They shouldn't have to report this all the time. These incels should learn to follow social cues, and not harass women, who happen to share a sexual fetish/kink.
Just because a woman is active in the community, that does not mean she is here for someone else's enjoyment and pleasure.

Even as a guy, I get the occasional weird message on this site. Some people are just so socially inept and out of their damn minds.

Some of the white knight cringe in this thread tho...

I think part of what I take from this is that a lot of the guys around here don't make that distinction at all. I honestly feel like an object in some ways. I'm less of a person and more akin to a past for what they want which is to indulge in their interest.

I think a lot of the guys that I've run into honestly treat everyone like a model who is interested in putting out pictures for everyone to see. Some of us just want to be left alone.

I was beginning to wish I hadn't posted this thread but today I am glad I did.

Some people think it turned into a hate men on UMD thread but I disagree.

It definitely highlighted the difference between models who are paid to wam and women with a fetish for wam. Models are selling customs and photos and videos to cater for the wam communities needs and are happy to receive messages of messy requests. If there is a woman on here who is active on the forum but doesn't post pics of themselves dont ask them creepy questions...simple. I kind of come in the middle of these two so I expect the messages but it says that on my profile. Guys read the profile of the person it gives you helpful clues on what is acceptable and isn't.

Anyways I'm off to go and sit on a cake while pouring custard over my head in honour of all the wonderful female wammers who have taken the time to reply on this thread and inbox me privately. I salute you all....

Not trying to cape for anyone here, or degrade anyone either, just adding my two cents

But I bet most if not all of these guys that are sending creepy messages or that are being pushy with their messages, wouldn't do the same if they were face to face with any of the women who spoke up in this thread, but because its the internet everyone has autonomy in a sense and can't be called out to their face on their bs, and on the flip side (as awful as this is gonna sound) a lot of these dudes probably don't even see the women as people, as much as they see them as a "nameless/faceless" (not the best description but I hope this makes sense) internet interaction that they can use for their jollies, I know that sounds horrible and I'm not saying EVERYONE is like that or has that mentality, but from the responses in this thread thats how it seems...and if the roles were reversed I bet those same guys wouldn't be able to deal with 1/4 of what some of these women have had to deal with

It really sucks that people don't have common decency, and to some of those guys, I have to ask- how would you feel if someone was acting the way you act, to your mother? Or sister? Or female cousin? Or any female you're close with? Treat people with respect and realize you are owed absolutely NOTHING from any of these women! Stop acting like children and act like a grown ass man!

I'm glad you did create this post as it's obviously something that is needed for female wammers on here! I don't see anything on here turning into a man-hating thread (though I'm sure the 'not all men' brigade are seething).

From my perspective I wait for people to talk to me. I have had some good chats with a few women and some random guys on here (and I'll be honest, 1 where I overstepped a boundary, I screwed up and I regret that).
I think a women only forum would be great for protection were others can be warned of serial offenders, and just a good safe place to rant. I would love to see more female wammers on here (and I'm asexual!) in a place they can feel comfortable being open about their fetish. Unfortunately this is the internet and there will always be that select group that ruin it for others.

I shouldn't laugh, but, lol.

Regards,

Andy and the team.

Thanks for the original post Cinqgirlracer. I think a female group can be done, but first I have to implore everyone: Please, please, please flag any inbox messages that make you feel the least bit uncomfortable. It's anonymous. Ot just block the person without leaving any message. Either way, that automatically gives them a negative strike on their UMD history, and I get a notice on my end to manually check out the situation. Then I can confront the user or ban them from the site completely so they can't bother anyone else. On public stuff, others might report it for you, but for inbox and chat messages, only you can flag those, so please do.


A female group can definitely be created, and it would be a wonderful idea if we could figure out how to do verification that members are female. Or would that not be necessary? UMD content goes by biological gender, but we still respect actual gender for the users, so that is a point that would have to be dealt with decisively on such a group.


Maybe on some psychological level? But nothing here is preventing them from speaking up, or thinking nothing will happen if they do. I personally review every single flag that comes through on UMD, and I take notes. That's in addition to alerts I receive all day from UMD's various logging, flood-prevention systems, etc. What I don't usually get is flags on inbox messages, which appears to be one of the problems here.


