Why do this?
Over the past few weeks a new meme has emerged. Share our Shit Saturday is designed to highlight the great sex bloggers out there on the inter web and all of the amazing work that they produce. There is so much wonderful stuff to find – raunchy fiction, beautiful poetry and prose, amazingly skilful photography and serious posts about the future of sex blogging.
To say the mainstream social media such as Facebook and Twitter are not keen on helping to promote us would be an understatement. The latest effort to prevent those tweeting anything deemed explicit is Shadow Banning. Twitter prevents accounts it deems undesirable from being seen by those not already following. Therefore it becomes difficult to promote websites, books, films etc. As a pretty low volume, low profile blogger, luckily this hasn’t happened to me as yet. But many of the sex blogging and writing community are shadow banned.
And, that is not all there is to worry about. Ever since we attended Eroticon earlier in the year I have been aware of the legal issues that are approaching. Myles Jackman, a UK obscenity Lawyer very eloquently explained the legal minefield we face in showing and describing acts deemed obscene.
It is weird to think that just because you enjoy sex that is a little more kinky than the norm. Just because you may call your partner Sir or Master like to be spanked you are in some way abnormal. But that is definitely the case.
For some reason there is an obsession about children and young people accessing literature and photos deemed pornographic online. There seems less concern about violence or about ensuring that our youth are well educated and prepared for life. Enabled to understand what a healthy relationship looks like. The same politicians proposing and then passed this bill have been exposed as sex pests and abusers. Apparently this is less dangerous to the young than exposure to online porn!
In April 2018 there will be a requirement to have an age check mechanism on websites and online platforms providing ‘commercial’ pornography. Everything I read about this makes me believe that this is a data breach scandal waiting to happen. Not only that, but in my experience young people are very savvy about how to get around rules. So I am not even sure these mechanisms will be enough to stop a determined teen. None of us want children looking at our blogs and websites, let alone commercial porn. But this isn’t the way to stop them and it feels that along the way we all might end up being vilified at best and criminalised at worst.
My reading recommendations
This week I have been reading around the subject. Pandora Blakeprovides an excellent over view of the potential dangers of age verification.
Many of my fellow sex bloggers and authors use Patreon to help support and fund their work. I have to admit that until this week I had little knowledge of some of the challenges everyone is facing. It seems that moves are afoot to stop erotic authors, photographers and film producers being excluded from this support. I discovered ErosBlog this week as I tried to find out more. I highly recommend reading this and other posts.
So onto some of the bloggers that I love and respect and their posts this week that I have enjoyed.
Molly wrote an amazing post for the Wicked Wednesday prompt Geography. I am in awe of her creativity as a blogger and photographer. I love that she used the geography of husband Michael’s body as the centre of the post.
Ann St Vincent has the most amazing poor luck in finding the right kind of guy to date. As we know, many people lie about their marital status, about their readiness for a new relationship or just about the fact that they are only around for a quick fuck. I love Ann’s blog, she manages to keep cheerful while weeding out the dross from the downright dishonest.
Fondles and I have a long history of visiting each other’s blog, reading and commenting. She started her relationship with BIKSS at the same time I met S and there were some similarities as our journey began. Various life things got in the way and Fondles stopped blogging for a while. Now, though she is back with a vengeance and we have reconnected via our blogs.
Given the huge introduction to the topic, that is it for today. But I do plan to make #SoSS a regular thing.