Hi c/BDSM community!
Because the prior mods were inaccessible and unresponsive for months on end, admins have decided to appoint a new moderator. That would be me. I’m going to sticky this post for a while for community members to comment about what direction they’d like for this community. But I’d like to make some suggestions here too.
BDSM is as generic a term for all-encompassing kink as one gets. It’s a general term. A place where an interactive community should naturally form. So, while I support posting porn here, I’d like to also suggest an openness to community based material. That’s why I posted a blog entry by @[email protected] yesterday about her subby side enjoying ‘good girl’ praise. I think this community could do with more of that kind of material.
Along with that, I want to talk about c/BDSM becoming a true safe space for women, trans persons, and subs of all sorts. We cannot have a general kink community forum without kinksters. And we cannot encourage kinky subs to contribute if we let a slim minority of assholes in the community mistreat them.
Anyone who exposes themselves emotionally or physically will have the mod team’s 100% support. No kink shaming, no body shaming, no cruelty allowed. Period. That goes for male, female, and nonbinary; subs and Dom(mes).
Along with that, I’d like to offer mod positions, or some kind of community guidance role as wished, to women (Domme or sub) so they feel they have real input about how this place is run.
I mean, a male dominated BDSM community is plain at odds with basic kinkster ethics.
This doesn’t mean I envision c/BDSM to become LemmyNSFW’s c/subsanctuary. As a Dom, I really shouldn’t be involved in a community like that. But what it does mean is that subs of all sorts should feel safe and welcome to contribute here.
Opinions? Please feel free to express yourselves. Even if you disagree. I’m listening.
ADDENDUM:
To clarify, by seeking women’s, trans, and sub voices in how the BDSM community is run, I do not mean to imply this should therefore exclude male voices. This is not a zero sum game.
ADDENDUM TWO
I like everything you have to say here. I really hope that this can become a good alternative to FetLife for all things kink, eventually. I like Fet as a platform, but they definitely have some moderation issues among other things, but that’s its own discussion for its own topic, I suppose.
I definitely look forward to seeing how things develop here. The Fediverse is definitely a great platform to establish a strong community.
Out of curiosity, is there an interest in having a separate “sister community” explicitly dedicated to kink/BDSM education? I don’t know the logistics for something like that as far as Lemmy is concerned, but I can’t stress enough how important my local Lifestyle groups have been with regards to education and support, and there are a lot of places that don’t have resources like that anywhere nearby. It’d be great to have a sort of virtual alternative for folks that don’t have a local kink scene, or that aren’t comfortable in such a “public” setting.
Creating a community here is easy, anyone can do it. Creating an infrastructure linking local groups together… that’s another matter. Both logistics and software, because lemmy isn’t really designed for it. And the audience isn’t big enough to support it, either. At least not yet.
For now, on the Lemmy side, I think a catch all generic place is best. Mostly because I don’t think there are more than a few to at most ten thousand kinksters on Lemmy right now anyway.
Creating private chat groups is another matter. I honestly think Matrix chat is the best approach for secure and private group connectivity in the FediVerse. Though some might argue for Signal.
As a community kinkster, I’d love to have your input and community involvement though. Thank you for posting!
I was just passing through and thought I would throw in my two cents on this, as someone with a bit of experience. Session and SimpleX both work as ‘secure and private group chat’ platforms, as they are E2EE and require no phone numbers/other private information. SimpleX is a little more feature rich, but I’ve found Session more stable (although SimpleX is improving. They also lack the geek-curve @[email protected] mentioned, as you don’t have to do much more than pick a username to start chatting (unless you want to dig into all the technical settings). Depending on what you are looking for in a chat app, you may want to check them out.
e: fixed the link for SimpleX