It's depressing to me that the site itself gets blamed for... MEN. I would understand it if our policies favored men over women, or if I ignored reports and flags. But people tend to blame the site itself, or its longstanding community, for dudes that sign up with their dicks already hanging out. It gives the impression that there is negligence going on behind the scenes, which causes even more cynicism, and I'm not sure what to do about that. Cinq's idea for a female group might be a good idea, but I like the idea of more female site-wide admin even better (Cinq is basically already one). Splitting up into separate tribes to keep certain people in and certain people out normally indicates a failure to work together and resolve the problems in the first place, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try it.


I don't believe you've ever used the block feature on the chat. The inboxing system also has a block feature which not only blocks them but sends me an alert, so I know to take action. (You can also turn the chat off, and set your inbox to friends-only.) Otherwise there is really no way of me knowing. And if nothing gets said, they are going to do it to someone else. Please flag!


Can you please explain why one would want to be silent instead of submitting an anonymous flag so the person can get kicked off and not do it to anyone else? Is there a fear of blowback or something? Do people feel their flags fall on deaf ears? Do you not think it's really anonymous? I don't get it.


The line here between fantasy and reality is always blurred. This is an adult site where adults do adult things, and not everybody knows where to draw the line, especially when they see you post pics of yourself giving porridge blowjobs. A lot of people do sext back and forth here, and some enjoy some pretty aggressive conversations every day and they're cool with it. Just like in the real world, it is important to be clear about what YOU don't want, and if they can't respect your wishes, then we will ban / gag / kick them off. But I've gotta know about it, so please flag them.


Yes. I've spent the last 2 decades building all sorts of reporting systems into the site. But you can't force people to use them. If the first person that somebody harasses reports them, there's a good chance I'll be able to block them by IP, or put a watch on the account, etc. I don't pre-approve inbox messages or most content here, so it has to happen with flags.


Well, thank you for flagging! By doing that, you gave me the chance to prevent them from doing that to someone else. But please don't just ignore inbox messages as a way to avoid people; It doesn't work. Most people will think it's a glitch and message you again, and it will eventually come across as (or actually be) harassment. Just tell them you're not interested up front, and if they don't respect that, flag them and I'll take care of it. Again it's not YOUR fault that people act like this, and the burden really shouldn't be on you. But if you don't want to flag the person, I literally don't know what else I could do.


I removed that post and it had nothing to do with bias against women. It was a comment about a childhood incident that got a little too prurient for my comfort. I removed the post, so naturally any replies to it were deleted as well. Everything was explained on my delete comments. You re-posted the message later as an image, so I had to remove the image as well.


You would be *absolutely* surprised. A large chunk of people try and ignore the other person instead of being clear about what they don't want. But if you encourage them to speak up for themselves, or if you empower them with the tools to filter and block people, and ask them to use the tools, you might come across as tone-deaf or condescending or victim-blaming. The evidence seems to tell us that people need to be told, over and over, that they actually have power, and that someone will listen to them if they speak. Maybe it's hard to make people feel that way here since it's not that true in the world at large.


I have updated your UMD preferences; You can change them back at any time: I set your inbox to "Friends only." That means you can't get a barrage of messages from anyone random. If you get inappropriate friend request messages, please flag the user and I can yank them off the site. I have also set your chat to friends-only as well, but you have the option to just turn off the chat altogether. The inbox and chat have their own user-blocking systems that are available to you. UMD has several flood-prevention systems all over the place that will help prevent repeated messages to you from any one person. I am alerted whenever it kicks in and I always investigate. But for anything else you feel uncomfortable with, PLEASE flag them so I can weed those people out. Not many people read profiles before requesting friends, so maybe I should put your "Note to people" prefs on the friend request page, not just underneath the inbox form.... I've added that to my To Do list.


There is a block link at the bottom of every user profile, and there is a report link under almost every piece of content. None of it works unless it's clicked. I don't personally pre-approve messages and content before it goes up, so otherwise there is no other realistic way for me to know about these incidents. If you want to go into why there was no block option up until a few years ago, that can be subject for a deep dive on another thread.


