Yes, it is. They stated that no account will be deleted, only adult contents will be oscured and and made private. But it’s not what is happening.
Tumblr is shadowbanning all visual artists, no matter if they have NSFW or SFW material on their blogs. And this is mainly damaging the visual artists in the fandoms. The proof? Until some time ago, typing “Johnlock” in the dashboard search bar, I had among the popular results, tons of fanarts from the most famous artists. The fanarts were the most immediate and numerous result of the research, I’m sure you remember this. Now it has completely changed. These are the search results on “Johnlock” search from today. There are almost exclusively text posts, chats, and memes. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against memes or text posts, they are great. The problem is that fanarts, manips, photosets, gifset, and even most of the actors’ photos have disappeared from the research.
Is it strange? Not a result from Anotherwellkeptsecret, Reapersun, Bluebellofbakerstreet? How is it possible? Because Tumblr doesn’t want fandom material on its site anymore, and it doesn’t give a toss if it’s SFW or not. You’re a fandom artist? You are punished by becoming invisible. So much for “SFW content is still allowed,” right? :))) No, in reality it is not. How are users supposed to find new artists to follow, if they’re shadowbanned? How are arists supposed to make themselves known and show their creations, if they can’t be seen? I surely don’t have to remind you that many artists use commissions to pay bills and as a help to live. If they are no longer visible, they will lose commissioners, and even if they don’t do commissions, this attitude of Tumblr will discourage them from creating new art, since they will be invisible. There will be less new contents, less ficlets written under fanarts (if I don’t see the fanart, I can’t write a ficlet inspired by it). We are all losing, due to the new Tumblr policy.
All of this adds up to other forms of boycott that Tumblr is using: – internal research that no longer works: you can no longer explore the tags in a blog, because you do not see any results; – some users don’t appear in the list of the notes to a post, even if they added something; – for many users, their most popular posts are no longer visible under their username and blog title;
Tumblr doesn’t even allow anymore a visual preview of its own links, inside and outside Tumblr:
Besides, there are the old problems this site always had, never solved and now even more serious. The @ function doesn’t work anymore for many of us, and many peole don’t receive notifications from other users who have addressed them specifically. Seeing what the situation is like, I don’t think they have the will to fix any of these errors.
Ultimately, we can also decide to remain here, but it’s clear that the site no longer wants us here, and it’s doing all it can to crush us and make us invisible.
But what can we do to fight back? Not much, I’m afraid. The only thig I can think about, is:
Follow and reblog
FOLLOW AND REBLOG
FOLLOW AND REBLOG
FOLLOW AND REBLOG
FOLLOW AND REBLOG
Make sure you follow all your fave artists before December, 17th, so you can keep track of them, and you can visit their blog directly, if you don’t see them in the search or in the dashboard. And reblog their art, EVER. It could be the only way to save them from the oblivion. Lurkers, readers, writers can be safe, for now, but our artist comrades are under attack. This is the time to show that a fandom is truly a community, giving them all the support we can.
As a form of protest, and since I believe that Tumblr will try to shadowban this post, I have decided that I will punish it every day. Deal with it, @staff 🙂
“Not safe for work content will be taken off starting Dec 17″
“Also Safe for work content will be removed”
If Tumblr is so desperate to kill itself just shut down the servers
Well, this is worrying.
It’s not surprising but seeing more people getting hit with a shadowban makes me wonder where Tumblr is eventually heading towards. It’s like looking at a person very slowly walk towards a cliff, and no matter how much you yell at them, they just keep walking.
Still, let’s see where this is going.
And thus tumblr became a barren wasteland
im gonna warn some artists i know just in case. if you were tagged and you did not wish to be, sorry. (>w<“ ) i just want to make sure people are aware just in case, cause i sure as heck would like to know of something like this..
idk if this has been posted yet but i read this thread by @teamarimo and found it SUPER interesting and thorough and thought it’d be good to share it
This is good, just wish it wasn’t posted as a Twitter essay, they’re so hard to read.
[Caption: a series of tweets by twitter user @teamarimo. It reads:
the debate on who can use the terms “butch/femme” keeps coming up so i
did a ton of research & i’d like to weigh in on the issue. i’ll post
sources at the end
too many people credit anne lister (a historical lesbian) with coining
femme in her journals but she was speaking french and “femme” has been a
french word forever
going in chronological order of gay words in the english-speaking world,
“lesbian” began as a synonym for tribade. “tribadism” = scissoring;
both words meant women who slept with women & the sexual act itself.
