Houston, We have a Problem

They’re at it again...

I’m very sorry for this interruption. Sadly, I feel it’s needed. We have a problem—we’ve been having a problem—and it keeps popping up, again and again. It just raised it’s ugly head yesterday, for Riley Rose, who already took a big hit I described in this post.

The problem is with Substack’s payment processor, Stripe. It seems (well, I’m guessing) they just changed their policy about nude art and erotica (or maybe just art that shows nudity). So I’m going to talk about nude art, erotica and porn (regardless of what we think the different is between erotica and porn, we think there is one).

Why do they say “adult nudity”? Is “child nudity” fine with them? “Teen nudity”? This shows just how screwed up they are.

I’m also going to talk about healthy vs unhealthy, and easy vs hard.

I’m going to describe what’s new and different about this problem.

I’m going to explain how my Substack is going to be structured a bit differently and offer some thoughts about what I might do to share the content I want to share here.

And I’m going to make a few points first, but since this post is super-long already, I’ll put off discussing them more till later.

The main point is that this is much bigger than censorship, banning nudity, or even free expression (although that’s super-important). This is about a civilization based on people’s inalienable rights and a civilization based on totalitarian despotism; this about being free (which is hard) and being a slave (which is easy).

I’m not supposed to talk in those terms. The elites in our society tell us (tell me):

Don’t say that. Don’t be hyperbolic. You’re being dramatic, That’s not cool. You’ll upset people. Uncool. And you talk to much. Really uncool. Stop wasting people’s time. No one wants to read that much. Stop asking them to. They’re busy! Have a latte. Chill. Be cool.

I am not cool. I am the antithesis of cool. And I know these things, absolutely:

1) The most enslaved person is person who doesn’t know they’re a slave.

2) Being a slave has become a choice.

3) Powerful people want to enslave us for the sake of gaining more power and are doing all they can to make that happen; to convince us to choose slavery.

4) The road to Hell is paved with good intentions.

5) Hell is a bottomless pit. (This is not just a saying. It really is.)

That’s what this is really about. What’s happening here and now is the canary in the coal mine, the camel’s nose under the edge of the tent, the wolf in sheep’s clothing—all located on a slippery slope.

But I’m not going to talk about all that now, because I do respect your time. It’s the most valuable thing we have. I appreciate you sharing yours with me more than I can say.

So I’m going to ask this: Please read Riley’s post here. Riley is awesome. Riley is fun. Riley is everything cool should be, but sadly isn’t. Riley also posts the Best Pictures!

I’m not fun, I’m grumpy and I sound like I’m lecturing people: Eat your broccoli! (Bleah! as Zana would say.) But please read this (after you’ve read Riley’s post). And please express yourself in the comments, if you feel like it! And please forgive me asking for so much of your time.

Part 1. The Introduction

I’m going to start by sharing my favorite speech: Teddy Roosevelt’s The Man in the Arena. You can watch it here:

Please do, if you don’t know it. (Or do anyway, it’s worth hearing again.)

I know it may seem weird to introduce a post about nude art, erotica and porn with that speech, but I swear it makes sense. Or I’ll try to make it make sense.

What Roosevelt was talking about, more eloquently than I ever could, are two things: dedication to that which is Good and healthy in Life, and resilience; that is, developing the strength, discipline and courage, physical but especially moral, to pursue what is Good and healthy and Just and Right and face all the things that are Bad, Unjust and Wrong—and knowing which is which.

The point is doing these things is hard. It requires trying, it requires failing, it requires fucking up, getting up, getting slammed down, getting up again… rinse and repeat.

It’s really fucking hard.

But it’s also really healthy. It makes us stronger. It builds resilience in the face of calamity and fear. And it tests our limits and tell us where they are. Maybe most important, it allows us to make peace with our limitations, to know we’re going to be this good at whatever and no better, and we’re okay with that. We did our very best; we went as far as out gifts allowed us to go.