It happens to everyone! The same guys annoying ladies are annoying other guys, too. Ladies get it more often of course. But no gender "owns" harassment so we all need to work together to stamp it out. Flag!


It wasn't removed because a man might get sexually excited about it. It was removed because *anyone* could get sexually excited about it. I think I've been really clear in that we can talk about our childhood as a starting point of our fetish, but we draw the line when it gets described in alluring detail. That's what the post sorta did--it wasn't horrible--but I thought it was better to not have it up. You just can't be detailing how you sensuously wammed yourself as a kid. As I say on the TOS: "We allow reasonable discussion of the fetishistic lifestyle as rooted in childhood development, but we cannot allow for it to be described salaciously." I'm all-ears if anyone can offer a more clear, concise way to make this point.


I will absolutely keep telling everyone what they can do to make their experience here better. It's not condescending to tell people that there are options available to them, and that you'll listen to their side of the story when something goes wrong. I don't think saying "help me help you" is placing unfair burden on anyone. Fact is, a lot of people just don't know these tools are available. That's my fault.


I think you're right. But just hoping for it to magically happen won't fix anything. I hate to break it to people, but keeping a community together is hard work, and we have to work together. This world is growing more insane by the day, and the only way to keep it out of here is to report and remove those people.


This is a distinction that's literally encoded in our terms of use. It's how the site is moderated already. Exploring how we all got started in this is a key topic that's always been endemic to this forum. But we've got to keep it high-level. Going into too much detail crosses a line.

Peace,
Messmaster

And in a way that's something that has intimidated me about the whole process. Sometimes I don't want to talk about it any further or have someone jumping into it. I just want to ignore them and move on.

Knowing that every single block I put in is going to have someone looking into it, maybe scrutinizing it or anything I said is scary and makes me second guess if it is worth using that function. What if the moderator doesn't like how I worded things? What if they think I was too rough with the person that I felt was harassing me? What if this comes back to hurt me?

It's hard not to go down that rabbit hole in your head.

Sometimes I just want a block to be just that. A block.

I don't believe I've given anyone reason to be intimidated to call something to my attention by using the block feature. It's anonymous for you, and I'm the one who personally handles all the flags. There is no retaliation to fear. It's the other person who was flagged that I'm looking into, anyway. For any action that I take, I always describe my reasoning, and when I'm wrong I'm always open to appeal any decision. What do you think this is, North Korea?

If what you're asking is for me to deliberately ignore flags and not do my due diligence on them, then sorry, that's not going to happen. When you say you're being harassed, I believe you, so I am going to do everything I can to prevent it from happening to you again, as well as others.

Messmaster

I had no idea this existed for inboxes. Derp on me.

Chiming in on this, I'm sorry to hear about women being bombarded with unwelcome messages, especially when it happened as a result of them posting in this thread. I've had a bit of that (from gay guys who didn't look at my profile properly) but nowhere near the same extent.

I don't think this problem is unique to the UMD. Over on Facebook, I'm in a skinny dipping group, and women have mentioned getting unwelcome messages. The admins have set ground rules:
"Please use the group to communicate with other members in the first instance. Creating a post is NOT a de facto invitation for unsolicited private messages or friend requests to be sent and people who engage in this behaviour are likely to be removed with no exception or right of appeal."
The idea is that if I want to send someone a message, I should comment on one of their posts first and ask whether it's ok.

Similarly, I'm in a naturist forum, and they put a banner at the top for a while. It said something like: "Even if you think you're being friendly, please be aware that other people might feel overwhelmed with messages from complete strangers, so think twice before sending."

Unfortunately, some people will just ignore all of that. When it comes to blocking, I can see why MM wants to get a notification but I can also see why some people feel reluctant. For instance, here are a few messages that I've received (none recently):

"Hey. Like women gunged"

"your pic looks good"

"I enjoy slspstick"

"Hello! I'd love to meet up with you for some gunge fun! I'm new to this and always in suit and tie!"

"would you gunge me?"

