An LGBT charity calendar has reportedly been banned on Facebook for containing “sexual activity” despite it not containing any.
The calendar by The Naked Rugby Players, which aims to raise money for the testicular cancer charity Balls To Cancer and LGBT+ inclusive rugby, was banned from the social media platform for containing explicit content.
The calendar reportedly went against Facebook’s community standards on nudity and sexuality activity, which bans content containing nudity (showing genitals), sexual activity, sexually explicit language and female nipples (except in the context of breastfeeding, birth, health and protests).
However, the calendar contained none of the above.
According to The Gay UK, Facebook told the page’s owners that the post went against their community standards and banned the page from commenting or posting for 24 hours.
Facebook’s ban “disappointing”
The description on The Naked Rugby Players website reads: “We’ve photographed six inclusive rugby teams from across the UK, wearing nothing more than some sport socks and boots, to bring a little excitement to 2019 whilst at the same time raising money for each inclusive club involved and for the Balls To Cancer charity who promotes awareness of Testicular Cancer in men.”
It features the teams the Bristol Bisons, Liverpool Tritons, Glasgow Alphas, Brighton & Hove Sea Serpents, Northampton Outlaws and the Sheffield Vulcans.
The creative director behind the calendar, Jake Hook, told The Gay UK: “We take a huge amount of time on photo shoot days to ensure that everybody is comfortable and making absolutely 100 percent sure that nobody’s genitals are on show.
“In fact, it is in our agreement with the clubs that take part that we make sure that no one’s genitals will be invisible.
“Facebook’s ban is obviously disappointing,” he added.
“We are so proud of this calendar and the message that it gives. Be proud of your body, be proud of your sexuality and be comfortable in your own skin.”
This week, Tumblr announced that it would ban all adult content from its platform and said any user who was hurt by the decision could simply migrate to another site. But creators and readers alike don’t believe there’s another website that fosters the same kind of sex-positive spaces that Tumblr has. It’s as though Tumblr CEO Jeff D’Onofrio has failed to understand his own platform, how unique these communities are to Tumblr, and how unlikely it is for them to survive beyond the shutdown.
“Sex wasn’t this separate, shameful thing. Tumblr allowed it to exist right next to every other facet of our messy, millennial experience,” says Vex Ashley, who runs the blog Vextape that’s inspired by her work as a cam model and making DIY porn. “We shared it, discussed it, debated it, and curated it.” Porn, she says, was as appropriate on Tumblr as song lyrics.
Tumblr is home to a myriad of sex-positive and body-positive blogs, in additional to indie porn blogs and curated archives that provide something not found on Pornhub, YouPorn, or any of the other mainstream adult portals. It’s also been relatively unique among social media sites for allowing nudity and sexually explicit content to be posted. Most sites, like Facebook and Instagram, prohibit nudity and regularly remove posts that are flagged. With Tumblr gone from the equation, creators and readers fear their hubs of sex-positive and body-positive content will vanish.
“There is a lot of value in being able to share images of and information about sexuality. This change will erase years of content from countless Tumblr users,” says the anonymous author behind Bijouworld, which curates photos of vintage gay porn, old magazine covers, and newspaper clippings. They believe that other blogs focused on the history of erotica will also suffer. “This was a good spot for us all to exchange and combine our info and knowledge, so I hope we can find a new way to do that.”
Bijou Classics, the gay adult company behind the blog, also posts regularly to Pornhub and maintains an extensive web presence across multiple platforms that allow adult content. But Tumblr, the blogger says, filled a void when the company wanted to explore the archival and historical aspects of gay porn.
“I do think Tumblr is unique … [it] was one of the few platforms that is broadly open to the public where we could share explicit photos in any sort of organized fashion.” The anonymous person behind the blog says that since 2011, Bijou Classics has “used our Tumblr presence to post images from our archives, written blogs, trivia, and more.” The purpose is to “keep information circulating about the history and evolution of erotica and gay culture.”
Many sexuality blog authors don’t see a way forward without Tumblr. That includes lawyer and journalist Maddie Holden, who runs Critique My Dick Pic, a blog that’s received attention from sites including The Hairpin, Jezebel, and The Daily Dot.
