this is "nightline." >> tonight, the war on porn. >> sex is like eating. everybody does it. everybody experiences it in their same way. >> tumblr, once a so-called safe haven for adult entertainment shutting down erotic content. >> it takes a lot of hustle to earn a decent living in this industry. >> the ongoing debate about sexual expression and surprisingly, some men at notre dame fighting to restrict the access to online porn. plus king congress, the breathtaking show bringing a mega monster to life. >> kong might be king but you're queen of this show. >> okay. >> backstage with the first woman of color in the iconic role who also has a very special connection to nightline.

with a modern story line, this leading lady is no damsel in distress. but first, the "nightline" five. five. >> number one in just 60 seconds. ♪ ♪ ♪

connecting people... ...uniting the world. ♪♪ good evening. thanks for joining us. we begin with the battle over porn. tumblr, a social media platform some use to access adult

content, is about to remove all erotic images. the largely female audience, outraged, and now some young men are trying to reduce access to porn on their college campuses, saying it's causing problems for both men and women. here's abc's lindsey davis. >> reporter: abigail mac knows what it's like to try to make a name in the adult entertainment industry. >> i do a multitude of things, so i do scenes. i do movies. i do feature dancing. i have my own website. i try to stay very diversified in how i can make money. >> reporter: she says she relies on the internet to distribute and monetize her content. her husband, zachary helps, estimating she has well over a million followers. >> the possibilities are really endless what you can do with a brand on social media. >> reporter: standing out in a seemingly endless sea of internet pornography can be difficult. >> super cute.

it takes a lot of hustle to earn a decent living in this industry. >> reporter: that's why adult performers like abigail mac are lamenting the announcement that popular website tumblr will ban adult content starting next week. the company saying, in part, we've given serious thought to who we want to be to our community moving forward and have been hard at work laying the foundation for a better tumblr. we realize that in order to continue to fulfill our promise and place in culture, especially as it evolves, we must change. >> if it's so easy for just one day, gone, it's going to be really easy for another one just to be like, okay, gone too. it's pretty scary to know that i could wake up tomorrow and all my social media just won't be there. how am i going to promote myself? >> reporter: part mini-blog, part social media, the site allows users to create and share images, videos, and stories. over time, users began posting animated images or gifs of pornn

on their tumblr pages. >> tumblr actually is not a porn site. however, as the form of gif porn has evolved and become very popular, it's actually become almost synonymous with tumblr. >> and it's not just adult performers who are upset over tumblr's decision. >> it is a curated, specialized vision of your own sexuality in picture blog form. >> reporter: for eight years, elle has run lady cheeky, one of tumblr's best known erotic blogs with more than 200,000 followers r. >> it is very very female pleasure focused. it is body positive and sex positive. >> reporter: she says her tumblr page is popular in part because she posts videos and images showing different body types and sexual preferences. >> so, here is one picture that i chose and it's showing an embrace of passion and desire. >> reporter: chase estimates 60% of her tumblr followers are women, reflecting the demographic of the site.

a 2016 study found that 72% of tumblr users are female. >> women were consuming pornography and erotica on tumblr more than anywhere else because it felt like a safe, protected community. >> mainstream porn just shows us what we should find sexy, sex should be this way, you should look like this, you should be in this position, and that is not at all how tumblr porn works. >> reporter: she says she credits the source of the content she posts whenever possible and also has a disclaimer stating she'll remove material that breaks copyright. now she says she's not sure what will become of lady cheeky. >> i don't own that content. without it being social media, i don't feel comfortable posting it. >> there was a lot of marginalized voices represented on tumblr in that regard this change and their terms of service is pretty negative. >> reporter: where do you go. >> when you're kinky and you want to explore? tumblr was a great place to go for that. >> reporter: yahoo acquired tumblr in 2013.

