CULVER CITY, Calif. — A new cultural trend taking place on popular Gen-Z platform TikTok complicates the idea that support for sex worker rights and freedom of sexual expression will continue steadily gaining generational ground, according to a recent article by Rebecca Jennings for online news site Vox.
The insightful article, titled “TikTok: The Problem With the 'Cancel Porn' Movement" (subtitle: "On TikTok, It’s Impossible to Have a Nuanced Discussion About Sex Work"), highlights how a “Cancel Porn” campaign within the video-sharing platform has been quietly taking shape among “teenagers mostly, diverse in race, gender and aesthetic (some were girls with the dramatic winged liner of alt-TikTok, others looked like frat boys).”
Their message, according to Jennings, is that “porn is inherently evil; it normalizes rape, incest, pedophilia and misogyny; and it profits off of sex trafficking.”
As part of this supposedly “grassroots” War on Porn outreach campaign, Jennings wrote, “boys share stories of how their middle school porn addictions ruined their lives,” girls share Exodus Cry propaganda about non-consensual videos on adult platforms and “Christians discuss how to overcome the sin of lust.”
A TikTok-Based Facet of Conservatism
For Jennings, this “Cancel Porn” fad is “one facet of a conservatism, for lack of a better term, that’s proliferating on TikTok from rather unlikely sources: young, presumably progressive women (for the most part) who seem to believe that ‘choice feminism,’ or the idea that every choice a woman makes is inherently feminist because a woman made it, is propagating patriarchy and the male gaze.”
These young women even echo the standard SWERF propaganda points that “all sex work is coercion because it involves the transfer of money.”
This anti-porn campaign, the article argues, may be reaction to increased visibility on TikTok of sex workers attempting to normalize their lives.
“Escorts, sugar babies, cam girls, strippers, OnlyFans creators and folks who sell feet pics or panties online have used the platform to show both the highs and lows of their jobs,” Jennings explained.
“Yet even more than those videos,” she added, “I’m seeing the backlash to them,” and quotes an allegedly teenage conservative TikToker’s caption bemoaning that “liberal feminism telling young girls that hookup culture is liberating, conditioning them to think that if you don’t have extreme kinks at a young age then they’re boring and vanilla, and encouraging them to get into sex work the minute they turn 18.”
Jennings quotes sex industry studies academic Dr. Barb Brents, who sees TikTok’s “Cancel Porn” movement as a result of “misdirected anxieties.”
“It’s almost like the recognition that staring at a screen all the time is causing you problems, but if you can label those problems as, ‘Oh, it’s porn,’ then you can 'other' it and still be able to look at the screen,” Brents explained.
To read Rebecca Jennings' article “TikTok: The Problem With the 'Cancel Porn' Movement,” visit Vox.com.