- Hey everyone.
Welcome back to another episode of Pleasure Trove,
where we talk about news, culture
and favourites around sexuality.
I'm Hannah Witton, your host.
It's been a while since I've actually sat and filmed
a video, so I can't remember how to do this,
but we're just gonna crack on.
If you like these videos, I make content around
sex and relationships weekly on this channel
and then I also have a sex and relationships
interview podcast where I talk to lots of really cool
people so subscribe to this channel if you want,
subscribe to the podcast if you want.
I'm Hannah, hello.
Nice to meet you or see you again
if you've been here for a while.
I also just want to give a quick content warning
for a short discussion
about sexual abuse and sexual violence.
This happens in the YouTube recommendation section
of this video,
and I'll also leave some timestamps in the description
of when that is so you can skip it if you want to.
There are no descriptions,
graphic or otherwise of any abuse.
It is more a general discussion around disclosure,
but I'm just letting you know.
It feels like so long since I filmed a video
that I've forgotten how to speak to a camera
so I'm just going to pretend like I'm speaking to my editor
and then hopefully that will just like feel normal
and we'll get into it.
So hi Becky, editor, this is the news segment.
We're gonna talk about some news now.
Great.
So it's been a hot minute since the last episode
of Pleasure Trove, and there's always so much
going on in the realm of sexuality
and some of this news is kind of old by now
and so I thought about cutting it, but I was like,
no, but it's still like really important to talk about
and still really interesting.
So we've got a few things in news.
I'll also leave links in the description where people
have covered these topics in more depth,
but we're just gonna give a little highlights,
this is what's been going on.
So one of the main stories that caught my eye
was the Bella Thorne Only Fans scam.
So Bella Thorne is a mainstream celebrity
and she made an account on Only Fans.
Only Fans is a paid subscription website
that a lot of content creators use,
but also a lot of sex workers use.
And you can subscribe to your favourite creators
and they might also offer certain explicit content
and photos and videos for an extra price
and basically Belle Thorne created an account
and charged people $200 for a pay per view post.
So you have to pay $200 in order to see it
and apparently she said that they were explicit,
fully naked nudes, and it turns out they weren't.
She made like a million dollars in a day
and loads of people were asking for refunds quite rightly.
And basically what this led to was Only Fans the platform
introducing new restrictions
so something like this potentially couldn't happen again.
So now they've put a $50 cap on pay per view posts,
and also instead of creators being paid out weekly
they're paid out monthly and this has basically
fucked over sex workers.
Once again, people just do you not consider sex work work,
do not think about the consequences of their actions
and how they might impact people who are already doing a job
that is so heavily stigmatised and so difficult to do.
You've got governments and media platforms
left, right and centre trying to regulate and restrict
their ability to work safely and make money and,
you know, be respected and, you know,
be given just some human fucking decency.
So that has been a real hit for the sex worker community
and some of them have taken a huge cut to earnings
and I just think the whole thing is so frustrating.
And I will say, and this is in no way blaming sex workers
for like what happened to them, absolutely not,
like Belle Thorne and Only Fans are the instigators here,
but it does teach us a lesson about the fragility
of platforms that we use as creators.
It can be really dangerous to have all of your eggs
in one basket, and then that basket collapses
for whatever reason and you can't make the same amount
of money, you can't support your livelihood.
But I say that knowing that obviously there are limited
options for sex workers because not all platforms
are willing to provide a safe space for them.
And basically what we've seen happening with like
what happened with Tumblr and now like what's happening
with Only Fans when sex workers like built up
that platform over lockdown, like it blew up.
But what we've been seeing is just this narrowing,
this narrowing and this narrowing of safe spaces online
where sex workers can create content, post content,
have the ability to make money.
You know, it's just getting smaller and smaller and smaller
and that really sucks but if you're a creator
and you're not a sex worker,
perhaps the lesson learned from this is to diversify
your revenue streams in whatever way that you can,
because these platforms are not our friends
and they're especially not sex workers friends.
Next story I want to touch upon is the whole gender
reveal party and the California wildfires story,
which is just horrific.
If you're in California right now, I'm so sorry.
Please, I hope you're safe.
But I just wanted to quickly give you a quote
from the woman who is credited for inventing
the whole gender reveal trend.
And she said,
"stop having these stupid parties for the love of God.
"Stop burning things down to tell everyone
"about your kid's penis.
"No one cares but you."
So, there you go.
You heard it from the creator,
even if she did that unintentionally, please stop.
So finally in news,
I told you there was a lot of stuff to cover,
which is that RSE relationships and sex education
is now compulsory in schools in England.
So relationships and health education
is compulsory in primary schools
and then relationships, sex and health education
is compulsory in secondary schools.
The whole thing is honestly, a bit of a mess
and if you want to learn more about what the government
guidance actually says, what this realistically means
for schools and the different topics that may or may not
be taught in schools to young people,
I would recommend listening to the podcast episode
I did with the head of policy and public affairs
from Brook who are the UK's
young people's sexual health charity.
So if you want to learn more about the RSE guidance,
definitely listen to that podcast episode.
It gets broken down a lot with all of the loopholes
and potential problems that could arise.
