Patreon comes down on my work

Hi Patrons. Some of you may have noticed a bunch of my content has disappeared off this page. Unfortunately this is the result of a week long dispute between me and patreon. About a week ago I woke up to an email from patreon informing me that my content was in violation of their community guidelines. Despite the fact that their guidelines define banned pornographic content as "real people engaging in sexual acts such as masturbation or sexual intercourse on camera", and my work doesn't actually contain any real performance of sexual acts, or any actual display of exposed bodies, patreon has refused to concede that my work does not violate their terms. I have included screenshots of my dialogue with patreon in the image album for this post, in case folks want to see my full appeal and patreon's (crushingly blank) responses.

So, what does this mean now?
The ultimate plan is to move my work off of patreon entirely. Considering they censored not only my fun furry-on-furry photo comics and gifs, but also my fine art works that deal even remotely with sexuality (They specifically requested I remove my Self-Care/self-suck images, which are getting ready to be hung in a show later this month), I feel that patreon is not a healthy place for any of my work. I hope to recruit a web designer who can help me set up a custom subscription service that I link to from my artist website, tommybruce.net. If that works, then hopefully I can cut out a middle-man entirely and continue to produce and share my work with impunity. But, that takes time and money, two resources that I, as a graduate student in my final year of my art program, have very little to spare. This leads me to my next major point:

I will not be shutting down my patreon, yet.
I understand the feeling that others might have, that I (and all of you) should stop giving any money to patreon at all, starting with removing this page entirely. My thinking though is in weighing the damage: How much would patreon be hurt by losing it's cut of my supporter contributions? Not very much, $22.75/mo to be exact, as of my current earnings. Compare that to the funds I would continue to generate, if I maintain this page for even one more month, $407. That amount of money would be a huge boost in tracking down a web designer to commission for a custom payment structure on my own site. With that in mind, I hope you will consider supporting me through this moment of turbulence. Additionally, I want to let folks know:

I plan to make this issue into a topic for public conversation on censorship and sexual expression.
While I carefully devised the content I uploaded to patreon to never explicitly cross the boundaries stated in their community guidelines, I'm not too surprised that they would find a way to call for it to be removed. I see this instance as another step down the regressive path away from freedom of sexual expression on the internet, right in line with Tumblr banning 18+ content and craigslist removing personals from their site. All of this is an effort to push sexuality back into a closet by a fascistic government, and I think it's a battle worth fighting.

More info will be coming.
I'm spinning a lot of plates right now with school, teaching, upcoming exhibitions and more, so please bare with me as I try to make moves on this plan as efficiently as possible.

If you don't want to give money to patreon, you can donate money to me via ko-fi or Paypal.

I set up a ko-fi today!
https://ko-fi.com/tommybruce

And my paypal is:

tbrucephoto@gmail.com

All funds raised on these accounts will next go toward research and development of a new subscription payment method that I run directly through my own domain. 

Finally, thank you for your support—past, present, and future.
I would not have ever made a lot of the fun comics and gifs I shared here if it weren't for enthusiastic support from so many of you. Even glimpsing a possible future where I could make a living as an artist on the collective support of my patrons gives me hope that there is a future for a model like patreon... just hopefully one that doesn't get bought out and wrecked by venture capitalist backers and conservative online pay service companies.

If you have thoughts on how I might move forward, please feel free to reach out!
You can hit me up on twitter, telegram or email. @atty_boy on the first two, tbrucephoto@gmail.com via email!

Much love friends,

xoxo, Atty