My blog has been a celebration of my eclectic taste and my sexuality. For years, I’ve carefully colour-coordinated images, painstakingly juxtaposing art, architecture, the male form, gay culture, gay sex and random objects.
When the ‘adult content’ ban was introduced in December 2018, I expected there would be clarity about what would be permitted. Instead we got a very odd form of words and an algorithm to pick up posts that had fallen foul. I tried to work with it and conformed. I dutifully deleted historic posts that Tumblr flagged as explicit and then regretted it when I saw that it was identifying some pretty innocent stuff too.
Amongst my posts bizarrely identified as ‘adult’ are:
A botanical drawing of leaves and a seed pod
A glass of ice cubes in pink milk
Various pieces of contemporary art
The Mexican Embassy in Berlin
I’ve been unable to get Tumblr to review these posts because I’m not the original blogger. With the possible exception of the slightly phallic seed pod, I have no idea what set the alarm bells ringing for these images. That algorithm clearly has a very dirty imagination.
In an attempt to prompt Tumblr to look again at some of my posts I tried tweaking their tags. I took out words like leather, nipple and bulge in order to emphasise their innocence. In some cases, it worked - a black and white photo of Alfred Hitchcock, relaxing in a leather chair with his feet up was restored, though it left me wondering if the algorithm had originally mistaken his impressively shiny shoes for something else or perhaps drawn suspicion from his surname.
I’ve deduced that the ‘guidance’ given to those reviewing appeals instructs them to look for any trace of a genital. Male buttocks are generally permitted but the merest hint of anything between the legs (regardless of whether it may actually be the edge of a thumb or a sliver of shadow) is promptly dispatched to the banned bin. Frontal shots, where the genitals are covered by a leg, hand or the crop of the frame, may be allowed… but show so much as one millimetre below the pubic hair line and you’re shafted. This is madness - an archaic, prescriptive blueprint that harks back to the Hay’s Code of the 1930s. It clumsily tries to pigeonhole the ‘acceptable’; failing to recognise the subtleties of context and artistic intention. Work by artists like Wolfang Tillmans and Jean Cocteau are deemed to be no more acceptable than a beefy bonanza of bukkake-blessed bodybuilders.
Perhaps there’s some perverse justification in that. Art should have the power to challenge and to shock; to reflect our truths and our fantasies. There is no Cocteau without cock.
If I continue with my blog, then I feel I’m complicit in Tumblr’s censorship; I’m accepting someone else’s discriminatory curation when I literally want to be able to view the entire body of work.
I leave you with one of Tumblr’s ‘banned’ posts. I post the image because it says something about the ridiculousness of the restrictions. It’s a picture of a naked man’s back and buttocks on which images of flowers have been projected. It’s an image that I’ve seen on other Tumblr blogs. I maintain that it’s not an ‘adult’ image. The background is black and even with the aid of a forensic torch, there’s no hint of genitalia. The flowers are just flowers - not an underground invitation to depravity. I ‘appealed’ against its categorisation… and lost. I tried to contact Tumblr to better understand the rationale. I was twice redirected to the adult content guidance. I’ve been told there’s no right of appeal once an image has been reviewed.
So I leave, not because I’m incapable of producing a blog that abides by a set of rules but because the rules are arbitrary, clumsy, petty and fundamentally unfair. I am prepared to defend the defensible but Tumblr won’t even let me try.
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