Because in the end, we’ll all hit the ultimate limit and if we’ve done our very best and lived our lives to a high moral standard, we can face that ultimate limit in peace.

And no one ever does better than that.

Or we can do the “easy” thing, the lazy thing, the selfish thing and/or the bad things. We can take advantage of others, we can cheat, we can steal, we can sneer and disparage and be cynical.

We can also hide and avoid and “wish things away.”

All of those things are unhealthy. And even if we deny they’re unhealthy and/or try to bury that, deep in our inescapable inner being we know they’re unhealthy. And that knowledge erupts—it acts out, in different ways. Irrational fear, anxiety and depression are all ways it expresses itself.

When we try to hide and avoid and “wish things away” we weaken ourselves, just as laying around 24/7 and getting no exercise weakens us. The weaker we get, the more fearful our inner being makes us, because the less able we are to handle adversity. The space where we feel “safe” and “in control” shrinks and more it shrinks, the more fearful we become until it shrinks to zero, which leads to suicide, either in the dramatic form we think of it or slowly, by degrees. People kill themselves in a lot of ways and all too many die inwardly long before their heart stops beating.

Another way our inner being acts out is hate: self-loathing that becomes hatred towards others. Our inner being says: you lied, you cheated, you took advantage of others, you chose to be weak. It’s our twisted consciousness—the part of our mind that decides what we do—that says, Not my fault! It’s Them! They made this way!

That’s how atrocities start. But atrocities are just the bleeding edge. Worse it when it takes hold of a society and bleaches the Good out of it by ganging up on the people who do good; by disparaging them, belittling them, marginalizing them, banning them.

Alright, what has this got to do with nude art, erotica and porn?

I think a lot. Because along with all Life’s challenges and calamities, there are Life’s temptations, which if over-indulgenced in or indulged in the wrong way, lead to bad things—like uncontrolled jealousy, rank envy, and addiction and all that come with it.

We all have appetites, and how we handle those appetites so they don’t get out of the control and destroy our lives and the lives of others requires the exact same resilience the face Life’s challenges and calamities does.

And it’s built the same way. The hard way.

The point I’m getting to is that societies and cultures have a huge interest in controlling our appetites, because they can be so dangerous. Some embrace the hard healthy way.

Some embrace the easy unhealthy way.

Nothing is more powerful—therefore dangerous—than sex. And worst way to try to control the bad things that happen when sexual appetites get out of hand is the easy way.

That’s our way—the Puritan way: avoid, demonize, hate. And is how we handle sex. It does vary. For a very short time, we were becoming more tolerant, but then the pendulum swing back (actually it was pushed back—different topic).

This unhealthy way of dealing with sexual appetites is so powerful, even the some of the best people around fall prey to it; they say: “we tried the ‘sexual revolution’ and it failed because of…”

They’re wrong. But that’s how deep it goes.

That matters to what I’m about to say (sorry—please bear with me) because fearful people and angry people are easy to manipulate; really easy.

One reason is that when you’re afraid, your body redirects the blood flow in your brain away from your prefrontal cortex to the motor centers. Our brains take massive amount of metabolic energy (maybe 30% of the total? I forget.) There isn’t enough blood to do everything at once. When you’re being chased by a bear, your motor centers need all the energy they can get, so do your legs and heart. No time for rational thought.

We get that. What’s less obvious is that constant low-level fear and anger trains our brain to prioritize blood flow away from our prefrontal cortex “just in case.” So we start lose the ability to process information and make rational decisions. Everything starts to feel threatening and we act accordingly.

The people with a lust for power are well aware of this and they use constantly. It works wonders. So they push the “easy” unhealthy ways to weaken people so they’re easy to manipulate. This has come to basically define about half our society.

Again, apologies for going on, but I couldn’t figure out an easier way to address this.

Getting back to sex, which many people want to control (for different reasons), what’s the easy way? It’s: demonize, slander and censorship.

But we have this pesky 1st Amendment which protects free expression. The enemies of sex have been hammering at it but it’s been hard for them. So they have to keep trying new things.

