“[F]reedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth.”
~United States Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis 

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Why Am I taking META to Arbitration?

I am challenging Mark Zuckerberg and his company META’s unwarranted, unfair, inhuman and contract-breaching deactivation of my Facebook and Instagram accounts.

I humbly but adamantly demand that they be restored.

I am taking META and the “Metaverse,” to arbitration because that is the sole legal recourse META provides, the only way I can, perhaps, get Mark Zuckerberg’s gigantic social media mega-monopoly to face the truth about my META life and sudden death.

Truth is often a casualty of our high-speed Information Age – more and more controlled by algorithmic AI – Artificial Intelligence that frequently turns out to be Artificial Ignorance. This includes META’s instantaneous and truth-avoidant *evaluation* of my right to digitally exist.

This statement is my attempt to see that justice is served for me and others like me. In this increasingly technocratic, algorithmic world, the American justice system is one of the last bastions of human agency. Though arbitration is not courtroom litigation, my hope is that our arbitrator will take these issues of fairness seriously; at least, more seriously than META has taken them on its own.

Bottom line: META’s error in deactivating my accounts has done great, irreparable damage to my digital life, relationships, fan base, artwork, archives, mental and physical health, as well as personal and professional reputation.

According to multiple sources, including KQED and BuzzFeedNews, META has committed this sort of error many times, wrongfully deactivating countless other accounts, doing grievous damage to many people’s digital lives, their mental health, their work, their relationships, art, fan bases and reputations.

Sadly, most people cannot fight back. I am fighting back.

I am fighting for my own META accounts, and I am fighting for others who have also been unfairly mistreated, dehumanized, activated and deactivated, groomed and then doomed, as well as grievously harmed by META, Mark Zuckerberg and their AI technocracy.

It’s true that my chances of winning against a mammoth megalopoly like META are small. I’m the little guy – literally and figuratively.

Nevertheless, my hope is that justice will be served, that I will get my accounts restored and my healing underway, and that META and Mr. Zuckerberg will do less harm to all of us in the future.

View the Power Point demo below…

 Who Am I?

My name is Susan Marilyn Block, and I am a world-renowned sexologist, sex therapist, sex educator, researcher, relationship counselor, “love doctor,” talk show host, lecturer, columnist, philanthropist, humanitarian and bonobo conservationist.

I am a magna cum laude graduate of Yale University with two Ph.D.’s from Pacific Western and the Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality (IASHA), and a best-selling author of several books that have been translated into 11 languages, including Advertising for Love, Being a Woman, The 10 Commandments of Pleasure and The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure.  I also wrote the forward to Ecosexuality and I am one of the top contributors to the Wiley-Blackwell International Encyclopedia of Human Sexuality, the world standard sexuality text.

I have hosted The Dr. Susan Block Show and its various spinoffs on radio, cable TV, the telephone and the Internet for over 35 years, and I am perhaps best-known for my own #1 Nielsen-rated specials, Radio Sex TV, on HBO, recently profiled on Vice TV’s “Sex on TV.”

I’m also a featured speaker at AASECT (American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors & Therapists) and many other conferences at University of California, Berkeley, the University of Puerto Rico and Yale University, my alma mater, and I have served as a consultant and expert witness for the LA Public Defender’s Office (sex crimes division) on several criminal cases.

I have been a writer and columnist for hundreds of publications over the past 40 years, including Counterpunch (for 23 years), and I have been interviewed in many more, from Health Magazine to Cosmopolitan to The New Yorker, to name a few. I have also been featured as an expert, usually in sexuality, on numerous TV shows, such as The Doctors, CNN, ABC News, Oprah and NPR.

I have won various awards, including the “Sexologist of the Year” Glenny Award for three years, “Best of LA Radio” by The LA Weekly and “America’s Greatest Thinker” (second place) by the Great American Think-Off.

I am the director of the Susan Marilyn Block Foundation, a non-profit humanitarian organization dedicated to reimagining how people share resources and knowledge to create a more peaceful world, the Bonobo Way. I am also director of the Block Bonobo Foundation (since 1996), devoted to educating people about bonobo apes, as well as bonobo conservation and helping to save these highly endangered Great Apes from extinction. I have given many talks and lectures on bonobos and The Bonobo Way.

I have been married for over 32 years to Maximillian R. Lobkowicz. Together we host a weekly radio podcast where we talk about sexuality, politics, art, free speech and current events, which we had broadcast every week on Facebook and Instagram until May, 2023 when META deactivated both my accounts simultaneously.

2008 – 2023: META Grooms & Dooms Me

My relationship with META started in 2008, when I opened my personal Facebook profile account. Over the past 15 years – from the summer of 2008 to spring of 2023 – I have been enticed, manipulated and effectively “groomed” by Facebook algorithms, advertising and prompts, to create over 1500 Facebook posts, much of them with the help of my staff. These included pictures, photo albums, videos, reels, stories, articles, artworks and shows, with comments.

In 2017, I opened my Instagram account with the same type of content and comments, groomed by IG in the same way.

I use the term “grooming” because META has treated me (and many others) like a powerful, selfish, ruthless celebrity or CEO who grooms and then dooms, activates and then “deactivates,” abandons and insults a trusting fan, without a care for the terrible damage that is done.

Real Photo Albums vs META Photo Albums

Before 2008, I used to make real photo albums, scrapbooks, art archives and contact books. They’re old and frayed now, but at least, I still have most of them.

META, Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg employed various enticements to persuade me to virtually replace these real albums, real archives, real artworks – and even (in some cases) real friends – with their digital facsimiles via my Facebook profile starting in 2008, and on IG starting in 2017, until META’s deactivation in May 2023.

