“Fuck the first, second, third, and fourth ICE. Then worry about fucking me,” the Reddit post reads. “Immigrants of any status are my friends, neighbors and coworkers.”
On the Internet — and on the streets — that sentiment is inescapable, especially after 37-year-old nurse Alex Pretty was shot to death by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis on Saturday. The killing came just weeks after an immigration agent shot and killed another man, Renee Good, whom federal authorities labeled without evidence as a “domestic terrorist.” The message of this Reddit post would fit perfectly into online spaces for countless hobbies, interests, and creators: anti-ICE discussions are happening everywhere from r/military to cat subreddits. Except this time, it was posted on an adult forum.
r/MassiveCock is a subreddit primarily featuring photos of users’ penises. Before this weekend, the forum was largely apolitical: a place for users to sext or promote their OnlyFans accounts. Over the weekend, amid the usual dick pics, some posts began taking an explicitly anti-ICE stance.
“How hard it gets when I think about abolishing ICE,” one post read, including a photo to demonstrate. Another post accompanying the photo said, “Sorry, I was just thinking about the ICE agents who will rot behind bars for the rest of their lives.”
A user named Tomato1987 posted one of the “Fuck ICE” messages in the subreddit that became one of the top submissions over the weekend. The user, who requested to remain anonymous because he is a private person, says he is active in adult subreddits which he mainly uses to meet people and show off. he told The Verge He is moderately active politically – always votes, has attended a few rallies – but does not consider himself an activist of any kind. His Reddit account is his main platform, and he says he has no social media outside of it.
“ICE incidents are having a devastating impact on my community, friends and coworkers.”
“I admit that what I did feels a little (very) stupid to me,” he said in a message. The Verge. “Certainly a big part of what I did was just express frustration in the most public way that I could. The events of ICE are having a devastating impact on my community, friends and coworkers.”
As of Monday there are several dozen “Fuck ICE” or similar posts in the subreddit, some with hundreds of comments.
Many of the comments under Tomato 1987’s post were in support of her anti-ICE statement, but of course, “Why bring politics into sex?” There were also complaints along the lines of.
He said, “Someone else told me that nothing in life should seem ‘normal’ when things like this are happening in our country. Even porn and sex.” “All this should make supporters of uncontrolled political violence and fascism uncomfortable.” He also said it was a way to refute the notion that because he posts on “dominant, physically imposing genre subreddits” that he has certain political leanings or lacks empathy.
“I hope that at least a few people who pay attention to me will see that you can be ‘manly’ and still have compassion for fellow human beings,” Tomato1987 said.
Of course, politics and sex have always been deeply intertwined, and adult content online is increasingly under attack, including age verification laws that critics say are ineffective at keeping adult content away from minors, but have a chilling effect on free speech and raise privacy concerns. In the UK, Reddit requires users to verify their age by uploading a selfie or a picture of their ID before accessing some mature content, although users have found ways to bypass the verification process.
ICE has become a topic of conversation in other adult subreddits. A moderator of r/RandomActsofBlowJob (exactly what it sounds like) posted Sunday that the “Fuck ICE” subreddit had a “stance on what’s happening with regards to immigration enforcement.” (The related subreddit took the same stance.) The morality of running a fascist kink subreddit in an era of violent state repression has also been debated.
Tomato1987 says he has no idea whether anti-ICE content will stick in r/MassiveCock. For now it’s just “a little bit of daily hope,” he says. “Just to let people know there are a lot of people out there who are concerned about their safety and well-being.”
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