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An Open Letter to Patreon

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141–150 of 245 posts

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#141

Post by timthelion »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #140
timthelion wrote: post #116

As a white hetro male who consumes porn, as do %90 of us white hetro males do. I do not understand how it can be "fine" and "modern" for us to watch porn. But not "fine" and "modern" for the women who produce it to be paid for it. Porn is one of the few products out there that provides real value, real stress relief, and has no environmental or moral downsides. Porn is better for the environment, animals rights, and,…

There is a moral downside to porn. There's plenty that is uploaded without the person's consent (sometimes by a bitter ex). There's also a lot of stories out there of people being coerced and made uncomfortable to continue filming when they didn't want to. I imagine this is the minority, but there's definitely issues within the porn industry.

You're right, there are downsides to porn as it is, but there is no reason it could not be a perfect industry.

It is because of our barbaric taboos against women who appear in porn that revenge porn has power. It is because of our barbaric taboos that the porn industry is so shady. We should fight those taboos, and fight for the dignity of porn actresses.

These flaws in the industry are all the more reason to pay the actresses directly through Patreon. Why should we get our pornography through shady websites on which there is no accountability as to the origin of the images?

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#142

Post by lhnz »

timthelion wrote: post #107
lhnz wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ability to leverage performative victimhood invalidates any claim that you are weak. If you are actually weak, you will do anything not to draw attention to your self, as you will not be able to control the perceptions or actions of others.

I guess the key phrase there is "leverage". Does your performace succeed? In the case of trans people on US coasts, this seems to be changing. For a short time, their identity had leverage, but the fact that this discussion is criticizing the authors of the letter for trying to leverage trans victim-hood, suggests that this leverage is waning. As an example of a group without victim-hood leverage, see NAMBLA [1], whi…

  > But do you think that trans people have power?
In this particular case this identity is instrumentalised in order to modify the behaviour of Patreon.

This simply wouldn't be done so readily unless the identity within this context carried power.

I do not think that trans people in general have power. However, a lack of power in one context, can sometimes be an arbitrage opportunity in contexts where an oppressed identity is currency.

I'm not against this but the underlying power dynamics are too interesting to be ignored.

That said, I dislike the usage of the phrase "literally scared for their lives". This phrase is meant to be used to call on others to defend lives and here it is being used to call on other's to defend an ability to make money selling porn. Crying wolf undermines the ability for truly endangered people to ask for help. It is ethically repulsive to me that people that consider themselves good dilute the meaning of cries for help for base political expediency. By doing this, they may well deprive the most desperately helpless people of their only means for help.

It seems obvious to me that they're conflating economic opportunity with safety, as it is the only viable political position left to them. As has been established elsewhere, companies do not owe workers a means to make money. I do not personally agree with deplatforming, but there is currently no right to a job, and, if such a right was to exist, it would not be possible to administer it fairly depending on the relative oppression/privilege of a person. On the other hand, I guess accrued wealth and number of potential income sources could be seen as reducing the likelihood of homelessness and perhaps we should use this to determine whether a loss of income could affect somebody's safety. (In this case I think that's unlikely: there are so many other online social networks that are supportive.)

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#143

Post by lovich »

mikojan wrote: post #94
pmorici wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"scared for our lives" sounds like the same line police officers trot out and repeat over and over when they kill someone they ought not have. I think that sort of claim evokes a negative reaction when it seems like the sentiment is unfounded based on the circumstances because it feels like the person saying it isn't being genuine but just trying to manipulate people.

A disproportionate number of homeless youth identify as LGBT+. LGBT+ youth are overrepresented in the populations of youth who are at risk of arrest. Is it unfounded to assume that those same people are maybe dependent on precarious work, like creating porn to sell on a third-party platform, to make a living?

Even if that's the case, it'd be a moot point unless they are arguing that making child porn is acceptable if you would be homeless instead.