Outright censorship doesn’t fly well in all cases. Substack resists it which is why I’m here and Riley is too.

But if they can’t censor it, what Stripe can do is demonetize it, and they did. They said she can’t get paid because she’s posted nude art.

So Stripe is telling everyone “oh sure, it can be posted, be you can’t pay for it and she can’t make money off of it. See! Free expression! As long as it’s Free! (Haha! We’re so clever!)”

That’s the takeaway. Stripe, perhaps under pressure of Visa, can’t censor Riley (or me) but they can try to destroy her livelihood by making it difficult for her to make money.

And it’s all based in our fixation on doing things the unhealthy easy, not the healthy hard, way. And until we push back and get people—especially young people—to understand that if they don’t want to live a life of misery, they need to embrace the hard way, we’ll never get better and push our society in a healthy direction.

And Riley needs and deserves your support (much more than I do).

Part 2: We’ve been in this Movie Before

You can stop reading now, but I’m going to ask you not to, because there’s more to this story and I’m afraid it’s worse. It’s history—history I saw firsthand—and it’s about some of the forces behind this attempt to shut Riley down (and probably me at some point). And it’s what I’d call symptomatic of so much else that’s wrong in our society.

I’ve never heard anyone talk about this so I’m going to. Because this has happened before.

Again, I need to set the stage a bit. You may know that porn addiction has become a thing. When I spent more time in YouTube I saw a whole bunch of videos about it popping up. A lot were people in their 20s testifying how porn addiction ruined their lives. Psychologists and commentators joined in. It was a bandwagon—lots of people jumped on.

Porn addiction is real. It does ruin lives, like any serious addiction does. And YouPorn, in particular has been caught doing incredibly sleazy and horrible stuff to get their porn into the hands—and minds—of teens.

Why? Because the vast majority of addiction start in our teen years. Kids are most vulnerable around puberty because their brains are undergoing big changes then. Drugs, alcohol, nicotine, and sex all produce chemicals that can fuck with these changes if there’s enough exposure. Do that and the kid will struggle with addiction for the rest of his/her life.

So drug cartels (and liquor and tobacco companies, previously) make a big effort to get their products in the hands of teens, especially 12-14 year-olds. So do (at least some) megaporn companies.

But why do we even have megaporn companies? This is the historical part, that I personally witnessed. I’ve lost almost all my records from back then so I can’t pinpoint a date and it does sound kind of like “conspiracy theory” bullshit. But, to repeat myself, I watched it happen.

The first thing to remember though, is that porn made the internet what it is today. Porn was the only product people (guys) would risk a credit card for, and online porn was private. No more sneaking into skanky porn theaters or having to go to an adult bookstore; now it was available in the privacy of their own bedroom. It was massive.

So porn was the testbed (no pun intended) for online billing, secure transactions, online encryption, broadband internet and streaming services. No one needed broadband except some big companies who had dedicated high-speed lines (T1s). But cam girls did and guys would pay a lot for that. So tech people created affordable high-speed internet.

Everything—everything—we use on the internet except email, which was its original purpose and why the internet was invented, was developed and tested and then entered the mainstream because of porn, and for no other reason.

Yes, online porn absolutely changed the world. That’s how big it was (Sorry, done now.)

Now back to what happened. In the 2000s, there were a lot of a small “amateur” adult sites run by independent women and some did very well. Many did OK. In those days, my day job was supporting woman-run adult sites. At the highest, I worked with a couple of dozen directly and dealt with a bunch more doing cross-promotion, content exchange, and arranging for the women to shoot together (which I sometimes shot myself).

I also provided payment processing services to over a dozen of these sites; I think the number was 16 at one point? A few (that were joined in a network) made about $100k/yr for almost 3 years ($8k to $9k/mo). Others made a lot less, but a $1000/mo wasn’t unusual. Not much, but it helped.

Then it all came crashing down.

