By David Futrelle
Andrew Torba, who runs the Nazi-friendly “free speech” site Gab, is not exactly a big fan of porn. He banned porn from his platform back in July and regularly inveighs against “coomers” — chanspeak for porn addicts — on his much larger competitor Twitter.
But now he’s taking his anti-porn crusade to a new level. In a series of tweets over the past few days he called for a “cultural revolution against porn” and “unity against lust” as well as stringent new governmental restrictions on porn sites.
He threw in a little antisemitism to sweeten the deal:
He also hopes that all the semen conserved by penis-havers who give up porn could be repurposed to produce more white — sorry, Western — babies
Torba clearly thinks that jumping on board the NoFap(TM) train will bring his platform more traffic, and has said as much in a number of tweets, boasting that Gab has picked up more than 100,000 new users since the porn ban in July — including 4000 over the weekend.
Of course, there’s no way of knowing how much of this has anything to do with Torba’s stance on porn. And the initial social media reaction to Torba’s newly expanded anti-porn crusade has been, well, just a teensy bit negative amongst those who otherwise might be some of Gab’s biggest defenders.
He’s also lost the support of some far-right YouTubers, among them the frequently shirtless Styxhexenhammer666 and video game ranter The Quaterting, who has removed himself from Gab.
Still, Torba has his defenders.
So it’s entirely possible that Torba’s escalated antiporn crusade could work to his benefit, garnering Gab many thousands of new users from NoFap world even as it alienates some fans and potential fans, and helps to fuel a cultural civil war between trad-right puritans and what game developer Rami Baker calls “The Anime Tiddie Right.”
As far as I’m concerned, anything that gets these idiots mad at each other is a blessing. So you go, Gab.
PS: That dog in the pic above really is something of a porn addict — and here’s the proof:
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So I guess they would think I’m the worst of the worst and probably call me live action porn or something. Not performance art. This is the kind of sexist thinking that is behind slut shaming which I’ve had enough of in my life. Enough.
I noticed that Gab is also catering to another new user base that happens to be anti porn: TERFs. A few months ago, M. K. Fain, a well-known TERF blogger started an offshoot of Gab called Spinster for the TERFs that are getting banned from Twitter. As you might expect, they very quickly allied with the Nazis at Gab and seem to be close friends now.
Curious if this had anything to do with Fain and friends.
This is PRECISELY among the reasons why I’ve been watching porn, to spite Catholics, Nazis and other misogynists, since they don’t actually care about women affected in porn, more that it’s “degenerate”. Unfortunately, I feel like that watching porn is causing me some different problems, which I don’t feel comfortable discussing; I’ve had to stop as a result. I’m currently seeing a therapist for this.
1. “A cultural revolution against porn”? Torba’s really trying to prove the horseshoe theory, isn’t he?
2. On a side note:
…until a kid finds his father’s gun and start playing with it. Or decides to show it to his friends. Or the father gets depressed and blows himself and his family away. Or his wife mistakes him for an intruder and shoots him. Or…
For a Freeze Peach™ portal, Gab sure is heavily censored.
It’s almost like this whole neofascism thing depends on it, in fact.
@PersonalPest
Or he’s pivoting from Nazism to Maoism.
I don’t really watch porn much, but I’ve been thinking I should watch more if it makes Nazis sad.
I also like the idea that I can enjoy what I do even more because I know it makes Nazis upset.
I think if people don’t find porn degenerate and don’t care about the women in porn, they probably hate how it exploits men especially financially. Sure, porn is generally free, but I guess some pay for certain services like live adult chat and premium content.
So do TERFs hate porn because they just hate men and want men to be unhappy, or do they hate sex itself?
Because I never see TERFs advocating for the health and safety of porn actresses, or supporting woman-owned porn studios, or suggesting that we address harmful tropes that are commonly represented in porn. Nothing that would actually address the actual problems that porn can cause for women.
A site that touts itself censorship-free specifically to please authoritarians is bound to do that sort of thing sooner or later.
@Definitely not Steve
TERFs are reactionaries first and feminists a distant second, if even.
It has nothing to do with morality/culture/degeneracy…these troglodytes equate porn with the Jews. Hitler did the same thing.
Take care of yourself RV97
I am for age verification myself, though not anti – erotica, and I suspect others among the commentariat feel similarly.