Thus enticed, I put a great deal of time and creative energy into these Facebook and IG albums of photos, writings, videos and artworks.

So did my staff. From 2008 – 2023, my staff and I invested over 50,000+ labor hours into making, sharing and commenting on Facebook and IG posts of various kinds.

Putting aside my own *priceless* time spent creating META-tailored content and posting, streaming and commenting on META, my staff costs were about $100/week for the first 8 years when I was only on Facebook, and then $150/week for the next seven years when I was on both Facebook and IG. This comes to a total of $96,200, just for my staff to help me with posts. That’s not counting travel costs, digital equipment and lunches.

Like many people, my Facebook profile and IG account have served as a digital archive of my life, loves, work, shows, blogs, articles, lectures, art, politics, philosophy, causes and experiences.

All that investment of time, money, love and labor – gone in an instant.

Real Friends turned into META Friends… then Destroyed

As META groomed me into entrusting it with my precious posts and albums, I, in turn, encouraged my “real world” friends, fans and family into “friending” or following me on Facebook and IG – instead of calling, emailing, visiting, connecting, interacting or keeping in touch with me in other ways – all to the continuous benefit of Facebook, IG, META and Mark Zuckerberg.

Lulled into a false sense of trust, I built up my own large vibrant Facebook community of family, friends, fans and colleagues within the larger Facebook community, exchanging about 10,000+ public comments and 1500+ private message threads.

In fact, I lead a real community called Bonoboville which is based on peace, love, sexual equality, sharing and bonobo conservation. That continues in real life even though I am now banned from META, but my deactivation means I can’t personally participate in Bonoboville pages or groups.

Moreover, I’ve lost all of my other communities of Facebook and IG friends, family, fans, fellow Yale alumni, fellow IASHS alumni, AASECT colleagues, fellow bonobo conservationists, fellow LA Press Club members, fellow sex therapists and sex educators, guests who have appeared on my shows and podcasts, fellow filmmakers, talk show hosts who invite me to appear on their shows and academics who invite me to lecture at their conventions, schools and other venues, as well as many other contacts that I had built up over 15 years on Facebook and seven years on IG.

These people’s META profiles comprised my “digital phone book,” and our “show and tell” communications included thousands of posts, pictures, reels, stories, blogs, articles, shows, comments, threads, messages and “memories”– from 2008 – 2023.

Like many people, I was groomed by META to make my Facebook profile and IG account into vital points of contact for relationships with important people in my life. All was destroyed without warning, explanation or justification, in the blink of an eye.

The META Commons Megalopoly

Over the 15 years since I joined Facebook, mighty Mark Zuckerberg either overpowered or bought much of the competition – overpowering Pinterest and buying Instagram, for example – monopolizing the social media landscape which has become a crucial public utility, but with almost no oversight. Now, there is virtually nowhere else to go for many essential social functions.

Thus, the META/FB/IG/Threads/WhatsApp/Zuckerberg empire serves as an international Digital Commons.

For thousands of years, the “Commons” or Towns Square has been where people of all kinds could come to share feelings, experiences, discoveries, work, art and ideas, as well as connect with our communities of fellow humans.

Deactivation of one’s META accounts equals banishment from the Digital Commons, causing irreparable social, fiscal and emotional harm to the banished person, as well as their friends, fans, family, community and the general culture.

“People accept authority when they see that it treats everyone equally, when it is possible to speak up and be heard, and when there are rules in place that assure you that tomorrow you won’t be treated radically different from how you are treated today. Legitimacy is based on fairness, voice and predictability.”
~ Malcolm Gladwell

META Rules Are Unclear and Unfair

Of course, when sharing so much within such a large community, there must be rules.

I believe in playing by the rules.  It is, however, important that the rules are clear and fair, and META’s rules were and are neither clear nor fair.

AI’s implementation of META’s vague and fluid rules is even less fair. As AI consultant Mathieu Lemay points out in Buzzfeed, “AI is far from perfect and, in fact, sort of lazy.”

Nevertheless, I always tried my best, spending hundreds of hours over the years with my staff designing, redesigning, checking and rechecking to make sure my posts abided by Facebook and IG constantly changing rules and guidelines.

When in doubt, I erred on the side of caution and respect. I never tried to break or *get around* the rules. A few times, over the last 15 years, my posts were deemed outside the guidelines, and I was put in what is commonly called “Facebook Jail” – always for visual infractions, i.e., a “nip slip.” IG only censored me once for a picture about censorship (of all things) that showed me wearing a fake gag.

I never received a penalty nor warning for any of the words or links I used on either platform, so there was no reason for me to think any of my words or links were against META’s rules.

Suddenly, that changed.

Digital Death by AI Firing Squad

My META deactivation began with a note of congratulations.

In mid-May, 2023, I was pleased to receive a message from META congratulating me on my Facebook profile having surpassed 10,000 followers. Thanks to my elevated status, it said, I would now need two-step verification. Since I seemed to have no choice, I accepted.  Furthermore, I had been groomed by Facebook, IG and META to trust what they told me to do, and the congratulatory message made me feel accepted, welcome and warm.

Little did I know I was doomed, and would be hit, almost immediately, by the cold slap of META’s AI executioner. Within moments of my acceptance of this “honor,” both my META accounts on Facebook and Instagram disappeared. I was shocked and confused. What just happened? A tech glitch? A bad joke? A hacking? A terrible mistake?

No warning was given, no cause, no trial, no appeal – just a firing squad of bots that killed both my Facebook and Instagram accounts with one digital bullet.

This was no finite sentence to Facebook Jail. This was banishment from the entire mega META Empire. This was also the complete erasure of 15 years of labor and love – and likes! – on Facebook, plus seven years on IG.  No reason was given and no answers forthcoming to my many pleas for restoration and explanation.