If you are a teacher, I would love to hear your thoughts
in the comments about if this is affecting you,
how it's affecting you would be interested to hear.
So next up I have got some book favourites.
The first is "Fattily Ever After" by Stephanie Yeboah.
This came out recently and it is absolutely stunning
and it is all about body positivity, fat acceptance,
and feminism and racism,
and Steph's personal relationship with her body.
But there is just so much good stuff in here.
Like I learnt loads about the history
of the fat acceptance and body positive movements.
I learned a lot about the history of racism
and policing body types.
There was honestly a lot of new terminology
in here for me as well.
Like you get a real sense of Steph's story
and her personal journey,
but there is just like so many nuggets in here of important
information for people who are black, people who are fat,
but then also people like me who are neither of those things
and want to understand these movements better
and be a better ally, would highly recommend
and I read it in like two days and there's definitely
sections that I want to come back to as well.
It's very good.
Also I love the colours, orange and blue.
and the next book I wanted to shout out
I haven't read yet, but I am very excited to
and it is "Love Frankie" by Jacqueline Wilson.
I grew up on Jacqueline Wilson books
and in this book, "Love Frankie"
we have a lesbian hero, actually
I don't know if she identifies as a lesbian,
but a girl who loves girls.
This copy was gifted to me by the publishers
and I am so excited to dive into it.
Also, I know that Emma Gannon did an interview
with Jacqueline Wilson recently as well
for her podcast Control Alt Delete
so I definitely also want to listen to that.
Next up I have a podcast recommendation for you
and it is I Weigh by Jameela Jamil.
This podcast has been going since March,
but I've actually only just started to listen to it.
So I'm only like a few episodes in,
and I've kind of just like them picking them based on like,
if I am aware of who that person is or I'm interested
in the topic area.
So I've listen to the episodes with Munroe Bergdorf,
Matt McGorry, Rachel Cargle and Stephanie, boom,
and honestly just from the small selection of episodes
I've listened to so far, my mind has been expanded,
I'm learning so much.
I also really love the way that Jameela interviews
her guests and the way that she like reacts
to what they're saying.
There are a lots of episodes and I know I personally
want to work my way through a lot of them.
I would be interested to hear if you've listened
to the podcast and if there are any standout episodes
that you would recommend that I listen to.
But just in general, if you aren't aware,
the podcast is about all sorts
of forms of social justice and identity.
It covers a lot of stuff around feminism, race,
body positivity, and fat acceptance, politics,
the media, mental health.
So yeah, would recommend.
Next I have a YouTube recommendation
and this is a specific video.
It's one from Lindsey Doe of Sexplanations
and the video is called Responding to Abuse
and this video can be a really difficult watch.
She does give the appropriate content warnings
at the beginning,
but it is a very raw and visceral video of Lindsey,
not talking about what happened to her,
but kind of talking about the aftermath of it
and what happens when you disclose abuse to people,
how you are treated because of that trauma
and healing and just interacting with other people.
And I was watching this video,
just thinking that this video is so essential,
this video is so important.
People need to watch this video in case they are ever
in a position where somebody discloses sexual abuse
or sexual violence to them,
the way that we respond to survivors who disclose to us
can make or break their experience,
it can retraumatize them, or it can send them
in the right direction of healing and support
and that role as the person
who is being disclosed to is crucial.
And then also it's just a really compassionate video
that I hope other survivors find solidarity.
My next favourite is a TV documentary,
but unfortunately it's not available to watch anymore
because it's from Channel 4 and they leave things up
on their website for like 30 odd days
or however long it is and then it's gone.
So I don't even know why I'm telling you this,
but maybe, you know,
if you find a magical way to watch content on All 4
like after it's disappeared, then do this,
or maybe you already watched it
and we can have a little chat about it.
The documentary is called "Me and My Penis",
and it's a whole bunch of interviews
with lots of different men about their penis,
but also about masculinity in general and woo,
I honestly was going into it just being like,
oh no, what's this going to be?
What is it going to be?
But I was pleasantly surprised.
I really, really loved it as well as interviews
they're also doing this nude photo shoot with a photographer
and I heard that apparently this documentary
was the first time an erect penis
has been shown on British television,
so there's a first,
and then also I've just been generally having a lot
of conversations with people recently about nudity
and how nudity isn't inherently sexual
and we are not used to seeing nude bodies
in a non-sexual context.
So if you are able to watch that documentary,
I would highly recommend it
for the conversations around masculinity,
but also just to expose yourself to some non-sexual nudity
so we can all be less weird around people's bodies.
I'm pretty sure they interviewed a trans man as well.
However, I don't think they interviewed a single fat person.
I think they were all like pretty slim man from my memory,
which I now can't go check
because the documentary has gone forever.
But yeah, for a documentary that was focusing on body image,
masculinity, and mental health
them not including a wide variety of body shapes and sizes,
was like mm, I believe there was a man in a wheelchair,
they got the trans and the disability boxes ticked
but hey, always room for improvement.
And on that note, thank you so much for watching
this episode of Pleasure Trove.
I hope that you enjoyed it
and I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments
on all of the different things that we talked about
and also if you have any of your own recommendations
or news stories that you've heard about
that you want to bring to my attention
and I'll see you in my next video, bye.