11:21am July 19, 2013

➸ Queer Erasure in the Tag Searches

bidyke:

a-little-bi-furious:

nooffswitch:

gohomebiphobia:

bisexual-books:

dani-kin:

A lot of people are talking about the new tumblr regulations about NSFW content and that is really important but I’m personally more upset about the limitations on tag searches on mobile devices.

THE FOLLOWING TAGS NO LONGER WORK ON MOBILE DEVICES:

bisexual
bisexuality
lesbian
gay
pansexual
straight
heterosexual
hetero
homosexual

THE FOLLOWING TAGS DO WORK ON MOBILE :

bi
lesbo
homo
transgender
queer
lgbt
lgbtq

I can’t speak for what happens in the other tags, but the bisexuality tag is how the bisexual community on tumblr finds our own, and to have that stricken from mobile is insane. Didn’t we just win a big victory with google?

Just because some people use these tags for porn is no reason to erase entire classes of people. Oppressed people. People who have already had their feelings and lives dismissed, ignored, and generally shat on.

Does anyone know of a petition we can sign or a formal complaint system?? I don’t want to take this lying down, but I don’t know what we should do.

This is something that is very troubling to us here at this blog. We tag most of our posts with bisexuality and with only 5 tags to find an audience, we want our stuff to be found by the widest audience possible.

Also could we be labelled a NSFW or Adult blog for posting erotica reviews? We’re very concerned for what this means for the bisexual and queer culture of tumblr.

Just like any other ham-handed one-size-fits-all solution, this one will most negatively impact already marginalized people.

- Sarah and Ellie

In addition to all of that….. The bisexuality tags are actually pretty tame. There’s not porn in there with the frequency of the bisexual tag. That one I could understand because it’s mostly porn and dirty blogging and propositions.

But the bisexuality tag has legitimate things in it. There are people who use their phone to access tumblr who can’t access otherwise, and now they have lost access to this community.

Hey I made a petition!

http://www.change.org/petitions/tumblr-staff-unblock-and-uncensor-lgbtqiaa-identity-tags

I’ll fix it up a bit more later. If anyone wants to help out/add stuff message me k?
So let’s all sign and reblog!

Signal boost!

I also want to express my shock that the bisexuality tag is on the nsfw list along with some of the other lgbtq tags. The bisexual tag deserves to be on the list because fetishising porn blogs keep pumping it with nsfw content (the gay and lesbian tag also doesn’t suprise me because last time I was in the bisexual tag the porn was also tagged with gay and lesbian), it’s unfair but it’s a fact that refuses to go away so I can see why they were removed. But to this day I have not seen anything remotely nsfw in the bisexuality tag, not even a dirty conversation. And it’s not as if it’s flooding with posts either (well, not from people who are not trolls anyway), so it’s not as if we wouldn’t notice nsfw content in the bisexuality tag.

I also checked out the homosexual and pansexual tags, and unlike the bisexual tag which has porn every 3 posts on average, the most nsfw thing I could find was a selfie of someone in their bra and that was one in hundreds of posts.

Seriously tumblr, why the hell are these tags flagged?

Not to mention I got a real whiff of microagressive homophobia from the homo tag, who seem to have people spamming it with pictures of Justin Beiber (haha I get it, you called him gay in the tags, so funny and original).

I havn’t had a good look at the other tags yet but this has fuckery written all over it.

Signal boost. This is fucking outrageous.

This is probably a good time to point out that searching for the “bisexual" tag, amongst other LGBT ones, has for a long time not worked if you weren’t logged in. It would redirect to “lol". No idea if that’s still the case.

This already existed in iOS devices, I’ve been complaining about it for ages and ages and ages. But it wasn’t true on android devices. Is it true if android devices now or is everyone just newly discovering an old thing?

Notes: