Content, Clarity, and Consent

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I want to expand on what Talon said by pointing out that while issues surrounding Ageplay may have been some contributing factors that created momentum for our discussion, the rules that we’ve settled on are intended to be self-sufficient in terms of the value they bring. Were Ageplay to suddenly, magically not exist, the only change to these rules should be that 2. would become nonsensical. :stuck_out_tongue:

We did discuss arising legal issues, as well as the concerns and emotions they bring. This is because the legal landscape and the public zeitgeist have seen significant shifts, in countries and communities which represent much of the userbase of Wolfery (and its staff) even just since Wolfery was created. The rules that resulted from this prompt—and others—are not part of a strategy to so solve this, but rather are a product of a complex environment, and an example of our commitment to the core values of Wolfery. If we can ameliorate some of those concerns while improving Wolfery, why would we not? Let’s also remember that every user has always been responsible for understanding and upholding their regional laws and regulations. I know that’s difficult, but let’s try to ensure that our contributions here are not driven primarily by an emotional response to something that is often complex and painful. Instead, let’s stand side by side and look at the problem this may represent together, and search for solutions not in spite of each other, but in support of each other.

By all means, express yourself. It’s okay to say this makes you feel uncomfortable, or you don’t like it. It may be important to understand your frame of reference for your opinion. But let’s be sure that it’s a component of analyzing these rules, and not purely a reaction to the ideas and feelings they surface. No kink should be under attack or defense here. These rules do not attack or defend any kink. They represent a betterment of our communal guidelines in handling topics which are not always inherently safe, as adults, together in a shared space. That they may bring additional tangential benefits is a combination of serendipity and design. That they should exclude tangential harm or unfairness is ideal and a conscious labor.

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Help my posts are being hidden because why??? :sob::sob::sob:

[Moderation note: User has been messaged regarding adjustments which can be made to unhide the posts in question]

[User note: Nuhuh my messages would remove my signature chocoboco-flare if I changed em]

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I’d like to address a few of the things in the meta here that I’m seeing as a through lines in the discussion, some of which are, I think, taking the discussion off the direct track, or otherwise need tending.

  1. First and foremost, with regard to those who have trauma as a result of CSA, know that not only are we aware of, and closely considering your position, but also that the moderation team, and I am speaking personally here, have exceedingly deep wells of empathy. We understand very directly both those who are harmed by ageplay roleplay, and those who use it as a means of healing. We entirely endorse the reality and validity of both. Sadly, this factor is ultimately lost in the wash because: A, those two groups are, by our estimations, roughly equally sized; and B, the logistical, pragmatic side of the implications are shaped intensely strongly by externalities.

  2. ‘This is not a compromise’. This is tremendously common response in all forms of negotiation to a compromise. Most people, entirely subconsciously, weight the values and costs of any policy on their own perspective, even when consciously attempting to consider the other side. It is a feature of human psychology that takes years of training or, and I’m not being glib here, brain damage to overcome. The root of the problem is not in ‘weighing the other side’, it’s in ‘accurately seeing where the other side is’. And on that front is why deliberative consensus, such as we seek in moderation, is effective. Talons is not being placative when saying that we “represent a spectrum of opinions on ageplay content that is about as broad as what is on display in this thread”. This policy is a very carefully crafted combination of concessions either way, balancing permissiveness with tactful avoidance which leaves neither extreme party fully satisfied, yet in our debates sufficiently comfortable to accept it. That is a compromise.

  3. The moral standing of Ageplay. We are not here to debate the morality of any kind of ageplay, the epistemic standing of fantasy fictional characters, or the value of extreme roleplay in terms of sexual gratification, emotional regulation, or personal comprehension. Dan Olsen, in his video “A Lukewarm Defence of Fifty Shades Part 2” presents a very open, sex-positive analysis of the ways in which the presentation of fiction can have real-world psychological and sociological impacts outside of fiction. Augmenting that perspective, in Knowing Better’s video “The Social Currency | Gossip”, he discusses the ways in which the human brain is structured to perceive stories (whether real or fictional) as information we use to comprehend the world. Combined, they paint a picture of the way that fictional experiences can influence our understanding. This is apparent to anyone whose life has been shaped by a potent work of fictional literature. This can be positive (a book encouraging someone to change their life for the better) or negative (a powerful film causing nightmares and trauma). The issue at hand is not the inherent morality of the topic, it is that the issue is potent, and therefor must be balanced and regulated. We are not making policy choices on basis of abstract philosophical ethics, but rather the unassailable notion that the existence of the fiction has demonstrable social, psychological, and legal impacts on the world outside the fiction (effects which are acknowledged to contain both positive and negative factors).

