Hong Kong porn sites ThisAV.com and AVO1 published messages in which they urge users to stop watching and join the protests, Haaretz reported on Wednesday.
“Are you so lonely that you will continue to throw your money here and not demonstrate with everybody?” ThisAV.com asked users. Tens of thousands of protesters hit the streets of Hong Kong this week, demonstrating against an extradition bill that that would allow people to be sent to mainland China for trial.
Reporter Yuen Chan released a tweet on social media in which she lauded a site for telling users the protest is vital “not because we have hope… but because we need to come out even if we fail.”
It's happened. A #HongKong porn site is urging users to suspend activities to march against #ExtraditionBill "not because we have hope, not cos we think numbers=success, but because we need to come out even if we fail" #NoExtraditionToChina #反送中 pic.twitter.com/Fdo9UfebfA
— Yuen Chan (@xinwenxiaojie) June 8, 2019
In 1989, the magazine for men Lung Fu Pao published a special edition donating all profits to the families of those killed in Tianamen Square.
Pornography tends to find itself in the forefront of struggles in favor of more, not less, democracy and freedom. In the US, Hustler publisher Larry Flynt became famous for promoting free speech - in his case the ability to print nudity - and became the topic of the 1996 film The People vs Larry Flynt.
In Israel, the now defunct magazine HaOlam HaZeh used to print semi-nude pictures of women for the express purpose of attracting readers who would not normally purchase the iconoclastic magazine.