What happened? Google happened. They made a very deliberate change in their algorithms to promote aggregator sites like YouPorn and de-platform small independent sites. It was July to September of 2010 or 2011; in that timeframe. (If I could get to my bank records I could say exactly). The 2008 crash had already put a lot of hurt on small websites, but this killed or nearly killed a whole bunch of them.

I watched it happen over a period of a few weeks. Search engine traffic went down 90-95% over that time, because Google moved the small sites to the 2nd or 3rd pages for their favored search terms and promoted the megasites in their place.

A real example: one of the site I worked closely with was always in the top 3 or 4 on the 1st search results page for their favored search term and that generated (usually) over 1000 visits/day and about 15 signups/day on average.

Suddenly, visits from Google dropped to the low 100’s and within a week or 2, to less than 100. That site had dropped from the 3rd or 4th listing to the bottom of the 1st page briefly (as I recall), then to the 2nd page and finally to 3rd page (where hardly everyone ever went). The megasites all got boosted to the top spots on the 1st page of search results for that search term. Sales fell as you’d expect, and a network that had peaked at over $100k/yr was making less than $5k/yr, and about $3k/yr. Of course, creating adult content was time consuming and expensive. There was no way to create new content with that amount of revenue, so the network went static and lost even more members. At the end, it had about 10 members at any one time, which couldn’t even pay for hosting, and shut down.

That is how Google changed the whole online adult “ecosystem” almost overnight. And that’s why those megaporn sites got a monopoly. Of course, I can’t prove any direct collusion between the big aggregator sites and the other megaporn sites to shut down the small independents that were their competition, but that’s what happened.

It makes sense megaporn sites would want a monopoly, and through Google they got one. So that’s why YouPorn is pulling all sorts of shady shit (encouraging kids to watch etc). Google gave them that position and continues to support them to this day. The little independent sites, which were (largely) ethically run and took effective steps to keep kids off them were put out of business by Google.

And that’s also why we have Only Fans etc; women in the adult industry now have nowhere to go but megasites that can control and (if they feel like it) exploit them. It’s monopolies all the way down and that’s fucked up.

But Google wasn’t quite alone in shutting down independent sites and this is where history is repeating itself. Around at the same time, Visa decided to charge a $500 annual fee (I think it was less at first and went up). It was only for “high-risk” businesses—meaning only adult sites (or maybe on-line gambling sites too?).

They were low-hanging fruit and few independent adult site owners were going to complain and out themselves to family, day jobs etc. Visa also came up with a whole list of things that would make a site “noncompliant” which were vague enough that people who ran small sites were deleting content out of fear and losing members.

Again, the megasites didn’t care, $500/yr was nothing to them and Visa left them alone because Visa made a fortune in fees (3.5%) off them. Visa had 80% of the credit card market then (MasterCard had the other 20%) so no one could afford to drop Visa and make it with just MasterCard.

This went on for a while, then MasterCard also started charging $500/yr, so that was $1000/yr just take credit cards. This was on top of the 3.5% and the 10-12.5% the payment processors took. So nearly all the small independent—ethically run—adult sites shut down.

So what happening now isn’t new. They started going after small creators about 15 years ago to support YouPorn and the megaporn sites. It was deliberate and no one acknowledges that. People think it “just happened” and accept it was natural and get all up in arms about the “adult site” issues. But it was Google and Visa supporting the megaporn sites, because they are the hand that feeds them.

Back 15 years ago, the reason was that online porn was still in a new, but not very new, stage, and there was some pressure to do more extreme kinks online to attract new members, though I never saw much of that. But Visa latched onto a few sites doing more extreme stuff as an excuse for their vague rules that scared small site owners while turning a blind eye to what YouPorn was doing.

So then it was “shut down kink” along with “protect the kids” (always a winner). Now, the added excuse is “AI.” People are losing their shit over AI because bad people have done awful things with AI. That happens with all new technology. Did you know one of the earliest mass uses of the printing press was to spread anti-“witch” screeds in Europe that led to the witch-burning craze that killed 1000s of women in the most horrible way possible?