  4. The moral standing of ageplayers. We are absolutely not here to impose a moral standing on people who do, or do not, engage in any type of roleplay. We are not here to draw a moral equivalence between any form of roleplay, extreme or not, and real world actions. We are not here to debate the psychology of fetish actualization, nor whether, in the abstract, fictional constructs are representatively equivalent to abuse material, regardless of the well those stories are drawn from. That determination is out of scope for this discussion. We are here to address the pragmatic effects of behaviors that happen, regardless of any individual’s stance on that question.

  5. That said, the uniqueness of ageplay as a topic. There are two primary angles that do make ageplay a unique slot among fetish topics. From one angle, the fact that ageplay itself is directly a topic which, when parlayed into the real world, has pervasive and aggressive negative effects on an enormous number of people. Many of the other extreme fetishes are, theoretically, capable of implementation, without a doubt. However, the scale and proportion of impact is dramatically reduced along the spectrum of realism. Rape is, sadly, a parallel with similar reflections across the fiction/reality divide. Again, Dan Olsen’s video does an excellent job iluminating the impact of these parallels. What makes Ageplay substantively different in practice is the implications for the internet community. There is a veil of legitimate, safe ageplay activity between consenting adults with perfectly moral motivations, and there is an undercurrent of invalid, morally reprehensible activity beyond that veil which piggybacks on the convenient signal of that legitimate activity. And the latter must be addressed. Because of governmental and social mis-management vastly out of all our collective hands’ control in the physical world, a particular malignancy has developed bedhind the topic of ageplay, and the fact that it is caused by external mismanagement and pressures does not mean that we are free of the obligation to address it.

TLDR;

  1. CSA survivors- we hear and see you, and the sad thing is that this issue splits your group right down the middle.
  2. This is a compromise drawn from our team’s equally wide range of outlooks on the issue. No one on the mod team is entirely happy with it
  3. Debating the moral standing of ageplay as an activity is out of scope. There are measurable pragmatic impacts on people we are examining instead
  4. Debating the moral standing of people is out of scope, and drawing moral equivalences between fiction and reality distracts from the practical implications we are addressing
  5. Ageplay is a unique topic. It can be made platonically equivalent to other fetishes, but that falls apart when we consider the real world, and that is what we are here to do
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Yep, you’ve made the point here perfectly. What to one CSA survivor might be a form of reclamation and wresting a degree of control over their own trauma, to another might be the trigger for horrible flashbacks. It’s a very individually dependent sort of thing, so providing a mechanism to keep one person’s medicine from becoming another’s poison is important.

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Providing a mechanism to keep one person’s medicine from becoming another’s poison is important.

This exact dichotomy is responsible for the kink community’s resolution that content warnings should be normalized across all venues catering to kink.

@FoxLancaster-Okami, I think one approach that would help focus our discussion here — because I think this anxiety is relevant and inevitable given our present circumstances — would be for the moderation team to present a unified front regarding what Wolfery’s principles are regarding this and adjacent topics.

I recognize that this very debate is happening amongst yourselves, but at some point we just have to have a final decision, so that people can make the choice whether their principles align with or are in contradiction with the principles of Wolfery. While refraining from making such a position official and a matter of policy and conviction within the moderation team is easier, and offends less people, I think it also has the effect of leading some of us on who are very concerned with this topic, and is at least partly responsible for this debate cropping up anywhere the topics of kink and consent intersect on this site.

Basically, I am asking, “Is ageplay between consenting adults condoned and protected by Wolfery in an official capacity, meaning that this conviction will guide your judgments, policy-making decisions, and responses to legal externalities?”

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I don’t know if this will be satisfying, because the moderation team doesn’t have a unified front regarding the issues themselves. Members of the team range from the laissez-faire approach, through a total ban, and with, frankly, more motivating principles than there are team members, and combinations of opinion on the topic and opinion on the policy which would likely surprise folks. The core principle we all do agree on, and base our decision on, is that a compromising, debate- and negotiation-driven style of management will lead to a better community that can be influenced by all the conflicting principles and interests held by the members thereof.

