Tumblr may be after 'female-presenting nipples', but this tutorial on drawing nipples is still alive

NOTE: For all latest, breaking news related to Tumblr adult content ban as well as its alternatives, head here.

Recently, when popular American cartoonist Liz Climo (of The Simpsons fame) shared how her comics got caught up in the Tumblr adult content ban, The Verge’s managing editor couldn’t hold themselves from saying that Tumblr’s porn filter is irreparably broken.

https://twitter.com/chillmage/status/1083447892650668033

God knows how many times we have highlighted how bad the censoring algorithm is. There are several examples that show a lot is wrong with what Tumblr is doing. To name a few, posts are being wrongly flagged, users are finding loopholes in the way Tumblr is censoring posts, reviews of the Tumblr app are allegedly being manipulated, and Tumblr’s own examples of allowed adult content got flagged.

While Tumblr’s implementation of the ban has left a very large number of people annoyed, we have now stumbled upon someone whose blog post about nipple drawings has manged to survive this apocalypse.

You know what’s hilarious about tumblr’s ban on the nipple? My tutorial about drawing nipples that has over 25k reblogs is still up on the site???

You know what's hilarious about tumblr's ban on the nipple? My tutorial about drawing nipples that has over 25k reblogs is still up on the site??? https://t.co/fOpiiZ2lkP

— Ovens (@ButtOven) January 11, 2019

Just click on the link in the tweet to see the tutorial. For its part, here’s what Tumblr’s new Community Guidelines say:

Don’t upload images, videos, or GIFs that show real-life human genitals or female-presenting nipples — this includes content that is so photorealistic that it could be mistaken for featuring real-life humans (nice try, though). Certain types of artistic, educational, newsworthy, or political content featuring nudity are fine

It’s hard to say whether Tumblr’s censoring bots are yet to scan this tutorial or have already given it a green signal. But one thing is for sure that among all the ongoing mess currently on Tumblr, wherein even floppy disk photos have been flagged, this comes as a pleasant surprise.

What does ‘female-presenting nipples’ even mean?

This has been a big question ever since Tumblr used the term in their official announcement and subsequently in their new community guidelines. Tumblr has even faced a sort of backlash over the term.

https://twitter.com/Lizzieandstuff/status/1069706977721237504

https://twitter.com/NaturallyLexi27/status/1069662462734155776

https://twitter.com/dondrapershadow/status/1069652318298271749

If you remember, we published our analysis on this sometime back. Basically, we were able to spot something which we feel could be a potential reason why Tumblr went for such a term.

Leaving aside the debate on why the ban is only on female nipples and not male nipples, the bone of contention here is the use of the word ‘presenting’. A Twitter user shed some light on the matter by saying:

i definitely feel like they added “presenting” following @raindovemodel going head to head with Instagram over gender identity

https://twitter.com/babesapienne/status/1069837697831788544

To which Rain Dove (whose Twitter bio describes them as Gender Capitalist- in fashion, film and activism) replied in affirmative.

Yes they did. Everyone freaked out at the loophole which resulted in IG being forced to allow me to keep up my topless photos or risk breaking the user agreement contract I had entered into with them

To give you some context, earlier this year, after Instagram – which doesn’t allow photos of female nipples – removed a topless photo Rain Dove shared through their account, the activist called out the company for breaching the user agreement saying they are not female.

Following which, when Rain re-shared the same photo and it was reported to Instagram again, the company refused to take action saying it does not violate Instagram’s community guidelines.

So it’s possible that Tumblr used the term ‘female-presenting nipples’ in order to avoid any such back clash. What do you think? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.

NOTE: PiunikaWeb has covered in detail the Tumblr adult content ban as well as the platform’s alternatives, check out all updates here.

Follow @PiunikaWeb

PiunikaWeb is a unique initiative that mainly focuses on investigative journalism. This means we do a lot of hard work to come up with news stories that are either ‘exclusive,’ ‘breaking,’ or ‘curated’ in nature. Perhaps that’s the reason our work has been picked by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and more. Do take a tour of our website to get a feel of our work. And if you like what we do, stay connected with us on Twitter (@PiunikaWeb) and other social media channels to receive timely updates on stories we publish.