Holden takes a media that’s often considered a nuisance to receive and approaches it satirically as an art form, going in depth about the shadows and positioning of each photo. She ends her reviews with: “thank you for submitting to critique my dick pic” and a grade ranging from A to F. The latest lyrical review of a dick in the shower, posted on November 30th, reads, “your photo is certainly not coy but it avoids being dick-centric, and apart from minor flares of distraction — a green towel in the bottom-left corner and a blue razor in the windowsill — the background is uncluttered and effective.”
Critique My Dick Pic has been described by its followers as “hilarious and useful,” says Holden. She says a trans woman recently told her that the trans-inclusive nature of the blog factored into helping her decide to come out and transition.
The blog has been around since 2013, but Holden says she’s not sure if she’ll move to another platform after Tumblr hides her content from public view on December 17th. Holden tells The Verge, “I mean, it will be the end of the blog as far as I can tell. I receive a portion of my income from CDMP, which will end, and the site has been pretty beloved for years now, so it’s a shame for its followers.”
The operator of another quirky, body-positive blog, called Things My Dick Does, says he plans to keep his Tumblr open after the ban, but only to share safe-for-work posts to keep in touch with his readers.
Started by an anonymous man in 2015, the blog’s creator draws mustaches and smiley faces on his dick, often placing props around it in amusing situations. He tells The Verge, “I know it’s a silly dick blog, but I’ve gotten to know some pretty amazing people through here. (My girlfriend included!)” He says that as he continued to post pics of his dick sipping coffee, dressed as Batman, or just smiling cheerily, he received positive feedback and even had a woman reach out to him because they lived in the same city. She later became his girlfriend. “People say they’ve overcome some serious rough spots in their lives because of the laughs I brought them.”
The man says he can migrate to other platforms, but his presence on YouTube and Instagram is distinctly different. It’s covered up and less NSFW, obscuring the very quality of his blog that disarmed audiences — a charming, dressed-up dick that more resembled a cartoon than graphic porn. “It’s definitely a loss to the adult content creators out there,” the man behind Things My Dick Does says. “Seems like it’s getting more and more difficult to express yourself.”
There just isn’t anywhere else to go. Other than Tumblr, there aren’t many mainstream, well-acknowledged platforms that allow unique adult communities to grow. Facebook and Instagram both prohibit sexual content and nudity; Twitter allows it, but it’s not exactly known for its positive, supportive communities.
Ashley, who runs the curated, often DIY porn blog, explains that Tumblr was a livelihood and a home for people who didn’t necessarily conform to mainstream porn sites’ ideas of what is sexy. “As our lives move increasingly online, spaces that are safe for sex are becoming smaller and smaller,” she says, in words that are now published on Medium. “If we continue to push our depictions of sexuality into the shadows, we allow them to continue to be defined and co-opted by the status quo — whatever is on the first page of a porn tube site.”
Grindr’s director of communications Landen Rafe Zumwalt has stepped down. (LandenRafe/Twitter)
Grindr’s director of communications has resigned from his role, seemingly in response to the dating app’s president saying he believes that marriage is between a man and a woman.
Landen Rafe Zumwalt, who is gay, published a post on Medium on December 7, explaining that he was stepping down from his position at Grindr with “great sadness.”
Zumwalt does not name Grindr president Scott Chen in his statement, but his blog post appears to be in response to Chen posting on Facebook that he agrees marriage should be “between a man and a woman.”
Grindr’s head of communications: “I refuse to compromise my own values”
Zumwalt writes: “As an out and proud gay man madly in love with a man I don’t deserve, I refused to compromise my own values or professional integrity to defend a statement that goes against everything I am and everything I believe.
“While that resulted in my time at Grindr being cut short, I have absolutely no regrets. And neither should you.”
“As an out and proud gay man madly in love with a man I don’t deserve, I refused to compromise my own values or professional integrity to defend a statement that goes against everything I am.”
— Landen Rafe Zumwalt
Zumwalt also tweeted with a link to his blog post on December 7: “Today, I submitted my official resignation as @Grindr’s head of communications. My full statement is here.”
PinkNews has contacted Zumwalt .
25 Must Have Gadgets That Are Selling Out This Holiday Season
These 25 mind-blowing products are flying off the shelves! #2 is about to sell out
Ad by Weekly Penny
A Grindr spokesperson told PinkNews: “As Landen shared in his Medium post, he has resigned from his position at Grindr. We wish him the best in his future endeavors and appreciate his contributions to the company and the Grindr community.”