I was in shock – as well as out of touch with IG and Facebook friends – my emotional support system! I was embarrassed, bewildered, devastated and isolated. I tried to appeal, of course, but received no reply.

A college professor friend even made up a petition to restore my accounts, but still, there was no response. I wondered what the problem could possibly be as I’d been very careful with images for the past few years, and I had never been censored for words, nor given any kind of warning by META, Facebook or IG.

Yet the instant sentence for my unspecified crime was “deactivation,” aka “termination,” or digital extermination.

It was – as many others have said – Kafkaesque.

“With artificial intelligence we’re summoning the demon.”
~Elon Musk

META Harms

Studies have determined that META seriously harms children, over which at least 33 states in the Union, including California, are suing the company. META also harms adults, including elders like me, driving many of us mad, feeding depression, isolation, paranoia, frustration, envy and addiction.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta stated, “Facebook harms mental health, work flow, personal relationship and reputations… In seeking to bolster profits, Meta has repeatedly misled the public about the substantial dangers of its products.”

Outrage over META’s harms is erupting on both sides of the political aisle.

“Mr. Zuckerberg, said Senator Lindsay Graham at a Congressional hearing on youth suicides due to META grooming and dooming. “You have blood on your hands.”

Recently, families of the Uvalde victims sued META for promoting and activating violence in “socially vulnerable” young men like the 18-year-old gunman.

META harms in how it activates (grooms) people to stay – and depend on – its sites, as well as how it deactivates (dooms) people – in real life and in the METAverse.

Essentially, META’s deactivation – following years of intense activation – is a breach of contract rupturing my entire digital life.

“Freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth.”
~United States Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis

META Responds to My Lawyer

It took an attorney – James Felton – with a relationship with Instagram attorneys, to obtain a reply from META to my pleadings.

I was grateful to finally get a response, though it struck me as extremely unfair that only someone with a lawyer can communicate with META about being literally robbed of their life’s work and their social media support system of friends, family and work colleagues.

A Mayer Brown LLP lawyer, Elizabeth M. Anderson, representing META, responded to my attorney, claiming that my account was disabled because I had posted content referencing my work as a sex therapist, in which I practice sex therapy over the phone, aka “phone sex therapy,” with the hashtag #phonesextherapy.

What? Suddenly, a hashtag that I had used for years without any problem had triggered the simultaneous deactivation of both my accounts?

It didn’t seem fair, and it wasn’t fair. Neither the hashtag #phonesextherapy nor the term “Phone Sex Therapy” were mentioned as forbidden in META guidelines.  I had posted it many times – along with my voluminous other content – for many years and had never received a notice, strike, warning or a week in Facebook Jail or IG censorship of any post with this hashtag or these words – or any words at all, for that matter.

It made no sense. It seemed clear that META had breached its contract with me, and that this “reason” was manufactured retroactively by lawyers trying to defend a bot’s bad “decision.”

Sex Work vs. Sex Talk

Unlike some people, I have great respect for sex workers, and I have interviewed many on my show.  Like 52% of Americans, and as I have said many times on my shows and in my writings, I believe most consenting adult forms of sex work should be decriminalized.

However, I am not, nor have I ever been, a sex worker. I am a sex therapist, educator and researcher. There is a big difference, first and foremost, in that everything I do is legal. Sex work, in most states, is illegal.

There is also a critical and rather obvious physical difference. Sex workers provide “sexual services”; that is, they have some form of physical sex with their clients. I only talk about sex and sexuality with my clients, mostly over the phone. I call this telephone sex therapy or tele sex therapy or phone sex therapy.

If by “sexual services,” Ms. Anderson really means that I TALK about sex, that is true, of course. However, talking about sex is not commonly considered a “sexual service” nor is it “sex work,” and it is unfair to deactivate me for doing that.

Practicing sex therapy, sexology, sex research, sex education or doing a talk show about sex does not violate META “Terms of Use.” Indeed, there are hundreds, if not thousands of other sex therapists, sexologists, sex educators and sex talk show hosts on IG and Facebook – including META’s own therapy app – posting a variety of types of content. So, if META’s lawyers are saying that my accounts have been deactivated for promoting my work as a sex therapist, educator, talk show host or researcher, then I have subjected to unfair treatment and wrongful deactivation.

Phone Sex Therapy

As has been documented in various media, I pioneered the practice of “phone sex therapy” or sex therapy over the phone, tele-sex therapy or telephone sex therapy.

I prefer to use the last term, but it contains the most characters, and there are character limits, so I mostly used the hashtag #PhoneSexTherapy, to connect my posts with each other.

META, IG and Facebook expressed no problem whatsoever with this hashtag or phrase for 15 years. If I’d been advised that it was against META’s guidelines, I wouldn’t have used it. But I was never so advised, warned or informed.

In fact, not using it would have been fine with me. I would not have “lost business,” as META lawyers have snidely stated without evidence, again disparaging my work in a defamatory way.

Less than .5% of my sex therapy traffic and even fewer client inquiries come from META sites.

Where does most of my telephone sex therapy traffic actually come from? About 70% come from search engines, such as Google, Bing or Baidu, due to people searching for my name, or for particular sexual subjects since my website offers lengthy, educational articles on a variety of sexual subjects that get top Google placement.

About 20% come from Google Ads where I advertise DrSusanBlockInstitute.com (the site META references in their answer). Google Ads is very strict – much stricter than META from what I can see – and would not allow me to advertise this site at all if it was for “sexual services” or “phone sex.”