The government here, among its other recent bungled policies, tried to introduce it, but in so inept a way that you’d be forgiven for thinking they’d tried to lift the ‘Sex Enjoyment Tax’ idea from the film ‘Carry on Henry.’
To the Freeze Peach crowd: WHAT DID YOU THINK WAS GONNA HAPPEN?! THEY’RE NAZIS! HONEST-TO-BADNESS NAZIS! CENSORSHIP IS THEIR JAM! And you KNEW they were Nazis when you allied yourselves with them! It was inevitable that they were going to turn their attention to something you liked eventually!
I have to wonder why they call it porn addiction when it doesn’t fit a single criterion for addiction as described by the DSM-V. As far as I can tell, the so-called addicts are.just people who feel guilty about having a libido greater than what society says is normal…or those who simply would rather think with their dicks than with their heads. That’s not addiction, that’s just stupidity.
@Anonymous
Extreme cases do meet the criteria of addiction. Just like a video game addiction. The addict will put off sleep, food, water, and go outside the acceptable realms for viewing pornography until it becomes all they want to do is watch pornography. And by acceptable norms I mean at things like work, funerals, baby showers, church. Is this rare? yes just like people dying from gaming is rare but it does happen. And you forget one of those criteria is that it causes distress or impairment in one’s life.
Does the average person have a sever porn addiction? no probably not. But porn causes problems in intimacy, sexual arousal, it gives a lot of young people unrealistic and unhealthy ideas about sex.
Porn can also help with a lot of things. For example it can help rape survivors get comfortable with the idea of sexual attraction and the idea of sexual acts.
@rv97
A lot of Catholics watch porn unapologetically and without shame Rv97. Myself and my husband being two of them. There are also queer Catholics (myself). Catholics that have prematernal sex (ever young catholic not in a relationship I’ve ever met), Kinky Catholics, Feminist Catholics, and ever other type of catholic you can think of. It’s almost like Catholics are people and not equal to misogynist just because their Catholics. Though the idea of jerking off while saying “yeah take that Christianity” is disturbing to say the least. maybe get out a bit more and breath.
They do realise it’s the Internet, right? AKA the best pornography delivery system ever envisaged by humanity?
Blocking porn on Gab does precisely SFA to stop people viewing pornography, though sure, it’s fun to see them fighting amongst themselves. 🙂
Maybe I’m an abberation, but I’m pretty sure I would much, much rather stumble across a hidden stash of my (hypothetical) spouse’s porn than a concealed stockpile of knives and guns.
The former would be perhaps a little embarrassing. The latter would indicate that I needed to get out right now immediately and never ever come back.
I guess most TERFS also qualify as SWERFS (sex worker exclusionary). I don’t know if the Venn diagram is just a circle but I’ve yet to see one who isn’t the other. Though they are definitely separate problems.
I’m pretty sure you could destroy a family much more easily with guns and knives than with porn.
Who could have predicted this shocking development from the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party?
I wonder what fraction of those on this anti-porn crusade are secretly porn users, though.
I’m not sure that Strength Through Lack Of Joy is as compelling a pitch as they think it is…
Mahojo boasts of his “acidic demon cum,” which he says will “burn straight through” electric lines.This ejaculate sounds remarkably like that of jerrycan dan’s (David’s December 5, 2019, “field report”). It’s the latest fashion in ejaculate among the alt-right.
Guys, this is super impressive.
@Definitely Not Steve
I think the main reason TERFs oppose porn is because they, as others have mentioned, are also SWERFs and opposed to all sex work. They pretend to care about the women involved, but really they don’t. Instead, they go around being extremely patronizing and saying that the actresses can’t consent or are always suffering, and when some porn actress comes forward to say she likes her job they just attack her and say she’s brainwashed or traumatized. They have no respect for women’s own choices.
I’m pretty sure they know that decriminalization would make sex work safer, but they don’t want it to be safer. Like the radical right that they are very similar to, they want to hurt the people involved to “punish” them.
Oh, and they like to blame trans* women for porn. Because in a TERF’s mind, everything is the fault of trans* women.
There’s also a bit of antisemitism in a lot of TERFs, as a significant number blame trans* people on a Jewish conspiracy.
@Anonymous
There’s not a tremendous amount of research, but what we know about porn addiction suggests that the feeling of being addicted to porn is much more common in highly religious individuals who have guilt. There is some dispute over whether it qualifies as addiction, while porn can harm someone’s life it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s an addiction by the DSM criteria.