LAS VEGAS—YouTube has suspended content created by Dr. Victoria Hartmann, sexologist and the Director of the Erotic Heritage Museum in Las Vegas.
Both her Baking Naked and a sex-positive vlog have been suspended since the beginning of May.
Baking Naked featured Hartmann—who has been the director of the famous sex museum a block off The Strip since 2014—and a colleague talking about the latest in sex research while … baking. A nude sex worker assistant was almost always with the pair to lend a hand in the episodes, her body judiciously pixelated, as nudity is against YouTube's terms of service. W
orking hard to “keep sensitive content off the channel,” as Hartmann said, to her surprise, she found Baking Naked systematically taken from YouTube at the beginning of this month. When she then took to vlogging about scientifically researched subjects ranging from the myth of porn addiction to gender dysphoria, she found this content also removed.
“I was raised in Europe, Germany, specifically,”Hartmann said. “It’s not unheard of to jail people who are Holocaust deniers, and I think it’s justified given the crimes committed by the Nazi regime. Sometimes speech is uncomfortable, but I fail to see how one can equate sex research in the same category as hoaxes and conspiracy theorists.”
Since the YouTube banning, Hartmann has opened a stand-alone site, BakingNakedShow.com and is presently in talks with the folks at Pornhub to host the show as a part of their Sexual Wellness outreach.
“When we stifle science and researchers who study sexuality, the slide into censorship will only pick up speed. Where does it end?” Hartmann said.
Hartmann is an academician in sexual science and health. She has written articles on pornography, paraphilias, and sex work, and has been featured in Huffington Post, Slate, and VICE. In 2017, Hartmann was voted the most influential activist for the LGBTIQ community for Nevada in 2017 by Broadly Magazine. She lives in Las Vegas and works full time as the director of Harry Money’s Erotic Heritage Museum.
For more, visit BakingNakedShow.com.
