How to Fix Things: The War on Sex
Welcome back!
Sorry for no blog last week. Becca was tabling an event on Saturday and that meant my Sunday was eaten up doing chores around the house instead of being able to split them across the weekend like I usually do. I bring this up because last week, there were a number of things I thought this blog might be about: I thought I might share this lovely thread from Cheryl Lynn Eaton on things fledgling comic writers should know and possibly expand on the response I did share! I thought I might revisit something I've talked a bit about before: the importance of saying no! Or maybe--and I'll eventually get to this stuff--the largely forgotten history of IDW as a creative-services company (I know I don't work there anymore, but I think it's a cool bit of comics history)! Or, and this is also probably going to happen one day--revisiting my post on the importance of physical media to talk more about lost media, my feelings on piracy as a tool of digital preservation, and the importance of maintaining both because on both physical and digital formats we still have so many issues around decay and loss. I thought about something really light, like my decision to try to watch a movie a day for a month (so far it is not going great, TBH, Daylight Savings really threw me off my game) and I thought about something heavy and serious, like posting my own State of the Union.
And then this week happened. For as good a week as I had personally, trying to watch movies, learn Japanese, and read Dr. Slump, every fucking day, a million things seemed like they were going wrong. So, let's talk about some of them and maybe work on brainstorming some solutions.
The War on Sex
This is not the first time I've talked about this. There is a systemic war against sex, sex work, queerness, women, trans people, children (who are part of this), artists, the disabled, the unhoused, and pretty much everyone. It's escalated to such absurd extremes, that it's even looped back around to harming the ultra conservative.
Starting at sort of the most recent and back-tracking, new updates have gone out on sites that are popular with artists like Gumroad and Patreon further limiting or outright banning a lot of the adult content hosted on there, and particularly in the case of Gumroad, with basically no notice. The reason given being that it is to comply with their payment processors like Stripe and Paypal which in turn have to deal with draconian regulations passed down by the likes of MasterCard (speaking of, if you're finding your income affected by this, you may want to direct your attention here...). And this isn't the first instance of this happening--longtime Patreon users have watched them become more and more strict on what kind of adult content could be hosted there; a few years back, OnlyFans briefly looked like it was going to pivot from adult content, though ultimately they've just added their own stricter guidelines; etc.
Relatedly, this week, PornHub disabled access in Texas, making it the 7th state where regular access to their sites is inhibited or banned. Now, there are a LOT of things to be critical about when it comes to PornHub and their network sites (note: That's literally just their wikipedia page and it's mostly controversy). It's certainly a few years out of date now, but I'll also recommend Jon Ronson's podcast: The Butterfly Effect if you're interested in just how far reaching their tendrils are. Now, something that I appreciate this TechCrunch article pointing out is that the age verification policies that're being enacted by state governments are part of a larger program of what I can only call weird, bad, contradictory internet legislation in favor of censorship. This absolutely exists in alignment with KOSA, a bill infamously touted for how it would restrict the spaces in which trans and queer people were allowed to be present online, and with the "Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act," aka the TikTok Ban, which recently passed in the House and we need to kill in the Senate.
And all of this is happening in a larger culture of censorship, where libraries are fighting battles for basic funding (fuck Eric Adams), subject to book bans and bomb threats, and are at the center of a larger cultural war that's killing kids like Nex Benedict. But it's not just in libraries either: it's in the absolute joke a Supreme Court outright deciding not to hear a case about a drag show at a Texas campus--the sort of thing that should be an open-and-shut matter of free speech to the House trying to remove federal funding from any university that "promotes antisemitism" which folks have rightfully pointed out is over-broad (if you want to have a bad day, just go through the amendments to HR 5894 and see how much talk there is about the "anti-freedom vaccine movement" and how willing folks are to defund medical research and the things that keep us mutually safe and healthy) to creeps more local to me like those in Huntington Beach who decided to ban pride flags on public property.
And of course this is all arising in a larger context over bodily autonomy in the states, from the, again absolute joke a Supreme Court vacating Roe v. Wade to Biden's repeated claim that if he's reelected, he'd make it the law of the land again (which... y'know, I know it's an uphill battle when a significant portion of Congress, on both sides, are just a bunch of absolute jagoffs, but you could'a maybe made some progress earlier, Joe--almost like having done something would've been something solid to campaign on, rather than just a hope for the future if you're reelected). Within that, we've got everything from the rise in out-of-state travel for abortion care to travel bans to the idiotic Alabama IVF ruling.
