbots and hate-blogs with free reign reeks of kink-shaming, of a puritanical finger-wagging, a sense that we are somehow “less than”.
I reject that. I came to Tumblr as a full-fledged adult (and then some…) with a myriad of life experience, skills, and self-worth, in large part to reclaim my sexuality. To stand up and state out loud that this is a part of who and what I am, and I claim it. I will not allow Tumblr to take that confidence and sense of self from me by telling me that who and what I am has no value here.
What then are the alternatives? Well, to be honest, there aren’t any terribly good ones yet. I was really hoping that BDSMLR could be the place where we all regroup and begin again, but between the glitches, the mobile-unfriendliness, and the way the site software inhibits actual dialog (comments on reblogs, post sharing, ease in following back, heck, even just SEEING what someone wrote or which of your posts it is that they’ve liked) it’s obvious that that isn’t the case. Without conversation, real conversation, there can be no community. And without community, that particular site is little more than an endless avalanche of hardcore porn gifs. Now I like a good sexy gif as well as the next person, but for me personally I like it to be aesthetic, to evoke something, to make me feel something other than just “oh, more porn”. The never-ending stream of gaping orifices is becoming a real turnoff. I am more than just porn, and I want to interact with people who are more than one-dimensional. And frankly, even the name itself is problematic. Who the hell wants that popping up in their predictive text on every new web page…
I’m keeping a close eye on developments over at mojofire.com, where @dominantlife assures me that they’re working hard to create a site that EVERYONE can enjoy, and that we’re likely to see the initial version go live very soon. I’ve got all my fingers crossed that this will happen, and that mojofire is able to become the home we all desperately need.
What will I do in the meantime? I’m not really sure. I’ll probably post here a bit more often, at least some of my SFW posts, and will keep my blog on BDSMLR up to see how that shakes out, but really I’m still feeling uprooted and homeless.
I don’t have any particular answers, but after hearing from a number of people who are feeling the same way, I decided to at least put my thoughts down here to let you know that you’re not alone, and that we shouldn’t give up looking and trying and striving to rebuild. Because wherever we end up, this community will ultimately be what we ourselves choose to make it. If we want a home that lets us be ourselves while still being more than just an endless stream of gaping orifices, we have to be the ones to put that content out there, and we have to be the ones to share and to support each other’s efforts when we do.
I know this became a long wall of text, thank you for reading. And again, if this resonates with you, if this is the type of community you want to be a part of, then please, join me and together lets create that shared space. Pull up a comfy chair, grab a blanket if it’s chilly, help yourself to a cup of coffee or heck, a glass of whisky or even chocolate milk, whatever strikes your fancy, and make yourself at home.
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