There is a particular take on the destruction of Tumblr that I keep waiting for someone to write, but no one has yet. Which means I apparently need to do it myself.
The take is, essentially, that not only should adults have access to adult content – in itself, valid and true – but also it is important to cultivate SOME social spaces where the overtly/explicitly sexual overlap with the non-sexual. (Not all spaces; I still think it should be illegal to have sex on the sidewalk. But SOME spaces that enable the sexual and the non-sexual to exist side-by-side)
Part of what I think leads to the dehumanization of sex (and subsequently allows the stigma and shame to cling so heavily to it) is the complete bifurcation of life into SEX and EVERYTHING ELSE and never the twain shall meet. When we – at every turn – put all aspects of human life into one sphere, and sex into another, we dehumanize it. We remove the full subjectivity of people from it, which is a problem.
I think we need to actively cultivate spaces LIKE before-time!Tumblr where we can be people, and talk about what happened at work today, and the funny thing our dog did, and how our parents make us crazy during the holidays, and how dare they do X thing on Supernatural, and here’s a great version of that distracted boyfriend meme, and ALSO be able to talk about being horny on main, as the saying goes, and find the right porn clip to fap to. Or post nude selfies. Or hunt down that sweet, sweet NSFW Symbrock fanart.
Having spaces where the explicitly sexual and the non-sexual overlap is important to humanizing sex and, subsequently, de-stigmatizing it (which, it should go without saying, is particularly salient for marginalized people who often suffer way more heavily from sexual stigma)
This. As someone who is half French half British I’ve forever struggled with the frankly pretty Puritan British attitude towards sex and our bodies and the open French attitude. I know which is healthy and which isn’t from personal experience. People not discussing sex, nudity etc in a safe environment leads to so many issues around lack of education, understanding and future deep emotional and physical issues for young adults trying to figure life out. It can last our entire lives if not addressed.
My friends and I got naked in front of each other as teens to change like it’s no big deal and yeah on occasion we looked and compared bodies, it’s thanks to this that I know that my nipples which I hated for being so huge are actually not that weird. My friends all have completely different body shapes and it made me comfortable in mine knowing it was ok to not look like a model/porn star and be different because we all were.
I’ve learned so much from tumblr just from discussion and I share this with others, it’s embarrassing how little people know about their own bodies due to a lack of a forum to discuss it. This is such a good place for it and I’m so sad it is so niche already let alone if that now collapses.
Due to lack of discussion of sex and just human bodies someone close to me didn’t address the pain he had every time he had an erection until he confided in me as an open friend and it turned out he needed a medical circumcision. He went 10 YEARS with this pain (and not having sex) because he had no one to talk to about it and nowhere to look it up. Fucking ridiculous.
So yes, even for non trans / queer folk it’s so important to have an open forum somewhere regarding these things let alone how hugely important it is for these communities.
While at the same time I’m also angered that sex and nudity is villainised while nazism and it’s ilk is fiiiiiiine.
This . Is . Wrong .
“also it is important to cultivate SOME social spaces where the overtly/explicitly sexual overlap with the non-sexual.”
This.
One of my favorite things about rl kink communities? That we also went to munches (get togethers at restaurants) and just hung out, and sure we’d probably casually mention/joke about being huge perverts at some point because it was safe to do so among people we knew wouldn’t be offended, but the nice thing was just being able to be around people and talk about anything.
God, yeah. I remember being wigged out at first when I got on tumblr and it was just this free-wheeling place where someone would complain about their bad day and their next post would be a reblog of pornographic fan art with graphic comments in the tags.
You can follow people who make nsfw content (photos, fic, art) and get to know them as people. You can follow people that aren’t content creators and get to know their tastes in kinky shit. You can have friends you met because you liked the same kind of porn and find out all the other stuff you have in common and become real friends.
I don’t talk about my sex life on fucking facebook (other than in very locked groups, lol). Hell, I’m not sure I’ll do it on twitter unless I start a separate one for that (which….tbh I might; I liked having a sideblog here for me to post nudes and sexual tmi).
I’m really gonna miss the way that stuff was all mixed together here.
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.
Okay so ive never liked tagging and I very much am a silent follower (I love all of your content by the way!!) but I honestly that feel that this is important. You have what’s most important – FOLLOWERS – and you can really signal boost this shit. Tumblr’s response has been to take down sfw and queer content instead of the child porn, pornbots and neonazi content, which is NOT acceptable. So many people have had their content flagged for NO REASON AT ALL. not to mention that this was done only after apple removed it from the app store. Its clear staff doesn’t listen to their consumers’ demands and fix shit when they need to,, so this is the best way to get staff’s attention and LISTEN to what we want,,, so please reblog this if you support it, and let your followers and mutuals know!! ♥️♥️♥️
I usually wouldn’t share something like this on my art blog, but this is the kind of friendly and peaceful protesting that I’m into. I do not like fearmongering, I do not like panic inducing posts but this… this is something I want to support.