Interestingly, since I started advertising with Google Ads in 2006, rules about wording have changed, as META’s have, but Google Ads never deactivated my account, as META did. Google Ads gives me a chance to make changes to fit the new rules, as META should – but doesn’t.

About 8% of my phone sex therapy traffic come from my ads in Psychology Today, which has a rigorous vetting process and would not let me advertise if there was any indication that I was offering “sexual services” or “phone sex.” The editors at Psychology Today can see that I am a sex therapist who conducts therapy sessions over the phone.

According to Statcounter, less than 1% of my phone sex therapy traffic came from social media, including YouTube, X/Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr and META sites in 2023 when META deactivated my accounts.

It’s Not About Business

Why don’t I get much phone sex therapy traffic from META?

Because I’m not trying to!

Over the years, references to my therapy practice have made up less than 5% of my content on META. More than 95% of my META content is/was NOT about phone sex therapy, but about current events, bonobos, conservation, my interviews, shows, podcasts, books, articles, lectures, travels, Yale reunions, friends, family events, milestones and other such things.

Though the most I can demand in arbitration is $75,000, META’s deactivation has caused me well over $75,000 worth of damage. This has almost nothing to do with my phone sex therapy business (less than 1%).  It has to do with my entire life.

LOST: 15 years’ worth of my lectures, talks and keynote speeches at Yale, UC Berkeley, UC Puerto Rico, UCLA and more – which have nothing to do with phone sex therapy – along with thousands of comments, shares and other community interactions – all deactivated on Facebook and Instagram.

LOST: 15 years’ worth of my interviews, shows, podcasts and documentaries – which have nothing to do with phone sex therapy – along with thousands of comments, shares and other community interactions (thousands of hours of work) – all deactivated on Facebook and Instagram.

What a loss – especially at my age!

If only META had warned me not to mention phone sex therapy or #phonesextherapy or link to https://drsusanblockinstitute.com, I would have been happy not to. Since I never received a warning nor was told anything was wrong with phone sex therapy nor linking to https://drsusanblockinstitute.com,  I continued to do so. Therefore, META was in error and in breach of contract with me when they deactivated my accounts on Facebook and Instagram.

Why “Phone Sex Therapy”?

Back to phone sex therapy, the so-called “reason” for META’s sudden outrage and deactivating rampage against my Facebook and IG accounts.

Why conduct sex therapy over the phone?

• It’s safer for the client and for the therapist.
• It’s more convenient, comfortable and private.
• It’s easier to talk about sensitive subjects by phone than face-to-face.
• It’s better for the environment (nobody has to drive anywhere).
• It’s available to anyone with a phone worldwide.

Thirty-three years ago, when I was earning my first Ph.D., I conducted all of my sex therapy sessions in person. Then I became ill but wanted to keep in touch with my clients, so I started to provide therapy sessions over the phone. That worked so well for me and my clients that even after I recovered, I continued the practice. I called it “telephone sex therapy” when I came up with it in the early 1990s, or “tele-sex therapy” or “phone sex therapy.”

“The telephone gives us the happiness of being together yet safely apart.”
~Mason Cooley

 Changes in Sex Therapy Practices

At first, some of my fellow sex therapists were appalled.  Their certification boards did not allow them to conduct sessions over the phone. However, just as Facebook, IG and META’s guidelines have changed over the years, so has the practice of sex therapy.

Gradually, over the next two decades, attitudes toward using the phone and other devices went through a complete transformation. In the 2000s, conventional therapists and medical doctors started referring their patients and clients with sexual problems to me for sex therapy over the phone. At the same time, other sex therapists started to realize it was perfectly acceptable and even better in some ways to do phone sex therapy than in-person sessions. Many even started doing it themselves.

Then, the pandemic happened, and they ALL started doing it; and they haven’t stopped. Nowadays, various forms of professional telephony – including tele-medicine and tele-law, as well as tele-therapy or phone therapy and phone sex therapy – are at least as common as in-person sessions (if not more so).

Now, over 75% of my colleagues are discovering what I’ve known for 30 years: phone sex therapy is best for helping clients with many intimacy issues.

Different therapists have different boundaries. In my practice, I let my clients talk with me about anything, including their most troubling issues.

Hippocratic – Not Hypocritical

I am not the “thought police.”  I’m a facilitator for safe, therapeutic discussion.

I believe in the healing value of talking about what’s on your mind – whether it haunts you, scares you, arouses you or a combination – with someone who can help you in a positive way. It is vital that those seeking professional help have a safe and shame-free space in which they can discuss what is bothering them.

This guiding principle is at the heart of the Hippocratic oath and the bedrock of counseling. Nevertheless, many of my clients feel ashamed – or shamed by their doctors or even their *regular* therapists – and this is one reason they call me, because I will talk with them about issues they can’t talk about with anyone else.

I have been a featured speaker at several American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors and Therapists (AASECT) and Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS) conventions, and I’ve been an AASECT and SSSS member for over 25 years. However, I believe some sex therapy licensing and certification requirements can be damaging to the professional therapist/client relationship, and I choose not to be licensed or certified. I am not an institutional therapist, psychotherapist, psychiatrist or clinical psychologist, and legally, I do not need to be licensed or certified to practice sex therapy or discuss, teach and help people with their sexual questions and other issues.

Talking about deep, difficult-to-share feelings provides a safe, healthy release that reduces violence and saves lives. I have written books and many articles about this subject, and spoken about it on many programs, including my own. The importance of talking with someone you can trust about your sexual problems and concerns, and the privacy, safety and convenience of being able to do this over the phone cannot be overestimated.

“What Can We Talk About?”

META lawyers point to my “What Can We Talk About?” page – with its list of dozens of subjects we can talk about – like it’s some sort of “gotcha” piece of evidence, implying that it means I “offer sexual services.”

