Val Webber
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publicpubics.bsky.social
Val Webber
@publicpubics.bsky.social
2.6K followers 600 following 82 posts
Public health & porn OHS, working with PASS, ECP, and the SHaG Lab. He/they flavoured. Previously naked on the internet.
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publicpubics.bsky.social
Beyond these harms to the broader culture, vague guidelines that conflate actual abuse with fantasy and fiction have a devastating impact on the livelihoods of creators – especially those who do not create vanilla, heteronormative content. Like most platforms, sex workers and other sexual content creators were some of the first to adopt Bluesky and played an enormous role in building it up. I urge you not to be yet another platform that throws them under the bus the second you catch a whiff of ‘reputational risk’. To read my research in this area, please see the following: link to the article "The definitional creep: Payment processing and the moral ordering of sexual content" in Sexualities journal and link to the article "‘This is fucking nuts’: the role of payment intermediaries in structuring precarity and dependencies in platformized sex work" in Porn Studies journal.
August 16, 2025 at 12:18 AM
publicpubics.bsky.social
that the violence being portrayed neither harmed the actual performers nor is a simplistic endorsement of acting out said violence ‘in real life’. Denying this complexity to sexual content by conflating fantasy and reality actually reinforces cultures of sexual violence. Sequestering sexual content and devaluing it reinforces classist, whorephobic rhetoric that sexual culture is ‘low culture’, and therefore the purveyors and consumers of it do not deserve respect and dignity. This is one component of the attitude that exploitation of and violence against sex workers and other sexual labourers is justified. Additionally, when we undermine people’s ability to enact and consume fantasy material (whether those fantasies are portrayed in animation or by real humans), we are denying them the right to exercise bodily and mental autonomy. For a culture of sexual consent to exist and grow, people need to be able to both refuse the sex and fantasy they do not want to engage in AND be able to assent to the sex and fantasy they do want. You cannot have one without the other.
August 16, 2025 at 12:18 AM
publicpubics.bsky.social
I am a postdoctoral research fellow who has researched the role that payment processors exert on platform terms of service and community guidelines, and the way these terms impact content creators and other platform users. My primary concern with the proposed Bluesky community guideline updates is their failure to distinguish between content that documents actual expressions of non-consensual violence (i.e. video footage of a sexual assault), and content (whether featuring animated characters or real humans) that depicts the consensual portrayal of those themes, acts, and fantasies. Specifying that ‘Consensual adult content’ is permitted in 5.B.i is potentially in conflict with clauses 2.A and 5.A.ii. Historically, when the rules are vague, the regulation of adult content always errs on the literal and conservative side. Consensually created, fictional adult content is held to wildly stricter standards than fictional content featuring ‘non-sexual’ forms of violence. With non-adult content it is understood
August 16, 2025 at 12:18 AM
publicpubics.bsky.social
New pub alert! 🚨 💳 🌽 💦

Rébecca Franco and I talk about how adult content payment processing rules enforce a moral hierarchy that prioritizes credit card brand reputation over – and at the expense of – people’s sexual consent & autonomy.

Open Access! 🔓
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Sexualities journal article titled the definitional creep: payment processing and the moral ordering of sexual content, by Val Webber and Rébecca Franco
December 2, 2024 at 3:59 PM
publicpubics.bsky.social
They acknowledge these numbers could be due to higher self-reporting or data collection methods, but no way it might reflect a real increase in the proportion of people who've been disabled by covid, which continues to run rampant on campus.
www.dal.ca/content/dam/...
screen cap from the report that reads, the number of persons with disabilities at Dalhousie has grown over the five years. By 2022, 19% of students, 8% of academic staff, and 15% of other staff identified having a disability. Senior administration included 13% persons with disabilities, and 14% of Senate identified as such. While these numbers show progress, ongoing work is needed to create more inclusive and accessible environments. screencap from the report that reads, it is not clear whether these increases in persons with disabilities and 2SLGBTQIA+ communities reflect more individuals form these groups joining Dalhousie, a higher willingness to self-identify, or improved data collection and reporting methods.
November 26, 2024 at 4:58 PM
publicpubics.bsky.social
This isn’t relatable but I made it anyway
The “really? Right in front of my” meme. The disgruntled character is holding a calendar that has a white woman with big hair in a pink bikini on the cover, and it says “really? Right in front of my the girl next door Atlantic Canada’s best ladies as seen in the auto seller 1995 wall calendar?”
November 20, 2024 at 3:40 AM
publicpubics.bsky.social
tfw you can’t decide which book to start next
(and you haven’t finished the other four you already started
[and tbh you’re going to watch a sexy slasher movie instead 🪚])
A selection of books laid out on a grey bedspread: Dis/Consent edited by KelleyAnne Malinen, The Color of Kink by Ariane Cruz, Trafficking Harms edited by Katrina Roots Ann De Shalit and Emily van der Meulen, The Social Safety Net by Nora Loreto, The New Sex Wars by Brenda Cossman, Never Whistle at Night edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C Van Alst Jr, Body Shocks extreme tales of body horror edited by Ellen Datlow, a zine produced by spank chain called Hors d’Oeuvres, Moving Politics by Deborah B Gould, Luttes XXX by Maria Nengeh Mensah Claire Thiboutot and Louise Toupin, Working It edited by Matilda Bickers peech breshears and Janis Luna, and Your Body is Not Your Body by Tenebrous Press.
November 15, 2024 at 11:58 PM
publicpubics.bsky.social
I know I don’t *need* another podcast on the roster but this sounds like it’s gonna be so good
public-health-is-dead.simplecast.com
Cover art for the podcast Public Health is Dead, featuring an anatomical drawing of a skull in a shade of purple-pink over graph paper. The title is written in a combination of typewriter text on torn paper and bright green ransom note style cut and paste.
November 5, 2024 at 2:13 AM
publicpubics.bsky.social
Latest COVID forecast is pretty stark. If you were ever considering bringing some mitigation back into practice, anything is better than nothing! 😷
Details & provincial forecasts here:
https://covid19resources.ca/covid-hazard-index/
Visual summary of the COVID-19 resources Canadian forecast for September 23 to October 6, showing every province ranked as very high or severe rates of infection, long covid, hospitalization, and death.
September 24, 2023 at 5:36 PM
publicpubics.bsky.social
This 90s Brownie patch is my gender and I won’t be elaborating
Embroidered patch of yellow thread on brown background depicting a jaunty fella with their head tipped to side and a lil smile on their face.
August 21, 2023 at 11:21 PM