The following screencap began to circulate on Twitter last night:
Today, Ana Valens of The Daily Dot—seemingly the only journalist on the internet that is continuing to track the slow, creeping war against the NSFW internet—hunted down the source of the post and (mostly) confirmed its veracity.
I’m not certain what this means for my Patreon.
On the one hand, nothing I have written is non-consensual, nor do any of my stories glorify (or even feature) what I would consider sexual violence. But Patreon’s definition of what constitutes “coerced consent” and “sexual violence” continues to grow in nebulous and worrying ways, and I don’t know if future stories will be in violation of these (or future) rules, or even if my current stories are actually in violation.
All of my stories fall somewhere between “enthusiastic and explicit consent” and “alien sex pollen made them do it, but they really secretly wanted to do it anyways.” And it’s that last end of the spectrum—the light dubious consent—that I can see myself getting into trouble. Is a corruption story inherently a “forced transformation” story? Is a monster girl seduction story inherently a story of “consent obtained through deceit”?
I want to think that I’m overthinking this, that I’m following the rules—even these rules that were just created—and that I’ll be fine. But when it came to Tumblr’s crackdown on NSFW contents, I thought the same thing. I used other, far more popular and explicit NSFW artists as my bellwether; “surely,” I told myself, “they will be banned before I am, and then I will know to head for the exits.” And then it was my account that was locked twenty-four hours later, and that stayed locked with no response from Tumblr for months and months.
Every author I know that has been approached by Patreon’s Trust & Safety team has had the opportunity to remove the offending content to keep their account. Perversely, this means that I don’t need to self-censor right up until the moment that I absolutely must self-censor.
But the worry is still there, the looking over the shoulder, the uncertainty. “Is this story the one that does it? Will this story of explicit consent between loving adults still, somehow, be considered non-consensual or violent or forced?” And that’s the point, I think: the chilling effect, the self-policing, the population pressure to move elsewhere. And the vague-but-encompassing definitions are also the point, because they afford Patreon the maximum leeway while incurring a minimum obligation to Patreon’s users.
What will change next? What will be the next the banned kink, the next forbidden subject? How will the definition of “sexual violence” continue to evolve, divorced from reality in its role as a tool for content control? How far can the scare quotes around “consent” be stretched?
In practical terms, I need to think about how I will be proceeding with my Patreon. I have been pleasantly surprised that my Patreon has legitimately grown into what I characterize it as on my main page—stories of transformation romance, if you will, with an emphasis on my own fantasy worldbuilding. And I think that many of you like these kinds of stories, too; the paladin Karla and her demon wife Lucia are the most popular characters I’ve ever written, and I have written precisely one (1) kiss between them.
But, even setting aside my own desire to sometimes write totally trashy erotica, I know that some of you support me for the lewd stories. And if push comes to shove, I won’t be able to use Patreon to support those kinds of stories, and you will have to look for them elsewhere—posted first and publicly on my website, for instance, with no exclusivity.
I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts on this whole frustrating situation, friends.