When I was 10, my mom made me wear a bra and it felt like a punishment for being different.
When I was 10, I took the bra off when changing for gymnastics and accidentally dropped it in the school hallway. A teacher picked it up and said, “Oh, this must belong to you” and handed it back to me in front of everyone. I quit gymnastics.
When I was 11, I thought maybe the boobs would be okay so long as they didn’t get any bigger than would fit in my hand, so I kept measuring it, but they did.
When I was 12, I started wearing two or three sports bras to smush them down, until one day a classmate said, “Are you wearing two bras?!” while laughing.
When I was 13, a boy told me he wanted to squeeze my boobs “until they popped.”
When I was 14, I got cast in a play as an older character and a classmate told me I got the role because I had boobs.
When I was 17, my mom told me to return a swimsuit because it would be too distracting for my boyfriend’s father.
When I was 21, I got properly fitted for a bra and everyone felt the need to tell me how much better my boobs looked.
When I was 26, I got pregnant and my immediate fear was that my boobs would get bigger.
When I was 28, I got shamed for trying to feed my screaming baby in public without a cover.
When I was 28, people asked me “why are you bothering to use a breastfeeding cover?”
When I was 30, people gave me weird looks that I wasn’t yelling at my kid for putting their hand on my boob.
When I was 31, I avoided going to the beach or pool because I didn’t want to have to deal with boobs in a swimsuit.
When I was 32, I got asked, again, “why don’t you get a breast reduction?”
When I was 33, I watched a 5yo girl get shamed for running around in sweltering heat without a shirt on and had to reprimand a bunch of tween boys who thought it was okay to shame her for doing something they do all the time.
When I was 34, my kid kept patting my breast and saying “Mommy’s squishy breast!!” They will never see me express any shame about tits, because I want them to have a different mindset than I had. Yes, boobs are nice! They’re squishy! They’re fun! That’s the end of that.
I’m 35 and no longer give a fuck. I don’t care anymore. As a teenager my tits were covered in stretch marks. They’ve been engorged with milk. My nipple changed shape with pregnancy. Give it another couple decades and my breasts will probably be all wrinkly. It’s sexual when I’m using it sexually. I don’t fucking care, and I won’t be ashamed anymore.
Every time a policy or cultural hangup treats people with breasts differently, it fucks us over.
Tumblr’s new policy makes an active choice to participate in this culture of shame. By classifying “female-presenting nipples” as explicit material, Tumblr has taken a stance that any chest or breast that differs from a male default is worthy of shame and unavoidably sexual. The idea that breasts are shameful and unavoidably sexual is exactly what fucked me up for so much of my life.
Stop shaming people for having bodies.
I’ve been seething in rage thinking of this all day and @aibidil put into words what was reeling in my mind.
Regardless of whether you create, reblog, or even enjoy NSFW content, this ban should matter to you.
I am personally - and I think we should all be - severely disappointed with the decision to censor adult content on Tumblr. - a platform that has always, up to this point, made freedom of expression a core aspect of how it defines and promotes itself. There are two glaring problems with affecting this ban that should matter to every single Tumblr. user.
1. It won’t work. A site-wide ban of all explicit content is a shoddy patch attempt to remedy multiple long-standing issues the platform has been facing - most of which we are all familiar with, like porn bots. If we know anything, however, from current and past attempts by staff to eliminate these issues, it’s that IT’S NOT WORKING. Safe Mode algorithms, reporting, and staff intervention aren’t effective at identifying and removing problem posts and blogs with even a limited target scope. If so many of these things are slipping through already, what makes Tumblr. staff think that using the exact same tools and methods on a larger scale will be any more effective? And this is with the constant effort of users to aid staff in identifying and removing problematic content.
The result of this ban will be largely to flag and remove adult content created, shared, and enjoyed a community of users who have done so responsibly. Those individuals who use the platform to spread harmful content without regard for the community or it’s “guidelines” will continue to find ways to do so. Attempts to remove all adult content will not make an appreciable difference in the proportion of harmful material on the platform, and will ultimately only be a disservice to the community of users who have loved this platform enough to try to improve it. Staff needs to work with users to develop new approaches to solving their content problem, rather than alienating them by applying the same ineffective methods against responsibly created and shared content.
