9pm in New York is 3am in Berlin, but I stayed up for this Distanced Drawing event!
I finally made it to a remote model session from the wonderful woman-run, sex-worker positive online life drawing group Distanced Drawing, because I just HAD to draw The Midnight Foxes !!
I had seen the Foxes in a very filthy show produced by The Bridesof Burlesque and been blown away.
So little, so pretty, so STRONG, so KINKY!!!
The petite performers Medianoche and The Ivory Fox gave an absolutely marvelous series of inventive poses, all glowing with queer chemistry and true vintage fetish style. Enchanting!!!
MediaNoche, left is Miss Exotic World and Queen of Burlesque 2017!
The Ivory Fox, seated above, also takes gorgeous photos of Medianoche!
I had so much fun drawing these two.
They are tremendous performers and models; they created so many beautiful shapes and interactions.
Love that vintage fetish style!
The Ivory Fox rocked classic Bettie Page hair and gave me a chance to really work on drawing the way the style moves on a living, moving person.
Because of censorship problems on US platforms, I also created censored versions of my Midnight Foxes drawings using nail art lace decals.
You can see Medianoche in a similar look here, using a Playful Promises (sex-worker positive company!) black lace bralette over pasties. She has an OnlyFans where you can support her by checking out saucy looks as well! And don’t miss Damsels in Control, her gallery of gorgeous feminist pin-ups!
Using “feminine”-coded materials like nail-art decals, which also references the Letraset and Letratype of my illustration youth, is meta, and also pretty.
But you know what? It sucks to censor women’s bodies in order to be in compliance with the TOS of my PayHertre0n account. FOSTA-SESTA is an evil law that has deeply harmed, and continues to harm, the very people it purports to protect. As well as those no one seemed to care about protecting, male sex workers! Chilling effect is chilling, and the knock-on free speech effects on artists and everyone else have been devastating. I live in Europe, though, and my sites are registered and hosted in Europe, so I can show you the full glory of The Midnight Foxes here.
I encourage you to support these incredible queer NYC nightlife performers, who have been hit so hard by the economic devastation of COVID-19 in the US.
Liliana Velasquez at Violet Variete Benefit for Berlin Bruisers by Suzanne Forbes April 10 2019
This page at Onlinecensorship.org tells you how to appeal if you’ve been censored or shut down on Facebook, Insta, etc.
EFF has a new project called TOSsed Out. It shines a light on cases of people deplatformed for so-called Terms of Service violations. The basics on it.
New as of Jan 20: The group Hacking//Hustling has a terrific resource page to help adult content creators handle shutdowns, doxxing, security and more.
NEW as of Dec 5 ’19: An EXTREMELY clear and helpful post from Hoss, explaining a lot of the basics of how all this works plus a huge amount of detail on Facebook/Insta/WhatsApp “Community Standards”, i.e. what will get you banned.
OUR Community Standards, a show and statement from the Tom of Finland Foundation for the annual ToFF Art Fair.
Alternatives to OnlyFans, from before OnlyFans was bought by MyFreeCams. As of today, June 22 2019, you CAN put adult content on OnlyFans. You must check a box stating you intend to upload pornography. Along with your legal name, country of residence and bank account.
Adult performers picketed Instagram to protest content policy. This piece includes the story of famous fine artist Betty Tompkins being kicked off Insta.
Them magazine on how sexuality in online spaces has become whiter, straighter and thinner. Good breakdown of how corporate platforms self-censor and governments become more repressive. Includes the UK Digital Economy Act, which affects porn in a range of ways, including an age-verification system. Although that has now been delayed til 2020.
Liberapay, a payment donation platform, which doesn’t exactly allow porn, but doesn’t exactly not, and is based in France.
For the latest on censorship and the fight, I follow young sw Liara Roux. She has a SFW twitter, an XXX twitter, a Patreon (for now,until Patreon shuts down all adult accounts) and of course, her own platform.
I just joined Mastodon, the federated social media thing, on Switter – which is the sex-worker-friendly instance! Find me here: @suzanneforbes@switter.at
Here’s my screed on the value of owning your own platform:
Own Your Platform, Own Your Fans.
A platform is a piece of technology (software + servers) that lets you publish content to the internet.
Platforms can be owned by corporations (they pay server costs, your content/data is their product) or by you.
In order to Own Your Platform, you must:
Own your domain name and know what nation it is registered in.
Pay for your own hosting of your website on servers, and know what nation the service you buy hosting from is headquartered in.
To Own Your Fans, you need to be able to connect with your fans outside of a platform owned by corporations. Corporations can and will always throttle your access to your fans. A mailing list is your biggest asset. But your newsletters must comply with the TOS of the mailservice you use, and the laws of the nations your fans are in.
Using a corporate platform like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter is like renting a shop on a busy street in a busy part of town. The corporation can cover the front of your shop with a dropcloth and set up a barricade to redirect your fans away from your street whenever they want. They can even evict you with no notice whatsoever.
Owning your own domain and paying your own hosting is like owning a piece of land in outer space, light-years from your fans. Except, the mailman comes and goes ten million times a day, and mailing is free, and your fans can visit you in milliseconds. You can build whatever kind of house you want on your land.
When you own your domain, you have a permanent address where your fans can always find you.As an artist I will always link to creators’ own domains first, then add social platforms. That way anyone who wants to reach the creator from my page will click first on the site the creator has the most control over. And if the social links go dead when an account is deleted, the creator’s website is still there.
Cherish your mailing list.
If you lose your social platform, your own domain or your hosting, temporarily or longterm, an email to fans to let them know can be extremely reassuring. You can let them know where to find you again.
9pm in New York is 3am in Berlin, but I stayed up for this Distanced Drawing event!
I had seen the Foxes in a very filthy show produced by The Brides of Burlesque and been blown away.
So little, so pretty, so STRONG, so KINKY!!!
The Ivory Fox, seated above, also takes gorgeous photos of Medianoche!
I had so much fun drawing these two.
Love that vintage fetish style!
Because of censorship problems on US platforms, I also created censored versions of my Midnight Foxes drawings using nail art lace decals.
Adult performers 
For the latest on censorship and the fight, I follow young sw Liara Roux. She has a SFW