In the last two weeks, I realized I'm at a fork in the road.
The recent SCOTUS decision opened a flood gates of possibilities and even since my last post, I'm seeing multiple states (including the one I live in) racing to come up with the most restrictive and unreasonable “reasonable” they can come up with regards to porn sites. It doesn't help that I was looking into my options and seeing what was already there. That includes Tennessee with the “you must do an age check every hour” or South Dakota's a year in prison for the first offense and a felony for the second for even a single reference to a nipple or genitalia. I didn't mind Texas' verification that much (though it is neither reasonable or financially possible at my level), but the more recent ones are pushing the limit of what is acceptable as the various conservative governments.
Many of these laws are set up to use the bounty pattern than Texas used for the anti-abortion bills, intentionally set up to allow anyone to sue anyone in the union and drag the lawsuit back to the state is more favorable for getting rid of porn. That way, they can crowd-source the anti-porn movement to folks looking to cash in on a quick buck. Naturally, there are law firms that are more than willing to advertise that like ambulance chasing injury firms.
What that means is that there is a proliferation of laws in states that each have their own rules and I have to now worry about every single one. Some of them say a third of the site has to be porn (mine is well over that) and other say even a single sentence about a woman's nipple is enough to be corrupting the youth and grounds for lawsuits or felonies (Ohio, South Dakota).
None of this makes me feel safe. All I wanted to do is turn people on. I don't make much for it, but it is something I've enjoyed doing since the early nineties. Most of my writing is free, at least in terms of words, and I love posting it.
But now I feel unsafe.
That is point. These laws are a war on porn and designed to scare people like me away.
And it's going to work, at least for a little while.
I don't have a lot of faith that the US is going see that I'm not hurting anyone. I don't think I can hope it changes soon. Too many people are already on a rampage for hurting as many others as possible, as long as they aren't white and male and straight. There are going to be a lot of tears because they clearly don't care about collateral damage and they get off on knowing that they've ruined people's lives.
So that leads me to the fork in the road. Right now, I don't feel safe. There is a non-zero chance someone is going to decide to make a quick $50k dollars (Texas) by claiming their kid read my stuff.
That means I'm going to suspend my patronage and I'm going to lock the doors. I don't intend on stop writing, but until I can come up with a safe way of sharing it, I need to be safe. I need not to have nightmares or worry about every time someone rings the doorbell. I'm not being brave here, but I'm not giving up. Of course, it feels like that and the future will tell if I do fold, but I need to not be exposed as much as I am. At least not while things are moving so fast in the middle of a massacre that we're currently in (I'm including trans, brown- and black-skinned folks, and fascism in this because it's all the same thing).
My intent is this, I'm going to put Patron and SubscribeStar both on vacation mode (or whatever they call it). I'll let folks join in but they aren't going to be charged.
I'm going to create a zip archive of my stories, at least the PDFs and EPUBs I've generated, and I'm going to give my patrons a link to those. That way, they get a single point in time of every story I've published.
Two weeks after that, I'm going to lock the passwords to the sites. The chapters will still be there, the password pages will remain, but no one is going to have the keys. There will still be links to the physical books, the rest of Curious Cabbit. My contact page will still be there in case you do want to chat. Basically, all the bling without the naughty content.
I will probably lock out categories on the discussion forum or shut it down, I don't know. I don't want to lose the story ideas but Discourse is a pig when it comes to resources.
Then, I'm going to work toward making it safe for me. I don't know the form or method that will be. I don't know how long will take. The laws in the US may gain some sanity, the administration may change over and politics will swing the other way, or the US may come up with a unified system of age verification that allows me to post.
If I can find a safe way to publish from another country, I'll look into that. If I find a system that only works for one region, I'll make that work and keep working toward opening everything for every adult who finds my writing appealing.
(Immigrating out of the US really isn't a choice for me, though I wished it was.)
I'm sorry I'm not brave enough. I'm sorry that my own personal anxieties and fears have pushed me to this. I'm sorry that I'm cowering in my cave.
When it safe again, I'll come back. I'll bring porn, erotica, and iced tea (I don't drink alcohol).
Until then, be good to each other and please don't hate me too much.