Make me a mod. I'll throw people out whether they deserve it or not.

If you throw Mrs. Bee out, could you aim for a mud puddle?

If I can find a quality one in Chicago.

Not read through this thread properly because this subject has given me the rage

Too little, too late.

Bosunbob and Messmaster, if you are serious about this then you'd better not have that absolute DICKWAD macho bullshit system of mods each having a 'mark' and only dealing with their own 'mark'

Five years ago (hmm possibly more actually more like seven) I needed your help

There was someone I had proof was a threat who had threatened and harassed me in the past then wormed his way back in by claiming his account was hacked. What idiot ever believes that classic telltale shit in the first place? Come on!

I was told by Bob, Yam etc 'sorry, that guy is Middy's 'mark' and it's his decision to let him stay

This person then went on to harass Twink and I've since found out threatened Kacie James and her sister too and no doubt many other women who haven't come forward. Oh and he spent a merry evening making our lovely Messy Jessie cry too. The system here supported and allowed that.

This wouldn't have happened if you'd listened to me so I'm mad as hell that suddenly it's a concern when all of us long term wammers here have had to develop thick skins and learn to look out for our damn selves.

Flippin ya the bird til we all get a decent apology about this and some decent block functions. and mods who believe us and actually fucking ban people... (and don't let them back either!) and don't say oh it's fine he's threatening You/Twink/Jessie/Kacies sister, that's someone elses 'mark' so we'll just leave him be'

Nuke first ask questions later. Only way to deal with undesirables.

I've always thought there should be a strong female presence mod on here. I even offered about 10 years ago.

Candy for the role!

What?! You mean Lisa could've been cracking the whip on me for over a decade?! You blew it, UMD!

I second this (and that Candy should do it if she wishes).

One of the first rules of actually dealing with sexist abuse (rather than shoving it under the carpet as has been done in all walks of life for way too long) is to listen to, make space for, and pay attention to what women say. Having one or more known female moderators here would make a huge difference, and give women who were experiencing issues someone they can trust to talk to. Very well said Lisa!

I'd also recommend everyone to go back to Page 4 of this thread and read Candy's post (one up from the bottom). Stuff like that needs to be stopped.

Finally (as my previous comments are a few pages back), one thing we absolutely need is a full, and easy to use, block function. Something that stops the blocked person from being able to interact in any way with the person who blocked them, stops them seeing forum posts, viewing profile or pics, sending PMs - just like when you block someone on Facebook.

Did I hear Candy for President? She gets my vote.

But Candy can't be president cuz she's Brittish.

Long live Queen Candy I!

I can't help but think that we may be overthinking some of this.

Problem::solution [proposals]

1. Inundated with several chats when you log in:
Make yourself "Offline" Chat Status by clicking the little gear, lower right, as soon as you log in. It works for me. And I can still chat with someone if I start it, so, all good.

2. Unwanted emails:
Ignore them, and delete them. Usually, they get the idea and go away. As kittenish has said, so many men here are respectful.

3. Real harassment; such as consistent and repeated unwanted emails, emails containing unconsented-to sext, hostile intent, threats, and so on: copy and alert the moderators. I have not had to do this, FWIW, but I imagine that the mods would be all over this like too much cool whip on a cake.

A female moderator could be a good idea! It all depends on who the female is (just as it depends on who the male is when considering a male moderator).

I will say that, if anything, this thread has made me more aware of pinging the mods when I do get (super-infrequently) harassed, even mildly (which has ranged from several chats telling me not to disagree with a certain long-timer here and to "watch my step", which was silly and I ignored it - to someone sending me chats calling me "sketchy" every time I logged in. Yeah gonna escamalate these from now on).

Sorry to hear
but thanks for reporting
Hope there's a decent alarm bell from now on.
Great to have you here

I have to say that I'm pleased to see that UMD finally appears to be arriving in the second half of the 20th century!

...but seriously folks ...

