The ex-Mormon TikToker who posted a viral video about “soaking,” the act of inserting a penis into an orifice and not moving it, says her job was threatened because of the video.
“The idea behind it is if it’s just in, but not moving back and forth, or there’s no movement, it’s not a sin,” Alexis George Lowry says in the video, which has garnered over 14 million views since it was posted earlier this month. An Oct. 21 Daily Mail article about the TikTok helped it gain traction.
Lowry says her boss told her on Monday that if she didn’t delete the TikTok, she would be fired. So, she resigned.
“Never in a million years did I think I would have to lose my job, threaten to be fired, for explaining what soaking is,” she says in her latest TikTok.
In her original video, Lowry also explained jump soaking, or the act of a third person moving the bed on which soakers lay to “create movement” as an “outside [force].”
“But if you’re not doing it, you’re not having pre-marital sex,” Lowry says in the TikTok. She also notes that soaking and jump soaking are popular at Brigham Young University. (The BYU Virginity Club and the BYU Slut Club, both unofficial student organizations, have disavowed soaking.)
As Lowry is only one of many creators who have explained soaking on social media, commenters were confused about what she was threatened to be fired for.
“Why are companies allowed to control what u do in ur personal life?” user @shayede77 commented.
“If TikTok said it didn’t go against guidelines,” @peachstonegirl wrote, “then what’s your [work’s] problem?”
Some said that similar situations have happened to them.
Lowry’s announcement of her resignation from her job is yet another example of viral labor: workers fighting for their rights using social media and the internet.
In her TikTok, Lowry clarified that the job was a part-time side gig. In an email to the Daily Dot, she said that there were “other incidents” unrelated to her TikTok that “caused her to leave” the job as well.
Some commenters encouraged Lowry to sue her former employer, but she said that just isn’t the “right path” for her.
“Sueing would have continued a negative energy in my life and I would like to move on,” Lowry told the Daily Dot.
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