I discovered that some fetish videos of me were stolen and posted to the pornographic website called (ew) Motherless. While the violation of my consent is maddening in itself, it was the packaging of my sexuality to cater to the male-gaze that gave me pause. I am a sexual artist, I do not object to being viewed by hordes of people in moments of intimacy, but I get to decide how I represent and where I share. This is a piece on how pornography exploits and packages sexuality to serve itself.
Written by Ancilla L: Pissed-Off Fat Pain BDSM Amateur Slave Maso.
I stared at those words for a long moment after the video loaded onto my phone on a website called Motherless where I absolutely did not post it (and let’s be honest, even if I had, I would have given it a title so wordy and convoluted, no one would have made it to the video). I knew immediately that something other than the obvious violation of privacy was bothering me. It was the description and the tags, not for obvious reasons though. I am certainly fat, definitely into BDSM and pain, I identify as a slave in one relationship and (I guess?) I am not a professional slave, so maybe even amateur is not inaccurate, and while I am incensed that the primary title I give to myself, masochist, was unceremoniously cut short, it is also accurate. However, these words were not written as a description of me. They were written to package me into an easily searchable clip for the gratification of consumers, the majority of whom come from a single demographic, so as to aid the profiteering of the same demographic on the images and private expressions of non-consenting people. Those words were written to package me in service of the male-gaze.
That is what immediately bothered me.
There is a class I teach on erotic expressionism which involves an activity in which I ask the students to write down or share the tags or titles they envision would be attached to a video of their sexual expression on a porn-site, which then turns into a discussion on how those labels are packaged and exploited in larger, more mainstream capitalist set-ups to demonstrate how a pornographic view of identity permeates much more than how we are viewed on porn-sites. It’s always tags like the ones used to describe me in the video posted to Motherless because we are also conditioned to view ourselves and our sexualities in terminology that has been largely popularized by the pornographic industrial complex, even when the words are the same as the ones we may use to describe ourselves, there is a difference between a description and packaging. A difference I understand so well that I did not ever envision falling victim to it in this way.
I can hardly be described as prudish. Now, at the grand age of thirty-four, I primarily describe myself as an erotic author and kink/sexuality educator but through the years, starting from the age of eighteen, I have been involved in the industry of sex in lots of different ways. I have been a sex-worker and as one, I always took pride in the fact that I was an “ugly” one whose clientele was largely built on an innate acceptance of the “weird” desires of people instead of my lipstick, sexy gender-conforming outfits and gorgeous figure. I have been a columnist and essayist. I have written a tonne of “erotica” about my actual and fantastical sexual encounters, erotic non-fiction about my ongoing relationships where everyone is presented in their entirety and created visual fetish art (video/pictures/audio) of many types of encounters none of which cater to the male-gaze, the majority of my consumers are non-cis-het men and that pleases me greatly. My work is explicit, raw, deeply sexual, often literary, horny as fuck, sometimes challenging to understand but it is never packageable. I take immense pride in my refusal to cater to an audience and even more pride in the fact that I make a fairly sizeable income in the industry of sex without ever having catered to the male-gaze.
I am not, by any mean, famous, on my most popular social platform, I have 30,000 followers and by modern-internet metrics, that is nothing but those followers were not gained by me through strategy, click-bait or purchase, and that is something. I build this over a decade of authentic expression of self and (if I may say so myself) excellent writing. Most of my followers do not lightly consume my work as mindless scrolling through the endless mire of brain-rot and many of them have financially patronized my work. I am belligerent about the fact that I am an artist and as such, I create what I create, not what people want to see. Not once have I posted a tit or a cunt to appeal to the audience, I have never “sub-packaged” myself into a meek, infantilised creature to appeal to the audience or pedo-bait the masculinity that controls this market, I don’t suck on bananas when allegedly promoting my sex-ed classes, I don’t package my products to be the trope of sexy. In fact, even the stolen porn of me posted to Motherless is largely, completely clothed and hot as fuck, which is not to say one cannot find their nudity empowering or expressive, but for me, pain is the language of my sensuality and I refuse to use any other because it is more attractive to the viewer. I refuse to express myself in ways that are not authentic to me and entirely owned by me.
Therefore, I am gutted by how I am being represented on this porn-site.
I am neither a consumer not supporter of pornography but I am not against (the concept of) pornography either, I just believe that every performer must have agency, autonomy, privacy, safety, dignity and, most importantly, make the bulk of the income associated with their work. The vast majority of the industry of porn is not at all interested in or able to provide this. Even platforms like OnlyFans and Meeting, portrayed as spaces where people, especially women, allegedly own their own portrayal and decisions, are owned by men who exploit it. It’s a struggle to exist online as a person who deals in sex as themselves, on their own terms, especially as a woman and queer person. I have personally been banned, shadow-banned, removed from sites, attacked, stalked, issued rape/death threats, not to mention the fact that the faintest ability for any of us to be the direct beneficiaries of our sexuality (through OF or our own channels) has made people so very mad that every platform (like Fetlife) where one is still allowed to promote their own business is pullulated by people just waiting to denigrate the OF girls who have ruined the culture (of everything, but in this context, of kink). Personally, I don’t fuck-with tropey, sanitized portrayals of sexuality that just package people into what cis-men want to see without forcing anyone to confront what gritty reality looks like, but even when that is what you do, I will champion it because, at least, you’re doing it for your financial gain and I know exactly how hard it is for us to autonomously benefit from our own identities.
