This page doubles as an announcement (above) and short essay/response, "Censorship and Double Standards" (further down). As of June 2026, my book series is predominantly written. I've decided, since then, to lean into videos and voice work that focus on trans/sex worker rights (and other minorities). If those mean anything to you, consider supporting me on Patreon. Even $1/month makes all the difference!

Note: I also take money on Ko-Fi and other revenue streams; they all go towards the same work and its goals, which the companion YouTube video explains further. Click here for further details on the essay work I do (which my voice shall feature in, moving forwards).

Update: I can't do videos on Patreon like I want to because I openly discuss sex work and BDSM, which Patreon automatically treats as Adult/18+ even when educational. Adult channels can't upload video, so I'll just be focusing on voice work with anything I upload onto Patreon (while still uploading videos onto YouTube). Facing these struggles, I have since written a short response—one that gives evidence and information for curious parties swept up in the same uphill battle.

Censorship and Double Standards Regarding Sex Work; or, Capitalism, the Protestant Ethic and Passing

Hi, y'all! I wanted to post here about an issue that's important to me, but also relevant to [the subreddit-in-question I'm sharing this in; e.g., r/sexeducation]: sex education, including discussions about sex work as something to censor or not censor, owners-vs-workers (which generally happen alongside the work-in-question). In doing so, I specifically want to raise awareness about said censorship within anarchist and/or Socialist dialogs—meaning through any systemic issues and structures responsible, and furthermore how we can prevent, deconstruct and ultimately rebuild them without demonizing sex work, education and activism. This means no blaming the whore, nor "gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss" (to paraphrase Arruzza)! Sex work is work, trans people are people, and genocide is inherently wrong and should be prevented alongside the rights of either (our focus here being the Internet and corporate platforms).

CW: sexism, transphobia, whorephobia, SA, prohibition and genocide

(source thumbnail: Persephone van der Waard's "Smash or Pass: Censorship and Double Standards," 2026)

To keep the discussion within anarchist and/or Socialist purviews, I'll pose a question: "If sex work = work, then why do double standards stigmatizing it continue under liberatory movements?" To narrow things even further, "If sex work is work within Socialism, anarchism and anarcho-Communism, then why do the double standards within sex work continue to exist; i.e., during the struggle to liberate work, more broadly?" China, for example, has a total ban on pornography and prostitution, one making all the usual claims; i.e., about protecting women and children from the harms such things offer (when monopolized by pimps)—all while ignoring that sex work, when criminalized, still continues. Workers simply have less rights when trying to survive under the Western nuclear model (and its binaries) that all states adopt and abuse (re: "State Vampirism," 2026), and one tying to an underlying issue of capital and state predation, more broadly.

Note: In gathering opinions tied to my larger body of work, I'm asking the same question on different subreddits: those dedicated to Socialism, anarchism, and anarcho-Communism (the anarchism and Socialism_101 subreddits were too Puritanical and SWERF-y, taking these conversations down because the moderators are de facto pimps). Regarding Socialism and its basics, this pertains to discussions of queerness and sex work dating back to Engels

What we can now conjecture about the way in which sexual relations will be ordered after the impending overthrow of capitalist production is mainly of a negative character, limited for the most part to what will disappear. But what will there be new? That will be answered when a new generation has grown up: a generation of men who never in their lives have known what it is to buy a woman's surrender with money or any other social instrument of power; a generation of women who have never known what it is to give themselves to a man from any other considerations than real love or to refuse to give themselves to their lover from fear of the economic consequences (source: "Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State," 1883).

and where "sodomy" is something Engels calls "abominable" (and GNC folk "Uranians") while likewise seeing sex work as something to eliminate in ways that feel rooted in Victorian values that haunt Socialism as much as any Communist "spectres" do (re: "Making Marx Gay," 2024); i.e., as otherworldly beings or things to abject and demonize/exclude in Puritanical thus moderate-to-reactionary ways, blame-the-whore, from the movement: for being "degenerate," "decadent," "sinful" (temptation) or otherwise "unsafe/a threat" to the wider public thus nuclear model (as anything gay and/or openly sexual elements canonically are, below). Pimps aren't always overt, but announce themselves in parallel means using fascist and/or liberal framings that Socialism isn't exempt from.

I'm of course referring to the Protestant aka Puritan ethic under Capitalism (re: Weber)—one that, seemingly not standardized on corporate platforms, coalesces into a common theme: the policing of sex as something to hypocritically allow* when profitable under the table; i.e., according to various canonical gender and beauty standards, meaning those who "pass" vs those don't, the subsequent gatekeeping that occurs affecting those outside marriage and the bedroom, per the usual nuclear models; re: Foucault's History of Sexuality (1980) and relegation of sex to the bedroom except where profitable under capital and state contradictions (as I argue).

*In legal terms, which are broad and vague to lump corporate platforms like OnlyFans in with "sex trafficking." Said term applies to immigration fears and xenophobia (e.g., Islamophobia and so-called "rape epidemics"), but also people who make the content for these platforms without harming anyone. To that, the law technically "applies" to corporations, who control the banks, the police, the courts and the state; and so they criminalize sex work through an unequal ability, one the bourgeoisie exclusively possess and enjoy. Workers must decriminalize sex work, not permit the owner class (those who own these giant media platforms) to decide who is punished and who isn't, therefore who lives and who dies in us-versus-them language (the process of abjection, as Kristeva puts it, and one I apply to state predation at large as something to reverse through sex work).