It does not. On the contrary!

My “What Can We Talk About?” page lists a wide variety of subjects, including so-called “taboo” topics, that clients can talk about with me or one of my other sex therapists. This page is not linked directly to or from any META site and is preceded by a clear “warning” page.

Nevertheless, I’m not surprised the META lawyers are making a fuss about it because there are so many different, interesting, sexual topics on that page – with something to offend everyone!

However, these topics are in answer to the title question, “What Can We Talk About?”

It’s NOT “What Kind of Sex Can We Have?”

These are not “sexual services” we offer. These are some of the many sex-related subjects that we discuss.

Importance of Self-Pleasure for All

Is it just “phone sex”? No. Just because you put the word “sex” after “phone” doesn’t make it just “phone sex” – especially since I always qualify it as “phone sex therapy.” Do people touch themselves when they talk to me? Honestly, I don’t know as we’re on the phone, so I don’t see them. Unlike META, I can’t – and wouldn’t – invade their privacy. Regardless, there is nothing wrong, illegal or inappropriate about masturbation in private, and they are in private.

As George Carlin said (only partly in jest), “If God had intended us not to masturbate, he would have made our arms shorter.”

Self-pleasure is, according to Healthline among many other reputable sources, very normal and healthy for virtually everyone, as any sex therapist will agree, and has “no physically harmful side effects.”

It is especially important and very often life-saving for people who have no other sexual outlets. Many of my clients are disabled in some way. About 30% have medical problems, such as cancer, paralysis, heart disease, diabetes, autism, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and other “disabilities.”

About 40% of my clients are veterans of America’s wars. Some have lost limbs or suffer from crippling PTSD.

Should we, as a society, deny disabled people their sexuality and experiences that most of us take for granted? Such denial tends to depression, anxiety, isolation and/or violence to oneself or others, according to a National Institute of Health (NIH) study, among other sources.

About 30% of my clients come from very religious backgrounds and need help separating scientific facts from religious superstitions about sexuality, including masturbation. They may not be disabled, but they are deeply disadvantaged in life by sexual ignorance, delusions and misconceptions.

“Why does the acceptance of masturbation seem to threaten the very foundation of our social structure? Could it be that independent orgasms might lead to independent thoughts?”
~Dr. Betty Dodson

Masturbation Education

At a 1994 sex education news conference, US Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders was asked whether masturbation should be considered as a form of safer sex in school sex education classes. She responded, “I think that is something that is part of human sexuality, and it perhaps could be taught.”

Some people misunderstood Dr. Elders – like META misunderstands me – and President Bill Clinton fired her. Her willfully ignorant detractors insinuated that she meant that students should masturbate in class. Of course she didn’t, and sex educators – and anyone with a brain – understood that her words were taken out of context, and she simply meant that masturbation should be discussed as a viable, natural, healthy form of safer sex.

Bill Clinton should never have fired Dr. Elders; he should have heeded her advice.

Mark Zuckerberg should never have deactivated my accounts; he should restore them now.

Guided Phone Sex Therapy

META tries to waggle its finger of shame at a page entitled “Guided Masturbation Therapy.”

Therapeutic “guided masturbation,” “masturbation meditation” or “medibation” (a term coined by Dr. Annie Sprinkle who often posts on META sites) is the basis for a form of phone sex therapy where the therapist verbally instructs the client in how to breathe deeply, relax, touch their erogenous zones, use accessories, focus on desired goals, explore dreams, fears, fantasies or memories (good or bad), and practice safer sex.

Women: Many women need to learn how to have orgasms; it doesn’t come naturally to us, according to an IJHRBA study and other sources. Women may suffer from vaginismus, trauma or a lack of sex education. A book or article can help, but not everybody can learn from reading, and most people are uncomfortable with instructions in person, so telephony and videotelephony are the perfect media to conduct this sort of guided sex therapy, which is also sex education, but is certainly not “sexual services.”

Over the years, I have helped dozens of women have their first orgasms this way, like my mentor Dr. Betty Dodson, who often posted on META sites before her death at age 90 in 2020.

Men: According to the Cleveland Clinic, 30-40% of men experience what is commonly called “premature ejaculation” (PE). In my practice, I help many men with PE problems to slow down, using the stop-start technique, which many sex therapists use, and which is much easier to convey over the phone than in person.

I also help men who suffer from various disabilities, such as diabetes, testicular cancer, stroke, heart disease, fibromyalgia, trouble with problematic fantasies and traumatic memories, autism, PTSD or prostate surgery, to rediscover or reformulate their pleasure points.

Couples: I’ve been doing couples therapy in-person for 35 years, but it is generally easier and less awkward – for me and the couple – to conduct couples’ sex therapy over the phone.

Many couples need to learn to better communicate about giving and receiving physical, mental and emotional pleasure, as well as how to avoid or handle pain during sex.  Some couples want to introduce a new fantasy, fetish, sexual position or lifestyle change. Some need to talk out their sexual conflicts with a *referee* therapist, helping them to explore possible solutions.

Trans: About 8% of my clients have an interest in gender transitioning. Through discussion, research and guided phone sex therapy, I help trans-curious clients to determine whether or not it’s *just* a fantasy or fetish, or if they really want to physically transition, in which case I might refer them to an endocrinologist for possible hormone treatment.

More and more of my colleagues in therapy are now discovering something which I have known for 30 years: phone sex therapy is the best kind of sex therapy for helping clients with a multitude of sexual problems and issues. For these reasons and others, many of my more conventional therapist colleagues, as well as medical doctors, refer their clients with sexual problems to me.