And all of it stems from fear and a need for control. Whether they're justifying it with religion or whatever, this is about a few people having the right to decide, simply, who else gets to be and how.
So how do we start to fix this? At the micro-level, I'd love to talk to people who know more than me about like website coding and payment processing. I'd love to not just direct people to the platforms that do still exist and are currently allowing NSFW material like the slightly more limited OnlyFans, the unknown to me JustForFans (which I saw was trying to court some artists), SubscribeStar (which I had looked at as a possiblity instead of Patreon, but ultimately decided against when I saw they've got Alex Jones), and itch.io. but to see just what it takes to build and host a platform that folks could use (I assume the answer is a lot of time, skill, and $$$).
For as little as I trust my representatives at any level at this point, for the things that are already legislative or able to be, I say reach out. You're going to call, fax, and email about ceasefire anyway, so why not add rejecting KOSA, the PAFACAA, and any other authoritarian censorship or limitation of bodily autonomy action. It's dumb that we have to say "hey, we'd like self-determination and the right to exist" but that's where we are.
Now, as a brief aside, I do want to say a bit more about the PAFACAA--I don't really use TikTok myself. I'm not much for making videos. But I know that A. TikTok's been massively influential in the overall U.S. information on and response to the genocide in Palestine--that it is a platform Palestinian folks are able to use to show in real time what is happening and that B. on a larger level--and as one representative said in talking about why he wanted it banned--it's one of the primary newsources for people under 30. It's also been helpful in planning our wedding in Japan and seeing funny videos of cats and seeing people on the grind for cash and all these other things that are typical of any social media. Because ultimately, that's what it is, just a social media platform, and one that has less of a public track record than most others that are based in the US in terms of data breaches and election interference!
And, onto the most macro level, I guess completely rework the system is the answer? We'll get to this more another day, but I was particularly struck by a recent skeet of Henry Pissinger "damn this master's house seems to be staying up pretty well when i apply these master's tools!"
So, next week, I'm going to stay on this, kinda, with some more thoughts on "Generative AI" theft (whoof, what I've been through this week) and the larger entertainment landscape, and then the week after that, I think I'm going to try tackling "democracy." So... stay tuned!
New Releases this week:
Seem to be in a bit of a dry zone!
Announcements:
WonderCon in Anaheim is in a couple weeks. I'll be around, as I often am. If you will be too, feel free to reach out.
There may not be a blog WonderCon weekend (or it might be short). There also might not be a blog the weekend of April 13th or the weekend of May 18th as I expect to be traveling. And I'll announce anything past San Diego Comic-Con in July in the coming weeks! Suffice to say, I'm expecting a busy September!
I've talked about it here before, but I have a Manuscript Wishlist page now. I don't have unlimited capacity, and very importantly, it does have clear and strict guidelines on how to ask if you can submit things to me, but might be helpful for folks.
Becca's website is partially updated! There's new stuff up in the gallery and updates to various other pages, but hoping to get the shop update live in the next week. There is still a lot of stuff available there even now, but more is coming! And as long as we're talking about NSFW content and platforms that allow it, maybe take advantage of Becca's Patreon right now before they try to enact any changes that might affect what Becca has up or pick up Rivals on itch! And don't forget you can pre-order their Godzilla Rivals: Mothra vs. Hedorah cover at all fine comic shops.
Finally, if you want to support me in other ways: You can check out my Patreon which, as you can imagine, I've got mixed feelings about plugging at the moment, but I really appreciate the little bit of income from it. Please also check out my webstore, my Kofi (that includes our newest edition of our Anti-AI zine), and/or my eBay for additional ways to support us and get a little something for yourself! We're getting married in Japan this September and if you can contribute to that, it'd be really lovely!
What I enjoyed this week:
Nancy (Comic), Blank Check (Podcast), The Flop House (Podcast), The City We Became (Book), The Sopranos (TV show), Superstore (TV show), Dungeons & Daddies (Podcast), The Triangle of Sadness (Movie), Dark Star (Movie), Thirteen (Movie), The Afterparty (TV show), Dr. Slump (Manga), planning the trip and trying to learn some Japanese.
Pic of the Week:
If you follow me on socials, you may have seen some of these already, but I decided to make a bunch of really dumb memes to promote our wedding/honeymoon registry. Enjoy!
