I have seen a post that got 15 upvotes that was advertising online sex and asking for people to DM them. I am confident that the moderators will remove it. However, I am disturbed that most of the comments replying to it believed nothing was wrong and actually requested to exchange DMs with this person.
A while ago I saw a post about someone in an online relationship with another person saying they meet over a kink discord server and a majority of the replies were encouraging them and this relationship instead of concern.
After this latest thing I can’t take it anymore.
If a significant portion of this community cannot practice basic cyber safety, especially around sex, then I think this is an unsafe place that creates an environment of encouragement around unsafe online sexual conduct.
This is supposed to be a transfem community and transfems are a minority group especially susceptible to sexual cyber abuse. Nobody here should tolerate the encouragement of unsafe online conduct or engage in it.
First before you read the rest of my response, could you put a meta tag in your post title? Just to keep things organized.
I do think that looking for for sexual interactions is against the spirit of this community. I am going to add that as a new rule and enforce it from here on out as a new standard rule. Looking for friends is okay, looking to meet people is okay, but that specifically is, I agree, something that puts vulnerable people at risk.
As for the comments about online relationships. This community is first and foremost a supportive community for transfeminine people. That necessarily entails that people can come here and talk about the things going on in their lives without an expectation that they will be met with gatekeeping and judgement. I dont want to foster an atmosphere whereby people feel like if they post here about something they are likely to met with a lot of unsolicited advice and caution towards their lives.
If someone were to ask “what do you think about my online relationship with this person I met on a kink discord” then I think its appropriate and acceptable for people to express concern. But if that hasnt been requested, if they didnt ask for advice, then I wouldn’t really want or expect the community to collectively throw a lot of caution or concern their way. The end result of that in my mind is more likely that the poster will just feel alienated from this space and unsupported here.
Case by case my vary, but depending on the tone of the comments I would be concerned about someone creating an environment of hostility towards other users here. A degree of caution is always warranted when engaging in online relationships. It is also true that many people who are in an online niche queer community like this are themselves in online relationships. I do think it is important that this space exist for them too.
It was a sensitive topic for me, as I have experienced sexual trauma online and I could have maybe overreacted, but I’m glad you’re addressing it.
Yeah I was under the impression this isn’t a dating site. I don’t seen anything wrong with seaking out sexual partners online. Don’t ick someone else’s yum and all that.
But also… This isn’t the place? Dating and sex tend to be their own thing for a reason.
Sexual and sex can be two very different things after all.
And hey, it’s only over reacting if you don’t have a good reason and hurt someone because you did something you can’t apologize for.
So if you have a valid reason and are sorry over an action you took and no one got hurt. You can always say sorry and things can move on.
Never beat yourself up for reacting to something naturally. As long as you self reflect you can always get better and it can help a lot to understand your trauma and move past it.
You can’t move on if you don’t confront yourself and accept yourself in equal measures. Its work!
Hey you probably are talking about my post in part. I have not met this person via a dc server.
I am doing opsec and I am also doing background checks. There will always be risks and ppl should inform themselves before diving. I did that mistake twice and sadly paid for it, but those situation had been entirely offline as well.
The worst thing that could happen is me getting blackmailed sending naughty messages between 2 consenting adults. And to be quite honest I do not care. I stand behind my sexuality anf if someone were to try to embaress myself with what I like IN PRIVATE all I’d have to say is:“why do you care about my private life oh so much”
I can emphasize with your worry and see that these posts can trigger people when they have experienced sexual violence. I marked my post nsfw for obvious reasons but a policy like we have with [vent] posts could maybe help with that
I had to break all 5 of these rules before I felt safe for the first time since I was 10 y.o. I was not safe from ages 10 to 23 because I followed the rules, then I broke the rules and my life got better.
These rules are not what I’m talking about.
The rules that keep you safe are also a trap in and of themselves.
Life is about taking risks. The trick is trying to guess and understand when it’s safe to break the rules or not.
No one can know till they try. And this extends to more then just online safety. It’s one of the biggest catch 22s of life. It sucks and people tend to get hurt and then ruin their own lives after wards because of the fear of getting hurt again. Or ruin them from fear and never taking the chance in the first place.
And worse of all the only person who can give honest and good advice typically is yourself. It’s rare to find someone else that knows you and your circumstances enough to give good advice.
warning: mentions of sexual and gender-based violence
I definitely don’t want to minimize this issue, and it is a very difficult topic to navigate within a community that is yeah, disproportionately impacted by online sexual violence, but also uniquely reliant on online spaces for sexual expression.
I don’t think this is the instance you’re referring to, but I made a post about the difficulties socializing with other trans women while managing trauma and neurodivergence, and received multiple replies advocating for Discord as a vector to simply meet other trans women. One of those replies was similar to what you outlined here, and aimed to normalize online kink spaces as social kink spaces (a pervasive issue all on its own), and assumed that I’d be open to forming relationships with random users in that setting. My response to that was discomfort with that notion even if just on the grounds that there would obviously be a possibility of harmful power dynamics due to no guarantee on the age of other users.
Now, I, as I’m sure some or even many of you are as well, am a survivor of sexual violence. I also would have never realized that I was trans if it wasn’t for online spaces where I could express myself sexually, and of course, trans women already have to deal with the intersecting violence of objectification as women, fetishization as trans women, and hyper-sexualization as queer people generally. Oppression and the sexualized construction of trans women forces many of us into dangerous private (online) spaces where our only vector of validation is to engage in a markedly trans-misogynist performativity.
