Destigmatise sex!
- De-stigmatising sex involves a process of unlearning cultural narratives. Kink does not equate to violence. Nudity should not be conflated with sexuality. Fat is not offensive. Pornography can be artistic. Art can be pornographic. Algorithms cannot determine the gender of a person’s nipples, nor should it matter.
- Sexual content is not inherently harmful, risky, offensive, dangerous or inappropriate. It does not need redeeming through artistic, scientific, medical or literary framing. Sex already has cultural, social, and political value. Consensual sex has a valid role in broader human experience.
- Platforms should not conflate different kinds of sexual content or treat them as one homogenous harmful or ‘unsafe’ category. Sexual content is diverse. There are infinite kinds of sexual media that have different functions for creators and consumers including expression, identity, intimacy, connection, creativity and work.
- When platforms target ‘pornography,’ they scapegoat content regardless of its explicitness, context or user interpretation, and deliberately assign a pejorative category to content. The term ‘pornography’ is a regulatory construct so broad, disparate and inconsistent that it is poor criteria for content moderation.
- Sexuality is generally organised into systems of power that reward narrow forms of intimacy (such as marriage, monogamy, procreation, coupledom and private sex) and punish other forms of intimacy (such as public sexuality, queer sexualities, commercial sex and kink). These systems disadvantage and marginalise some sexual communities and privilege others, perpetuating inequalities.
- To address these inequalities, platforms could prioritise content by queer folk, trans folk, fat people, disabled people, sex workers and people of colour instead of amplifying white, cisgender, able-bodied, heteronormative bodies and intimacies.