They're not offensive as such, but I also had no interest in pursuing those conversations. If I block those users, I personally don't mind if MM wants to review the message, because I trust his judgement. However, I've heard that women are socialised (trained) to "not make a fuss", so this could add a bit of extra pressure. "If I block this person, am I overreacting to a friendly message? Will I get this person in trouble? Should I put up with it until they've unambiguously crossed a line?" Maybe there could be a checkbox next to the block button that says "Report to admin"?

After reading all 4 pages of this in one sitting, I feel like that meme of Ben Affleck smoking a cig. I feel, just, so many things:

- I feel bad for you gals, I really do. This sucks and I hope that it improves drastically

- One thing that makes the women on this forum so awesome is the fact you seem to think that 85-90% of us are decent human beings and it's the other 10-15% that are the creepers...which, I agree with.

- There are men who seem to not know the difference between a female wammer who is a producer versus a female wammer who is just a contributing member to this forum (even though you should talk to both the same respectful way)

- There are thankfully ways to get people reported and or/banned that should be used

- Just because a woman is naked doing your fetish and/or being an exhibitionist does not mean she is an object or property

- There are more female wammers out there than we think

- Because a woman exists on this forum doesn't mean she is looking for sex/hookups/sexting unless she specifies it's what she wants....maybe she just wants to be a part of a community of like-minded individuals that feel like they found 'their people'


...I'm probably forgetting things. But it's good for grievances to be aired and not bottled up.

Absolutely this! Regardless of sex, race, mental stability, just don't be a dick!

Whenever a person signs up as a female, UMD automatically defaults their privacy settings to be more restrictive. Their chat and inbox are both initiated as "friends-only" and the Wam Party is turned off, and a few other things are done as well.

Changing these options from their defaults is effectively an opt-in to accept messages from random people.

Messmaster

Speaking of defaults and starting places, it might be useful to have a brief user-friendly (and optional) "onboarding" or tutorial script after creating an account, which shows every new user the more interesting block and privacy features, some of the rules, and the norms around the reporting system. I totally didn't know about the mail block option, despite really wanting to see it for a while, and desperately wanting to use it and not figuring out that I had that power until this thread.

I do think it would be useful to somehow put a banner or a notice or something on all the new accounts for their owners to see, pointing to the fact that there are several privacy options they can check out. For some reason people complain before even looking for such options. I'm also going to show your "I am here to:" and "Note to people about to inbox me:" info right on the friend requests page, so people friend requesting you have to see your wishes right up front. I'll probably also add a note to remind them that even those messages need to be respectful. I have a few other things on my To Do that I'll be integrating over the coming weeks and months.

Thanks for the idea Nein. The floor is always open to more suggestions!!

p.s. If things got so bad that you desperately wanted to block someone, even without blocking them you could always report them to me. For the record I still don't like the block feature. The better alternative is to report and *remove* those people so they can't mess with anybody else. Why would I want to keep them around if my members are blocking them? This place is a house party. If someone at your party is acting a fool, what do you do? You kick them out!

Messmaster

Thanks for clearing that up. I don't want to take up too much space, since this is a thread for/about women, but just to respond with my own experience on this by playing with your analogy.

I am personally super unfriendly to the idea of being "cornered" at a party (which is effectively what the dynamic looks like in DM's). But I am totally fine with dragging someone in the public (forum) space when they're being Extra. So while I really personally just don't want one set of experiences of shady one-on-one contact, I also don't necessarily want my preferences to have the effect of automatically kicking the other person out of the party, because not everyone is like me or likes the things I like. Hope that makes sense.

Makes sense to me. I'm not normally that binary, in that a person either needs to be liked by everyone, or else totally banned from the site for one person blocking them. The deal is that my experience with the block button is that 90% of the time it's not actually used to block a person who won't stop messaging them, but rather as a signal to them that they are angry. Half the time it's 2 people blocking each other after a spat, or someone blocking someone else who's never messaged them once. The block button doesn't even actually block them from seeing your profile (that's what Invisible is for). Its main advantage is that it gives users a sense of power of restricting someone from contacting them if they tried.