On November 30, it was reported that Chen posted on Facebook that he believes marriage is between a man and a woman.
The head of the gay dating app, who is married to a woman, wrote on Facebook: “There are people who believe that marriage is a holy matrimony between a man and a woman. I agree, but that’s none of our business.”
Grindr president Scott Chen sparked outrage with his Facebook post. (scott chen/facebook)
In the post—which was reported by Grindr-owned publication INTO—Chen continued: “There are also people who believe that the purpose of marriage is to create children that carry their DNA. That’s also none of our business.
“There are people who are simply different from you, who desperately want to get married. They have their own reasons. Getting married is a personal issue.”
He added that he wished people wouldn’t donate to anti-LGBTQ causes and instead “donate your money to places which are in dire hunger, poverty, or suffering from war,” asking: “Why spend all that money to stop people who love each other from getting married? Aren’t there more important things in life?”
He concluded: “I’ll never buy HTC products ever again, and I’ll never donate a cent to any Christian groups in Taiwan!”
Facebook released a new set of community guidelines this week centered around ‘sexual solicitation’. The guidelines specifically harm LGBTI users, by disallowing them from discussing their identities.
In justifying the new community guidelines, Facebook wrote in its policy rationale that the discussion of drawing ‘attention to sexual violence and exploitation’ is important, but it wants to ‘draw the line’ at content encouraging or coordinating ‘sexual encounters between adults’.
The rationale for the new rules | Photo: Facebook
The community guidelines then go on to detail what kind of content users are no longer allowed to post.
Some of this banned content includes mentioning ‘sexual preference/sexual partner preference’ and ‘commonly sexualised areas of the body such as the breasts, groin or buttocks’.
Further, these standards apply to all of the companies Facebook owns, including Instagram and Facebook Messenger.
‘For example, on Messenger, when you send a photo, our automated systems scan it using photo matching technology to detect known child exploitation imagery or when you send a link, we scan it for malware or viruses,’ a spokesperson told Bloomberg.
What people are saying
People are upset at social media companies’ decision to start censoring such content for numerous reasons. While drawing a hard line on exploitative content is good, blanket censoring harms marginalized groups like LGBTI people.
Users are taking to Twitter and elsewhere to express their discontent. Making rules like these both continue to take away spaces for LGBTI users, as well as equate LGBTI identities with harmful sexual content.
A university in New Jersey, USA, has decided that a Chick-fil-A restaurant will not be built on campus because of the chain’s anti-LGBT+ views.
Students at Rider University reportedly voted for the Chick-fil-A branch as their top choice for a new food outlet on campus in a poll in spring.
However, in an open letter to students, the university’s president and vice-president said that Chick-fil-A had been removed from the list of options for the new campus restaurant because of its poor record on LGBT+ issues.“Although it was included in previous surveys, Chick-fil-A was removed as one of the options based on the company’s record widely perceived to be in opposition to the LGBTQ+ community,” said president Gregory Dell’Omo and vice-president for student affairs Leanna Fenneberg.
“That decision required a difficult assessment of competing interests.
“We sought to be thoughtful and fair in balancing the desire to provide satisfying options for a new on-campus restaurant while also being faithful to our values of inclusion.”
Rider University has issued a letter saying that a Chick-fil-A outlet will not be built on campus. (Rider University/Facebook)
Chick-fil-A denied that the company is against LGBT+ people.
“Chick-fil-A was removed as one of the options based on the company’s record widely perceived to be in opposition to the LGBTQ+ community.”
—Rider University
In a statement to WIVB, a Chick-fil-A spokesperson said: “Chick-fil-A is a restaurant company focused on food, service and hospitality, and our restaurants and licensed locations on college campuses welcome everyone.
“We have no policy of discrimination against any group, and we do not have a political or social agenda.”
Chick-fil-A has previously been criticised for donating large sums of money to anti-LGBT+ groups and opposing equal marriage,
In 2012, it emerged that Chick-fil-A had donated millions of dollars to anti-gay groups, including the Family Research Council, ‘gay cure’ group Exodus International and Focus on the Family.
CEO Dan Cathy later confirmed the company was opposed to marriage equality and “guilty as charged” for backing “the biblical definition of a family.”
Cathy told Baptist Press at the time: “We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that.”
In June, Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, came under fire for supporting fast food chain Chick-fil-A.
Dorsey had tweeted a payment that he made to the restaurant using Square, a mobile payment service he owns.