The Phone Sex Therapy EXPERIENCE

Telephone sex therapy with the Dr. Susan Block Institute can take various forms, though all are ethical, helpful, effective and, of course, legal. Some therapy sessions are called an “experience” because even though it’s just a conversation, it can be extremely powerful, enlightening, immersive, transformative, expressive, unforgettable, lyrical, life-changing, or – as the “Jimi Hendrix Experience” might say – “mind-blowing.”

In a desperate attempt to defend their misguided bot’s deactivation of my accounts, META points to my use of the word “experience” in “The Girlfriend Experience” or GFE as some kind of evidence.

Let’s consider a typical GFE session with my Institute, in which a “shy” client who has never been in a romantic relationship might learn how to talk with a “girlfriend” roleplayed by one of our therapists. Other GFE clients do have girlfriends, wives or other partners, but don’t know how to talk to them about sex, fantasies or other sensitive issues, so they *practice* with the therapist roleplaying the girlfriend or boyfriend. The fact that the therapist is not a real “girlfriend” or partner makes the client feel less pressured and freer to learn new ideas, approaches and perspectives.

I first heard the term “Girlfriend Experience” when I was on a Sex Week at Yale panel in 2009 with the actress Sasha Grey who had just starred in a film of that title directed by Steven Soderbergh, and I started using the term for experiential roleplay therapy. It is not sex work in any sense, nor is it “sexual services”; it is a sex-educational and/or therapeutic conversation that is also a powerful experience.

It is, in fact, just words. But we believe in the therapeutic and transformative power of words.

Another type of experiential session towards that appears to put META lawyers in a sanctimonious panic is the “Porn Star Experience.” It is widely accepted that adult film performers, aka “porn stars,” know a lot about sex that the rest of us don’t know. Many are “influencers” on META sites. My Institute offers our clients the opportunity to talk via phone or video conferencing with veteran adult performers who are also sex educators or therapists such as Nina Hartley, Kelly and Hamilton Steele (a married couple), Coralyn Jewel and others who share a wealth of knowledge about various sex acts, safer sex, sexual positions, communication, use of accessories, mental health considerations and more.

META lawyers try to denigrate these therapeutic “experiences,” and to “slut-shame,” or brand with the Scarlet Letter some of our therapists at the Institute, as they do with me. Though most of our therapists are not as experienced as I am or educated at institutions like Yale, each is empathetic and excellent in their specialties, and I am proud of the great work they have done over the past 20 years to help our clients.

Struggling to defend their AI bot’s deactivation, META lawyers point how, in addition to the phone, we provide sex therapy via video conferencing, aka “webcam sex therapy,” and texting, aka “sext therapy,” as somehow damning.

We are simply providing sex therapy, information and education via the medium that is most effective for our clients – whether that’s in person, over the phone, via video conferencing, email or texting.

As we face draconian crackdowns on sex-educational speech in schools, libraries, bookstores and mainstream media, people have even greater, deeper needs for good sex therapists and sex educators like us to help them with their sex questions and problems. This is another reason why it is important for META not to deactivate my accounts.

Why are Niteflirt, 1-800-PhoneSexy, Webcam Girls and Real “Sexual Services” on META Sites?

Even if META refuses to accept that “phone sex therapy” is the best way to do sex therapy, they should still restore my accounts for the sake of fairness.

There are many people and companies offering plain old phone sex on META – no therapy involved! For example, META allows the world-famous phone sex company Niteflirt to maintain  several accounts, pages and profiles on Facebook and Instagram, blatantly enticing META users to call them for phone sex. Not phone sex therapy. Just phone sex.

I don’t want to get Niteflirt into trouble, but META’s reference to the “phone sex” part of “phone sex therapy” as their professed “reason” for deactivating my accounts is a classic example of patently unfair business practices, even if for no other reason than Niteflirt is on Instagram and Facebook.

So are “1-800-phonesexy,” “Phone Sexy Girls,” “Webcam Girls,” “DM Me for Price for Sex,” and many others.

Of course, I have listed several reasons that META should not have deactivated my accounts, but the titillating presence of these phone sex-peddling profiles and pages on META sites proves its hypocrisy and unfairness.

Titillation is all over Facebook and IG, featuring *sexy* scantily clad models and very little sex education, especially when it comes to safer sexual pleasure. So, META users looking for sex education just get mindless titillation instead.

There’s nothing wrong with titillation; I like to dress sexy too, but not at the expense of substance.

More to the point of this arbitration hearing, the hypocrisy of allowing Niteflirt, 1-800-phonesexy, Phone Sexy Girls and many similar accounts to proliferate on META while deactivating mine is outrageous and unacceptable.

These aren’t even real people; they’re models enticing people to partake in phone sex (with other people), as well as real-life, often illegal “sexual services” of different kinds.

For example, a “Jenita Douglas” profile on Facebook says “I need a man to accompany me” and links to a page that says “F*ckkme: Looking for sex tonight in your area?”

There are many pages and profiles like this throughout Facebook and IG.  If these phone sex lines and real-life, often illegal “sexual services” can stay on META sites, why can’t I? There is no valid reason. Therefore, META’s deactivation of my accounts is grossly unfair and a breach of their own contract.

We tend to think that equality is about treating everyone the same, when it’s not. It’s about fairness. It’s about equity of access.”
~Judy Heumann

Fairness is Next to Lawfulness

In my studies of bonobo apes, I learned that the importance of fairness is even older and deeper than humanity. It is just as vital to bonobos that they get their “fair share,” that their activities involve “fair play,” and that they are generally treated equally, as it is to us.

Fairness may not always be possible, but it is a basic tenet of what I call “the Bonobo Way.”

