Posted first on Fetlife.
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I learned last night that Patreon is deleting erotic hypnosis creators,
and I'm devastated. Although this Daily Dot article by Ana Valens does a
wonderful job of explaining hypnosis kink, and humanizing these
creators, it left me with a sick lump in my stomach - the feeling that
we're beginning the fight of our lives.
Patreon is censoring hypnosis content on the basis that it "glorifies
non-consensual sexual activity" and "sexual violence". It would be easy
to take the position that it's not like that! A lot of what we
hypnokinksters do is pretty wholesome - when someone had a scene at
last night's BEHIVE munch where they were hypnotized to smell each step of baking snickerdoodles, that was not so dark.
But for a whole lot of us, fantasy nonconsent is right at the heart
of our hypnosis kink. If not something that is a type of rape, then
mental violation, capturing, transformations. Things that would be Not
OK in real life.
But that is absolutely fundamental to what we're doing
here on Fetlife, all of us: things that are very much Not OK can become ok with a
consenting partner. And dark fantasies our minds generate don't need to
be feared.
All this stuff that we talk about on this site, that would be immoral
and a crime without consent: tying someone up. Cutting them. Biting
them. Whipping them. Kidnapping them. Making them your dog. We're
brought together on this site by the radical idea that eroticizing these
things doesn't make you evil. And that they can be explored without
hurting anyone.
Finding the erotic hypnosis community freed me from a weight of guilt
and shame that I'd been carrying since adolescence for my fetish, and
it did that for my wife too. One friend in the community engaged in self
harm as a teenager because of the shame of her desires. And now I know
hundreds of people with many backgrounds, ages, genders, and sexual
orientations who have these exact same urges.
We learned that two things make these things actually ok: consent,
or else being fantasy. Patreon specifically objects "when hypnosis is used
as a coercion mechanic for nonconsensual sexual content, typically in a
fictional scenario". That means no one was hurt, and they were erased for
being fantasies that were too dark.
I could point out the hypocrisy of targetting hypnotic nonconsent
fantasies in a world where many grotesque and extreme dark fantasies are
eagerly consumed, from streaming platforms to Kindle Unlimited, but I
want those works to be protected too! We can't be afraid of our own
imaginations, and as long as attention is paid to content warnings and
keeping out minors, we should be allowed to dive into them.
The danger comes from the left as much as the right, and I wouldn't
be surprised if the impetus for the new policy comes from a
well-intentioned liberal perspective, based on language like "zero
tolerance when it comes to the glorification of sexual violence". I've
had the emotion of, ick, this fantasy is really disturbing me, and
should be policed. For example, somehow this author seems to genuinely
not like women and want to hurt them, for real. Or think that
brainwashing someone would not be a deep violation of their personhood.
But at the same time, I can't imagine any committee of people, never
mind algorithms, that I would want to make the call on which dark sexual
fantasies need to be erased, even from the reach of adults deliberately seeking them out. There's not one politically sensitive committee I can imagine that would allow what I and most of my partners like: fantasy depictions of evil mind control
and predatory hypnotic coercion. (We also like other things!)
I'm devastated at how easily this happened, after the absolute
decimation of the happy erotic hypnosis Tumblr community 6 months ago.
One of my favourite creators, Hypnotic Harlequin, who among other things writes brilliant and precious historical essays like this one about Blacaman: The Animal Hypnotist Who Cheated Death
was threatened with removal, and many others have been. There's a tendency to comfort oneself by
thinking we can just jump to another platform: Twitter, Discord,
whatever sketchy fly-by-night BDSM platform pops up (and I include
Fetlife in that, though somehow one of the least sketchy, and with some longevity). But I have a deep worry that this won't be true forever:
especially with horrifying forces along the lines of SESTA/FOSTA, and advanced surveillance AI, they
might get all the way ahead of us - not just cutting us down as soon as
we start to thrive and stretch out.
At best, the end point of that possibility is hypnokink being
obliterated from the internet. All our memes, jokes, culture, public
fights, knowledge, history, and ability to find each other. Gone in a
blink. It's happened. It happened on Tumblr, and it came fucking close to happening on Fetlife.
At worst (and keep in mind my middle name is actually
"Catastrophizing"), our digital secret lives could lead to us being
hunted, discriminated against, and imprisoned. Damned for our fantasies
and how free we felt to share them. And for the dark and depraved things
we did, with wildly enthusiastic partners (keeping in mind that it is currently illegal in my state of Massachusetts for me to spank my consenting wife)
I don't know how to avoid at least the first possibility, as long as
there is no way for us to organize and push back. Otherwise the
cowardice and greed of these companies will mean they will eject us with
the least pressure from the left or right. Hypnokinksters have to learn
to become political, including what kinds of political power are available to us that work, whether it's financial, legal,
educational, social, or some combination. It might become necessary to
use our real faces and names, those who can afford to.
Consensual non-consent must be protected. If you can understand
consenting to non-consent, a wildly counterintuitive notion, then you
can understand the nuance of consenting to everything else that seems
harmful and wrong on the surface. And if you reject the concept of
consensual non-consent, you are a long way towards rejecting and
condemning all of what we do on this site. Furthermore, 100% of our
energy should go into fighting bad behaviour in our community, and 0%
into fighting bad fantasies.
If you're there thinking, "sure glad my kink is a nice friendly one,
not a creepy twisted one! It is safe", you are wrong. Like I said,
someone thinks your fantasy life is not ok. And if you don't have a plan
to speak up and push back, you're next.
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