In April last year, students at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh protested the arrival of a Chick-fil-A branch on campus.
Student senator Niko Martini told The Duquesne Duke: “Chick-fil-A has a questionable history on civil rights and human rights.
“I think it’s imperative [that] the university chooses to do business with organisations that coincide with the [university’s] mission and expectations they give students regarding diversity and inclusion.”
Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equalirt Index takes the ethical guesswork out of Black Friday.
As quickly as Thanksgiving comes and leaves us stuffed and merry, the madness of Black Friday descends upon us. There’s nothing quite as American as the gluttony of Black Friday. With the objective being getting as many deals, deals, deals as possible, it can be easy to forget to consider where one’s dollar is going. Who’s corporate pockets are we fattening?
Every year, Human Rights Campaign releases a Buyers Guide index to hundreds of Fortune 500 companies. The guide assesses whether the companies are committed to LGBTQ-inclusive workplace practices and policies.
“Our annual Buying for Workplace Equality guide provides quick, user-friendly help in selecting everything from groceries to cars, allowing fair-minded consumers to use their wallets to resist attacks on the LGBTQ community by supporting brands committed to fully inclusive workplaces,” said Deena Fidas, Director of HRC Foundation’s Workplace Equality Program. “ Every year we hear from members of the LGBTQ community and many other consumers who want to choose brands that align with their priorities of workplace fairness. Using the Buying for Workplace Equality guide this holiday season helps ensure that their dollars go to businesses that support equality.”
The Buying for Workplace Equality guide sorts businesses by sectors, assigning them a score ranging from zero to 100 based on LGBTQ workplace equality, as measured by HRC’s annual Corporate Equality Index and HRC-researched data.
Here’s a look at the top and bottom ranking companies in each of the 19 categories, with 100 being the highest score and 0 being the lowest. For more information and the full catalogue, visit www.hrc.org/apps/buyersguide.
You can now report Twitter users for targeted deadnaming and misgendering.
Twitter updated its Terms of Service last night (23 November) to protect trans people from online abuse.
The new protection comes under the heading: ‘Repeated and/or non-consensual slurs, epithets, racist and sexist tropes or other content that degrades someone.’
It continues: ‘We prohibit targeting individuals with repeated slurs, tropes or other content that intends to dehumanize, degrade or reinforce negative or harmful steroetypes about a protected category.
‘This includes targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals,’ it said.
Targeted misgendering is the process of deliberately using the wrong pronouns when addressing someone. While targeted deadnaming is deliberately using the birth name of someone who has legally changed their name to affirm their identity.
Twitter users can report these slurs by using the ‘It’s abusive or harmful’ option, then ‘Includes targeted harassment’ or ‘It directs hate against a protected category’.
Transgender advocates took to Twitter to commend Twitter for protecting trans people against online abuse.
One Twitter user wrote: ‘GOOD. It’s about time.’
Another tweeted: ‘A nice thing for Friday.’
Another wrote: ‘If we are going to have rules against harassment, these updated rules makes sense.’
Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos has reportedly donated $10,000 to a notorious anti-LGBTI politician.
Bezos and his wife Mackenzie donated a combined total of $10,800 to Republican Senator Cory Gardner. They individually donated $5,400 each, which is the maximum amount allowed for individual donors in Colorado.
The couple donated to Gardner’s 2020 reelection fund in September this year, according to CNBC.
Gardner from Colorado has a long history of anti-LGBTI voting. In 2006, he voted no to allowing same-sex couples to adopt and has long voted against same-sex couples right to marry.
Bezo wasn’t the only Amazon employee to donate to Gardner’s reelection campaign.
Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky, Amazon Worldwide Consumer CEO Jeffrey Wilkie and Senior Vice Presidents David Clark and Doug Herrington all donated $5,400. Other Amazon employees donated smaller amounts of money.
Bezos, his wife and Amazon have long supported LGBTI causes, so it’s unclear why they would donate to a politician with an anti-LGBTI history.
Last year, Human Rights Campaign gave Bezos its Equality Award for his ‘outstanding efforts of those who publicly stand up for the LGBTQ community, committing their time and energy to improve the lives of LGBTQ people’.
CNBC noted Gardner has co-sponsored a number of Amazon supported bills. The company also spent millions of dollars on Gardner’s DIGIT Act. The Act would create an Internet of Things working group in the Commerce Department.
