Fandom nonsense: wuxia, xianxia, danmei, baihe, Kinnporsche. Also languages, writing, history, orchids. Yi Citizen. In my 30s.
AO3: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katzenfabrik/pseuds/villainousfriend


Essay
@Essay

A thing that I haven't really seen addressed in The Great Platform Migrations of 2022 is that when I left Tumblr over "female-presenting nipples," it wasn't "oh no, I can't look at titties anymore," it was "the way this is being enforced is consistent with the historical conflation of queer identity with explicit sexuality" - that is, the "beep beep dirty sex thing" detector also flagged SFW expressions of queerness.

This isn't new. Think of the furor over drag queen story times; think about "well, they can be gay but why do I have to see it"; think about every time someone objects to a pride display because it's "inappropriate."

I left Tumblr because it didn't feel safe to be queer there.

I've read the plain-language explanation of why they have a NSFW ban, and I'm cautiously glad to see them walking it back as far as they can. But as long as my existing is viewed as inherently sexual, any place hostile to sex is hostile to me.



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in reply to @villainousfriend's post:

Yeah, I stayed on Tumblr after the ban but that was mainly because I never really figured out anywhere else (until cql twitter). It was one of several things that happened around that time that made me really internalise that, no matter if they gaywash themselves at pride and give their workers rainbow lanyards, corporations still think actual queer folks are bad for business. alas!