Open Letter to Patreon

Wow - what a mess!
I am absolutely appalled at how you handled this (most recent) censorship debacle, Patreon.

• Suspending so many accounts and not having nearly enough staff to deal with the fallout. Shoddiness.
• Non-specific, evasive answers to direct questions regarding censorship. Unhelpful shoddiness.
• Lack of transparency, ridiculous in its intensity. There is a huge wall up around Patreon. You have all hunkered down to weather the Paypal storm and were clearly given talking points to not admit to anything, just keep repeating the mantra that the 'guidelines have not changed'. Evasive, unhelpful shoddiness.
• You are being completely disingenuous and misleading when you say the guidelines have not changed. That’s BS and you damn well know it. Interpretation and enforcement of the guidelines has absolutely changed, and that’s the same thing. Duplicitous, evasive, unhelpful shoddiness.

I asked about the Paypal censorship issue before I ever signed up (May of 2016) and was reassured that you’d reached an agreement with them regarding adult content creators. I guess they decided to not uphold the ‘agreement’ you thought you had with them. That must suck for you.

In a way, it’s like a domino effect. When you took Paypal on as a payment processor – they were not transparent with you, and you weren’t happy about it but decided to go with the decision anyway. (Yes, I still have the email.) But what happened? You were lulled into a false sense of security (likely until the money changing hands became very significant, because that’s their pattern) and now they have pulled the rug out from under you and given you new rules to play by. That must feel pretty bad. Like you were duped.

I know how it feels.

You were not transparent with us Adult Content Creators, either. Your guidelines were the epitome of vague, despite repeated requests to clarify them. We got comfortable here, made you a bunch of money, and now you are jerking the rug out from under us, which most definitely feels bad. I, for one, certainly feel duped.

Patreon was fine with the links to my blog I put up from day one, and then all of a sudden the reach of their censorship supposedly extends beyond my Patreon page to my blog? Oh HELL, no. To me that is laughable. I am so proud of that blog. I wouldn’t change a word of it. I wouldn’t take down one picture. Yes, the curated pictures off the internet with attributions that Patreon (Oh, sorry – Paypal) has now decided to call ‘porn’.

You can call it whatever you like and ascribe shame-filled undesirable qualities to it, but that blog is a large part of why I have patrons. Part education and part arousal. That’s how sex works, you know – the arousal component? We don’t go to bed with clinical charts and graphs and expect to find sexual satisfaction.

You never did answer my question about how I can be a sex educator without sexualizing content. Isn’t that the point? To help people find more excitement, more confidence and less shame around their sexuality? There is so much sex-negative shaming going on right now in this country. You have apparently decided that you are going to be a party to it for the sake of the all-mighty dollar.

Jack and Wyatt, you aren’t fighting for us adult content creators, so please don’t lie. If you were before, you have now clearly caved and are throwing us under the bus. You are doing as Paypal dictates because you feel like you have to. Would be nice if you could at least tell us the truth, that this is flat-out puritanical sex-negative censorship from the big banks, and you have chosen to play their game. Congratulations.

So what now? I have censored my page to within a shadow of its former self. I have taken down all but the most bland content, and may pare it down even further. Why? Because you are now a glorified payment processor to me. That is the only purpose you serve. Why would I put creative content up to drive traffic to Patreon when my page is unsearchable to begin with and I have been censored so harshly? There is NO benefit there for me. None. The trust is gone. You handle my payments, that’s it. You are a necessary evil.

Some days, I dream of someone like Branson coming in, telling the big banks to go take a hike, and setting up a sex-positive and uncensored payment processing system for adult content. There's so much money to be made, and we are being treated so unfairly. One can dream.

*****