Oct. 25: Facebook's war on sex workers, 18+ games labor
Also: New Jersey targets student-athletes in "adult entertainment."
Hi all! After a nasty cold put me out of commission, we’re back.
Today’s NSFW News Roundup is taking on a slightly different format: less summarizing, more direct quoting. Let’s get right into it.
Facebook, Instagram’s Community Standards target sex workers again
Shop Catalog (CC BY 2.0)
XBIZ broke the news this week that Facebook silently revised its Community Standards on “sexual solicitation.” Earlier this fall, Facebook added that “sexual emojis” used to "implicitly or indirectly" request sexual communication are banned. Pasties and photo manipulations blurring genitals aren’t allowed either if they’re used for “solicitation.” The move targets sex workers outright on Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger.
Over at the Daily Dot, we dug into its impact:
The new rules mean sex workers, for example, can no longer post nude photos censored with pasties, emoji, or their hands covering their bare breasts. The guidelines also have implications for the LGBTQ community: Users in queer cruising groups can no longer publish suggestive images with emoji over their genitals.
“Content must meet Criteria 1 (offer or ask) and be implicitly or indirectly offering or asking for sexual solicitation in order to be deemed violating,” Facebook notes. “For example, if content is a hand-drawn image depicting sexual activity but does not ask or offer sexual solicitation, it is not violating.”
New Jersey bill targets NCAA sex workers
Ted Kerwin/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
Another story from XBIZ, this time regarding sex workers both on- and offline in college. A bill designed to protect student-athletes’ branding is actually forcing them out of doing sex work.
In theory, the bill would let students monetize their "names," "images," and "likeness" without punishment from the NCAA. However, New Jersey’s bill explicitly limits athletes from earning a profit from "adult entertainment." In other words: if you’re an athlete who needs to do sex work to pay the bills, you aren’t legally entitled to keep the profits, and the school or NCAA could penalize you.
The inclusion of adult entertainment on the prohibited list is particularly galling. While there have been attempts, covered extensively by XBIZ, to demonize the adult industry as being akin to the tobacco, firearms, or even the illegal drug trade in its supposed contribution to the decay of social order, no reputable expert on the subject takes these ideas seriously. Aside from the odd wunderkind, most college students are legal adults. If they want to pose nude, accept an endorsement from a production company or pleasure product manufacturer, sell their autograph at adult expos, or any other of the hundreds of ways in which the adult industry could benefit them, and simultaneously profit from being associated with their likeness, why shouldn’t they be allowed to? There is no logical answer to that question beyond the default stigma that for some always exists: "porn is icky."
This bill threatens the safety and financial stability of sex workers at Rutgers University and other major schools in NJ. It’s a blatant attack on adult performers and sex workers and implies adult content creation is immoral and/or sinful.
Liberal feminism’s problems with sex work
Melissa Gira Grant’s “Liberal Feminism Has a Sex Work Problem” reports on the Washington, D.C. city council hearing on decriminalizing sex work in this piece. More specifically, she turns a critical eye to SWERF feminists, thereby making a much larger point about whorephobia in liberal and carceral feminist organizations.
Sex workers who testified sat through hours of graphic descriptions of what some outsiders believe sex work is like. They heard others claim that to extend them rights would initiate a dangerous “domino effect,” as one speaker put it, imperiling the whole country.
“This is not a social science experiment. We are talking about people’s lives,” Jessica Martinez, a methamphetamine services specialist at HIPS, told the council in response to these arguments. “And I am tired of people—cisgender people—coming up here and speaking on my behalf, saying that they know what my experience is. You want to know what it’s like to be a trans sex worker? I’m right here.”
Twitter account uses nudes to fight for games industry labor rights
If you’re in the games industry, you might have seen the account @titsoutfortakes on Twitter recently. The account says it all on the tin: “the games industry's been naughty & it needs to be punished / saying what we're all thinking, just mostly nude.”
Posts feature games industry members posing seductively as they talk about some of the biggest labor issues plaguing our industry. Yours truly features in one of them.
Here’s a personal favorite:
The code of silence that permeates all areas of gaming is hideously toxic & exists to the benefit of nobody but abusers & executives. It doesn't matter if its esports, AAA, or indie — the events of the past year have shown us that no section of the industry is exempt.
(Fair Use)
Here’s what else you need to know this week:
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s showdown with Mark Zuckerberg just got a hilarious photo manipulation using Pornhub’s UI. Check out the original above
There’s a new mobile app out for pre-scene BDSM negotiation. Read more over at Sextechguide
Over on the porn games beat, things were a little bonkers at Dot: two studios are making horny battle royale games
Also, this adult visual novel about a cute Grim Reaper is gorgeously animated
Lastly:
CNBC is wondering whether our economy is tanking because millennials aren’t horny or if millennials being not-horny is tanking our economy. It seems obvious that capitalism is just really great at extinguishing everyone’s sex drives, but maybe that’s just me
That’s all. Have a Happy Halloween, and see you next week!