Title: Adult content on a balkanized web
Date: 2018-12-09 19:00

Today's web is mostly divided between tech giants: everybody uses
google/baidu to search for webpages, twitter to yell at one other,
instagram/pintest/snapchat/… to share pictures, facebook/vk to showcast their
life, youtube/twitch for videos, amazon/taobao/aliexpress/ebay to buy stuff,
linkedin to find a job, youporn/pornhub to watch porn, and tumblr to, … well
[not porn anymore]( https://tumblr.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/231885248-Sensitive-content).

Most of the companies behind those websites are American; meaning that
they either:

1. Ban sex, nudity and [everything remotely related](https://uk.pcmag.com/news/118715/new-facebook-policy-sparks-fears-of-sex-talk-crackdown),
	 preferably in a sexist way (female nipples are forbidden, male ones are
	 allowed, and of course, women are allowed to show their bodies only if it's
	 maternity-related.)
2. Broadcast a gigantic amount of bland mainstream porn.

Tumblr's new policy made me realise that there are not that many spaces between
those two extremes, and this is worrying, because let's be honest, kids
**will** find porn on the internet, and I'd rather they find some on Tumblr
than on Pornhub.

I mean, since tumblr is "a microblogging and social networking website,"
so they might find things here like: artsy production, contextualised
acts, communication with other human beings, intimacy, diversity of body
shape/taste/preferences/… maybe even LGBTQ+ content, depiction of consent
(have you *ever* found that on youporn?), and even some educational material;
instead of lowest common-denominator content produced by large
productions and mechanically performed by generic-looking actors.

This is important because, as thoroughly explained in [this (great) NY Times
article](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/07/magazine/teenagers-learning-online-porn-literacy-sex-education.html),
this has heavy behavioural influence, and we already have way too many
[sexism-related](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexism) issues to deal with
without having to add even more.  In a (comprehensive) [2016
survey]({static}/files/porn_report_uk_2016.pdf) of ~1000 teenagers in the UK,
half of them have seen pornography, and in this group more than half of the
boys thought that pornography was "realistic." Heck, there are even states in
the US that do __not__ mandate sexual education, so pornography is the de facto
replacement. Unfortunately, it doesn't tell about pregnancy prevention,
discussions of anatomy, birth control, disease prevention, healthy
relationships, …

You might argue that maybe it's not the role of the internet to teach people
about those topics. But even if you do, people **will** still go on the internet,
and **will** look for sexual-themed content.

This is why I'm convinced that it's crucial to have spaces for those kinds of discussions
and depictions, and while [some](https://www.ohjoysextoy.com/)
[people](https://assemblyfour.com/) [are](http://www.scarleteen.com/)
[working](https://www.plannedparenthood.org/)
[on](https://crashpadseries.com/queer-porn/crashpadseries/)
[it](https://lustcinema.com/) (also, there's still
[reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/ListOfSubreddits/wiki/nsfw)), there are still
a lot of empty spaces to fill!