References to underage sex on Sex board

[BenCoopersSupportWren]

I haven’t been following the Sex topics in Active furore too closely, beyond agreeing on one of the early threads that it would be better for the Board to revert to the way it was - out of Active, with a longer qualifying time to be able to post.

However I’ve just read a thread which, on the face of it, is just reminiscing about posters’ ‘first times’ but which includes numerous disclosures of underage sex, including some that involved grooming, and one or two that are genuinely heartbreaking testimonies of child sexual abuse. They are particularly jarring interspersed as they are between end-of-pier type humour and jokes of others’ experience.

As I just posted there: “there is a reason most ‘mainstream’ dedicated end-user sex sites like Literotica, BDSMLR etc don’t allow stories or posts that are explicit about underage sex even when clearly written by adults, and will remove such posts when brought to the moderators’ attention. I used to work in the CJS and I’m afraid to say that such descriptions - even when expressed in short and simple terms - have currency among paedophiles. Part of my job was keeping the video testimony of CSA victims and any associated transcripts locked away so that they didn’t fall into the wrong hands. Unfortunately it’s not just explicit photos and videos that they get off to.”

For clarity, by “explicit about underage sex” I mean making specific reference to, not that the material has to be particularly sexually explicit. The exact same thread would simply not be allowed to stand on Literotica’s chat forum, for example.

While there have always been examples in other parts of the site of posters making disclosures of having been abused, that is a very different thing to sharing it in a section that only the most naive or wilfully obtuse would deny will be used in part for titillation. My issue isn’t that the thread is particularly sexually explicit - it mostly isn’t, and I’m pretty broad-minded… in context. But no one could argue that “where did you lose your virginity?” is masquerading as a support / how to / informative thread; it’s for entertainment and kicks only, be the latter humour or a sexual thrill. (A few posters on that thread have been supportive to those who disclosed their abuse, but ‘support’ is clearly not the original purpose of the thread.)

IMO it is extremely remiss of MN to disregard the ‘good practice’ rules that other sex sites maintain for handling material relating to references to underage sex/CSA, both because of the type of person attracted to those sites if such rules aren’t in place and from a liability / arse-covering perspective. This, combined with the lack of any age verification or warning for that part of the site, makes it even more obvious that MN don’t understand what is involved in safely and legally hosting a ‘sex chat site’ or part thereof.

To be fair, I'm shit at reading the room and I'm definitely female.

I’m sure there are some rooms you would definitely be able to read @lummsnet.

(I actually intensely dislike that phrase, but I’m so irritated by the current state of MN that I’ve used it twice in the space of 5 min!)

This response is SO familiar to any woman who's ever been in a relationship with a man.

I've asked for my post to be removed. No offence or sarcasm was intended.

Shocked not shocked no MN reply.
100% agree with @BenCoopersSupportWren

Where is @MNHQ on this? If you're charging for a membership and have a section that's for sexual stuff, you need to do it responsibly and follow the same rules as the rest of the adult portion of the internet!

'Sorry I spoke' was sarcastic. Come on, own it.

And don't get it removed, it is very instructive of exactly what we're saying. It's not your fault you were socialised male. We just want a corner of the internet that isn't all about men.

@MrsTerryPratchett , your post just now is a more eloquent version of something I've posted on a similar thread about this issue (or was it this one?! Cba to check).

In my post I just said that I wanted a female space and I didn't like the increased amount of men posting. But you've got the nuance in your post - there's a few prolific male posters I can actually think of that do add value to the site. But apart from those select few, when men turn up they tend to change the atmosphere drastically.

Like yours, my husband also has the mumsnet app on his phone and he sometimes browses and sends me links to threads. I think he likes it because the female nature of the space makes the tone and vibe very different from places he usually frequents - also because it helps him understand my point of view on a range of issues.

He never posts anything, because why would he want to? Why are other men incapable of keeping their nose out of spaces not intended for them?!

Agree - this struck me when I saw the thread

Like yours, my husband also has the mumsnet app on his phone and he sometimes browses and sends me links to threads. I think he likes it because the female nature of the space makes the tone and vibe very different from places he usually frequents - also because it helps him understand my point of view on a range of issues.

I remember when DH realised how good MN was. It was when that plane went down and couldn't be found. M, something. He was pontificating about it and I said, "oh MN says blah blah", he looked confused and I said, "well there are a million women on there, including flight nerds, air traffic controllers, pilots and others who know a lot". We (of course) were right. And he then started on any zeitgeist or current issue, to ask.

He sometimes suggests something I can post from his area of expertise. I often say, "that's OK dear they've covered that".

Where are the mansplainers / pervs coming from? I get why showing up in Active is making the threads visible to existing users, and how reducing the number of days as a member to post in them is exacerbating it - but why are there so many more actually posting? Has something changed in Mumsnet’s advertising / visibility in searches etc?

I laughed at the inappropriateness of the ‘get back into the saddle, new mother, sorry, vulva haver’ vibrator and was annoyed by the visibility of the sex threads (but didn’t have a problem when they weren’t, ahem, in my face) but what I didn’t expect was the speed of the influx of men.

I’ve been here for years under copious names and will try to follow if people leave. I’d miss FWR and some other long running threads I post on under different names.

