Censorship, Ten things we can do to resist.
More and more Gay artists are reporting censorship and the social media platforms are repressive. We need to start taking action to resist this repression and think of strategies.
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Censorship on Twitter, Facebook, elsewhere.
I got this notice. (See below.) I had no idea what the specific post was or what group it was in. Nor could I find out. I challenged it, but you don’t have any real recourse since you don’t know what they removed or why they removed it. (Section on the documentation of censorship follows.)
I only found out what post it was when a Group admin contacted me. Notice it is from Feb. 28, 2023. I think homophobes track Gay art groups to report them and see if they can get stuff taken down and harass us.
Twitter won’t pull content and they will merely lessen your visibility and it will only be for stuff that is clearly sexual in nature.
Facebook censorship doesn’t have a conservative or Christian origin. This is the censorship of the corporate department of the type of people that feel they are progressive.
I think it is related to this image. I had this shared to me by a person who runs a Facebook Gay art group. Just by luck, he had decided to let me know, otherwise I wouldn’t have had any idea what was happening. Two men kissing in a shower is getting Facebook upset.
I make ten suggestions of what as individuals we can do immediately.
I put these ten suggestions forth to get supporters of Gay art mobilized to start resisting censorship of Gay art. Also, to get people to start thinking about what we might do and to realize we aren’t helpless. We can do more than complain.
I am not claiming that these actions are going to solve the problem of censorship, they are just to get our resistance started. If you have ideas, let me know so I can put them in my newsletter.
So here they are:
[1] If you are only on Facebook or Instagram, get on Twitter. With Elon Musk the censorship is much, much less and it never was that much. Yes, your liberal friends might complain, but they are type of people that want to keep the internet “safe,” (resulting in your art being banned) and don’t care about you being censored, in fact the mentality which got you censored came from them.
Gay people need to find the cracks in the system and go through them.
[2] Start a Substack newsletter. They don’t censor. It is one of their selling points. You don’t have to require everyone have a paid subscription or anyone to have a paid subscription. You can also discuss your creative process and ideas. There will be a continuity for your fans in following you instead of Facebook fragmentation.
[3] Be on multiple platforms and connect on multiple platforms. Artist A needs to make sure they are on multiple platforms. Art supporter B needs to follow them on multiple platforms. If Meta decides to nuke Artist A, Art supporter B will still be connected.
All too often an artist gets wiped out by a social media platform they will lose almost all of his followers or supporters.
[4] If you have a newsletter or some online presence, share artists links to their sites off of social media. When I showcase an artist, I provide all the links to their media. Just liking their Facebook posts or hearting their Instagram post doesn’t help them that much. On Twitter, repost their stuff. If possible on Facebook share it. If you have a newsletter, pick a couple artists and mention them.
Every time I go on X (formerly Twitter), I repost a few Gay artists.
https://twitter.com/PartisanGay
I keep a directory of directories for Gay article.
In that directory there is a link to this directory.
[5] Artists need to help each other out. I can see why you might not want to share a link to another artist that does very similar or somewhat similar work, but you could share links to artists which are very different from you. If they want the other artist’s art, chances are they weren’t interested in your art. Even if the other artists style is similar, there might be stylistic or subject matter differences where a person might not want to purchase your art, but the other artists’ art. You could be bringing each other sales and I don’t think it is a zero-sum game.
[6] Look for other platforms. Reddit requires a screen over each post, so you can skim over and find the ones you are interested and none of the groups look interesting. You have to open one after another. On the Discord servers, the so-called “Gay art” is a anime cartoon character drawn by some straight teenage girl. After opening about a dozen groups I gave up.
Substack was previously mentioned. Consider maybe
We need to start digging around and seeing what alternatives are. I don’t think we will be changing the attitude of Facebook.
If you find an alternative, share it with others.
Special Note: If someone would take on having a Reddit group, we could all be members of a GayArt group there, and then if someone does get nuked by social media, they could announce their new site or id or whatever social media thing. We could also ask.
[7] Don’t support Threads, the Meta product competing with X (formerly Twitter.) If X goes down, it is a disaster for Gay art. Though if Threads becomes part of the permanent social media landscape, we will just have to accept it and use it.
[8] Support media that is not on social media platforms. For example these items or items like these. I am not specifically suggesting these two, but giving them as examples. There are seven magazines listed at this post and they probably aren’t getting as much support as they need.
Gay Art Magazines
INTRODUCTION: I will be listing magazines that are for Gays, and not “Queer” art magazines or LGBTQXYZ magazines. I might make an exception or two, because I am not in the habit of cutting my nose off to spite my face. I will be adding links as I discover them.
If I am missing a magazine, or website let me know.
[9] Provide space for a Gay artist on your online website or platform. On my Substack newsletter I have several directory posts of Gay artists on Twitter, Gay artists on Instagram. I also do showcases where the art of an artist is shown without censorship.
This page leads to the showcases of 36 artists.
If their social media is nuked, they still exist here, and if the artist contact me, I will update it with his new online identities.
[10] Organize. So far it is just us acting as individuals. If we could have something like the Society for the Promotion of Gay Arts, we could help out Gay artists a lot. We could also have a larger scope of action. We might be able to publicaly chastise Facebook. We would have to make sure that our groups wasn’t taken over by the Respectability Gays.
We could have zoom meetings once a month. At least a Facebook group. We should be able to get five or ten people together on some type of committee or action team.
If you face censorship on any media platform because of your art, I would like to report it in the newsletter.
If you have been censored, I will need screen captures of the notices of censorship and an explanation of what was censored.
I will need to know when, who, what, where, etc. Not just verbal frames.
Again, screen captures or parts of screen captures. Pdfs are good of a notice of censorship or warning.
I am going to create a directory post of posts about censorship.
This person was a victim of X (formerly twitter) censorship.
I followed the link, but I can’t find the tweet again which talked about his persons Twitter account being ended.
https://eroticcomagazine.com/nsfw-orion-marcin-smorawinski-by-wojciech-jachyra/
Bran Solo is subject to censorship.
His work is not at all pornographic or involves sexual activity.
Quite rightly he expresses the following sentiment on Instagram.
So much to do. It's a shame to torture artists like this.