I’d guess not. We think of the printing press as a great revolutionary invention. It is. But so many innocent women were burned to death because of it.

AI is creating a new generation of independent creators and some of those creators create nudes and erotica… and porn. And the same people who didn’t want competition from small independent adult sites don’t want competition from us. So they’re demonizing and demonetizing us.

BTW: I want to make sure there’s no confusion about what AI gets used for and what it doesn’t get used for. I use AI to help me make art and video, because I can’t do that on my own anymore. I don’t use any AI in my writing. In one instance (which you’ll see later) I did ask AI for help fixing the chorus of a song I wrote.

The same is true of Riley. Yes, she posts AI-generated art. She does not use AI to write her stories. That’s an important distinction. AI is a tool to assist us, some cases, with creating work we can’t create otherwise. It’s not a replacement or a substitute for our creativity. That remains ours. That’s need to be well understood.

Okay, back to my point…

There’s yet another reason they’re going after us. The people who are freaking out about the fucked-up things some people are doing with Gen-AI want scalps. They want their “leaders” to “do something” just like they wanted to “protect the children!”

So the companies are scalp-hunting. Of course, they aren’t going to “bite the hand that feeds them” (as far I know, YouPorn is still up), but they can wave the scalps of small creators as trophies to show they’re “doing something” and it costs them next to nothing. Then the regulators will get off their backs because, “See! It worked!”

This means the huge creators who push the very worst content that makes my stomach turn get a free ride. It’s a near-perfect storm of 3rd-degree fuck-all.

Bottom line: whatever people in power start pushing regulations to “protect us” the reason is always so they can grab more power by tracking every little thing we do and controlling it (and us) while protecting the people who line their pockets—often the worst people on earth.

It’s been allowed to happen because of laziness, selfishness and weakness that breeds the fear and hate that they use to maintain and grow their power.

That needs to stop.

Part 3: Why this isn’t Same Movie

Some people in power have been trying to suppress any form of erotic expression for basically ever. Does anyone still remember the Hays Code? If not, it was a code that was used to make movie studios self-censor their films over anything deemed remotely “sexual.” It was basically like Prohibition for anything sexy in movies. It started in the early 30s and lasted until the late 60s (Wiki tells me 1934 to 1968, but it was introduced in 1930.)

It eventually got dumped. So the same type of people—the Prudes—tried again. Like I said, we have this pesky 1st Amendment and it was being taken seriously. So they kept trying to get around, like I’ve alluded to.

One of the things they came up (in my lifetime) is what’s called Code 2257. Code 2257 was designed to “ensure” underage performers were kept out of the adult industry (really girls—no one cares about the guys). It was bullshit. There already were laws about this and requirements that you get two forms of legitimate ID, typically a government-issued ID (a passport was best) and a social security card, and a legally enforceable signed release. Releases were often signed by witnesses. And all that had to be kept on file and presented, if there were any questions. I dealt with hundreds of those.

2257 went far beyond that. It required reams of documentation and special rules for handling it and establishing a special “custodian of records” and threatened dire penalties of there was so much as a comma out of place (in the opinion an inspector). And it did not one fucking thing to protect girls from being exploited that wasn’t already being done.

2257 was another attempt to scare off the small independents—yes, the good people—and put another burden on them, while turning a blind eye to the big porn producers where the exploitation—when it happens—happens. Those studios have tons of money and lawyers; independents obviously have neither.

By the way, in my experience, talking privately with a lot of adult actresses, the adult industry, while it obviously has sleazy people in it and bad shit has happened, was overall better than what we’re all learned about Hollywood in recent years.

Not going there…

To be effective in scaring people, 2257 had to be “interpretable” and include things that were legally questionable. They were questioned and a lower court eventually struck 2257 down. It didn’t go farther than that, as far as I know. The ruling only applied to that court’s jurisdiction. But took a lot of the scare out of 2257.