Whilst most of this thread has focussed on the significant problems that have been encountered by women suffering harassment, we should not forget that tolerance and respect (or the lack of them in the case of those who are causing the problems) are also to be borne in mind. It is possible for people to be whipped up by haters for all sorts of reasons. It could be colour of skin, sexual orientation, gender, religion, gender presentation, politics, etc. - the list is probably endless but those are the most significant ones that tend to crop up, in no particular order there.

Those who tend to display a lack of tolerance, respect and empathy are sometimes struggling with mental issues and often of low educational achievement. We've all observed that there comes a point where no amount of polite argument will enable them to see the folly of their ways.

It's pretty rare for me to comment here these days, partly because I haven't got the time to eat, sleep and breathe most of the time but also because, probably about 10 years ago now, I was so fed up with what I can only describe as the constant undercurrent of knuckle-dragging bigots who thought it was fine to have a kink that involved women getting covered in gloop or for them to go rolling about in mud but not for anyone to have any other kink of any other type that they didn't personally enjoy. (In my case, that means occasionally enjoying dressing up in tights and other stretchy lycra gear, as sploshing only works for me when dressed in femme clothes. It's another harmless kink but a heinous crime in their eyes.) Fortunately, the late, great Bill Shipton had started the splosh UK website and forum (Forum still going - http://www.sploshuk.co.uk/forum/ !) and welcomed kinks of all varieties for sploshers, so many of the T-girl community found a happy home there. (Incidentally, the Venn diagram of T-girls and WAMmers (or sploshers) has an extraordinarily large overlapping section in the middle!)

Meanwhile, on here, I was constantly getting bombarded with haters calling me gay (which is ironic since, as luck would have it, I'm not)! I'm an occasional T-Girl who's only interested in RGs ('Real Girls') - think Eddie Izzard or Grayson Perry. The 'hard-of-thinking' frequently cannot differentiate between sexual orientation and gender presentation, assuming that the two are invariably linked. The constant use of the word 'gay' as a derogatory term made me wonder just how awful that sort of treatment must be for people who are that way inclined.

There was also a constant undercurrent of 'protesting too much' muscle guys prepared to shout everyone down until THEY got what THEY wanted, especially if that was to avoid seeing T-girls, because ... well "there's a dick hidden under that skirt"!!! (Shock horror we'd never have guessed!) Once again, the irony was acute, since they'd next be praising 'regular' porn sites where dicks feature in almost every image, yet strangely, that didn't seem to scare them at all, there. When all T-girls got shunted into the 'male forum', that pretty much killed UMD for me. I wasn't out looking for dick pics either so being exiled to that ghetto area, even when making a post without images about unrelated matters was pretty much the final straw but if I happen to stumble across a pic which includes the male appendage, at least I don't go screaming off to moderators shouting "I don't like it; make it go away!" like a scared 4 year-old who's just found a spider. Odd that. ... and then we wonder why women don't stick around when there were guys like that ruling the roost!

Anyway, I think the point here is that we need NOT ONLY women moderators (though that would be A Good Thing anyway) BUT ALSO a range of moderators of all the protected characteristics, able to understand what it's like to be on the receiving end, for whatever characteristic is particular to their circumstances, to step in and deal with the lack of tolerance and decency that usually causes the problems in the first place. (I think Candy and Lisa would be a fantastic pair of mods for starters but you do need others who are empathetic and sensitive to the needs of the other protected characteristics, simply through being within those groups themselves.)

For those who are scratching their heads wondering what a 'protected characteristic' is, I refer you to the UK's Equality Law. See this page (https://www.gov.uk/discrimination-your-rights) and the subsequent page in the sequence. Things in the UK have been getting a lot more tolerant over the years, especially since this law widened the categories in 2010 and it seems to me that general principles based on it would be a reasonable direction to go for UMD.

We did really fuck up the trans tolerance thing when it came up in a big way a few years back. I'd like to think people are more enlightened now, but, uh....

Just wanted to quickly clarify that it turns out Bosunbob wasn't aware of the problems I mentioned on page 4 and he was horrified to read what I had to say and he quickly set about investigating and finding out what's happened from myself and the other women mentioned.

