Thread by @MsKateSinclaire

TIME FOR A THREAD! This thread talks a lot about sex work/porn because sex work/porn are being thrown under the bus in order to convince lawmakers that elimination of ALL privacy in online posting for every Canadian citizen is a good idea. You should care a lot. Buckle in.

It’s going to be a wild ride, but it’s worth it. Today we’re going to deep dive into the ETHI committee. It’s a House Committee on Access to Information, Privacy, and Ethics. ourcommons.ca/Committees/en/…

There’s currently an issue in front of this committee titled “protection of privacy and reputation on platforms such as PornHub”. Remember that NYT article about PornHub that made Visa and MasterCard cut them off? It’s those people.

The whole idea of this committee is that it’s a group of 11 Canadian Members of Parliament from every single major political party. They hear witness testimony on various subjects and then they use that as guidance when they’re considering bills that will become Canadian law.

So, Michael Bowe (one of Trump’s personal lawyers during his presidency) represents a young revenge porn victim, and has approached the ETHI committee in order to influence them to write laws that will prevent this revenge porn victim’s harms.

Seems great right? Protect the children. #savethechildren. This became a widely used hashtag in 2020, attempting to call people to action against human trafficking.

So we're saving this girl and girls like her right?

You probably saw a lot of your friends posting suddenly about saving the children in 2020, with pictures of cute little white girls with bows in their hair. Like, fuck yeah I don’t want that girl to suffer! I’m on board! YEAH!

Except it came out that this hashtag was a legitimate one that ended up hijacked by QAnon. Why? There’s a myriad of ideas as to why. Mostly, it’s assumed that it’s an issue we can all agree on. It's something to get *everyone* on the same page.

The posts asked Q's like “Why isn’t the govt doing anything to catch child traffickers?!” when reality was that they are, and they do, and that child trafficking is WAY more complex than a cute white girl with bows in her hair abducted from the street reuters.com/article/uk-fac…

The truth was that QAnon hijacked this hashtag from groups doing actual anti-trafficking work, and the sorts of things they were suggesting are actually things that are demonstrably counterproductive or bad for people who are in actual danger.

So now we’re at the perfect moment for the NYT article (linked) using a kinda perfect revenge porn victim to come out, and somehow she’s backed by an incredibly high-priced American lawyer who was Trump’s personal lawyer? Ok. nytimes.com/2020/12/04/opi…

So this is about more than just her.

Michael Bowe, that lawyer I mentioned, jumped in during the ETHI committee meeting to blast PornHub (something I also regularly do, but for different reasons) and blame them for the victim’s trauma.

I mean. The person to blame for her trauma is the boyfriend who shared around her video without her consent, full stop. No? Like? No one else see that glaring guilt spot? Why isn’t this about attacking societal norms that make this sort of thing a common enough story?

Because this isn’t about securing justice for the victim. No one is on trial here. So what the heck are all these theatrics for? You need only watch the second meeting

Mr. Bowe stated in the first meeting of the committee that *anyone* who speaks out against him and the victim is an ally of pornhub. If y’all know me, you know that is NOT who the fuck I am. Head back in my twitter past for that proof.

He also suggested that people who do attempt to speak out against pornhub tend to get “disappeared” (read: murdered). So why would he want to do that? Keep that in the back of your mind for a minute.

In the second meeting of the committee, MindGeek rolled out two of the worst public speakers I’ve ever seen in my goddamned life to speak for them. In order to seem agreeable, they stated the lengths they’re willing to go to keep illegal material off their websites.

Here’s the big one folks: THE IDEA THAT IS BEING FLOATED FOR LAWMAKERS IS TO REQUIRE PHOTO IDENTIFICATION FOR USE OF ANY WEBSITE ALLOWING PUBLIC UPLOADS.

Yes I had to all-caps that. The truth of the matter is, pornhub isn’t the only place that revenge porn gets posted. It gets posted to Facebook, twitter, Reddit, YouTube, Vimeo, anywhere that people can upload.

So folks are suggesting that in order to post on sites *like* pornhub, you should be required to provide photo identification. Did you know that pornhub, minus the porn, is just like every single other social media website? There it is.

If a law were written that required photo identification to upload to pornhub, that law would absolutely apply to every other social media/public uploading site.

So what’s the big deal? I’ll provide my photo ID to reddit, and I can keep posting. I have nothing to hide. And only baddies would have a problem sharing their photo ID. Oh man the big deal is a big deal.

In the dying days of the Trump presidency, Trump refused to pass a bill that included pandemic relief payments unless a repeal of section 230 was included. What’s 230? You can check out more about that here: eff.org/deeplinks/2020…

Because the USA can’t technically meddle in Canada’s politics just for funsies, they’ve come forward with this situation - a revenge porn victim who story could influence our lawmakers to write knee-jerk laws which would cause action akin to repeal of 230 in the USA.

The whole supposed argument is that if pornhub goes away, revenge porn goes away. As a victim of revenge porn when I was 19, in 2004, I can tell you what revenge porn looks like without pornhub (which launched in 2005).

My revenge porn situation happened at the hands of an ex partner, as is usually the case. But, being that there was no pornhub, my photos were instead uploaded to an anonymous board specifically for shaming ex-girlfriends/wives.

When I found the photos, I had *no* way out. It was an anonymous board, maintained anonymously, no owner info, no whois info, no names, no traceable accounts. THAT. That is the alternative.

While pornhub has a takedown process, it is slow and folks do just re-upload content. BUT IT HAS A FUCKING TAKEDOWN PROCESS. I want to make clear, again, that while this process is shitty for victims, it is the better option.

The laws/changes that Mr. Bowe and all these prohibitionists and evangelicals and “concerned parents” are making will absolutely make things harder for revenge porn victims in the future. They will, full stop, make things more dangerous and underground.

I was that lil white teenager whose image got shared around on the internet without my consent. I know that I’m 36 now and so it doesn’t have the same impact, I can’t be trotted out with the same level of relatability.

Especially because I chose to rise above the shame and work in the world of sex work - now I’m not that cute 19 year old at all. But I am human. And I need you to listen to what I’m saying on behalf of ALL victims of revenge porn.

No matter what “side” of politics you sit on, letting a country mandate photo identification in order to speak/post on the internet is not only fascism in action, it will also create even more dangerous situations for victims, for sex workers, for every single person.

If we require citizens on the land called Canada to provide ID in order to post to social media, what do you think happens to marginalized voices? Dissenting voices?

Do you think these laws in the wrong hands could be abused in order to uphold social credit systems or, worse, create situations like Iran’s revolution in the 70s in which dissenting voices were located and disappeared?

That’s the thing about laws - they help some, they hurt some, and in bad hands/good hands, they can be completely different things. In this case, the suggested actions are bad for ALL people in Canada and the world, and hold very concerning implications for the future.

Oh and because Mr. Bowe said all that stuff about how any dissenting voices to his arguments are “PornHub allies”, members of the committee are now REFUSING to allow sex worker groups to submit briefs or provide expert testimony!!! Our input is “irrelevant”. WTF.