That’s a double edged sword of trying to increase monetization and revenue at the same time as being resources that cost a fortune. Who cares if you keep the loyal, longtime customers, if you can, at least briefly, invite a large, new crowd.

@Northernsouloldies

No offence or sarcasm was intended.

"Sorry I spoke" wasn't sarcastic?

It obviously was, so why claim otherwise?

Very odd.

Schroedinger's sarcasm. It's only sarcastic if someone notices!

Yeah. Even I can tell that was sarcastic, to be fair.

MH370. Can I recommend to you and your husband the Admiral Cloudberg series on reddit?

Also, my husband is the same as yours - Always enjoyed hearing me read out funny bits of mn, enjoyed reading links I sent him, but would never have registered or posted himself. He valued the different perspectives and voices you used to get here, as one of the few majority female spaces on the Internet.

How sad that that has gone.

it's almost funny how massively butthurt men get when they are told that their opinions just aren't needed, or wanted. It makes you realise how rarely they ever encounter that in life.

MH370

That's the one! Thanks.

As MN haven't responded to this today or indicated they'll do anything about the points raised in the OP regarding following any sensible guidelines for sex sites, I imagine Friday night on here will be more eventful than usual 🤮

Hi everyone. Thanks for posting - and sorry for the delay in responding. We’ve been discussing the posts here and on the myriad of threads currently running about the Sex topic pretty much all day.

Cards on the table - we put the Sex topic into Active a few weeks ago and we should have given people the heads up, so they could hide the topic in advance. Since then there has been a huge amount of feedback - most of it negative. Perhaps we’ve been naive in underestimating the impact and potential unintended consequences - to be honest we’d meant for the topic to go into active when we introduced the ‘hide topic’ feature a while back - it was an oversight that we didn’t. Then roughly a year ago we changed the time from registration from 90 days to 7 - we believe this is a sufficient delay to deter trolls and, since this change, we’ve not noticed any increase in trolling on the topic. But we accept there could be a wider knock-on consequence here with the overall tone on the boards and it’s something we’re monitoring closely.

Our primary motivation for putting Sex in Active was, as it always is in these cases, to increase visibility to this part of the site for those who need advice. We know that the sex chat threads have been referenced a lot but the majority of threads on the topic are discussing things we know are important and relevant to a significant percentage of MNers - such as post-partum sex, erectile dysfunction, and lack of sex drive. We wanted people to be able to find these threads and, hopefully, find some useful advice and support. It was never our intention to ‘sex up Mumsnet’ - we believe that sex is a pretty regular part of life and hence threads involving sex have always been posted across the boards.

We certainly acknowledge that the sex chat threads are divisive but we cannot see any evidence that it’s driving more male users to join - as far as we can see the men on the sex board are regulars who’ve been using this forum for some time, it’s just their presence is more visible.

Of course the last thing we want is to encourage a load of sex pests onto Mumsnet and I can promise you that we are monitoring this very closely and will of course have a re-think if we see any evidence of it. We’ve also pinned a notice to the top of the topic asking users not to send unwanted PMs. We’ll ban anyone who does.

The thread referenced in the OP was deleted this morning. We had several reports from posters who said they regret posting and it was clearly making a lot of people very uncomfortable so we took it down.

Please do keep letting us know if you have any particular concerns - I can promise you that every report and every post on Site Stuff is read and carefully considered.

All those 'relevant topics' like rimming and squirting just have to be in Active now? And sex pests won't PM thanks to the friendly message asking them not to? When so many users are not in favour of this board being in Active, why keep it there? It really doesn't seem like anyone wants it.

Thanks for the response Justine. But I don't see the rationale for keeping the sex topic in active when the consensus from users is that they don't want it there. Those who frequent the sex board don't want randoms turning up because the threads in active. And everyone else does not want to see threads about rimming and anal sex while they're idly scrolling. There are serious concerns about safeguarding which MN needs to consider as well. There's no age restriction on MN, it's basically a public forum, so facilitating private chats, the sex chat thread, discussions of abuse and paedophilia, etc etc, should all be looked at through a safeguarding lens.

If the reason for putting the sex topic is active is so that people know it's there, then job done. You can now put it back in its corner, surely?

Only those who have been a registered user of Mumsnet for at least 7 days can post in this topic. Mumsnet is a site for grown-ups - you can choose what you want to share with other users but please don’t send unwanted PMs or be otherwise disrespectful.

Thank you @JustineMumsnet as long as posters are banned if they do send unwanted PMs, I think this is fair enough.

Hopefully it'll put an end to all the squabbling and repetitive threads now.

Yes, if it’s a genuine experiment for raising visibility only, that so many users have said (in ‘the myriad of threads currently running about the Sex topic pretty much all day’) they’d prefer not to be the case (or are neutral about) then what’s the motivation to continue? Genuinely.

If the primary motivation was visibility, was the secondary anything related to partnerships with sex toy manufacturers?

There's also the inference in Justine's response that threads describing underage sex are fine and allowed, until someone finds them uncomfortable or regrets posting. Then they get deleted, but only then. So no guidelines or active moderation of the sex board. And MN are happy to host a sex chat thread - I can't see any possible defence of that.

Also, with Sex topic posts in Active, users seeing them there will not come across the pinned note, presumably, that they would, should they seek the topic out. Perhaps I’m wrong.