In the 1980s, Lawrence Pazder and his wife Michelle Smith wrote a book called Michelle Remembers, a biography of the recovered memories Smith had of being tortured and sexually abused as a child by Satanist in rituals to summon Satan. It eventually led to all sorts of prosecutions of Satanist who were abusing children and Geraldo Rivera telling people there were over a million Satanist in the United States just waiting to prey on your children.
None of this was true. Satanic ritual abuse was never a thing. One daycare operator went through seven years of court cases and involved allegations of being abused by flying witches and Chuck Norris in a series of tunnels under the daycare that did not exist.
It was a moral panic, and today is generally referred to as the satanic panic, and it’s a good lesson that the fact that child sexual abuse happens and is horrible doesn’t mean it’s happening everywhere and it can still be the focus of a moral panic.
We’re almost certainly in the midst of a moral panic about pedophilia and I don’t mean the people who thought office pizza orders were code for sexual abuse. When people compare two adults in a consensual relationship to child sex abuse, that’s a clear sign we’re in a moral panic.
Likewise, when someone makes a joke and posts a cute video of themself as a child and people compare it to pedophilia, we’re in a moral panic.
YouTuber Gabi DeMartino posted a $3 video on her OnlyFans with the title “Won’t put my panties on.” It was a video of her as a little kid, fully dressed and laughing about panties.
This became a huge scandal because OnlyFans has a reputation for having a lot of porn on it, but OnlyFans isn’t actually a pornographic website. Lots of people on OnlyFans use it for things other than porn, and there are rumors and rumblings from time to time that the site would like to be rid of sex workers entirely. They certainly market themselves to the public with no mention of the fact that the primary use of their platform is selling naked pictures and movies.
So many people were so angry that Gabi had to issue an apology on Twitter, saying “a childhood video of me on the phone sayin ‘Nani says put your panties back on’ and jumping up and down laughing. I’m sorry I didn’t think that one through. period. a home-video i love to share w my friends & i use my OF as a ‘finsta’ page where i share stuff as i would w friends.”
a childhood video of me on the phone sayin "Nani says put your panties back on" and jumping up and down laughing. I'm sorry I didn't think that one through. period. a home-video i love to share w my friends & i use my OF as a "finsta" page where i share stuff as i would w friends https://t.co/yEgFCPs9zg
— gabi demartino (@gabcake) December 1, 2020
But seriously, saying “you better not be trolling with kid pics and thinking that’s OKAY” doesn’t seem like an overreaction to you? First of all, of course it’s okay. It’s basically just a rickroll but with a video from when she was a kid.
She was apparently banned from OnlyFans for a terms of service violation, but OnlyFans has had a lot of bad press over this sort of bait and switch video in the past.
Gabi got the above tweet, which reads “That video of you as a young child might have been completely innocent, but when you charge money for it on a sex work app and use a sexually suggestive caption to sell it, it’s not just wrong, it’s illegal.” That’s hilarious to me for so many reasons, the first of which it is self-evidently not illegal to make jokes that involve children and sex. It might get you temporarily fired from Guardians of the Galaxy 3 but it is well within the realm of protected speech.