Let’s do this, people! And please share so it reaches more users on this website!
Every day I handle more money than I will ever make. Every day.
At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.
At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.
“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.
The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.
I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.
I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.
I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht.
I’m not worth the cost of a watch.
Maybe if you develop talents and skills you’ll be worth more.
Fuck you in your presumptuous goddamn face.
If there is a desire for a job to be filled, then the person filling it should be paid enough to live.
No? Why should a job my 6 year old cousin could do be rewarded that much? Doesn’t make sense.
Because the job needs filling? Because there is a demand for that skillset to be employed? Because the business which sells $500 watches and obviously makes a significant profit has a need for an employee who can A) Sell a product B) Knows enough about said products to offer information on a range of options C) Can be trusted to handle large sums of money D) Maintains a positive attitude.
Retail IS A SKILLSET. And it is a job that needs filling. We as a society need people to work with customers to improve their experience, and that is evident by the fact that these jobs exist.
If everyone fucking decided they will “Develop” skills to be “worth more,” then who will perform this labor?
The fact is that in our economy, we need people at the base level to work retail. They put in the hours, they work hard, they put up with people’s bullshit, and they deserve to be able to survive.
What doesn’t make sense is creating the need for a person to work full time, and then not paying them enough to survive when working full time.
They don’t deserve to be paid over the odds to do a job that anyone else can. That’s simple economics, basically anyone can perform those roles, it’s not special or unique. Therefore it isn’t rewarded as such.
Being paid enough to eat at night isn’t some high-class goal. He’s not asking for a five bedroom three bath home. He is asking for enough money to pay rent and eat. That bare minimum to survive.
You want to talk economics? Let’s talk about forced scarcity. In America, for example, there is more than enough edible food to feed everyone. Period. Factual statement. There are enough homes that everyone could live in a house or apartment. Factual statement. There is an excess of the bare minimum, and it is forcibly destroyed because of this ideal that jobs that need to be filled still don’t deserve fair pay.
Tell me, what ‘economic sense’ is there in destroying so much food that the poor can’t eat? What economic sense is there in making good employees unable to work by denying them the ability to live on the most basic level? What economic sense is there in creating stagnant wealth pools where the poor can’t contribute to the economy because they lack the means to – even when working.
Here’s the short of it: If you need someone to fill a job, PAY THEM FOR THAT JOB.
Full time work should pay enough for the worker to afford to live in the area where the job is. That means housing, food, all the necessities, plus a little more for savings. That is the bare minimum that should be provided.
If you’re working full time and can’t afford to live, it’s the system that is broken, not you.
(not to mention people with disabilities/other circumstances that prevent them from being able to work full time are also people and deserve to be able to afford to live)
Demanding that someone give you hours of their life to do a task you are too busy or important to do requires that you pay them enough so that when they are not doing your tasks they can still afford to eat and have a safe, clean, place to sleep.
The crime of modern retail and service work is that they want people to commit large blocks of their time that COULD be spent learning marketable skills, learning useful information, doing other work, etc. They want to buy the majority of people’s economic capacity, prevent them from using that economic capacity in other ways – but they don’t want to actually PAY these people enough to cover the economic capacity that they ask for.
@declansoutherland98, you are a total dick – and not in a good way. As an experienced recruiting manager, I’d like to interview your 6 year old cousin for a job in retail selling high-end watches. Send her/him over, let’s see how it goes. Fuck, come over yourself, I’ll have a no-skill retail job waiting for you. Accepting bets how long you’ll last!
@inkskinned – I’d like to ask you to believe that you will do better; I’ve been where you are, and I did. I also hope you will NOT have to deal with dicks like declansoutherland98, ever.
Having a hard day? Turn up the sound and let Max lull you.
In case anyone else was worried about why this cat is looking so domestic, here’s the video description:
Max Lynx, the educational animal ambassador takes a moment to get some good scratchin’ before he sits down for his meal. He was born at a zoo in May 2011. He’s not completely domesticated but not wild either. He educates the public on the endangered Canada Lynx in hopes that people will be driven to conserve our environment and protect our wildlife.
WHAT A WONDERFUL SOUND. WHAT AN EXCELLENT CAT.
(And wow, just commentary on body language, whoever this human is, Max trusts them ENTIRELY. Not only is he nuzzling and purring, he’s showing his belly and giving them his throat for pets and scritchies. That is a HUGE “I Love You” in cat language. Also the paws directing where the scratchies need to go is just adorable.)
And THIS is why lace was a worn primarily by royalty and aristocracy for so many centuries.. It was expensive and time-consuming to produce. Wearing it, and wearing LOTS of it was a blatant show of wealth and excessive consumption.
Mechanically-produced lace wasn’t really a thing until well into the 20th century, but there remains a wide gap between the quality of mass-produced and hand crafted
In general textile arts are highly underated considering the amount of skill and time needed to execute pretty much anything.
Steel Phoenix Studios 