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#144

Post by Certhas »

ankushnarula wrote: post #125
Certhas wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is Patreon having a fuzzy stand against pornography disproportionately affecting the LGBT community? First of all, they say the vulnerable among them are disproportionately LGBT. They do not say that it affects an LGBT creator differently from a straight creator all else being equal. Given that there are massive mainstream porn companies that cover most of the non-queer market, it stands to reason that the crea…

Just to clarify, the aforementioned disproportionate representation is with "street children" not homeless youth as a whole. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_children#United_States

a) What does that clarify? What's the difference?

b) From the literature I looked at, and the very wikipedia article I linked, it is true for homeless youth as a whole.

E.g. the very first sentence in the abstract:

> A disproportionate number of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) youth experience homelessness each year in the United States.

in

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4098056/

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#145

Post by vacri »

icebraining wrote: post #87
vacri wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are demographics not defined by their sexuality (disabled, PoC, english-second-language) more likely to make sexual/nudity content, and hence be more affected by this issue? I'm big on egalitarianism, but I'm not keen on co-opting unrelated groups in order to make your case sound more important.

The letter doesn't say they are more likely to make such content, but that the negative effects are more harmful to people who are already more vulnerable.

The whole first paragraph is completely overbearing. "Quick, pull in every non-mainstream group we can think of, and then describe them all as literally in fear of death from an ambiguous policy about fringe content. Oh, and of course all these people rent off landlords so nasty that they won't accept a single delayed rental payment and they'll end up homeless if that happens". It's completely indefensible hyperbole.

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#146

Post by whipoodle »

ineednoprocrast wrote: post #135

I heard a story a while ago about how marajuana-related companies in colorado formed some financial institution in order to deal with being blocked out of the wider financial ecosystem. The piece of the puzzle I don't understand yet is why credit card processors appear to have taken it upon themselves to be the moral police. They could very easily make the argument that the use of money transferred isn't their proble…

It’s about money not morals. Porn is associated with much higher fraud and chargeback rates than other commercial sectors.

It’s always about money. It is always, always about money.

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#147

Post by [deleted] »

erlend_sh wrote: post #68

There’s a major opportunity for competition here. A complete open source stack for what Patreon does is already available as free open source software: https://github.com/opencollective A sex-positive alternative to Patreon could be up and running within a month. A lone developer could make a viable side-business for them self living off the 10% fee + having their own collection project. This would be good for the Op…

[deleted]

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#148

Post by vacri »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #140
timthelion wrote: post #116

As a white hetro male who consumes porn, as do %90 of us white hetro males do. I do not understand how it can be "fine" and "modern" for us to watch porn. But not "fine" and "modern" for the women who produce it to be paid for it. Porn is one of the few products out there that provides real value, real stress relief, and has no environmental or moral downsides. Porn is better for the environment, animals rights, and,…

There is a moral downside to porn. There's plenty that is uploaded without the person's consent (sometimes by a bitter ex). There's also a lot of stories out there of people being coerced and made uncomfortable to continue filming when they didn't want to. I imagine this is the minority, but there's definitely issues within the porn industry.

If being uncomfortable while working was to be made illegal, there'd be few minimum-wage jobs left. From burger-flipping to call centers, people do it because they have to, not because they want to. Coercion is a different kettle of fish, but being uncomfortable at your work is a pretty normal state of being.

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#149

Post by vacri »

erlend_sh wrote: post #68

There’s a major opportunity for competition here. A complete open source stack for what Patreon does is already available as free open source software: https://github.com/opencollective A sex-positive alternative to Patreon could be up and running within a month. A lone developer could make a viable side-business for them self living off the 10% fee + having their own collection project. This would be good for the Op…

I think you're grossly underestimating the work involved in being a payment handler - even just the legal work alone would be crushing. It certainly isn't going to be a side-business for a lone developer.

Re: An Open Letter to Patreon

#150

Post by lmm »

arkades wrote: post #106
kuschku wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not when it becomes impossible to exist as a business without relying on such intermediaries, e.g. VISA or MasterCard. Then they are a monopoly, and can't choose their customers anymore.

You can’t exist as a business without patreon? Selling porn? Someone should inform ... the vast majority of porn businesses. The rest of them don’t use Patreon for payment processing.

Small independent producers may not be able to operate without Patreon. I mean, the whole point of Patreon is that it enables a huge group of creators who otherwise couldn't exist as a business.
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