The less-than-comfortable inference is that what we condone and protect is the existence of a community in which all these influences and outlooks have a seat at the table.

And I assure everyone at this table that refraining from taking an abstractly principled position is not easier, and this direction is not taken with ease, comfort, or simplicity as driving considerations.

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I appreciate your candor. The consequence of this inability to provide that security is that we remain exposed to the abusive language and calloused rhetoric of those who have aligned themselves with the current public zeitgeist that has very much placed this particular demographic into a marginalized position.

I do not mean to minimize the work that you are doing, here, and I really do appreciate that the approach taken thus far has been deeply empathetic and carefully-considered, but I also think that while we have moderators who exist on both sides, we are not safe from harm, and cannot trust the moderation team to adequately address harm as it crops up, because many of them do not recognize it as harm, but in fact as justice.

A polarizing answer is necessary to deconflict this community, because compatibilism is not welcome for one side, and so they will endeavor to exclude the other with their words and actions. If the moderation team does not perceive this exclusionary rhetoric as abusive, but in fact as healthy debate, then they are asking a marginalized demographic to continue to face constant disapproval and questioning asking us to justify our very existence, which inspires us to advocate for ourselves as we have been doing here.

I recognize that calling what some people think is morally outrageous a marginalized demographic seems like a stretch, and that many people will find that rhetoric offensive, but it is the position we feel we are in, and so we are going to act accordingly. Wolfery is not providing us that protection, so we have to protect ourselves, and that means litigating the topic when someone shows up decrying it, or when policy disrupts us in some way, or when we are anxious about the direction the community is going.

We are very used to being excluded, and have found joy in Wolfery, and are hoping we are not excluded from here, too.

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I am sorry this happened to you, and I really do empathize, but this proves my point. If there is a policy in place on an adult roleplaying website like Wolfery that may even make it a little bit easier for something like that to happen, then it needs to be addressed and per the mod team, it seems like it will be, which is a good thing.

In my opinion, again if something can be done in terms of rules to reduce the risk, it should be done.

I never said all ageplay is about sexual attraction to minors. I was very clear that I was talking about NSFW ageplay. I really do understand the part about exploring past trauma, I’ve done that before, but that’s only something I needed to do once. I guess I just don’t get why someone who is not sexually attracted to children would want to go there mentally more then once? Again, I’m sorry, that just doesn’t make sense to me.

I would also like to point out that the primary purpose of Wolfery is not to be a substitute for a therapist. I don’t mean that to sound harsh, and I know not everyone has access to a therapist, but if CSA survivors feel like they need a safe environment to meet and explore these themes as well as their past trauma, then I think that should exist. However, I’m sorry, I don’t think that’s Wolfery. I think if anything, it should be its own realm.

I can only speak for myself here, and It’s certainly not for me to say who should go or who should consider leaving, but for me, I come to Wolfery to explore adult themes. I love story RP, but if it turns into ERP eventually, all the better. To me Wolfery is a place to explore said themes and tell compelling stories. Seeing NSFW child characters at all, ruins that for me.
When I see sexualized child characters running around, in the awake list or otherwise soliciting NSFW ageplay, it kills my enjoyment and takes me out of the world and I am far from the only person on the platform or in this thread who feels this way.

Would better filtering tools help? Yes, but that doesn’t solve the legal implications. But really, I think the question comes down to is Wolfery a place for NSFW ageplay or not? I don’t think it is, and I don’t think it should be.

What fallacy would that be? You’ve put a lot of patronizing language in your post as well as telling me what I think. While I appreciate your lived experience, intentional or not, I did feel a need to call it out.

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My reply was as maximally non-patronizing as I could muster. I do not think I failed in that endeavor, and I am frustrated that you do not see that careful labor. I do not think I am equipped to adequately address your concerns.

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There is a very fine line between permitting different voices to be heard, and suppressing abusive rhetoric. With a topic as contentious as this one, people tend to have extreme feelings, and also to perceive their own extremity of opinion as natural and median. Further complicating it, there are cases in which people do legitimately hold views which cast others in a negative light by implication, and a listener may be hurt by the implications, though the position of their opposite is not constructed as an attack.