According to my late great mentor, distinguished primatologist Dr. Frans de Waal (who quoted me in his best-seller The Bonobo and the Atheist), “We are fair not because we love each other or are so nice, but because we need to keep the cooperation flowing.”

Fairness is next to lawfulness, and it is essential to any “rules-based orders” among social creatures like bonobos, dogs and – perhaps especially – humans.

Harmful “No Fap” Accounts on META

The quality of our society’s sex education has declined on many fronts, according to a Duke University Center of Global Reproductive Health report.

The disinformation-peddling “No Fap” coaches and so-called “semen retention” abstinence gurus that urge people (almost all men) to refrain from masturbation – and any form of sexual activity – are essentially the opposite of pro-science and self-pleasure-positive educators like Dr. Elders and me.

Considered dangerous by sexual health professionals, many “No Fap” coaches have accounts on Facebook and Instagram – such as Alpha Fox and NoFap Motivation on Facebook and NoFap Coach and NoFap Community on IG – where they peddle their destructive messages, shaming people with perfectly normal masturbation habits, plunging them into depression, humiliating them, even driving some to suicide, according to a 2023 LSBU survey study.

Why are the “No Fap” charlatans allowed in the METAverse – hawking their dangerous, anti-science disinformation and promoting their exploitative, sometimes deadly messages – while I am banished? This is a very lopsided morality. It is unfair to me and the greater META community.

“Why does the acceptance of masturbation seem to threaten the very foundation of our social structure? Could it be that independent orgasms might lead to independent thoughts?”
~Dr. Betty Dodson

Lords & Serfs

Though publicly traded, it has been said that META is Mark Zuckerberg’s private company – John Naught of the Guardian calls it his “fiefdom” (Public Citizen) – and he can do “whatever he wants” without regard to free speech or harm to others.

If Mr. Zuckerberg and other top META shareholders, like Vanguard Group Inc., BlackRock Inc., Michael Schroepfer, David Fischer and David Wehner, are the “lords” of this “fiefdom,” then what does that make the rest of us?

Serfs groomed to surf their META-fiefdom – our minds being mined for data which turns into revenue for the META-lords and their royal families – until we are doomed – for whatever *reason* – algorithmically isolated, banished from the digital world we spent good portions of our lives helping to build?

That certainly isn’t fair.

Like any American business that is open to the public, META is not allowed to apply its rules unfairly or inconsistently. Dystopian aspects aside, META’s actions against me are in violation of California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act requiring “full and equal accommodations, advantages, facilities, privileges or services in all business establishments.”

Moreover, in this digital age that Mr. Zuckerberg has been so instrumental in creating, the many sites of the “Metaverse” – including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Threads and more – comprise the digital albums of our lives as well as the digital phone book and digital commons of our society.

Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg’s immense, competition-crushing powers, META is mega. This one company possesses an unprecedented international monopoly – a META Megalopoly – on humanity’s exchange of ideas and information.

META has more power than a public utility, and has taken full advantage of public utility wires, easements, satellites and more. In turn, it ought to accept the responsibilities this power – literally and figuratively – owes to the public.

At the very least, for the good of its own members, and the society that it exploits and profits from so handsomely, META must be fair. META can have any rules it’s rulers want, but – like fair housing and fair lending – META must practice fairness and consistency.

I’m not demanding special treatment. None of us deserves to have our treasured photo albums – including our friends’ precious comments and messages – demolished without warning, and all of us have a right to access “The Commons,” so long as we obey the rules. The key is that we must be given a chance to obey the rules, especially when these rules are vague, wonky and ever-changing as META’s are. That is only fair.

Furthermore, the rules must be enforced equitably. Members of META communities have the right to a fair hearing, before being banished from the empire – especially when the empire is a mega-monopoly as META is.

Erased by META

META’s deactivation is a form of erasing me, with no recourse, due-process or the human and civil right to speech.

As anyone who uses social media knows, this erasure is extremely painful and harmful, like losing a limb.

I mean no disrespect to victims of real physical violence and war. But META destroying my archives of work, photos, videos, posts, threads has felt like having my (digital) house bulldozed – without even a warning – leaving me in the rubble.

META’s deactivation has also hurt my staff, provoking staff-wide depression and trauma over META’s deplatforming me, their company’s director. Within months of deactivation, a couple of my key staff members quit, afraid of losing their personal META accounts because I’d lost mine.

The wanton destruction of my accounts, deleting me from META’s digital “phone book,” is also harmful to my friends, fans, family and colleagues who have trouble contacting me now. Moreover, they miss my shows, my posts and my voice on META sites.

Worst of all, META’s deactivation has led to physical and emotional traumas in myself and my 80-year-old husband. It may have even contributed to his recent severe illness. It certainly was a hindrance when I needed to quickly reach family members whose preferred form of communication is Facebook messenger and WhatsApp, from which META has banned me.

“To suppress free speech is a double wrong. It violates the rights of the hearer as well as those of the speaker.”
~Frederick Douglass

Reputation Defamation

I am a public figure. I have worked hard all my life to create an internationally respected – albeit colorful – reputation through my best-selling books, top Nielsen-rated HBO specials (seen by over 50 million people around the world), acclaimed articles, documentary films, weekly radio and TV shows (since 1984), magazines, artworks, lectures, interviews, work with bonobos and other efforts.

Now everyone who knows me knows META deactivated my accounts. All wonder if I did something “wrong.”

Moreover, in its groundless attempt to defend its bot’s deactivation of my accounts, META has made false and defamatory accusations, attempting to brand me with a “Scarlet Letter,” claiming I violated their rules by providing “sexual services.”

Most people define “sexual services” as “sex work” or prostitution, which are illegal activities and in which I have never engaged. META is baselessly accusing me of engaging in criminal conduct.