chase says she figured eventually adult content would be removed. >> it made me feel really sad because this is eight years of my life. it was a way for me to express myself. and that was being taken away because it had to do with sex. >> banning doesn't ever help. what does help, though, is having honest conversations about how we consume pornography in healthy ways and that starts as part of an early sexuality education program. >> reporter: in this country, only 24 states require public schools to teach sex education. chase says pornography often fills the void. >> this is entertainment. it's like going to a super hero movie. you can't do those tricks. porn is not sex education. >> reporter: even without tumblr's adult content, this is a business that continues to grow, easy access to porn makes getting that erotic fix more popular than ever. internet giant pornhub.com says it gets 962 searches per second

and has more than 100 million daily visits. the equivalent of the populations of canada, poland, and australia combined. now some in the generation that grew up during the explosion of internet porn are pushing back. notre dame senior jim martinson says he thinks pornography consumption is a big problem on his school's campus. >> it harms men and their ability to form healthy relationships. it harms women with -- by fostering a culture of sexual assault and violence. >> reporter: martinson decided to take action, writing a letter to the editor of the school newspaper asking the university to install a filter on the campus wi-fi that would block pornography, saying, in part, notre dame's sincere efforts to educate students about consent and other aspects of healthy sexuality are pitifully weak in light of the fact that by the time students arrive on campus, many have been addictively watching pornography for years. >> for a lot of people, they just want to stop. if we have a filter implemented on campus, as a universal

policy, this can do so much good for them and their friends that are struggling with this as well. >> reporter: university of notre dame is catholic, a religion that typically views pornography as immoral. martinson's friends say that's helped them find an audience for their proposal. >> a lot of the priests on campus, a lot of the faculty that we know are very supportive and encouraging of us doing this. >> reporter: martinson says about a thousand notre dame students, faculty, and staff have pledged their support for a campus pornography filter and his idea may be spreading. >> my e-mail has been flooded with students from other universities throughout the country. students not only stating their support for what we're doing but also interested in getting something very similar done at their university. >> reporter: in a statement to abc news, the university says, notre dame already has prescriptions against using university laptops and other computers to access pornography. we also expect our students to self-filter and not patronize porn sites in the first place. >> i consider myself to be a feminist and i see this as a

feminist issue that we want to be viewed -- like women want to be viewed with respect and with the dignity that they deserve and not as lesser human beings or just as sexual objects. >> if somebody really is very, very compelled to seek out access to adult content, they're going to do it anyway. and when you make it less convenient, and you make it shameful, then all of a sudden that leads to other problems and issues. >> reporter: as adult performer abigail mac sees it, everyone should be free to express their sexuality on their own terms. >> i think sex is like eating. everybody does it. everybody experiences it in their own way. everybody has fantasies. yes, it can be kept private, but you should be able to enjoy it how you want, you know? no one should tell another human, you know, what they should do with their sex life. as long as they're happy and they're healthy and they're consenting adults. >> reporter: for "nightline," i'm lindsey davis in new york.

>> our thanks to lindsey. up next, king kong, a mega monster meets his match in a fearless young woman. ♪ close your eyes ♪ now the moon has found you watching from the skies ♪ whoa! the mercedes-benz winter event is back, and you won't want to stop for anything else. lease the gla 250 for $359 a month at your local mercedes-benz dealer. mercedes-benz. the best or nothing. hey! yeah!? i switched to geico and got more! more savings on insurance!? they helped with homeowners, too! ok!

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broadway musical breaking barriers with its reimagined heroine, redefining beauty and femininity and make no mistake, our next story is a tale of a father-daughter bond between my "nightline" coanchor and his inspiring leading lady.

>> reporter: it's an hour to show time at one of broadway's boldest productions. >> come this way. >> i just try to get as relaxed and as quiet as i possibly can. >> reporter: last-minute touch-ups, a whole lot of nerves before the curtain goes up. >> watch your step. >> it's not the best look, but this is a wig prep. >> reporter: but you see the name sake of this big budget show isn't backstage. he doesn't even fit in the dressing room. this is king kong. the $35 million action-packed musical like nothing broadway has seen before. "king kong" is a story long revered in the american consciousness. a giant ape captured and brought to new york as a spectacle that

escapes, taking the heroine captive atop the empire state building before falling to his death. and this newest version just so happens to star my daughter as the independent and head strong leading lady, ann darrow. now, kong might be king, but you're queen of this show. >> uh-huh. okay. ♪ i'm taking the throne, i'm going to be the queen of new york ♪ >> reporter: reimagined for a modern age, a far cry from the damsels in distress of kongs past. what's it mean to you to be the first african-american woman to play this iconic role that historically has always been a white woman? >> i feel like it means progress, because i think for a long time, if someone was supposed to be beautiful on stage, they had to be blonde or they had to be fair skinned and i think we're now in a place where beauty is so many things, and i get to be unapologetically

