Tumblr is an almost obsolete social media and content sharing platform that probably just put the final nail in its own coffin by banning all adult content from their platform on December 17, 2018. The most bizarre part, though, is how they are defining adult content. The specific phrase that has me both giggling and shaking my head is that there may be
no more "female-presenting nipples" on the platform.
Will you sign my petition to ask Tumblr to take out this stupid portion of their definition of "adult content"?Every platform gets to decide what kind of content they want to host, sure. I guess they haven't realized that many of their users use Tumblr almost exclusively for adult content.
My guess is that this desicion is probably due to the fact that
FOSTA/SESTA will become law on January 1st. This piece of legislation passed almost unanimously because it was advertised as being a way to better prosecute sex traffickers, despite
survivors of actual sex trafficking convincingly arguing the opposite. They actually make it harder and will result in the harm and death of many many sex workers, both consensual and trafficked.
Beyond placing sex workers — the majority of whom are women, femmes and LGTBQ folks — in more danger and making it harder to help those who are truly being exploited in the industry, the laws are also very bad for anyone interested in a
free and open internet.
In any case, these laws essentially make it easier for the government to go after websites for anything posted on the site, even when the posting is done by a user and not the site itself.
So that's what happening here: Tumblr is afraid of legal trouble so they're doing what Backpage, Craigslist, OKCupid, Tinder and many more sites have already done, they are just ending the parts of their sites that mention sex or included nudity at all.
But the main thing here is Tumblr, like many institutions before it, has arbitrarily decided what adult content is and realized it's more complicated than they want to deal with. Thus the "female-presenting nipples." I don't know about you, but I'm pretty sure all nipples are gender neutral. Do they mean to censor the fat around the nipple that some folks in female bodies have? If so, what about men with fat breasts, is that obscene too?
The logic breaks down super quickly when you say that "female-presenting nipples" should be banned because they are inherently more sexual — because male nipples and non-binary nipples are often employed as erogenous zones, too.
So why are only the female nipples a problem? Misogyny, that's why. Just more policing of women's bodies and I'm just not here for it. If you're going to ban "female-presenting nipples," then ban all nipples. Otherwise, stop sexualizing something that actually serves a very different biological and evolutionary purpose (aka: breastfeeding.....).
My vote is to just pull this stupid phrase out and let all nipples be free on Tumblr. Folks can eroticize anything. I know — I was raised Mormon and the joke was that if our shoulders showed we had "porn shoulders," thus no tank tops. The whole thing is silly and sexist.
Sign my petition if you want Tumblr to pull back this silly language and either ban all nipples or no nipples. 