Take me, for example: Apart from my daily activism and non-profit book series, which discuss sex work in educational, sexological ways regarding socio-political issues (while using Gothic poetics and theatre), I'm also trying to monetize my work while doing so (something I mention here for context, not to sell my services); i.e., to continue preserving the voices and work that I do but also my friends (most of whom are GNC sex workers of different minorities, including BIPOC furries, neurodivergent folk and/or disabled people). In trying to, I came across some censorship issues—mainly tied to ongoing struggles concerning trans genocide in America happening alongside the prohibition of sex work dressed up in corpo-speak as "protecting everyone*." Pimps gonna pimp—with bourgeois, corporate-owned platforms like Patreon, YouTube, and elsewhere toeing a similar line; re: a hypocritical one, and one that generally sees those who "pass" (usually white straight women) being let in through the front door to furtively peddle back-door access; i.e., to different "grey" revenue streams the ruling class monopolize, thus classically abuse, arbitrate and profit off of (making them de facto pimps).

(source thumbnail: Persephone van der Waard's "React No.24: Prohibition and Genocide Are Here; Fight Back No Matter What!" 2025)

*An issue I've discussed before; e.g., regarding FSC v. Paxton in Texas, and Michigan's House Bill no. 4938 aka "the anticorruption of public morals" act targeting sex work but specifically trans people as "inherently pornographic," thus (according to the state) needing to disappear from public life (the Trans Question—with whores being the canaries in the coalmine but sometimes the cat who ate the canary should they tokenize).

In other words, those who pass are generally given a pass—the "pass system" an idea historically tied to Western chattel slavery (as Lost Futures discusses in a video of theirs) but one far older than systemic racism (~600 years). In fact, it actually dates back thousands of years to the world's oldest profession (and labor struggle): prostitution as regulated and controlled by state powers (city- or otherwise). So the state and capital are full of various contradictions, including "sex sells; sex is criminal, abject, forbidden." State/corporate powers (which fascism hyphenates) police sex more than anything else, and these historical-material hypocrisies continue into the present; i.e., under current legal struggles tied to social, dialectical-material ones—those that concern and affect trans people (sex worker or not) during ongoing genocides (foreign and domestic; e.g., Palestine, the Congo, Turtle Island, or Aotearoa).

To conclude, there exist legal considerations at play regarding sex work (and discussions of sex work); i.e., as matters of free speech, but also "public decency" to conjure, pearl-clutch, and wield like cudgels during state crisis versus state targets; re: trans people and/or sex workers (often women), who the usual pimps police ipso facto (and inconsistently): during state contradictions/moral panics that pursue profit (and productivity). These always lead to censorship, and silence is genocide! So "land back" is just as much a question of work back and sex back! Class war is ass war!

But these are just my thoughts and those of my friends. What do [other people] think; re: regarding the Protestant ethic and double standards it enforces when pimping sex work out?

Update, 6/19/2026: YouTube removed the thumbnail to "Smash or Pass," a video notably discussing sex worker rights on corporate platforms where corruption is rampant. "They" did so despite its imagery coming from Shorts on YouTube that advertise the same exact material; i.e., as it normally appears on YouTube, no different than a thumbnail:

(source skeet: vanderWaardart, 6/19/2026)

As I explain in the pinned comment to said video:

The kinds of policies per platform are ultimately arbitrary but serve the same Protestant ethic; e.g., YouTube's sex and nudity policy. YouTube literally removed the thumbnail for this video (which I've replaced with a tacky censored version) because its "team" thinks the thumbnail "violates our sex and nudity policy." Said "team" continues: "YouTube removes thumbnails that show nudity, sexually provocative content or portray shocking violence. The image in this thumbnail may be acceptable in the context of the video, but we've determined it's inappropriate for a thumbnail." Says the robot spokesperson for the ruling class (who are all pimps who punish others for their crimes). The irony being the images are literally from YouTube Shorts that, unto themselves, DON'T have thumbnails; they're still images from the Shorts, themselves, which advertise accordingly the same sexually provocative images NOT allowed in video thumbnails: the very sort designed to funnel literal millions of viewers into back-door routes on OnlyFans and other revenue streams. There's no "protection" of anyone going on, here, save for the owner classes' bottom line. Pimps gonna pimp, then play the "we care about viewers" card. I call bullshit—specifically how platform enshittification exploits sex work in all the usual ways, including corruption [e.g., with YouTube ignoring straight-up nudity in videos like the one below for years].

(source screencap: Great Arcade Games' "Chun Li vs The Mask Epic Crossover Battle in Street Fighter!" 2024)

Translation: Dead labor feeds on living labor, from Marx to us. Alienated from labor save as something to fetishize and exploit, the state can monetize sex according to whatever rules it arbitrates; i.e., the most policed thing and which force controls by criminalizing sex (during the abjection process, under state vampirism). Those who do control the courts, police, and media as things to hypocritically pervert, "boundaries for me, not for thee"; i.e., sex trafficking something that doesn't apply to them, whether in grey areas or not; e.g., their veiled fleecing of sex workers on OnlyFans for billions a year versus more overt trafficking like Epstein Island and chaser billionaires pointedly targeting white trans women. The owner class doesn't care/can legally monetize sex under capital and its Puritan contradictions while exploiting workers however they like; workers cannot—in the eyes of the state, legally or otherwise—reclaim said labor to make money for themselves by themselves (the means of production subverting the Protestant ethic). Doing so is effectively "terrorism," weaponizing labor against state power by virtue of simply making money the state normally dangles over their heads per the nuclear model: a zero-sum game where the state does what it wants, and dormant workers accept that under Capitalist Realism. Anything else is "cheating" but also "the end of the world," under said Realism.