Why I am fed up with Vimeo’s blurred lines and you should too

My Vimeo account was deleted yesterday. And you know what pisses me off?

1. The blurriness

The reason they gave me for not only deleting my latest video but also my whole account, is that :

“Vimeo does not allow videos that contain explicit depictions of nudity or sexual acts, nor do we allow videos that seem primarily focused on sexual stimulation or designed to promote commercial activity of an erotic nature.”

Sexual stimulation. It really sounds like something a frustrated priest would teach an ignorant mass, don’t you think? Ok, it’s not in latin, but still, it basically says that anything related to sex and desire is prohibited. Because sex is dirty. And you’re a dirty perv!

So what falls into this criteria? Why is something sexually stimulating? Is there a list somewhere? Because Vimeo is filled with sexual content, so someone will have to explain to me how they filter the videos.

2. The hypocrisy

When I first opened my account last year, I did upload explicit content, which was removed at once, because the rule at the time was “no explicit sexual content” and since then, like the good little girl I am, I haven’t uploaded anything explicit, even my latest reel was really soft. Explicit meaning PENIS + VAGINA or PENIS + PENIS or VAGINA + VAGINA. And even if I did, my video wouldn’t last a day on the site and would be taken down right away.

However, the Vimeo crew must be really busy because my feed still seems to be flooded with explicit material that is “primarily focused on sexual stimulation”. See, I have subscribed to a lot of channels on Vimeo so that I can easily browse through videos, filter them and post them here. And every day, every time I open my vimeo account, this is what I see.

Now, how is this not meant for sexual stimulation? Don’t get me wrong, I’m fine with nudity, I love nudity! But they canceled my account because my videos were too stimulating. Hell, maybe I should take it as a compliment…

Most of my feed is made of girls getting naked. This leads to my next point.

3. The sexism

As long as it’s just about girls showing their butts, it’s all fine, because you know, that’s what they’re here for! They’re just girls, naked models, for the pleasure of our male-oriented viewership. But upload an erotic – not explicit – video with a couple enjoying themselves or let alone a man with a hard on, and you’re screwed, and not in the fun way. A flacid penis seems to be ok, but no erection please, you can go to hell for that!

Conclusion

I would love to boycott Vimeo but ironically enough, they’re my primary source of erotic videos for welovegoodsex.com, funny, huh? I will use it as little as I can and focus on more open-minded platforms which are pretty much non-existent at this point. Tumblr is awesome, but they don’t allow videos either. I’ve tried using Dailymotion because they have a mature / explicit rating but they also deleted my stuff. The alternative is using porn tubes but it doesn’t really fit with the content.

So, all of us who are making modern erotica are stuck in the middle, between mainstream and porn. It’s pretty sad to say it’s 2014 and showing a boob online gets you banned, even when you only need to turn on your tv to see a naked girl in a shampoo ad. I get that they don’t want their site to turn into a porn tube, but, let’s be honest, it already has, and their filtering is obviously biased, sexist and unfair.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU SOCIAL NETWORKS!