You know what’s not hard? For pornographic portrayal that benefits the institution of porn to exist. Despite bans, guidelines, copyright laws and governments (like mine) outrightly restricting access to pornography, it thrives in the most exploitative of ways while the artists of sexuality and individuals who create their own pornography are the ones to be denigrated, maligned and banned. Pornhub is a necessary evil, but the pornstars are witches to be burnt at the stake.
And let’s be very clear, when I say pornography here, I mean a few specific things: I mean videos (etc) of people who are not consenting or videos that may have been produced in exploitative settings, that have been posted in places where the person in the video did not consent to having them posted, that have been packaged to suit the gaze of the audience, that are freely distributed without permission and that benefit the sharer/owner of the platform more than or entirely instead of the performer. Surely, if you get to redefine my identity into tags for your perusal, I get to redefine your industry as what it is: Criminal, exploitative, entirely dependent on the talent of others and sustaining itself on the labour and imagery of people who did not consent to it.
My videos were stolen from a platform where I posted them to a closed community myself, sixteen of them were stolen in total, and posted to a mainstream fetish pornsite by a person I cannot identify, whose identity will not be revealed to me and while I have reported them and filed a DMCA (Digital Millenium Copyright Act) notice, I cannot be certain they will take the videos down. Motherless and other pornsites like it are notorious for refusing to respond, hosting CSAM material and other deeply egregious things (like bestiality). Even the page where information to file this notice is listed, is worded like a cautionary tale, telling the filers of the notice that they are under threat of perjury, forcing us to reveal our legal names and contact information and warning us that if they do not rule in our favour, we might be liable for attorney fees. All of it is a tactic to get people from filing a complaint in the first place and a covert foreshadowing of the victim-blaming that will inevitably follow if I make noise about this.
I know exactly how this goes. My adult life has been spent working as a reporter, a sex-industry professional, an activist and a writer. I once wrote about labour exploitation in the armed forces and was maligned by someone in the highest echelons of government office because the word of a self-professed bisexual (correction: I am fucking pansexual) couldn’t possibly hold any value. I know how this fucking goes. There is a section of people who will just believe I deserve this for who I am—openly kinky, queer, outspokenly sexual, woman—and this entire tale will be viewed as nothing but evidence that bad people like me get what we deserve, and these are the same people who will stroke it to non-consensually posted images on pornsites. There is another section of people, ones who couch their victim-hatred under pragmatism and logic, who will ask and wonder what I was possibly expecting would happen if I posted videos of myself being slapped, trampled and fucked on the internet. Surely, if I post it myself, I should expect this to happen. They will reassure me that they agree this is wrong but this is why I should be careful, you know, the internet is not a safe place and if I want to be safe, I should probably just not use it. I should hide inside my house, cover my legs at all times, only go out accompanied, probably cover my face too and like, probably, I can leave one eye uncovered so I don’t trip over. It’s not because I did anything wrong! They just want to keep me safe in the gilded cage where we all belong.
Well, fuck you very much.
When I was a teenager, a man who should not even have been fucking me made a video of our sexual encounter to teach me a lesson in safety. He showed it to me later and told me he was a really nice and would never put this video out there but I should be careful because everyone is not as nice. He wanted me to be scared and grateful. I was neither because he was an adult, married and non-consensually filming a minor he fucked. I told him he was a criminal and he should be scared. I told him what I am feel about this now: Every scarlet letter is nothing but a soapbox to me. You will post videos of me to shame me? Buddy, I am walking the streets naked because my sexuality brings me no shame. I have the right to represent myself as I see fit. I own myself. You, do not. I wouldn’t presume that I alone could take down the exploitative pornographic industrial complex, but silence is not what you get from me either. I will not be a good, scared victim. You fuck with me, I fuck back. Well, you can see that on the stolen videos posted to your platform, I suppose. I fuck back real good.
To you, I am AncillaL Fat BDSM Pain Amateur Slave Maso. That’s fine. You call yourself Motherless. Ew. Your existence is hinged on the idea that only people raised without the influence of mothers— which is a dog whistle for good family values—have sex or do these things that you sell to your users. That is the saddest, most self-loathing client-base in the world. I weep for you. However, you do not get to package me. You lack the vocabulary, depth, intelligence and understanding of sexuality to even comprehend a description of me. I am AncillaL and only I get to decide what that means.
Ancillary Kink Support 
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