Sexuality occupies a crucial part of our online behaviour, however often we might erase our browser histories. In spite of this, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to make sense of sex in the cyber sphere. On the one hand, explicit images of sex seem to be everywhere; on the other, most of us have encountered online censorship: nipples covered by emojis and mysterious “community guidelines” that even object to innocuous 18th-century art nudes. What is the balance between freedom and control in the production and consumption of sexual content?
Today — and quite literally today as December 17 marks the day that Tumblr officially bans all pornography (defined as depiction of human genitalia, “female-presenting” nipples and sex acts, including illustrations) from its platform — this question becomes more and more political. Since the announcement less than two weeks ago, the move has been publicised widely, provoking a particularly vocal reaction from artists working with nudity and explicit imagery, pornographers, porn performers and sex workers (by some unbelievable coincidence or intention, December 17 is also the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers).
In recent times, porn has gained more visibility in mainstream culture: the renaissance of independent female porn directors was covered by The New York Times, this years’ PornHub award cermony was curated by Kanye West, Stoya’s website ZeroSpaces is changing the conversation around the adult industry, and no one can argue with the impact that Stormy Daniels has had on US politics this past year. At the same time, it’s evident that sexual content is demonised more frequently, and pushed to the margins. Both the SESTA/FOSTA bill in the US and Digital Economy Act in the UK are set to restrict what kind of sex can be presented online — which both limits creative expression and silences an open dialogue about sex. Tumblr is just the tip of the iceberg — a microcosm within the macrocosm.
“I started using Tumblr in 2009 when I was seventeen and quickly discovered that there were a lot of images relating to sex circulating, and of different kinds of sexual expression. Not only did these images help me discover my sexuality, but they also inspired me to start making my own sexually explicit work,” says porn director Poppy Sanchez, who belongs to the new wave of creatives reinventing porn. Her films are a great example of the movement: explicit, arousing, hot depictions of sex — but with a strong artistic sensibility and focused on female pleasure and diverse representation of different sexual experiences and identities.
The sex-positive, alternative porn community is growing rapidly, but mainstream social media is not an easy environment for them to exist within. “I have encountered censorship from numerous social media sites flagging my work or taking my entire profile down without warning. It’s frustrating not because of all the lost followers and likes, but because by doing this they are distorting sexuality in ways that will affect how we preserve it,” Poppy adds.
The act of erasure that accompanies deleted posts and suspended accounts is particularly damaging for the LGBTQ+ community, whose sexuality has been historically marginalised. “I absolutely believe that censorship has a greater effect on queer and POC communities in comparison to those existing in white heteronormative spaces,” says photographer and cinematographer Lanee Bird, who works primarily with fetish and BDSM imagery and is a frequent collaborator of independent porn company Aorta Films, which showcases the radical diversity of queer sexual expression. “I’ve noticed that many of my friends working in the queer pornography industry are faced with content flagging, deletion and shadow banning, while other accounts that may only serve to showcase cis white bodies continue to stay up online without backlash. The reasoning for this is a much larger social issue of homophobia and bigotry towards queerness and queer pleasure.”
“I think it’s more common for LGBTQ+ films to have sex and nudity in them, because these narratives are more often about sexuality or are sexual in nature,” says Drew Lint, director of M/M feature film, whose work often takes visual cues from pornography. “Also, the posted examples of censored images I’ve been seeing are ridiculous: photos of two men holding hands or a Nan Goldin photo of people in drag. Censoring images like that is just going to inhibit the exchange of ideas and stifle creativity, plus reduce the visible representation of marginalised groups.”
“There are consistent attempts to subdue or erase pornography, possibly because it’s an ugly stepsister of what we imagine to be moral, and now because it’s too nuanced and unpredictable to market effectively,” says artist and pornographer Dylan Meade, who is also one of the founders of GSA pornography society that seeks to integrate discussion about pornography into broader culture. “As a result, pornography becomes a no man’s land: enter at your own peril because if something bad happens to you in there, the rest of us won’t help you, we’re not watching — although someone is always watching.”
Indeed, artistic work dealing with explicit sexual material is the bridge that could connect marginalised discourse around sex to mainstream culture — and it’s vital for it to exist on social media platforms. But most directors and artists admit that the voices that must be heard are the ones of porn performers and sex workers, the ones who are most affected by censorship, social stigma and slut shaming.
“This is the hill I will die on — sex is not wrong! Why are we able to share images of violence, hatred, why can I witness literal murder on these social platforms but not be able to share pleasure and love and the joy of sexuality?” asks Jiz Lee, adult film performer and queer porn producer at CrashPadSeries.com. “I don’t think there is anything shameful, or wrong about making money being sexual. When I decide to share an image, I try to limit it to platforms that accept sexual content. That said, knowing where to ‘draw the line’ is a challenge. For example, I am a nonbinary person. Are my nipples ‘female presenting’? I personally don’t think they are, but I understand how an algorithm or a worker at-a-glance would think so. Therefore, I’ve had to practice discretion.”
Instagram has been a battlefield for a long time, with plenty of sex workers and porn performers having their accounts removed repeatedly. When it happened to performer Bishop Black earlier this month, it got a large part of the community to consider if the platform is even right for them at all. “I am usually quite lucky in the fact that I don’t get banned as much as my other sex worker friends on social media. So, it was a shock when I did, because there was no reason given. I’m left to feel like I am not valid enough to be even given a reason,” Bishop admits. “Putting adult performers and sex workers in a niche hole to control them is another form of ghettoising a community because they do not fit into normative structures. Also, with the laws around sex work becoming tighter, we cannot make our livelihood. We cannot get work. We use more dangerous avenues. We lose our safety.”
One of the arguments used by Tumblr officials to justify the pornography ban is the fact that there are plenty of platforms for adult content already. One could agree — but the internet can’t really be divided into different zones, it’s a shared space in which, as it turns out, some have a right to exist in and some not. “It’s important for adult performers and sex workers to be present in social media on mainstream platforms because we are part of society. We don’t want to be marginalised and excluded just because we work with erotism and sex. It’s part of the movement to normalise sexuality,” says sex worker and vocal sex workers’ rights activist, Maria Riot. “We deserve having our rights recognised. This exclusion on social media is just a reflection of how the governments and a really big group of people don’t want our existence. But we are going to resist”.
Expression of sexuality online is much more than a question of private pleasure. As the artist Barbara Kruger once put it, your body is a battleground — and so is your pornography. And it looks like the battle is only just beginning.