A Statement on the New Patreon Guidelines (Patreon)

If you haven't seen it yet, Patreon has new community guidelines for NSFW content, and they're a hot load of centaur shit. They've banned a bunch of kinks, including a few of my favorites and go-to's for creating art. So I wanted to jump ahead and answer what I can. 

What did they ban? When will we know more?

All the fun stuff! Well, not all of it, but a lot of my taboo favorites. 

To highlight a few that will impact this page: sex under the influence of alcohol, drugs, hypnosis or blackmail, consensual non-consent, incest (including step and adopted relations), age play, beastiality, "depictions or glorification of animal genitals" (I assume this means knotting and omegaverse), and any sex that doesn't have "freely given, specific, informed and unambiguous indication of consent by a statement or by a clear affirmative action."

The Queer Erotic Content Creator's Club will be meeting with Patreon on Monday and hopefully I'll have more information after the meeting. It's unclear if the rules allow for knotting and omegaverse. 

Technically beastiality is allowed if they're the same species, so I desperately want someone to take this to court and argue that a centaur giving a human a blowjob is allowed under these rules, so long as it's the human half - we should make an actual US court judge define centaur sex.

Will you keep making smut? 

Of course I will! What about me makes you think I'd roll over and not make even kinkier, smuttier smut out of spite? Patreon can suck my studded strap on (I should stop using that as a threat, it really is a lovely time.)

I've been queer, kinky, and on the internet for a while. This isn't my first anti-smut rodeo. We're just going to get creative. Remember ye olden days of 2001 when we called smut lemons or nested it in links? We're going back to that. For kinks specifically banned, I'll probably post links. 

I refuse to go back into the closet or let kink be siloed to a dark corner of the internet. There is nothing wrong with sexual fantasy. Rape fantasies are among the most common for women in North America. Incest is the most frequently searched tag on porn sites. Age play is a tool for self expression, and knots are just really fuckin' fun. I will honor my sexuality and yours by continuing to make art of what you and I find sexy. I'm not going anywhere. 

In the immortal words of international sex symbol Jeff Goldblum, life finds a way. 

Drop some ideas for code words. It's hard to argue the consent or lack thereof in a single frame of artwork, so it'll be the stories that get me in trouble. I will likely host the stories elsewhere and put a link on Patreon. 

Will you change platforms? 

As for now, no. I don't want to rebuild on another platform. I rely on the income from Patreon and if I can stay, I intend to. That said, all my spidey senses are pointing to Patreon phasing out 18+ content all together. Nothing is confirmed, but this is eerily similar to what happened on tumblr and Etsy, so I won't be surprised if they push us out in the next year or so. If that happens, I'll look into something like Subscribestar or Substack. 

Isn't it a good thing they're banning underage and rape content? 

No. These new guidelines ban fantasy. Fantasy is not and cannot be a crime, even if the fantasy is of criminal activity. (ie playing Grand Theft Auto doesn't actually make someone a car thief. Fantasizing about rape doesn't make someone a rapist.) 

Characters can't consent because they aren't real. They're fictional, in a fictional story, and do not have agency. The only consent that matters is between the reader and the art. "Does the reader consent to engaging with these topics?" is the only question that matters because that's the only live human person able to give consent. 

Proponents of these bans will claim that they protect readers, but in that protection assume readers can't differentiate between fantasy and reality. This argument only serves to infantilize readers (usually women) and stigmatize a normal aspect of human sexuality. 

This policy is Patreon trying to protect itself from being sued and to appease payment processors. Human wellbeing is not the priority. 

Heyyy Ada, how ya doin'?

NOT GREAT, BUDDIES. But kudos and orgasms to you if you made it this far. I'll be in my little smut corner, drawing and writing my devil's works with full intention to corrupt the minds of impressionable women, whom I'm sure Patreon executives would prefer never have been allowed to read in the first place.