My mistake, I thought I'd gone to every mod.

Bob also assures me that old system has been been ditched, which is a relief

Gold star for Bob!

Thanks everyone for the votes of confidence regarding me being a mod. I would do it but only if I wasn't the ONLY female mod (who is actively part of the community) and I think Lisa would be a perfect pairing.

Corrections noted and appreciated.

The other thing I was thinking about today, which in a way is the elephant in the room of this thread, is that around the same time a credible serial sexual harassment/assault accusation, not unlike some of those in the news during the past two months, was made and discussed at length in the forum. As far as I know the person accused suffered no real consequences, apart from occasionally getting dunked on by Rich and me, and is still benefiting economically from this community. At the time I mostly abstained from the serious side of that conversation, because I was more troubled by the question of due process than by some of the broader issues.

I wonder how differently we might look at that incident now, and whether it may eventually come up for relitigation in some form.

Also in conjunction with everything here; I've noticed recently that when I copy photos from my iPhone, if the picture I copied was also taken with an cell phone it will tell me the exact address at where it was taken. I won't get into specifics whose pictures did this but it was quite a few ranging from England to Canada and Japan.

MessyDareGirl said:
Well, again, I think there needs to be some correction to common misperceptions here. "T-girls" is a generic umbrella term that covers us all. Some only cross-dress and make no attempt to look femme, some are (like me) Transvestite and not only wear the clothes but also a wig, make up, false boobs etc, to look femme, others want to become female and live completely as women. (That's a simplification - There are many more layers between and, also, the same can apply in reverse too, of course (F>M).)

Gender dysphoria comes in a variety of flavours and strengths - from pretty mild (the CD) to max strength (wanting full surgery and to live full-time as a person of the opposite gender). We're *all* trans-people - it isn't necessary to have undergone (or even to want) full gender reassignment surgery to be a trans-person. This is a common misperception. Being trans isn't necessarily about sexuality and what's actually down below, it's about gender *presentation*.

It's a continuous spectrum, just like so many other things in life. Whilst the context I talked about above (occasionally wearing tight stretchy lycra for the purposes of filling up my tights with sloppy gloop) was specifically in relation to sploshing, I do also (generally monthly if I can make it) go out for the evening to a T-friendly club 'dressed' and have enjoyed going to a small, friendly hippyish music festival with friends where 'Lizzie' wanders around happily in the evenings (and is often approached in a very favourable way by GGs (Genetic Girls)! - more so than I normally get when in drab mode - LoL!) If only that had been possible 20-30 years ago, I might have pulled more often!

In practice, I'm happy to be a bloke most of the time, doing normal blokey things but, sometimes, it's lovely to glam up and feel a bit femme and sexy for a change. It's a bit like when you go out for the evening - you don't go in tracky bottoms and T-shirt. You do your hair and makeup, wear a glittery dress and sexy shoes and you *feel* different about yourself - more confident, more sexy etc. Well, it's the same for me, except that I change from boy clothes to girl clothes not just from dull girl clothes to sparkly girl clothes. I fully accept that this is nowhere near as life-challenging for me as it is for someone whose dysphoria is so strong that they want to undergo surgery and live permanently as the opposite gender. However, that doesn't invalidate what I (and many, many like me) do, which is a common misunderstanding.

Hopefully that explains things a bit more. It shouldn't matter whether we're male, female or somewhere in-between, part-time or full-time, pre-op or post-op (or non-op), black, white, gay, straight, religious or atheist - everyone should be getting treated with tolerance and respect, so this place needs to be somewhere that accepts those who say "my kink isn't your kink ... but that's ok"... so long as that person has an interest in sploshing. The corollary of that is that those who aren't able to accept that position need to be kept under control and/or ejected. That needs lots of mods who are empathetic to the needs of all types of people ... which means there is a need for a variety of types of mods.

I believe that is EXIF data and systems can be applied where it is automatically removed when posted to a website - MM or any other moderators can we implement this please?