It was really just a game. The government never enforced it, as far as I ever heard. No inspector ever went out. It was just the threat they might that they hoped would be effective and it did drive some independents out of the industry.

So why am I talking about it?

Again, I ask forgiveness and forbearance. I’m talking about it to highlight what’s so different about 2257 and now—the business with Stripe et al.

2257 was about explicit sexual imagery. Especially explicit penetrative sexual imagery. It wasn’t about showing implied sex. People had to be fucking, or mastubating, and you had to be able to see all the bits (genitalia). It wasn’t about being nude and even showing a vulva or vagina nonsexually. (Again, who cared about boys?)

Otherwise, any movie with a sex scene, any art model who shaved, even National Geographic (or possibly medical text or film?), might get hauled in on a 2257 charge. So the definition was restricted to actual sex, involving real people.

But what’s happen now is that they’re attacking art the shows nipples! And a naked butt! Of adult women! Degrees of nudity that are “PG-13” and perfectly legal in public in many jurisdictions.

Because it’s AI. So an AI nipple must be banned. Real nipples, fucking, anything else… okay, if you’re a megaporn site. And if the AI nipple looks fake, that’s okay too and so is content of fake-enough looking sobbing young teen girls being nonconsensually gang-banged by monsters with skyscraper-sized cocks, because oh that’s fine—if it’s making someone (with lawyers) enough money.

But post a gorgeous artwork of a beautiful, super-hot nude adult woman’s ass?

Nope! We’re shutting you down! Because you’re a small independent artist who doesn’t make a ton of money and can’t afford an army of lawyers. And we can wave your scalp to the media (who’s totally in on this) and say: “See! We’re protecting people! Aren’t we awesome?”

And oh yeah… that nipple’s AI! While actually criminals are exploiting AI; while ChatGPT convinced a teen to commit suicide. Is ChatGPT still up? Yes. Has Sam Altman been arrested for negligent homicide (at very least)? No. Has anyone even seriously suggested they shut it down? That they “demonetize” it? It killed a child! (Oops…)

But let’s try to shut down Riley (and other small creators) over AI nipples. And Grease Girl’s epic tush. (To be honest, she’s got lot of epic tushes to share!)

Can we see what astounding level of bullshit this is? How fucked up this is?

This is our world. This is the world we allowed to be created. Is this the world we want? Where small artists are persecuted and a tiny cadre of big-tech titans and their algorithms run our lives? Where a few megaporn sites are allowed to recruit teens (supported by Big Tech) and “age-verification” is just another way to keep tabs on us?

And on and on and on…

I apologize. That was ugly. But I’m pissed off. I think of the people who came before me— people who died, who gave everything, who went the grave with wounds from decades ago (physical and mental); who endured and suffered things to so far beyond our experience—to give a us— to preserve for us—a world where we’d have a chance to proper. A world where we wouldn’t have to live with a boot on our neck.

And this—this!—is what we’re making of it?

I’m so sorry. I’ll stop now.

Part 4. Some changes

I’m going to be pulling the nude and nude videos of Substack this week and posting them in my Google drive, at least for the time being. I still have the luxury of my own server (collocated with the best host in the world) so I may move content there where I have full control once I get a website working (that takes time). But my Google drive seems like a decent solution for now.

I’m not leaving Substack. I value Substack. They aren’t the problem. Stripe (and Visa) is the problem.

I’m going to explore other ways for people to support me if they wish. Donating via PayPal might be an option? I’m not sure at this point. But this isn’t about money. I very much appreciate your support and if you want to donate you’re awesome!

But please, if you want to donate, give to Riley first. This is her livelihood. I’m just a grumpy artist and sometime poet sharing what I can, when I can. I get by. She needs it.

Final Word

So, as my final word: celebrate and women and men in the arena; be the woman or man in the arena. Join forces with others who do the same.

Support Riley Rose.

Our society—our civilization—depends on it.

Thank you, more than I can say. Regular posting will resume soon.