Naturally, for many young, repressed trans women, myself included, that validation as sexual women is too relieving to discard out of hand, and our education on sexual violence and capacity to give consent under these conditions results in a large number of those young trans women being victimized without even understanding that they are experiencing sexual violence. ** As always, it is never the victims’ fault that they are victimized, only the perpetrators.**
I agree completely that any responsible trans woman in this community is obligated to address these vectors of sexual violence that I’m sure many of us have already been traumatized by. The difficulty is in how we do that without expelling trans women who expect that behaviour, as they are likely to think this is merely how trans women are treated, and have internalized the notion that they deserve to be treated that way. At the same time, that form of expression may be the only way they feel comfortable expressing their gender identity as, again, it may be the only way they’ve been afforded to. I’m sure many of you also know the pain that comes from taking yourself seriously as a woman, and challenging internalized trans- and typical-misogyny while still struggling to feel valid.
I think the examples you use here are great to demonstrate this difficulty, as one appears to be a clear cut instance of fetishization, and the other potentially a reproduction of those norms that victimized trans women may believe to be expected. It’s easy to say they don’t belong here on the grounds discussed above, but if we’re having a discussion on the tolerability of sexualization in this vulnerable community, we do have to then discuss the nuance that there will be trans women who come here with harmful internalized values, and it will be very difficult to distinguish them from predatory bad actors much of the time.
sorry for the long comment, this is a topic I obviously struggle with quite a lot
Discord is a terrible thing and has done more harm than good to online socialization.
It’s too walled off and creates far too insulated communities which tend to echo chamber themselves into really shitty social norms.
I’ve seen far too many friends of not just trans nature but other vulnerable minorities go through some real fucked up shit cause of discord. :/
Yeah this is well written. This should have been my post. I was kind of emotionally reacting to things I’ve seen, I’m sorry if it caused issues. I agree with this analysis.
that validation as sexual women is too relieving to discard out of hand, and our education on sexual violence and capacity to give consent under these conditions results in a large number of those young trans women being victimized without even understanding that they are experiencing sexual violence.
This happened to me, exactly as described, so when I see it mirrored in other people I kind of lose it. I made the mistake of thinking that other queer people are safe and that I could throw caution to the wind around them. It’s just not true. The danger level is how vulnerable you are to being manipulated and taken advantage of, not the identity of the other person/people. Users here not being safe with how they interact with others scares me badly.
No please, these are all valuable perspectives that speak to a shared trans experience. It’s deeply unsettling to look at the current internet landscape and find that it seems even more threatening to young trans women than it was when I was young, and I think it’s understandable to want to avoid the dangers that reliably work their way into these communities.
Young trans women are understandably vulnerable to validation, and predators always seek out people like that. A major issue with online spaces is there is really no way of knowing that you are around other queer folks, and yeah, it isn’t like you don’t have to be wary of predatory queer people along with the usual suspects. Many victims of sexual violence also do not realize they’re traumatized until much later in life, especially when it was something that didn’t involve literal sexual assault from a stranger somewhere. Sexual violence prevention education is certainly more of a thing now than it was before, but of course, like most things, trans women are disproportionately affected by the persistent miseducation. It is extremely rare to see sexual violence prevention education programs address issues like the specificities of trans women’s experiences with isolation and internalized trans-misogyny.
I’m sorry you experienced that, and believe me, I understand the fear you’ve expressed here. It’s difficult to overstate just how prevalent these experiences are for trans women.
Oaky
Regarding the “hacker girl”, she’s only spammed the same weird, over specific post and has only replied to comments on those posts in the 1 month that her account has existed. I would think someone who says they are that desperate for friends would make more of an attempt to actually interact with people in communities like this rather than circle-jerking herself over hacking fast food companies.
Yea, that hacker girl post left me with extremely bad vibes as well… If everything in it is true, it’s seems very unlikely she would need to be posting here to find a partner. It feels like an attempt to talk sexually with trans girls, especially more vulnerable ones looking for a way out.
I doubt this comm would ever ban horny posting, but when it stops being discussions about sexuality and starts being horniness directed at other users that’s when it crosses the line, IMO.
Sex, sexuality and sexual are three different things after all.
Some soapy tiddy memes, body appreciation, sexual dysphoria, kink talk, and actual sex. All fall under those same three categories to various degrees. But all are WILDLY different in vibe and context.
Can you explain which specific things made you think it wasn’t genuine?
Everything about that hacker girl post was a red flag, it’s completely unacceptance to advertise online sex even if it was genuine.
She wasn’t specifically advertising online sex
starts with desire for fwb or something else. moves to quarter million salary (20k to 40k/ mo x 12 mo = 240k to 480k/yr), talks about tons of sharks, tv, and everyone’s favorite, a switch. and now they are 9.5 uncut. oh and as long as you are 18 all is green in their book. can even be as high as 38.
that type of post isnt kosher by craigslist standards. and i mean craigslist back in the day with personals wouldnt wanna see this.
Even more sus how that one post is all the OPs account got used for. There were no interactions on lemmy other than bait-y posts. Like, I’d imagine someone with that many sharks would maybe make a post in the blahaj community or something.
😶
points at own post count of 0
But you actively comment and participate and don’t just make a horny bait post
