Early last year, Instagram started banning certain hashtags. #fetish #rubber #leather #kinky #sexpositive, etc., were suddenly targets for censorship. Kinksters, sex workers, sex educators, leather men, rubber drones started falling away. Accounts getting deleted. Not for explicitly sexual content. Not for anything that violated @Instagram’s terms of service. But for thinking we should be allowed to be who were are online—and on @Instagram—in the say way straight and vanilla people are allowed to be themselves.

So my account was disabled by @instagram.

It sucks. And as I think about it, and how it went down, it falls into a pattern of homophobia, sex-negativity, and discrimination on @Meta’s social platforms that has been happening for years. If you are reading this, you’ve probably heard about it before.
Posts by straight artists and creators that would enjoy wide distribution — even promoted by @instagram itself — get LGBT people, porn performers, sex workers/educators suspended, shadow-banned, or banned for life.