(Image via Mandate)

eBay is the only way to go if you want to sell items secondhand and reach the largest market. I have used it for decades and love it.

However, with its semi-recent adoption of anti-sex (and anti-gay) rules, eBay has become explicitly homophobic in its efforts to approach nudity and sexually provocative items as if they are grenades.

Using my plight as an example, nudie magazines used to be all the rage on eBay. The tamer ones could pass muster for general-category listings, such as Books > Magazine Back Issues, while hardcore mags were safely hidden in the nonsensical and harder to find Everything Else > Adult Only > Magazine Back Issues.

Check out eBay's latest rules regarding dirty magazines:

Adult magazines, books and comics that contain nudity are allowed only if they don't contain sexual activity and if no images of nudity are showing in the listing

Some examples of this include Bear (magazine), Blue (magazine), Butt (magazine), Gayletter, Mayfair, On Our Backs, Penthouse, Playboy, Playgirl, and Playguy. This isn't an exhaustive list of magazines, books and comics we allow. Any adult magazine or comic that doesn't contain sexually explicit content can be listed following the guidelines in this policy

For no reason other than fuck it, there's just so many of them!, magazines like Playboy and Playgirl are exempted, while almost every other titty mag is supposedly verboten. I mean, Hustler is banned. Bizarrely, eBay mentions — of all gay nudie mags — Bear and Playguy as supposedly being okay IF they're in the Adults Only category. (And Blue shouldn't even be on the table — it's a fucking photographic art magazine. It's not porn.)

However, when I try to list Mandate (not only comparable to Playguy, but from the same publisher) and Playguy, I get this warning:

Note: Playguy is specifically exempted in eBay's own written rules, and Mandate for damn sure should be. Neither of these titles shows sexual contact. They were both published under strict guidelines. They don't even show masturbation. Just nudity.

And in this weird pop-up, eBay contradicts its rules! Now, it turns out the ONLY magazines allowed to be in non-Adults Only categories are Playboy, Penthouse or Playgirl. All straight magazines, by the way. All the other magazines are supposed to be Adults Only ...

... which isn't even a category you can find to use anymore. (Some listings I find are in those categories, but those categories are not findable on my listing tool.)

And yet — if you go to fill in magazine titles in the Books > Magazine Back Issues non-porn category, eBay does not have a suggestion for The Advocate, but does have fill-ins for porn mags Club, Oui, Swank and Leg Show.

Absurd. We have regressed at a dizzying pace from the '90s, when eBay gladly offered scat porn.