Confidence and Joy is a newsletter by Emily and Amelia Nagoski. Subscribe here. You can also follow Emily on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook!
Well, hello! September is Sexual Health Awareness Month, and September 4 itself was World Sexual Health Day. I've been thinking about last year's theme of year of āTurn it on: Sexual health in a digital world.ā
Which is amazingly relevant to this here newsletter.
Listen, there are so many important topics that fall under the idea of āsexual health in a digital world.ā According to the World Association for Sexual Health (WASH), just a few of those important topics are ālaws, politics, public health, education and clinical practice for their protection and the promotion of gender equality and the respect for sexual diversity.ā
So basically everything! We could talk about FOSTA-SESTA. We could talk about OnlyFans (a platform largely consisting of sexually explicit media) banning sexually explicit media and then, when people called bullshit, walked back that decision. (Patreon implemented a similar policy, making content it deemed āadultā unsearchable on their platform and otherwise reducing the visibility and accessibility of creators like sex-positive sex educator and cartoonist Erika Moen.)
Instead of those important topics, Iām going to focus right now on two topics:
1.) The relationship between sex educators and social media. Itāsā¦ well, āitās complicated,ā as Facebook would say.
Platforms like Facebook and TikTok could offer access to large audiences who are starving for sexual health information, but algorithms that control who sees our posts buries our work as āsensitive contentā that may be āupsetting or offensive.ā
For example, on Instagram, go to Settings ā”ļø Your Account ā”ļø Sensitive Content Control. The default setting is āOn,ā which means you wonāt see much content like mine or my colleaguesā. Every sex educator I know has stories about their work being reported and removed, as violating terms of service, and more stories about abusive comments that the social media platform has said are not violations of the terms of service. It is literally a joke among us.
One of the reasons I wanted to write for Bulletin is that it offered an opportunity to be a legitimized voice of sex-positivity, feminism, anti-racism, and anti-ableism on a platform where such voices are āshadow bannedā by the algorithm. My hope is that my presence here help will shift the perceived and algorithm-defined ānormal,ā toward inclusion, diversity, and welcoming pleasure-oriented education.
And hey, this is a risk Iām taking. I know that being a woman who writes on the internet about sexual wellbeing makes me a target for the worst kind of abuse. I let the team at Bulletin know that Iāll probably be a test case for them, in terms of filtering abusive comments and other toxic engagement. Iāve basically hired my husband to delete not-okay comments, like itās a game of Space Invaders.
I realize that one of the problems is the basic cross-media problem that violence is viewed as mostly okay, whereas sex is viewed as mostly taboo. Algorithms arenāt great at differentiating between sex education and porn. Howās a computer supposed to know the difference? Is an anatomical drawing of genitals porn? ĀÆ\_(ć)_/ĀÆ Is a description of the physiology of orgasm porn? ĀÆ\_(ć)_/ĀÆ
Which means we need to talk about porn.
2.) Thereās a whole conversation to be had about the impacts, both good and not-so-good of porn on peopleās sexualities and relationships (such as this Q&A post), but in my reading of the research, talking to therapists, and hearing from people whoāve read my books, porn has more potential to harm the people involved in unethically produced porn than it has potential to harm anyone who watches it.
The main point I want to make about porn on the internet it this:
Look, all that porn on the internet that you can get for free? Those performers probably arenāt getting paid for that. You donāt know what the working conditions wereādid everyone have free and full choice over what behaviors they performed? Was everyone fully sober? Was anyone pressured into being there? Was everyone paid fairly? You donāt know. You canāt know. Free porn erases the labor rights issues behind its production. So my big pro-tip for you: PAY FOR YOUR PORN. And buy it from production companies that explicitly name their practices for ensuring consensual behaviors with performers free to use whatever level of protection suits them.
What if you canāt afford porn?āand letās acknowledge that ethical porn is more expensive than free porn. Read sexy books and listen to sexy audiobooks, free from the library.
Porn is a luxury item, not a necessity of life. It can be delightful. But if youāre like me, you never want your luxuries to come at the expense of someone elseās rights and wellbeing. You look for fair trade coffee and farm-to-table dining and handmade artisanal tissue box holders on Etsy. Youāre willing to pay a little extra, so that your little delights in life donāt cost the actual Earth or anyone elseās life or your soul. Pay for your porn, too.
As WASH puts it, āThe use of technology has called for the reframing and reconceptualization of what is sexual health and sexual rights in a digital world and we need to learn how to integrate technologies in peopleās lives in an ethical human rights framework.ā
There are already some domains where you know how to think within an ethical human rights framework. Letās start this month by thinking about how we relate to sex education and sexually explicit media on the internet with the same ethical framework.
#WorldSexualHealthDay2022 #WSHD2022
Questions or comments? Please email my very tiny team at unrulywellness@gmail.com
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Stay safe and see you next time.