Zelato!

[smokywaterstudio]

Why I feel the adult content ban is wrong. Art imitates life.

^{Disclaimer: I disavow and exclude all materials and content related to underage subjects, underage teens, young children and anything related to the exploitation, the harm or the sexual abuse of children, and or all victims of sexual crimes, and I explicitly condone the use of them as a valid form of sexual expression in art, as an orientation and in pornography including but not limited to computer and human animated pornography.} 

Let’s start by saying, yes we all have seen porn, and it’s safe to say 80-90% of the people who see it, do in fact seek it out. And of those people 100% of them do NOT want to be looking for porn and get a virus while browsing through free sites. While some might not care about being known as a sexually free person, it’s also safe to say the majority of us, don’t want to publicly share with strangers or friends//family what our porn searching habits are, and never will. 

Tumblr offered a solution to that by being a nice little treasure box of gifs short clips and interesting fan arts. It allowed us to seek those things in a way that let us stay anonymous. It allowed us to connect with like minded people without the risk of being assaulted or attacked or followed home. 

It also gave us a portal where we could share artistic pieces with erotic themes. It gave a space to fill the void of a lack of sexually driven content. But WHY is sexually driven content important to artistic freedom and having a properly rounded online community?

 Artistic freedom, even in erotic art, is not just about putting the subject into a sexy pose and calling it erotic for a thumbs up. Art is not about making things that are deemed OK by a panel of censors. Artists have ALWAYS and will CONTINUE to rebel against censorship in art. ART is an expression of the artist’s passions, desires, feelings, fears, hopes, dreams, and more! We weave visual stories to convey messages, to share ideas, to create something new where there was once something old, and it matters not if the stories are met with supportive fervor or backlash, so long as it’s NOT CENSORED.

When we are commissioned we draw with the same passion we hold for these things but on behalf of those who can not do it themselves. Our job then is to express the passions of our clients and customers in the form of our art.

While the occasional artist will not draw sexual content, the seasoned art student will say there is no avoiding seeing nudity or sexual content as an artist. Alas each artist is free to chose what subjects they will and will not draw. Naked bodies, for me however, have no jarring effect on my mood anymore than seeing a stick in the mud in the forest.

Our job is NOT to censor the thoughts or expressions of anyone. We do not tell a client that we will black out the nipples to avoid offending anyone. However in the context of fighting censorship, censoring art ironically can be an effective tool to drive a deep message.

With so many people who express themselves in a sexual manner, it would be outlandish to even try to say that depicting sexual acts in art is for pure pornographic reasons. EVEN in the context of pornography we see self expression.

We see it with role-playing, BDSM, the thousands of off beat kinks, the amateurs who post home videos of them RAMMING themselves in front of their cam, the list goes on forever. Every person has a story as to why they like or how they found their niche kink. THAT in itself is fucking art because it is LIFE!

How did they find out they liked spankings and handcuffs?  What was the situations leading up to that moment? Was it chance? Was it suggested by another person? How influential were they to get another person into that kink? What’s the history behind that kink? Finally what kind of persona do they have in public? Do they dress conservatively and hold themselves to a high standard? Are they more liberal and express their kinks verbally with others? Do they have other hobbies? Who KNOWS about their kinks? Who would they hide those kinks from? 

The more questions you ask about them the more EXPRESSION can take place. And when you come to understand the underlying reason of WHY they have a particular kink, their story can finally be painted. Others can then in turn find solidarity or even discover a part of themselves they didn’t know existed. 

Erotic and pornographic art is an expression of the people who exist in niche kinks that are considered non conventional. It is an expression and representation of the members in those communities who live in nearly every society around the world. It allows people to signal each other and alert each other to their common interests. It allows communities to be formed of like minded people and common goals. By stripping away fear caused by stigma. 

Art brings people together, it forces people to think, it dares the viewer to challenge their way of thinking, it forces attention to subjects we might not be comfortable talking about but can not ignore. 

To exclude any form of sexual expression form a platform, simply because it is pornographic in nature, is a condemnation of finding enjoyment and pleasure in sexuality. It is demonizing a natural action that the vast majority of the world’s population enjoys.

 It’s in essence saying that lifestyle and individualism can only be validated by a strict set of circumstances set by a higher authority. It is telling us that the way we come to find sexual pleasure is unacceptable for sharing with others unless a board approves first.

The simple fact IS humans ENJOY sexual pleasure. It’s in our nature to crave the pleasure associated with sex. It’s in our nature to outwardly express what we feel inside THROUGH sexual acts. 

The control and censorship of sex, and our sexual lifestyles has always led to more bad than good. It’s made criminals out of sex workers. It’s allowed STD’s to spread through omission of education and information. It’s given us the HIV outbreak which many believe was set into place as biological warfare by government officials. It’s created mass hysteria among the uneducated public. It’s created villains from perfectly law abiding citizens. It’s torn apart families and ostracized adults coming to age. It’s caused people to take their own lives. 

We can not ever hope to progress towards sexual freedom and security when our sexual lifestyle is continuously held hostage. We will never see sex workers be validated and protected, or have truly safe work environments for the sex industry, if we cannot simply accept sexual acts in art and pornography as a form of sexual expression.

In the future I will be posting pieces to express my feelings on this matter. The imagery will be metaphorical and designed to provoke anger at the mistreatment of those who practice sexual expression.

In the meantime I hope the Apple lawsuit against them for their strict anti pornographic policy, is legitimate and helps to rectify the rift on this and the many other platforms that have banned similar content from their sites.

[zationao3]

change.org

Sign the Petition

European Parliament: Stop the censorship-machinery! Save the Internet!

[sweeneyfan2007]

[staff]

✊ Today is an Internet-wide day of action for net neutrality ✊

[fight4future]

There’s been a major development over the past 24 hours: another member of Congress just came out in support of the House Congressional Review Act resolution to overturn FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s net neutrality repeal.

This is a big deal and could help push other lawmakers do the same, but we have to act fast because the deadline is just over a week away.

Today is a massive day of action to show lawmakers that people still care about net neutrality so we’re asking everyone to click here and tell Congress not to let their chance to save net neutrality slip away.

We’ve been fighting for months without seeing any movement in Congress, watching the clock ticking down to the deadline. But Rep Joe Morelle (NY-25) his support for the Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution could change that.

If we act fast, we can leverage this new momentum to unleash a small landslide of other representatives coming out for net neutrality before the December 10th deadline, which will make a huge difference in the battles ahead.

Today we’re asking the entire Internet to sign this open letter to Congress telling them to do the right thing and support net neutrality before it’s too late.

Your voice matters. As part of today’s Internet-wide day of action, thousands of others are speaking out, along with celebrities, musicians, and websites like Tumblr, Postmates and Etsy.

You can join them and show your support for net neutrality by submitting an ‘I support net neutrality’ photo. We will be flooding lawmakers’ social media feeds with pictures, so if they decide to vote against the open Internet we will make them look us in the eye as they do it.

Click here to sign our open letter and then submit your ‘I support net neutrality’ photo into our gallery:

We can’t let this deadline come and go without making Congress remember that the whole Internet is watching. We’re still fighting for net neutrality. And we won’t forget if they betray us.

Tell everyone you know to take action at DeadlineForNetNeutrality.com and spread the word any way you can. Click here to find ideas on how you can use your slice of the Internet – whether that’s your Tumblr blog, a website you run, or any of your social media accounts – to help get the word out. We’re counting on you!

[staff]

A better, more positive Tumblr

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.

Jeff D’Onofrio
CEO