In the meantime anyone worried about that can run them through a private album on imgur (upload to then copy from) to remove exif data and I'm sure there are many other ways to do this too.

Those ways should be made very public and advised on any section where an image can be uploaded if we are not going to implement automatic removal of the data.

In the last few days I've seen several posts of people praising Regis for his 'lovable creep/sexual harasser' persona on here. Because we all know this is part of his clever schtick. But do ALL of us really know that? I'm wondering about newcomers or even clueless long-time members, the kind this thread has talked a great deal about. The kind of people who fail to see that Lisa Moomin is the wife of Leon Moomin, the kind of people who don't bother to even read a member's profile before filling her inbox with inappropriate messages and/or photos, the kind of people who think that because this is a sexual fetish forum, anything goes regarding the treatment of female participants, etc.

I just have to wonder if Regis' endless stream of creepy stalkers jokes (despite being humorously intended and coming from an implicit understanding that such behavior is wrong) coupled with our routine acceptance of them, and even praise for them.... might in some ways help to normalize this kind of behavior in the minds of less enlightened UMD members who simply do not get the joke. Or even if they get the joke, see it as a launching pad for more extreme 'jokes' that extend into entirely inappropriate areas, such as the inboxes of the UMD's female members. For example, Regis does make a lot of jokes about sending female members dick pics; I am sure he doesn't actually do this, but his jokes along these lines might help to normalize/encourage this practice in the minds of others who don't understand the context that he is essentially roleplaying a sexual harasser on this forum.

Imagine a version of Regis' online persona that apes racism instead of sexual harassment. Would that be considered acceptable, hilarious, and even lovable by the community? Very unlikely. Does this indicate that sexual harassment is more acceptable on the UMD than racism? If so, that's pretty fucked up and it's time for a re-think. (And just to prevent any misconstrual: I think racism and sexual harassment are equally abhorrent.)

Of course, now the Serious Regis we briefly glimpsed above (ID'd by MessyDareGirl) has disappeared behind his more familiar Wall of Snark. Guess we can at least be grateful he didn't use this as an opportunity to tell his 9,345th I'm-a-Hilarious-Sexual-Predator Joke.

I have, on a couple of occasions mentioned a similar issue with regard to the portrayal of the classic 'schoolgirl' look.

Whilst we all know that the people here who are dressing as 'sexy schoolgirls' are well beyond that age, does it nonetheless indicate that there are some viewers here who, if they find those images arousing, might have some more deep-seated problems?

Should people in UMD really be encouraging that?

Where do you draw the line between people looking at someone who is dressing up in order to *look* 15 and someone who actually *is* 15. It really suggests that the people who find that image an attractive proposition might *actually* be attracted to kids of that age. That makes me really uncomfortable.

It took me about 15 picoseconds to figure out that Regis is a silly troll and tries to derail every serious discussion on the forums. And this is why I ignore whatever he writes. I see Bea in the avatar, I skip the post. Easy peasy squeezy cheesy, it's not difficult. I'm interested in the discussion, and not in attempts at humor (if you can call it that 90% of the time). Someone said that there's a fine line between being funny and being a dick, and if you can't figure out where that is, just say nothing. Clearly, that ship has sailed! But again, a middling annoyance, and not a barrier to entry to the UMD.

And since I'm now on a roll to get banned for life from the UMD forums for openly criticizing a local favorite, there's this:

I'm way uncomfortable with the suggestion of Candy as a mod. When I respectfully disagreed with her on the old "Justine" thread in the forums (I even started with "I must very respectfully disagree." and continued to be polite and professional), I got chats from two different people telling me not to disagree with Candy, or to argue; that she was an old-timer with a lot of respect and power here, and that I'd better watch myself. Now of course I wish I'd saved those chats. I recall being told "Don't cross her" and "You could be sorry". Now why would that be? If you're one of the gentlemen who chatted me about that, maybe you can explain what that was about?

