Nothing To Do With Us

Last week, one of my readers told me that several camming platforms ban trans women.  Here’s one example, from My Free Cams.  At first I thought that perhaps these arseholes think that trans women are somehow “dirtier” or more intrinsically sexual than cis women, and therefore banning them would reduce the platform’s exposure due to FOSTA, or that the platform owners are just transphobic douchebags using FOSTA as an excuse to discriminate.  As it later turned out, the policy isn’t a new one, and though my second guess was closer than my first it has nothing to do with FOSTA:  the owners are indeed anti-trans douchebags, but their excuse is the same ugly fantasy used by toilet-law proponents, namely that predatory men might pretend to be trans in order to gain access to women-only spaces.  And though I turned out to be incorrect in my surmise of their motivation, the very fact that I and many others assumed it was FOSTA-related demonstrates not only how jumpy this tyranny has made us, but also how easy it would be for bigots to hide their bigotry behind “concern for commercial viability” or “advice from our legal department” (I’m looking at you, Fetlife).  Furthermore, it demonstrates why I so often say that fascism is much more effective at repression than communism.  Fascist states can pressure businesses to do their dirty work (censorship, discrimination, etc) and then blame the companies for it; “Operation Choke Point” is a perfect example of this.  Government says, “Oh, it’s not our fault those banks & credit card processors cut you off; we just gave them a list of undesirables.  What they did after that was totally their own doing.”  Ditto FOSTA: “Oh, we didn’t force those sites to censor y’all; we just passed a law that says every ambulance-chaser and attention-hungry DA in the country can sue or file charges against them if they don’t.  Nothing to do with us.”  So now sites which aren’t strictly adult-oriented are banishing sex workers, and sites which are strictly adult-oriented are doing bizarre, ugly flip-flops to try to “protect” themselves from disaster by enacting content restrictions that won’t do anything to protect them from the depredations of predatory government, but will certainly harm sex workers.  And as is always the case, it’s the most marginalized people who are feeling it the hardest.