this was long before IDpolitics
so lesbian/tribade was something you did, not something you IDd as, bc
they were labeled by their sexual activity since IDpol hadn’t come
around yet. there was no concept of who was or wasn’t exclusively
attracted to women. that’s why bi women are closer to lesbians than bi
men
tribade dominated the 17th-mid 19th centuries until sapphic & lesbian took prominence. it wasn’t until 1892 that a neurologist used bisexual to describe sexuality. from then until the 1960s, bi was used only in academic contexts. it still wasn’t an identity yet
bi women have always been here but shared community with & organized
under “lesbian” until (and even into) the 60s. before then, any text or
study that said “lesbian” meant gay & bi women unless it (on the
rare occasion) specifies otherwise, so context matters
butch/femme began in gay bars in the 40s-60s. women-only gay bars were
frequented by lesbian & bi women. so for the first decades of
butch/femme history, “lesbian” includes bi women bc there was no bi or
“women-exclusive” yet & they were at the bars, participating in the
culture
in the 70s, lesbian separatism begins with 12 white cis lesbians, the
furies. They suggest that women engage “only (with) women who cut their
ties to male privilege… as long as women still benefit from
heterosexuality, receive its privileges and security, they will…
at some point have to betray their sisters, especially lesbian sisters
who do not receive those benefits.” demon TERF sheila jeffreys says “our
definition of a political lesbian is a woman-identified woman who does
not fuck men.” this marks the split between bi & lesbian women
lesbian separatism others bi women who shared space, identity &
oppression with lesbians centuries prior. it deems trans women as
inextricable from male privilege they (don’t) have. it others lgbt woc
who share oppression with men & therefore can’t exclude men from
their politics
tldr it’s bad lol. with events like stonewall (1969) & increasing
anti-gay violence in the 70s, anyone with proximity to heterosexuality
in gay spaces was viewed as a threat & shunned. so bi groups begin
to pop up, since they had no place in straight or gay communities
anymore
in the 80s, 2nd-wave bi organizing was feminist bi orgs forming bc
lesbians posited bisexuality as anti-feminist. by 1988, LGB officially
separates lesbian & bi. now lesbians are invested in specific
lesbian history & everything before the 60s says “lesbian.” see the
problem here
texts with the word “lesbian” before the 60s are also referring to bi
women but modern meanings of old words are applied to them, &
consequently, bi women are denied a massive chunk of our history,
including butch/femme culture
in the 60s, ball culture emerges in houses created as safe spaces for
black & latinx queer youth. the genders are butch queen, femme
queen, butch & women. here, butch & femme embody: the
intersections of race, gender & sexuality; the freedom of it; and
the resulting persecution
in the 70s, lesbian separatists say any form of masculinity harms women,
materializing against butch & trans women. femmes are framed as
wanting to reap benefits of heterosexuality while still toying with
women (this is heavily wrapped in biphobic rhetoric too, if you can’t
tell)
butch/femme is framed as heteronormative, anti-lesbian &
anti-feminist. so androgyny is proposed as the lesbian ideal. now
lesbian feminism is centered on white, middle class, androgynous
lesbians at the expense of working class + nonwhite lesbians, bi women,
and butches & femmes
butch/femme fall out of popular use, only kept alive by the same working
class & nonwhite women who are ousted by white lesbians.
butch/femme usage among queer youth of color includes lesbians &
nonlesbians as it had since 60s ball culture & since 40s gay bars
with gay & bi women
it’s interesting that people say butch/femme is for lesbians only when
the beginning of lesbian as an exclusively-woman attracted identity
& the downfall of butch/femme go hand-in-hand. it was queer youth of
color who kept that culture alive, lesbian or not
white lesbian TERFs who demonized the culture embraced it again when
genderfluidity became trendy in the late 80s. they claimed it as theirs,
and stripped it of its history with bi women, trans women & queer
youth of color that they wanted no association with
so that history was lost among many, and now well-meaning lesbians who
definitely are not TERFs don’t even know butch/femme’s roots in race,
trans/gnc identity, & class struggle, or its origins among gay &
bi women as one group
tldr: TERFs suck, bi & lesbian women’s history is inextricable, and
bi women were using butch/femme before the bi identity even existed.
historically, “lesbian” encompassed a set of behaviors & became an
identity later
hi here’s a trans lesbian (homojabi@tumblr) saying exactly what I just
said from a trans perspective for the “everyone’s trying to steal from
lesbians” crowd. I’m going back to sleep
@queerly-tony I think you were discussing this a short while ago? Might be of interest 🙂
OMG I was!! Awesome! Yeah, it doesn’t surprise me it was TERFS trying to exclude trans women who started that shit.
Well cool. I’m… probably definitely some kind of butch. ❤
Entirely unsurprising that hard division between queer women has at its root extreme prejudice, hard division always does.
@asynca, might be interesting to you? I assume you probably know this, but possible you don’t.
Thanks! I knew some of this, some of it (like ‘tribadism’) is new.
this is my favourite summary:
tldr: TERFs suck, bi & lesbian women’s history is inextricable, and bi women were using butch/femme before the bi identity even existed. historically, “lesbian” encompassed a set of behaviors & became an identity later
Essentially – block anyone who tries to force a wedge between lesbians and bisexual women, between cis women and trans women, etc, etc. Exclusionary politics and separatism is ALWAYS founded in genuinely untrue bullshit, dodgy politics and discrimination.
Important history, darlings. Don’t let anyone rewrite it.
I often wonder what happened to authors of unfinished fanfictions.
I hope they’re having a nice life
we absolutely are not and that unfinished fic haunts us to this day
Once I lamented on Twitter about never getting to finish a really good Sherlock fic, and the author recognized it and apologized, and I felt terrible.
(And I SOMEHOW RESISTED begging her to finish.)
See, here’s how I feel: One of the best things about fanfiction is that I get the chance to read stories that are never going to be ‘published’ in traditional ways. I get to read the writing of people who are doing this as a hobby rather than a profession or even a part-time gig. And as a result, I get to be showered with so many beautiful stories that I would never, ever have found through any other medium. I get to read the work of writers who would have been lost to me if the only way I had of reading was through purchasing publications. There’s just so much more out there than publication systems have ever harnessed.
And, to me, unfinished stories are kind of the ultimate expression of that story that I wasn’t supposed to be able to read, but lucked out and got a chance to read anyway. Unfinished stories almost never get published. Before the age of the internet and fanfiction, most would never have been read except by their authors and maybe a close friend or two. But, thanks to the internet and the ability of authors to write as they go, for fun, with no obligations attached, I have gotten to read these unfinished, beautiful things. And sure, if I love a story I naturally wish that it would be finished. But if the choice is between never reading that story at all, or getting to read it as far as it goes, I’ll take the latter every time.
I have been changed by unfinished stories. I’ve been amused and moved and fascinated and transported by them. Some of my all-time favorite fics are unfinished. But I’m still so happy that they live in a corner of my head.
So if you have written an unfinished fic, thank you. I’m so glad you shared it.
Firebird Scratches 