How to Survive a Queer Kink Libricide
As Steam and Itch.io join the mass purge of LGBTQ content, we must document our past and ensure a shared future.
In the middle of the night on July 24th, indie game distributor Itch.io quietly delisted all NSFW games from its site. Any game on the platform that has been tagged as containing objectionable or adult content (which, to be clear, is a huge segment of the site’s library) is no longer findable on search, and reportedly, some NSFW games have already been completely deleted from the platform, and even removed from the libraries of users who have purchased them.
This mass erasure of predominately queer erotic art comes thanks to the efforts of Collective Shout, an Australia-based anti-porn, trans-exclusionary group that also recently succeeded in getting nearly all NSFW content removed from the most popular and widely-used PC gaming platform, Steam.
To mount their attack on erotic content on Itch.io, Collective Shout turned its focus on a game called No Mercy, which featured themes on non-consensual sex and incest. In their rhetoric more generally, Collective Shout often highlights the NSFW games with material that the public is most likely to find discomfiting — depictions of sexual assault, abuse, “paraphilias,” and hard kinks.
Though things like rape and abuse are real elements of life that many artists have personal experience with and feel moved to include in their work, anti-porn advocacy groups like Collective Shout use the public’s unease with such material as a wedge, driving forward the argument that certain subjects are simply too perverse to be acknowledged, even in fiction. (Keep in mind that a large number of the games listed on Itch.io are simply rule books for tabletop role-playing games — literally, tools for playing pretend with your friends).
Once the public has bought into the idea that merely talking about or imagining sexual violence is as dangerous as sexual violence itself, it’s not much of a logical jump to claim that ever talking or writing about sex is the same thing as sexually exposing children — and therefore demanding that all material that’s even remotely sexually suggestive be hidden, to protect the impressionable and traumatized.
Unfortunately, the rampant spread of harsh sexual content bans across the internet and the rise of Puritanical homophobia has primed many people to treat sex as exceptional, so loaded with unspeakable power that merely mentioning it can do harm. And under this worldview, queerness is seen as more inherently sexual than straightness and cisgenderism, because being queer requires that you think about and question sexual norms a whole lot, rather than just silently taking society’s rules for granted.
Mourning Porn on Imgur, Mourning Trans & Kinky History
Porn isn’t frivolous or dangerous. It’s essential to understanding art, history, and human liberation.devonprice.medium.com
Make no mistake, categorizing any and all pro-queer and pro-trans content as NSFW and getting it removed from the internet is Collective Shout’s next step, and it has been the goal for many of the reactionary groups that have pushed to see queer content scrubbed from public schools, national television, and all major social media platforms. And this push comes at a time when numerous online platforms — both “adult” ones like Grindr and general ones like Reddit— are beginning to require users to submit photo ID and proof of their legal age and identity in order to be able to access their sites.
Given how dangerous being openly queer has rapidly become, asking all social media users to hand over personally identifying information before they can explore or express their queerness is quite the menacing development, indeed.
The writing has been on the wall for years, but now it’s in the boldest of fonts: if there is porn that you like, games with even remotely adult or queer content that you enjoy, queer art you appreciate that features nudity or discussions of bodies, works of fiction that you love that features controversial subjects or themes, or any queer historical records that you think should continue existing, now is the time to build an archive of them. If you are panicked by the growing libricide of LGBTQ and NSFW records from the internet, this is one very impactful thing that you can do right now to help.
Download the files, store them on an encrypted drive, upload them to a protected server, and communicate with other lovers of sexual art and queer records, so that you can help build a library of it that is accessible to us, and those that come after us in the future. If you have the capability, keep meticulous records of what you have collected — where you found it, who originally made it, what year it comes from, the spaces and communities it was associated with, the names of the people who brought it into existence.
As the burning of the Hirschfeld archives and the catastrophic losses of the AIDs crisis taught us, queer history evaporates quickly when there is no one around to keep circulating it. But you can be a part of what keeps our stories flowing, the blood moving through us that keeps us animated and alive. And you do not have to be a trained historian or especially skillful with technology, though now is also a wonderful time to learn how to be a better archivist. Just begin doing something. Save and document all that you can — in a private space that you control, and that technology companies cannot purge.
It is also important at this time to understand how LGBTQ content bans happen on a tactical level, and resist in kind. Collective Shout pressures platforms into removing NSFW content by contacting payment processors, such as Visa and MasterCard, and convincing those companies to not process any transactions involving sexual works. Collective Shout claims that it only took about a thousand phone calls to get the companies to enforce a NSFW ban. We can also call them in large numbers, and demand that adult & queer content gets put back.
If a game that you paid good money for on Steam or Itch.io has been removed in the NSFW ban, you have grounds to demand a refund. Give your payment processor a call, make a complaint, and get them to issue you a charge back. This may help place pressure on both payment processing companies and game platforms to revise their policies.