I like your analogy of being cornered by someone who you don't necessarily want to be kicked out of the party. If the block button gives you the comfort of knowing a shady person cannot contact you, then that makes it worth it.

Messmaster

Granted, I am sure it isn't nearly as much as most females on this site, but I get plenty of creepy/unsolicited messages and chats as well. I just ignore and delete, and they usually seem to get the point.

I've been sitting on the sidelines reading this thread, mostly because my experiences on here have been genuinely positive for the most part, but I just wanted to chime in real quick and say that a few years ago I adjusted my settings so that only "friends" can message me, and it made ALL the difference in the world.

Now if I get a creepy message or someone is acting out of order, I can just de-friend them and they can't message me anymore. And I just don't accept any friend requests unless I know the person or like something they've made or posted. (And I don't think I've ever turned on the chat feature, nor do I plan to. That's just not what I'm on her for when I'm on here).

Also, I know in today's climate, not a single guy is going to come forward and bring this up (especially in a thread about "female wammers"), but I think it's worth mentioning, that for a lot of men on here, they're getting the same creepy unsolicited aggressive messages that we are, just from other men. Like of the 10-15 guys I'm real close with in this community, literally every single one of them has independently at some point brought up how often they get barraged with messages from other dudes about getting messy or sending messy pictures or doing sex. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. No exaggeration.

So I strongly recommend to anyone, male or female, that doesn't want unsolicited messages, adjust your privacy settings in your profile where it says "Who can inbox me?" to "Just Friends". Same with the "Allow chat with everybody, or just friends?" setting. You will truly be surprised at how quickly and how dramatically it changes your overall experience here.

I had a guy message and challenge me to a fist fight. I should have beaten his ass.

I don't want to put words in Erica's mouth here, but I personally think it's less of fear of blowback or thinking that flagging would fall on deaf ears, and more of like, a pain-in-the-ass to have to report/flag some douchebag after he's already pissed you off or offended you or made you feel disturbed.

Like after some guy goes off the deep end with me, I'm usually just bummed out. Bummed out that this dude is being a creep or a jerk. Bummed out that he's probably super unhappy with his life and based on his behavior, probably not going to be able to change that. And just bummed out that a person is broken and beyond help. That just sucks.

Plus, I'm on a fetish site, so that means I was probably super horned up when I logged on, and now instead of feeling myself (pun intended), I'm feeling bummed out. Which is like a double bummer. So it's just like, I don't have the mental energy to then go thru with reporting this dude and explaining the situation etc. I'd rather just open up a new tab and get perved up again. In fact, in most situations in general, regardless of what the problem is, I'd rather just open up a new tab and get perved up again.

Obviously, if someone is like dangerously creepy or super offensive, I'd report them, but more often than not, it's a casual-but-incessant bothering, so it doesn't exactly get you angry enough to like, do your part in justice system.

Is it selfish and irresponsible of me to not follow through with reporting/flagging? Yes.

Is it a disservice to the greater (female) community here? Absolutely.

Is it also completely unhelpful and probably super frustrating to the wonderful folks in charge here? Totally.

But like, I don't come here to help police creeps. This is an escape for me (and I imagine many of us), so I rarely have the chutzpa to like follow-through with flagging/reporting.

So rather than getting fired up enough by creeps to do something about it, it just makes you want to be less active publicly, cause in a way, the more out there you are, the more you're a potential target. And I think THAT'S what Erica was getting at when she mentioned being scared into silence. It's less about the fear of repercussions if we were to come forward and report/flag stuff, and more about just being afraid of what we might be inviting if we're more vocal in general on the site.

For example; I am already dreading the SUPPORTIVE messages I'm gonna get because of this post! Guys saying how sorry they are about what's been happening with the creeps or how they agree with what I said, or how they were enlightened about this that or the other, etc. And these are POSITIVE messages, and from people I'm friends with already, but they're still uninvited, unwanted, and usually a thinly veiled attempt at trying to "chat" with me so they can eventually ask "hAvE yOu EvEr BeEn PiEd?"

But I'm going to feel bad if I just ignore the messages... And I don't want inbox anxiety...