Abusive discourse is, on face value, not allowed on Wolfery- it runs contrary to most of our core, behavioral rules. We do indeed police this sort of attack frequently and aggressively. We also, however, do not mandate on legislating people’s outlooks. Our policy is and has always been, de facto, that if two parties have an irreconcilable difference (an eventuality we see as inevitable in a diverse community), it is the responsibility of both parties to put effort into avoiding one another. It is our responsibility to mediate that peaceable separation, and provide tools to make doing so smooth. This policy is one such tool.

Ultimately, our position on the matter is that it is neither appropriate to condone, nor condemn, from a moral level. It is appropriate to create policies which support a framework of acceptable interaction. In essence, we want to resolve the issue of a community facing demands to justify its existence by creating a means through which the people asking are not delivering the demand, and the people being demanded are not hearing it.

Taking a broad and polarizing stance would be a solution, but it would be a solution that mandates us making a sweeping declaration about the morality, psychology, and sociology of the topic, and that is not our mandate as shepherds of the community. Compatibilism is not welcome from either side, because each side views a compatibility solution as condoning, favoring, or supporting the other at the expense of one’s own group.

What we are attempting is the construction of a framework for a live-and-let-live option. Hearing the rhetoric harms one side, seeing the manifestation harms the other, so our approach is to provide an environment in which these interactions between belligerent members of either community are demonstrably and unassailably deliberate, and thereby both actionable and undeniably violations. It is, fundamentally, a tool to make enforcement of the removal of elements which cause those rules violations more direct, effective, and active.

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Most of this is understandable to me, although I think it makes a specific and significant error of inappropriately leveling the playing field.

Compatibilism is not welcome from either side, because each side views a compatibility solution as condoning, favoring, or supporting the other at the expense of one’s own group.

I do not need people who disapprove of ageplay — NSFW or otherwise — to not exist or to be silenced or to be themselves marginalized. I think most of the folks here speaking in support of such roleplay are in agreement, here; we are constantly being harassed and called out and abused and excluded here and elsewhere, and are asking only to be left alone.

This request is consistent with what you have expressed, that we are aiming for a live-and-let-live approach. This is ideal in our eyes.

Conversely, folks who are opposed to ageplay in whole or in part want us to be banned from the site for doing it. This is not a level playing field. This is not a situation where both sides are exclusionary. One side wishes to exclude the other. The other side just wants to stop being called pedophiles every time this topic comes up.

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With regards to this post, I do want to make a few statements:

  1. Whether CSA survivors need, want, or benefit from ongoing interactions of this sort is not your place to litigate. And ‘I don’t understand it’ does not constitute proof of a logical conclusion. I would ask you to be open to the possibility that even though it is an alien drive, it is not epistemologically impossible on basis of your experience.

  2. Vis-a-vis therapy, I agree that a therapist is of incomparable value, but seeing a therapist is not a comprehensive way to come back to life after trauma, and therapists are, for many reasons, not able to engage in all behaviors that would benefit their client.

  3. Risk reduction is tricky. Every risk eliminated costs potentials. We have to balance those carefully. Absolute risk reduction leads to absurd positions, and cannot be sustained.

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‘Being left alone’ is itself a mandate on behavior. For the people who feel strongly about it, it is asking them to tacitly condone, by not speaking up, a behavior they find reprehensible. Asking someone to suppress their moral conscience is a substantial point of compromise.

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  1. You’re right, I should have qualified that better instead of putting the “I can only speak for myself” in the next paragraph.

  2. Also fair, and I understand why that may not be an option for any number of reasons.

  3. Agreed.

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“‘Being left alone’ is itself a mandate on behavior”
:sob::sob::sob::sob::sob::sob::sob::sob:

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Then I think the problem is that this topic does not exist within the Overton window, and that social expectations around healthy debate are consequently distorted. We do not, in a progressive context, welcome people debating the validity of the existence of trans people, because this is intrinsically queerphobic behavior.

Because ageplay is not currently recognized by the public as a reasonable and acceptable behavior, we treat it differently. And this is not intrinsically wrong — it is possible for the public to be correct about something — but it is also how literally every other queer- and kink-adjacent identity has been received: First by outrage, and then by a recognition that it is a protected identity, and then the long road to reconciliation.