myself and unapologetically black on stage and that's something i do not take lightly. ♪ never ask permission, don't trample on ann's ambition ♪ >> reporter: there's also relevance, it seems to me in this play, to the me too movement. that you're not a damsel in distress. >> it's strong. this girl grew up on the farm. she always had to work for herself. so she doesn't even know how to let a man save her. which is shocking for all the men in the play. she's like, i don't need you and actually i don't know how to need you. >> reporter: you sing, you act, you dance, and your costar is on the quiet side. like he don't talk at all. >> right. the primary thing is just to listen and respond. so i'm sort of listening to his movement, to how his body moves, to how his face moves to get a truthful response. >> reporter: movement that's not possible without the team of

puppeteers helping kong come to life. >> what i love about kong is that it combines state of the art technology in the animatronic side but also marionettes. it's bringing together the new and the old into one really stunning piece of theater. >> reporter: a piece of theater that weighs 2,000 pounds and towers over the stage at 20 feet tall. >> there's ten of us on stage with kong. >> reporter: lauren grant is a dancer. now part of the king's company, the on stage ensemble physically moving kong's limbs. >> there's not a moment that one person is really shining and taking ownership. it's like really important that we're all together and sort of making one thing come to life. so, yeah, it's amazing. we're like ninjas. >> reporter: "king kong" on broadway, 2018, is a take on the

original "king kong" from 1933, which, for many people, is a take on birth of a nation from 1915. that deal in a very dark and ugly way, the issue of race. how is your version different from that earlier version? >> we're not shying away from the fact that our main character cannot speak. and our version, it is now a black woman who cannot find her voice throughout the entire show until she meets kong, who can't speak. >> wait a minute, wait a minute, hold on. >> it's really hard to watch the 1933 version as a person of color, but i think there's a sort of healing that comes from our version when you can see it and solely focus on a connection of love and respect. >> reporter: moments before show time, we're with her as she transforms herself into character. tell us about your dressing room. you got all kinds of stuff in here. >> i just have a lot of gentle reminders of women that helped me get here.

i have family. my grandma, my mom, just to sort of surround me with love. >> watch your step. >> reporter: kong captain jacob williams showed us where the magic happens, this giant box seatside in the audience. >> and this is where we do all the animatronic work of kong. come on in. and this is my rig. i control the shoulders, which just like our shoulders, they rotate on a ball socket. and then i can turn the arms out and engage the hands. >> now we've made it to the stage. i come out here early sometimes and just sort of stand in the middle and take it all in and pray for all the faces that are going to be out there watching us. ♪ let the night surround you ♪ gently close your eyes >> reporter: all right. girl, how good is this, right? that you are doing this thing you've been wanting to do since you were a little thing. >> yeah. it's unreal. >> reporter: right?

>> it's bizarre going to see broadway shows with your dad and talking his ear off, your ear off, about what it would mean when i get to be on broadway and what show will i do and making you stay in the cold at the stage door to sign autographs. and i cannot believe that i get to do that. i get to go out and meet these kids and their parents who have been waiting for me. oh my goodness, it is a dream come true. >> reporter: do you know how proud your family is of you? >> yes. i was never the best singer, never the best dancer. i was never the smartest in school. but i'm so lucky to have a dad like you and to have a mom like i have who told me, god loves you and god knows that you can do whatever you put your mind to. and i am here on broadway, still not being the best but being the hardest working, because of you

guys. thanks, pop. you've had this hanky since i was a little girl. >> reporter: and one last place i had to take my baby girl, the top of the empire state building. the top of the world. >> oh, wow. >> reporter: how cool is this. >> this is the best day ever. and i said that a lot since "king kong" has started, but it's like every day i'm living the dream. literally on top of the clouds right now. up next, one mom's big idea saves recess. touch shows how we really feel. but does psoriasis ever get in the way? embrace the chance of 100% clear skin with taltz... of its kind offering people with moderate to severe psoriasis a chance at 100% clear skin.

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and finally tonight, the story that's making everyone feel warm inside. zoe harrison has cerebral palsy and when it came time to go outside for recess, the 9-year-old struggled to bundle up and make it out in time. >> i couldn't, like, play. >> so her mom designed a very

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