How Tumblr's NSFW ban will affect people like me.

There are really many layers to the disappointment I feel for this change, especially now.

Most frustrating is the timing. I had just returned with a plan to deprogram my mind from the cult mindset i'd been raised in. It revolved around everything I remembered and loved about Tumblr right down to the "from kitties to titties" dashboard scroll. I hoped to use Tumblr as a window to find what parts of myself I had lost, and comfort in sexuality was a huge part of that.

Mostly, I thought of myself as an artist, but I have never been able to finish drawing anything especially NSFW without falling into a panic attack and trashing the image or squirreling it away in piles of unfinished or unscanned drawings to never think of it again until I'm cleaning my room and come across it years later.

That sounds specific because it is; I can think of one specifically I come across every time I go through old piles of drawings. I tried to draw because the characters held a connection in a roleplay that i wanted to capture because seriously, how poetic is it for a character to find a lost lover's alternate world incarnation? That's like the moment Earth-616 Spider-Man meets Spider-Gwen and that moment is gold in the sense of emotional story and art. I know this yet still I cannot push through it (yet) just because the characters were quite a bit more ...touchy.

I can't get over an aversion to making and viewing such things to expand my abilities and understandings without a proper source for it. Not to mention that the sort of NSFW posted to Tumblr that I was thinking of personally were usually so much more sophisticated and artsy than any other site where it just feels dirty. Either way, I can't explore whether that is true or if it's a subconscious reference to Tumblr being more artsy and safe in general due to how I was raised.

And frankly, this collective view that nudity has to mean sex is primitive. Evolve.

Not to mention the disgust we are taught to view our bodies with when parents repeat that touching yourself is "dirty" because of some ancient book has created a huge psychological shit-show that a lot of us are in various stages of coming out of. Again, exposure helps. Communication helps. Information helps.

Censoring does not help.