Right now, Wolfery is asking us to remain in that first stage, and I think any person who has experienced marginalization can tell you that this is a form of social violence. I do not think Wolfery condones these behaviors where it regards more normative identities, but it seems that it permits those behaviors as long as they are the popular reaction.

This, also, seems in contradiction with the principles Wolfery espouses. It seems to me that our values are not too far apart, and that there is only a difference in perception, here.

I once reported a user for referring to my nonbinary identity as stupid in a whisper to me. You addressed that report by speaking with this person in private, and relayed to me your opinion that I would be best served by muting this person, as they seemed not to grasp the gravity of their error.

The word stupid warranted moderative action.

Here, people are citing censorship laws and calling us pedophiles and telling us we are creating child pornography and, in past threads, telling us that what we are doing constitutes Child Sexually-Abusive Material, a term which should essentially only ever be used when we are talking about real photos of actual human children being sexually exploited. Your response has been to treat this as healthy debate.

Do you see why this does not feel fair to us?

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I’m not averse to responding in a humorous manner but I at least attempt to stay on topic and contribute to the conversation when doing so. I’m not saying this as a moderator (which I am not), just as an annoyed participant.

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Make different areas Realms instead, but make it possible for someone to move to another Realm via an exit (and ideally, direct/registered teleport). That way everything is separate, profiles will auto-switch because they’ll be different in the standalone Realm - and characters who do stay in Lamplight almost entirely won’t be viewable on About in Sinder.

In fact, I’d argue that Sinder should be the “safe space” Realm rather than splitting off Lamplight, Umber, etc to start with, since this seems to be in large part about what people mostly hanging out in the park want to see. But whatever works.

I’ve got to say, even I don’t think the browser addon idea is realistic (remember that many are on e.g. Chrome Mobile or the equivalent embedded option which won’t allow such things AFAIK). I do think such a blocklist is a reasonable technical request, for the web app.

There will always be more heat because people find ways to trip over stuff they don’t like, or just argue against it from a moral/legalistic perspective.

Part of this is due to the way core technical features have been designed, i.e. the global Awake list, highlighted as an issue last time we had one of these threads and which will become more unsustainable as Wolfery grows.

If we’re going to tell people “this is maybe not the right place for you”, it has to be open to the possibility that those asking for others to be censored are those who leave. I’d say “do we want Wolfery to be more like Tapestries or FurryMUCK, from an acceptance standpoint, bearing in mind the relative popularity of both?”, but as I’ve said above, it could be both and more, separate-but-linked Realms could be a great solution.

This is a great point. As before, separate Realms that you start in, can easily travel to others but have to set up your profile there with a popup of the realm rules might be a solution. A one-time per-Realm onboarding.

As an aside, I get the impression that a lot of the motivation for this topic is coming from players arriving from, say, F-chat, where there’s a clearer delineation of topics/interests, and are not prepared for a world where a lot of people are into things you’re not. For some it’s great, for others it’s not.

Is Wolfery for this theoretical, allegedly large but apparently unmeasured prospective userbase, or the community which uses and enjoys it now?

This argument reminds me of the time Furry Network (remember that one?) banned cub because some popular artist came in off of FA and declared that it had to go, dragging all their Twitter followers into the resulting poll. The kicker: they never actually uploaded.

But again, it’s a false dichotomy - we just need to open up to the idea of separate Realms that are still furry, and try to deal with a looser form of linking, of the level you get from whereare elsewhere. For now, switching profile based on the area may suffice, but this is crying out for a technical feature to establish and auto-switch it, rather than rely on people having to do it themselves. Policy isn’t enough by itself because people coming from spaces that are more permissive (i.e. F-list profiles) will just copy those on without a clear prompt.

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It won’t be all heat off of them, of course, but when things are opt-in enough that you’d have to be looking to even be aware of the content, such people will be the minority - and people who are constantly looking for things that make them mad are usually so unpleasant that they don’t last long in most spaces with decent moderation anyways.

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Given the extensive number of ‘I have had so many friends leave here because there was ageplay’ type posts as well as numerous reports of folks leaving for that reason that are NOT documented in the forum, I include those individuals in said prospective userbase because they WERE or would WANT to use the service, but do not feel comfortable doing so.

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