She's also made it clear that there's no place for anonymity here. Ok, well, that's fine too, if that's what eventually comes to pass. I'd be sad to leave this kinky messy little corner of the interwebs, but I'd get over it pretty quickly.


**https://umd.net/forums/thoughts-on-justine

And that's ironic, because if Candy Custard's real name is Candy Custard and she's into WAM, she's clearly some sort of Chosen One, ordained by ancient prophecy to lead us all to the land of milk and honey (and pie and custard and mud and gunge) and to immediately dive head-first into said milk and honey (etc). In other words, you might as well argue about bible trivia with Jesus.

I had better clarify: I inferred this from her statement on that thread:


I may have overstated this. Or may not have. I can't speak for Candy, of course; this is my inference, based on that thread.

And it turns out I'm still honked-off at what happened back then, go figure. I guess I didn't put it past me.

Today I learned I'm possibly mentally disturbed with deep seated problems.

People are here because they get turned on by such things as people lobbing pies at each other, women being humiliated and messed up, custard being poured into pantyhose, women wearing watches, girls getting tarred and feathered, women sinking into quicksand etc..... I think the classic schoolgirl uniform, that has been part of erotica since long before the UMD was a thing, is the least of our worries in that case!

Sure if a person can ONLY get turned on by women pretending to be schoolgirls it would be a problem but I take issue with the insinuation that I might have pedophilic thoughts because I like a hot adult model wearing a school uniform.

I think there is a major difference between someone who is clearly an adult wearing a school uniform and someone actually attempting to look under-age. Whenever I've done a uniform shoot the description always makes clear that the wearer(s) are adults, with storylines about some of our people discovering they can still fit into their old uniforms and wouldn't it be fun to mess them up, that kind of thing. Or that the women of the Hall are "wam testing" a proposed new uniform for a school Her Ladyship sponsors, or similar. I'll also usually drop the models' approx real ages (as in "mid 20s" or whatever) into the text. Bear in mind some models are into WAM not as a sexual fetish but for the sheer joy of "breaking the rules" and getting messy. Most people who are forced to wear it also hate school uniform, so the chance to "get their own back" by deliberately messing one up as an adult is quite appealing.

However that, and the comments about thread titles, are slightly off the topic of this thread. I know quite a few kinky women. Generally they aren't fussed about sexual language and terms, just like guys they know that comes with the territory. What they do generally dislike is being treated as objects or chat-bots by horny guys who just want to sex-chat till they cum and then bugger off. Doing that with a woman who has agreed to it in advance is fine - informed consent is everything - but approaching anyone who is or might be female like that is out of order. This is the same issue female custom producers used to have with time-wasters wanting to have long and detailed sexy conversations about fantasy customs they have no intention of actually buying.

A thought regarding the issue of privacy and people pretending to be someone they aren't in order to deceive: Should there be different levels of membership? Anyone can join anonymously and read and post in the forums and public chatrooms. But to get private message privileges, someone has to elevate their membership (a one-off $1 fee?) paid by card, which gives them a "verified" identity. They can still use whatever name and avatar they like, but the UMD "knows" who they are. Combine that with effective blocking tools and rate-limits on PMs and I hope it would reduce the problems somewhat?

Think i have only met Candy once at a Meet,but my late photographer Dids had done quite a few shoots with her and had nothing but praise for her and how warm and friendly she was as well as helpful to people,i would have no problems as to her being a mod

Kisses
Chantelle xxx

In a previous message in this thread, when I mentioned above that an administrator/mod had deleted a comment I had made in response to a lady poster, I was referring to the astute comment about exif data which Anna had made in the Justine thread.

Aaaand I still feel like exif data is a pretty important problem.

Aaaaand since I haven't seen any action on it by admins, I've sometimes taken it upon myself to alert vulnerable posters that their GPS coordinates are visible. In one case, sadly, it led to a user who was being doxxed to take down their (totally awesome) photo album. What a lose-lose situation.


Don't make me choose between you two.

...no wait, Regis never accepted my friend request. So. Yeah! Fuck that guy!