I started this blog on Wordpress. I've been blogging there since 2011 with no trouble whatsoever. That was even were I hosted my website until I bought the softlysarah.com domain. I'm not the most prolific blogger, but I get one posted every now and again. It's hard to blog, because you don't really know just how much of yourself to put into it when you're in this fiield.
Sadly, it has been shut down. It was shut down while I was traveing for family stuff, so I didn't notice it until a friend of mine emailed to tell me it was gone. There was something to the effect of, "For a limited time, you can access your posts to move them", but clearly that limited time had expired by the time I even realized my blog had been shut down.
I immediately wrote to them to ask why it had been taken down, and a "Community Guardian" named Daisy prompltly wrote back to let me know "my kind" wasn't wanted there in so many words. She wrote,
"Hello,
As mentioned on our Mature Content page, sites advertising or promoting the use of escort services are not permitted on WordPress.com:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/mature-content/
Your site has been permanently suspended and it will not be returned to you."
Now I really hadn't read that section too carefully when I created the blog in 2011, because so many escorts I know use a wordpress blog to blog with. So I wandered on over to take a look at the page at the link she sent me. Here is the pertinent rule:
"...However, there are limitations to the mature content permitted on our service. Please don’t...Post links, text, or images promoting or advertising escort or erotic services"
There are precisely three (3) posts on my entire blog that have anything to do with what I do. To be fair, there was a link to my website, which clearly promotes and advertises my services. But the average visitor to my blog would not have become offended by the content of my blog. And considering the number of blogs that are used by escorts, and how long I've had it, I'm imagining that my blog was reported to wordpress. Which begs the question, why?
Probably because I didn't stick to escort-related topics. I know- that sounds counterintuitive- but it makes perfect sense. If my posts were broadcast on WP, as they are in their system, my posts would reach lots of "civilians". And I had also begun reblogging blog posts that I found particularly interesting- again, rarely anything to do with escort-related topics. Therefore, my posts and my blogger identity would have made it onto many civvies' radars, and not all of them would be sympathetic to my cause, so to speak.
Yeah, so here I am, wearing a scarlet letter: E for escort. Can't have folks like me out there promoting such a sinful thing! My goodness. Yep- they need "Community Guardians" to take me down and keep the community safe from the likes of me. Lord knows- they don't need any hussie escorts blogging about the fractal nature of kale, after all.
Meanwhile, I managed to scrounge up most of my content from my former blog here (sadly, the last cache was two years ago) from different places around the Internet. I've placed them all here except for one or two that aren't that exciting. I've dated them all correctly, as well, so the continuity (er, or rather lack thereof) is not lost.
Sigh. Here we go again. Hopefully it sticks this time. :(