META’s character assassination has already caused me much reputational injury, and it is apparent that it will continue to haunt my reputation for years to come.

Virtual Isolation

In the digital age and in these off-and-on pandemic times, we have virtually no other way of communicating with one another than social media – most of it controlled by META.

Personally, I have a chronic respiratory condition that precludes me seeing many people in person these days, so being cut off from META sites is especially isolating and damaging to my mental and physical health.

Indeed, as war broke out in Israel/Palestine, and continues to rage, it has been distressingly difficult to communicate with my friends, family and colleagues in the war zone(s), now that I have no Facebook profile, IG or Threads account. Thanks to META’s grooming, Facebook Messenger is my friends’, family’s and colleagues’ preferred method of communication.

When I signed up for Facebook and IG, I agreed to follow the rules – not to be groomed and doomed, brutalized and banished.

The Normalization of Dehumanization

As I have shown, there is nothing illegal or against META’s rules about my work, my posts, my sites, nor my use of the term “phone sex therapy” or hashtag #phonesextherapy. Moreover, others still on META post comparable content that is much more clearly against META’s rules.

For 15 years, META, Facebook, IG and Mark Zuckerberg enticed and groomed me to put time, money, energy and trust into building up my content and my contacts on Facebook and IG, all of which META destroyed in an instant, without warning, without recompense and without a valid reason, dooming me to deactivation and adding insult to injury with defamatory character assassination.

META’s deactivation is a kind of algorithmic “cultural cleansing” that is as deeply undemocratic, discriminatory, defamatory and inhumane, as it is ill-informed and bot-driven.

The more I hear about why and how my META accounts were terminated, the more it sounds like this coldblooded *decision* made by bots is now being retroactively *defended* via attempts at slut-shaming by humans (mostly attorneys).

These experienced corporate lawyers have now stepped in to do their job which is to defend META’s bot’s wrongful destruction of 15 years of my digital life, 15 years of my work and 15 years of my relationships.

Is that what we have become? People who serve and defend the artificial ignorance of AI that is taking more and more control of the freedom, communication and censorship of our society?

Faced with this post-human dystopian future, I am fighting for my human rights and all of our rights to participate in the digital commons. I am fighting against the normalization of dehumanization.

Do the Right Thing

Therefore, and for all of the other reasons above and too many more to list here, Mark Zuckerberg and META’s deactivation of my accounts is wrong, unfair, defamatory and harmful to me, to the people who are deprived of my content and communications, to the many others who are victimized as I have been, and to human society in general that is compelled to contend with the exploitative sovereignty, the myriad hypocrisies, the algorithmic dehumanization and dark discriminations of Mark Zuckerberg’s mega META empire.

In Summary

• In Summary
  • META’s guidelines gave no indication my posts or work are – or were – against the rules.
  • META gave me no warning nor chance to delete or change my posts to fit within their changing guidelines.
  • META lawyers accuse me of “offering sexual services.” I do not offer “sexual services”. I’m a sex therapist who uses the phone and other communication devices to conduct therapy sessions which are not against META rules, and META’s false accusation is defamatory character assassination.
  • Phone sex therapy is a respected, effective, healthy form of sex therapy.
  • There is nothing wrong with masturbation in private, as a sex therapist helps the client with sexual problems such as premature ejaculation, vaginismus or traumatic memories. It is not illegal, unethical nor is it against META rules.
  • About 95% of my META posts and links were about current events, my shows, my books, including The Bonobo Way, my published articles, lectures, travels, art, politics, etc., and only 5% were about my phone sex therapy practice.
  • When I say META’s deactivation has caused over $75,000 worth of damage to me, it has very little to do with my business (less than 1%) as META lawyers erroneously and disdainfully contend; it has to do with my entire life.
  • I am not a phone sex operator, but if that’s META’s reason for deactivation, there are many phone sex operators on Facebook and Instagram, such as Niteflirt, 1-800-PhoneSexy, Webcam Girls, Sexy Girls and more with accounts and posts much more phone-sexy than mine and that provide no therapeutic or educational value – some even offering illegal “sexual services” in person.
  • META deactivation is equivalent to personal digital extermination, defaming my personal and professional reputation and traumatically cutting me off from friends, fans and family, with whom META groomed me to communicate via Facebook and IG over the past 15 years.
  • META deactivation destroyed my entire digital archive that META groomed me to create over 15 years – and which META and Mark Zuckerberg exploited for their own benefit, as they do with so many others that they groom and doom.
  • Therefore, META should restore my Facebook and Instagram accounts immediately and pay for some of the damage incurred from their unfair deactivation.

  What’s Next?

  So… will I win? If justice prevails in this arbitration, then so will I, and META will learn a small but significant lesson in the limits of its power.

  Of course, justice doesn’t always prevail, and maybe especially not in these technocratic, fiefdom-ruled, contract-breaching, dehumanized times.

  Whether or not I prevail, I believe that META will fail. It’s unjust, algorithmic normalization of dehumanization that grooms and dooms is unsustainable. More and more of us are fighting back, and eventually, one of us will prevail, and then many will prevail, and the whole heartless hypocritical monstrous megalopoly of META will fail, bursting from its own vainglorious, bloated and deadly meta-immensity. Or – perhaps even today – META will learn its lesson, adapt and change.

  May justice and humanity prevail.

“Free speech is life itself.”
– Salmon Rushdie

© September 23,  2023 Susan Block, Ph.D., a.k.a. “Dr. Suzy,” is a world renowned LA sex therapist, author of The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace through Pleasure and horny housewife, occasionally seen on HBO and other channels. For speaking engagements, call 626-461-5950. Updated May, 2024.

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