2. Even if the ban did work the way it is supposed to and removed every instance of “inappropriate” adult content, is a policy of censorship really the precedent we want to establish? The vast majority of Tumblr. users are adults over the age of 18, and that number increases if you consider also those users who are under 18, but meet the legal age of adulthood in their own country. In a free and open content-sharing community, I don’t see any reason why adults should not be allowed to share content featuring mature themes. Regardless of content, posts should be responsible and respectful - I don’t think anyone is arguing against that - but a policy enforcing respectful conduct is not exclusive of one that also allows for the discussion of mature themes. If sexual content isn’t your cup of tea, there’s nothing wrong with that. There should tools and options available for users to filter content they are uncomfortable seeing. But there is no reason to blacklist adult themes for users who enjoy them without harming others.
I believe the question should be raised, as well, as to how far reaching censorship bans will ultimately be. Staff may decide to limit depictions of nudity as “adult content” now, but what about horror or suspense content? Aren’t those mature themes? How about the use of adult language, like cuss words? That’s for mature audiences only. Or even detailed descriptions of atrocities and tragedies in real-world events, which we all know can be very inappropriate for young audiences? At what point does “Nudity is inappropriate for even our adult users” become real censorship of speech, of news, of outrage and outreach?
Not to be misunderstood, I acknowledge that Tumblr. is a privately owned company, and as such, retains and should retain full discretion regarding the content it chooses to allow on the platform. I would only argue that, if Tumblr. staff/owners/corporate-decision-makers should decide to begin placing large limitations on the types of content allowed on the platform, that they are upfront and direct about this in their branding. The Walt Disney company has a very limited scope of permitted content themes in everything they do, however, no one finds fault with this, as they are very clear in their presentation of both their own corporate identity and in their expectations of those that interact with them. If Tumblr. elects to redefine its corporate identity in this way, it must stop branding the platform as “a place for wide open, creative self-expression.” To do otherwise is dishonest, misleading, and unfair to current and potential users, both.
In response to the NSFW ban being enacted by Tumblr Staff, on December 17th 2018 I propose that we all log off of our Tumblr accounts for 24 hours.
The lack of respect and communication between staff and users is stark. Users have been begging staff to delete the porn bot outbreak, which has plagued the website for well over a year. The porn bots oftentimes send people asks and messages, trying to get them to go to a website full of viruses. They also spam advertisements on others posts.
Users have also begged that Tumblr ban neo-nazis, child porn, and pedophiles, all which run rampant on the site. The site/app got so bad that it was taken off the app store.
However, instead of answering the users, Tumblr has instead taken the liberty to ban all NSFW content, regardless of age. But users have already run into issues of their SFW content being marked as sensitive and being flagged as NSFW, not allowing them to share their work.
Not only does this discriminate again content creators, but it also discriminates against sex workers. Disgustingly, the ban will be enacted on December 17 which is also International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.
This ban is disgusting, and while I (and plenty of others) welcome porn bots and child porn being banned, the Tumblr filtration system is broken. It tags artistic work’s nipples as NSFW (when it is art), it tags SFW art as NSFW (when it is not), and does not stop the porn bots, neo-nazis and dozens of other issues.
This ban is discriminatory. This ban is ineffective. This ban is unacceptable.
To protest, log off of your Tumblr account for the entirety of November 17th. Log off at 12 am EST or 9PM PST and stay off for 24 hours. Don’t post. Don’t log on. Don’t even visit the website. Don’t give them that sweet ad revenue.
Tumblr’s stock has already taken a hard hit. Let’s make it tank. Maybe then they will listen to the users.
Reblog to signal boost! We must force change.
I’ll most likely be doing this. I encourage you to do the same.
I don’t know if it will really change anything, but give it a shot. Let’s show Tumblr we are not happy with their constant fuckin’ shitty choices.
Don’t log in for ANY reason on D-Day. No reason. A full 24 hours. Go take a self-care day. Eat some fancy snacks, drink a soda, sit in the tub for a few hours.
I think this is a good idea and I’ll be doing this. My posts are infrequent, but I’ll make sure there won’t be any content and I’ll log out on both my phone and computer for this on Dec 17th. I encourage you to do the same, and to please spread this!
if the ban happens,
i suggest those who write nsfw to use Archive of our own (AO3).
if you do not already have a account, i will warn you and say it may take a while to get in, BUT it is worth it.
if you post nsfw art, i suggest Deviant art. I do not like the layout no where as near as much as Tumblr, but if tumblr goes down, we gotta use something. :/
i will join in this protest against the ban of nsfw on tumblr for sure. please join this and lets cross our fingers and hope the staff does not pull the idiotic move of going through with this.