It is also important during this time to study the recent history of LGBTQ & NSFW censorship on the internet, and learn from communities that have been able to resist it successfully. One of the very first groups to be targeted by efforts like these was actually the hypnosis kink community, back in the late ’90s and early 2000s. During that time, an avid porn site user reportedly disputed hundreds of dollars in charges, alleging that he had been hypnotized into giving his credit card information away against his will. To avoid future such cases, payment processors like Visa and Mastercard refused to honor any transactions for any content involving hypnosis or mind control, and this has remained their policy ever since.
The Surprising Origins of the OnlyFans Sexual Content Ban
The site’s failed attempt at censorship has much deeper, more nefarious origins than you might think.devonprice.medium.com
Decades before the Tumblr porn ban, long before Imgur removed decades’ worth of queer archival work by deleting all images from anonymous accounts, hypnosis kink content was already banned on any porn site, and it was impossible to use a Visa or Mastercard to purchase any videos, illustrations, or works of fiction with erotic hypnosis or mind-control themes. Hypnosis has remained forbidden everywhere from Onlyfans to Patreon.
(And now, even many of the news articles about this ban have been scrubbed from the internet. Check out the archived writing of Ana Valens here, who has been blowing the whistle on Collective Shout and homophobic digital censorship for a long time, and has been harshly pilloried for it. If you believe in her work, consider offering some financial support on Substack so she can keep it going).
In spite of harsh repression at the hands of credit card companies and digital platforms, the hypnokink community has continued to thrive, and even grown in popularity and public acceptance in recent years. As many of you know, I am a long-term member of this diverse & queer-affirming community — I spent all of last weekend at an in-person erotic hypnosis convention, which I blogged all about on Instagram — so I know a bit about how we have managed to cope with being attacked and have come out stronger and healthier than we were before.
I think that any of us who are concerned by the stripping of queer and sexual content from the internet can learn from how the hypnokink community has responded to similar censorship over the years, and adopt some of their strategies.
One of the first things that the hypno-kink community learned once it was under attack was not to self-snitch. When we got banned from mainstream porn sites, we found the seedy, poorly regulated platforms that were not as likely to enforce payment processors’ ban on hypnosis content. On sites like Pornhub and Patreon, we learned to use terms like mesmerized and other euphemisms instead of hypnosis or mind control, or to merely reference media properties where hypnosis is featured without saying it outright.
We became data hoarders, snapping up copies of every porn video, erotic audio file, animated gif, and illustration featuring hypnosis that we could find, and then sharing it on forums with our fellow fetishists. We learned to make and share our work in private — in chat rooms, on password-protected servers — and began hosting hypnotic content on shared drives and websites we didn’t widely advertise.
Some members of our community built their own platforms for hosting hypnotic-themed works, such as the excellent fiction site Read Only Mind, and developed tools that helped hypnokinksters remain connected to partners from afar, such as DreamyChat and WriteforMe. We launched Discord servers and Telegram groups, and monitored and restricted them ourselves. We gatekept, when it was necessary, so that the only people who could find us had an earnest interest in the safe practice of hypnosis. We didn’t rely upon social media companies or legacy media. We launched small spaces that were entirely our own.
Rather than allowing outside groups to censor us, we took community responsibility for maintaining standards of consent and safety, and gave no quarter to predators. At conventions, we require attendees to complete consent quizzes, and provided dungeons with consent monitors. We offer classes on consent, safety, and developing agency as a hypnotic subject. Many of our events ban the use of substances and require COVID vaccinations and KN95 masks in order to reduce risk. We continually debate how best to navigate riskier kink practices and negotiate encounters with one another.
When hypnosis files come out that have no clear provenance, and contain really extreme language and really scarily effective triggers, such as the infamous Bambi Sleep files, we put out the warning and discourage people from playing hastily. We have made it a community norm to include content warnings and safeties in the majority of our hypnotic files, so that no one absorbs any unwanted lasting effects. We call out cults of personality and maintain an acute awareness of the power dynamics that emerge when a person forms a parasocial connection to a hypnotic file maker, or when two members of a couple role-play at being Master and slave for a long time.
When a cornerstone of the European hypnokink conference scene (and a developer of one of the most popular spiral-generating websites) was outed as an abuser, the majority of us took it seriously, ousted him from our spaces, and repeatedly warned others. We built alternative resources, like s.piral.me, which allows users to gaze at spirals and subliminals and listen to their favorite hypnotic audios without supporting a predator. Some of our local scenes have offered a safe haven for his victims, and believing victims has long been our community norm.
(We’ve also been willing to discuss limitations of simple rules of thumb such as “believe victims” — because many of us have seen how vague, unsubstantiated accusations of harm can be brought forward to socially dispose of marginalized group members, particularly people of color and trans women. We’re an analytical bunch, and take nothing as simply and universally true — an inability to ever stop thinking and questioning is probably why we’re all so desperate to get hypnotized).