We, the undersigned businesses, stand with the millions of people in America who identify as transgender, gender non-binary, or intersex, and call for all such people to be treated with the respect and dignity everyone deserves.
We oppose any administrative and legislative efforts to erase transgender protections through reinterpretation of existing laws and regulations. We also fundamentally oppose any policy or regulation that violates the privacy rights of those that identify as transgender, gender non-binary, or intersex.
In the last two decades, dozens of federal courts have affirmed the rights and identities of transgender people. Cognizant of growing medical and scientific consensus, courts have recognized that policies that force people into a binary gender definition determined by birth anatomy fail to reflect the complex realities of gender identity and human biology.
Recognizing that diversity and inclusion are good for business, and that discrimination imposes enormous productivity costs (and exerts undue burdens), hundreds of companies, including the undersigned, have continued to expand inclusion for transgender people across corporate America. Currently more than 80 percent of the Fortune 500 have clear gender identity protections; two-thirds have transgender-inclusive healthcare coverage; hundreds have LGBTQ+ and Allies business resource groups and internal training efforts.
Transgender people are our beloved family members and friends, and our valued team members. What harms transgender people harms our companies.
We call for respect and transparency in policy-making, and for equality under the law for transgender people.
Accenture
Adobe Systems Inc.
Airbnb
Altria Group
Amalgamated Bank
Amazon
American Airlines
Apple
Automatic Data Processing Inc. (ADP)
Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Ben & Jerry’s Homemade
BNY Mellon
Cargill
Cisco Systems Inc.
Citi
Clifford Chance
The Coca Cola Company
Corning Incorporated
Corteva Agriscience™, the Agriculture Division of DowDuPont
The Dow Chemical Company
Deutsche Bank
E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company
Facebook
Fastly, Inc.
Google
Hogan Lovells International LLP
HSBC
IBM Corporation
Intel Corporation
Intuit Inc.
Iron Mountain
JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Levi Strauss & Co.
LinkedIn
Lush Handmade Cosmetics
Lyft
Marriott International
MassMutual
MGM Resorts International
Microsoft Corp.
Nike, Inc.
PepsiCo
Replacements, Ltd.
Ropes & Gray
Royal Bank of Canada
S&P Global
Salesforce
Sheppard Mullin
Sodexo Inc.
Splunk
State Street Corporation
TiVo Corporation
Trillium Asset Management
Twitter Inc.
Uber
Warby Parker
The new owners of OUT Magazine and The Advocate, two major LGBTI publications, allegedly donated money to anti-gay politicians.
Women’s Wear Daily (WWD) reports that step brothers Adam Levin and Maxx Abramowitz bought the two publications, under the umbrella of PRIDE Media, back in September. The brothers are the founders of Oreva Capital, a private equity firm, as well.
In addition to PRIDE Media, Levin and Abramowitz are also, respectively, the CEO and lead investor of the High Times Magazine parent company, High Times Holdings.
WWD found that Levin has donated money to numerous Republican politicians with anti-LGBTI agendas. For instance, supporting religiously-based discrimination. These politicians include Devin Nunes, Dean Heller, and Josh Mandel.
Additionally, the brothers support Dana Rohrabacher, a Republican lawmaker who earlier this year said it’s okay for realtors to refuse selling homes to gay people. High Times Magazine praised Rohrabacher on this year’s list of cannabis supporters.
‘Adam is a staunch supporter of pro-Israel, pro-cannabis and LGBT issues and consistently works across the political spectrum to ensure he’s advocating effectively on behalf of each of these communities,’ a PRIDE spokesperson told WWD of Levin’s political contributions.
Levin himself spoke to San Diego Gay & Lesbian News (SDGLN) following the publication of the WWD article.
Levin, a straight man, blamed the bad press coverage on ‘a fired employee who was upset.’
He pointed out that he has also donated to Democratic politicians. These politicians include Adam Schiff, Gavin Newson, Jon Chiang, and Dan Adler.
According to the author of the SDGLN piece, the openly gay CEO of PRIDE Media, Nathan Coyle, said Levin will be more careful about who he donates to in the future.
‘I can’t imagine someone rationally thinking this but obviously people believe what they read,’ Levin said of the WWD piece and the following backlash. ‘And this has been hurtful and led to both my brother and I receiving hate mail and personal attacks.’