So then it's like, "hmmm, maybe I just shouldn't post". Like don't invite any conversations you may not want to have.

And that's essentially being scared into silence.

Which to bring it all full circle, is why a lot of girls lurk here. It's why I lurked here for 10 years before I made this account and made my first post. It's why most of my posts/replies here are super short and lack substance. The more vocal you are, the more you become a potential target. Where-as, the more silent you are, the less you get bothered.

On the other hand, if you don't put yourself out there, you don't get to meet as many interesting and wonderful people. Case in point; Erica is one of my favorite wam friends, and that's only because we both put ourselves out there enough over the years to be able to discover that we had mutual common interests. And that's also how I've met most of my other good friends in this community. So to some extent, you only get what you give in terms of positive experiences also, but it's just a tough thing to balance in this fetish.

But all of this was an extremely long way of saying, I don't think there's much, if anything, the site could be doing better in regards to unwanted attention scaring women into lurking. I can't speak for others, but I personally don't think it's an issue of people feeling that you guys don't have our backs, or haven't setup enough measures to safeguard and deal with these types of things. I think it's just an unfortunate reality that there's always going to be a level of emotional fatigue that dealing with jerks and creeps takes on us, and as a result, it can make it less appealing to do anything that might provoke MORE jerks or creeps to come pee in your pool again.

Thank you so much for this last paragraph, KelseyRose. All of you post was good, but this part especially spoke to me.

We have this topic come up all too often on UMD, and yes it needs to be revisited often. However, often the thread takes a sort of "blame people [usually men] for the actions of other people that the first group cannot control" tone. That tone comes from a sincere place of hurt, but it makes the (I think) vast majority of posters feel impotent to help or respond. Obviously "you" (the aggrieved) probably don't want a flood of messages of generic support from people "you" don't know. OTOH, the people who do cross the line don't care how many people eloquently or passionately called them out on their bad behavior in these threads.

We never want to make the mistake of victim blaming. Messmaster has provided a thorough set of tools to mitigate the damage the creeps can do, but it is completely up to the aggrieved to decide to use or not use them, whichever is more advantageous to their personal fulfillment on this site.

However, I feel at a certain point, holding a large category of community members collectively guilty for the actions of a few that that category cannot effectively prevent or mitigate, is unfair. (Which is to say that, personally, as a relatively low key member of the community, I feel that some previous iterations of this thread have in fact been started by member who feel "that you guys don't have our backs".)

I honestly think one of the oddest ones I've had was a guy in May who tried to message me a few times. It always happened when I was idle or logged into the site via mobile and unable to see chats. By the time I see them it was way later and they were gone.

I log in one day and this utter rant about how I must feel I am better than him, and how I am obligated to respond to his "nice" messages. After this, I really didn't want to chat. At all.

I told him that and he continued with the normal line that he "just wants to chat." By that time, there was absolutely zero interest on my side.

Thanks for this. I thought it was important to note that Kat / Chloe Pie were posting from the same computer since I don't believe it was mentioned elsewhere. Having multiple accounts from one computer is okay so long as people know what's up.

Messmaster

Is it just me or does this topic seem to come up every couple of months or when some community member gets disheartened or harassed and leaves?

To be clear, I'm not saying that it shouldn't come up/be discussed/be addressed/get fixed, this is just definitely not the first time it's been discussed recently. I think KelseyRose synthesized why a lot of this goes unreported and the underlying psychology as to why really well...so how does it get fixed aside from trying to rely on people organically changing their behavior?

You aren't the only one who has noticed it. I noticed it yesterday, in fact, with the "Jenn" post. While it was all fun and games in the post with lines like, "Why is Jenn?" but I couldn't help but wonder if there might be a connection to this.

If you read my post I wasn't actually talking about being harassed I was reaching out to the female fetishists on here.

Topics come up again and again on many subjects like "What's your fav substance"

Like many have said for those who feel are being harassed and this could be harassment for one person and just repetitive and annoying to another is to change your settings, close your chat, if someone wants to contact you usually an inbox wont be a message like "What should I put in my shorts?"