We have continued gathering in person, and in small virtual conferences, because there are conversations about our shared passion that require an in-depth conversation among people who are at a higher level of understanding. We discuss more complex, nuanced topics in rooms where people are prepared to have them, and we understand that every rule has the power to cause exclusion and damage — and appreciate that even the best guidelines need to be broken sometimes. (For example, plenty of people still benefit from using substances for their mental health, even at a “substance-free” con).
Because the kink we are playing with can be psychologically very risky, we emphasize the importance of being in community with one another and vetting play partners, and speak about our experiences so that we can better understand what we’re going through and what we need. We do what we can to unlearn our shame and stigma, and to bring our feelings and needs out into the open — but not in front of corporations and social media platforms that will only punish and censor us.
We come out to one another, and commune to build better art, more responsible and effective hypnotic files, to write hotter smut, to have better scenes, to be able to play at the edges of consent and consciousness with intention and responsibility. This does not erase all of the risk, but it allows us to be informed of it, and to accept what difficulties and costs we take on. Nearly everyone finishes a scene by asking who needs aftercare. We prepare for the emotional drops of having seen and experienced intense shit — and for the most part, we are grateful that we get to dive with such strong parachutes.
It is this combination of privacy, technological shrewdness, dedicated archival and resource-building work, and loving community responsibility that has made us robust. Though so many outside forces have attempted to silence us and portray us as a group of perverted predators, we’ve continued spreading the truth about who we are and helping people who share our desires to find one another, and revel in our passions as safely as we can.
When I was first admitting to myself that I had a fetish for hypnosis, it was still a largely unheard-of fetish that I found profoundly embarrassing and cringey. I told very few people that I was into hypnosis because I was so ashamed of myself, and felt certain I’d never be able to make it a genuine part of my life. I played only with strangers that I met on the internet, and didn’t have any protections or social support when anything in those relationships went awry. Like all queer people who didn’t get to find information about themselves, I was internally conflicted and lost.
Today, hypnosis kink’s stock is way up, with lots of other queer communities are curious about us rather than scared of us. Pup players, bimbos, bondage fanatics, tantric sex practitioners, psychedelics users, furries, and robot-fuckers all embrace hypnosis as a legitimate erotic practice, and hypnosis 101 courses at dungeons are regularly filled from wall to wall.
We have escaped the fear mongering and corporate pressure, and made something completely our own. All queer people and all makers of sexual or erotic art can do the same. We will get through this, but we will have to be more than just passive consumers of content.
We will have to become archivists, librarians, developers, community stewards, consent monitors, peer educators, advocates, organizers, and creators in our own right. And we can do it. Queer people have been producing creative work about our identities and inner erotic lives for as long as we have existed, and we have always been able to find one another in the back rooms of bars, in small bookstores in cities, in veiled language in personal ads, and everywhere else that we have tricked our enemies into not looking.
Today, I flag my kink on my neck, in honor of all those who cannot live in the open. I spent the past weekend catching up with friends that I’ve chatted with online for nearly a decade, but whom I rarely get to see, kindling new connections with dollification aficionados and passionate kink educators, and joining alongside fellow drones in a rubbery, blank embrace.
This crazy, inimitable life of mine was made possible through the early hypnokink websites of the early nineties, like WarpMyMind.com, which first taught me that I was not alone, digital communities like Hypbook and Sleepychat, which allowed an early version of my current hypnokinky social network to form, and thanks to the ongoing efforts every single person who goes to a convention, transcribes an audio file, or shares an old clip of mind control porn.
I want everyone to experience the exhilaration and confidence that finding such spaces has brought me. But I know that what we’ve made is precious, and it’s under attack. And so, while I can’t exactly blow up every private hypnokink spot, I leave breadcrumbs for the people like me who are still a bit lost and trying to find their way to their own special enclave of queer freedom.
If you happen to be lost like that, the thing I would most encourage you to do is to find your way to participate in and contribute to kinky queer spaces and their history. Come forward, seeking not only to find a partner, get laid, or make tons of money selling content, but to contribute to something larger than you that makes it possible for you to connect at all.
We will always be here, making beautiful things in the shadows together. No corporation, or censor, or pearl-clutching advertiser or advocacy group will ever be able to stop that.
If you enjoyed this piece, I recommend checking out Not Safe For Who? by Ana Valens:
And here are some of my favorite porn games currently still available on Itch.io:
ithinktherefore - text hypnosis session
A 20 minute, 18+ text hypnosis session about your mind being erased. Available for Windows, macOS, Linuxsleepingirl.itch.io
Nyx Goddess Games
Nyx Goddess Games may contain content you must be 18+ to view. The account has specified that it contains mature themes…nyxgaming.itch.io
The Tearoom
historical public bathroom simulator. Available for Windows, macOS, Linuxradiatoryang.itch.io