A Small Pushback is Happening Against the Feminist Anti-Sex Tech Onslaught
As I discussed here recently, male sex tech is facing an onslaught of negative media articles and even books by popular feminist writers. It’s facing knee-jerk legislation, not only against deepfake porn, but even (already) AI girlfriends. And it’s facing the same kind of ‘grassroots’ feminist NGO lobbying that resulted in payment processors pulling out of Pornhub, now widening to not only AI porn generators and undress apps, but even adult-themed games on itch.io and Steam.
Even accessing adult sites is becoming difficult for men, with more and more states and countries introducing stringent age verification laws that most website owners cannot afford to implement. The latest country to do so has been the UK, with the controversial Online Safety Act that came into force on July 25th. Here, there was a definite push back, including from the populist ‘Reform’ party, whose leader Nigel Farage has promised to repeal the act if he wins the next General Election. Elon Musk has also been vocal against the act, condemning it as a threat to free speech. Although Musk and Farage appear more concerned with aspects of the act that might censor news stories and such, rather than the porn age verification itself, many Brits have spoken out against this too, with concerns raised about not only the inconvenience, but the possibility of the Government and other third parties having access to your private porn viewing habits. Within days of the act coming into force, downloads of VPNs topped the Apple and Android charts in the UK, prompting fears that the British government could actually move to make the use of VPNs illegal. At the time of writing this article, an online petition that will be submitted to the British Parliament has received over half-a-million signatures.
Gamers Push Back against the Feminist ‘Karens’ of Collective Shout
Recently, gaming platforms itch.io and Steam took significant action against adult/NSFW titles after payment processors (notably Visa, Mastercard, and others) were contacted via an open letter organized by the feminist Australian group Collective Shout, the same tactic used successfully against Pornhub by feminist/religious cult group Exodus Cry. Both itch.io and Steam immediately caved in, and either removed or de-indexed their adult-themed game libraries. But as Collective Shout was about to discover, gamers are a far more politicized and proactive bunch than porn fans and ‘gooners’. They weren’t going to take this lying down. Within a day or two, the official Collective Shout account on X.com was taken offline due to the abuse it was receiving. Wired reported players and trade orgs calling this “financial censorship” and mobilizing to pressure payment companies; developers highlighted that non-sexual or sensitive-topic games were swept up in the deindexing by tag-association. A petition demanding payment processors “stop controlling what we can watch, read, or play” surpassed 147,000 signatures within days.
However, despite the best efforts of a huge swathe of a mobilized adult gamer community, the pushback appears at this point to have been largely unsuccessful. The petition against Collective Shout has been taken down by feminist moderators. Meanwhile, itch.io and Steam have not restored the removed games, although itch.io has said that it is reviewing each game to ensure it is compliant with the payment processor guidelines, and many may be restored. It’s far from a victory, but it may yet represent the first steps in a real fightback against the wider feminist campaign against all things male sex tech.