BD Forum Shutdown & Follow-Up [debate]

OK, it's not that funny.........it's a slow day.

 

Eh, Varka was indeed very transphobic in that exchange. BD employed incorrect terminology and prioritized cis comfort over a trans person's right to his own gender. There were other solutions that didn't involve misgendering anybody that would have even taken care of the complaints, but instead of listening to any of them, Varka decided to keep the incorrect terminology and pulled such a dick move as to delete all the videos overnight. Like, it would have been really easy to make everyone happy in that situation, but it was grossly mishandled. One of those things that honestly makes me want to swear off BD entirely.

 

Considering my partner actually had their mother threaten to burn the house we both live in down should she catch the two of us doing anything "funny", BD's comparison leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. Especially since after she made the threat she made sure to say "you know I love you right?" to my partner and had my partner respond positively.

So yes, I've experienced a "friend" politely threaten to burn down my house. Even it is technically theirs and I'm only renting a room, it's the house I'm living in. She called me her kid from another mother before that. and made me feel very welcome after I moved in after a lot of other shit going on in my life.

Now, this was before the two of us really got serious and were still in just the testing romantic stage, but it's still stuck strongly.

(For clarification, my partner and I are both asexuals who would qualify for same-sex marriage (if it was legal here) and their mom is a grade A homophobe.)

 

I think transphobic may be a bit strong. Varka definitely wasn't understanding or diplomatic really in that exchange and deleting all of someone's videos like that is very much asshole-like, I don't think he is actually transphobic. I don't have a lot of experience with the trans community so perhaps I am a bit more forgiving of incorrect terminology since I personally think it can be very confusing and easy to make mistakes with. What little experience I do have has also given me the impression that they can be a tad hostile about it. Point being it isn't a position I envy and I don't see a simple solution that would satisfy everyone, so while it wasn't handled well and I'd actually say it was bungled pretty bad, I don't really hold it against BD. I also think the other party had a chip on their shoulder and I'm not entirely convinced how open to other options they were either.

On that note and this may just be me being a bit unsympathetic, I'm underwhelmed by the stuff that led to the misogynistic and racist accusations. For the misogny which seemed to come from that one twitter post comparing coffee and women, I have trouble seeing that as anything else but people overreacting. It seems pretty clear it was a joke and made entirely with tongue in cheek. Now if it were being said seriously, I'd understand and I'm all for not encouraging a misogynistic attitude, but I just don't feel like what was said could be construed as being anything but a jest. They even clarified that they don't support the actual attitude, yet the responders were still all up in arms.

The racist escapade stemming from the naming choice for the ultimate fantasy colors baffles me the most though. I for one didn't realize "ebony" was oppressive or offensive and in truth, I don't consider it so, but maybe I'm being insensitive and if so that is on me. BD's response to someone objecting to it was to immediately apologize, say they didn't know and then say they'd change it and ask for other suggestions, yet they were still tore into over it. That just doesn't make sense to me. From the tweets I saw, BD seemed open to discussion and explaining why they didn't choose other names while the other side seemed to mostly just scream oppression. I will note however that the dark colored ultimate fantasy is still called ebony, so I guess shame on them for not actually following through.

Sorry, this stuff has been bugging me a bit ever since I heard about it during the forum closure fiasco, which was my first time hearing about it seeing as I had stopped interacting or even following the forum for a number of reasons about 2 years ago.(at least I think it was two years, it was shortly after the thing with Lady being banned for those of you who remember that.) Anyway, there are much better reasons to not want anything to do with BD than those incidents, mostly stuff applying to customer service and product quality and all kinds of business decisions, and I had intended to talk about that, but I will wait. I've typed enough already.

 

The problem with the misogyny thing was that when confronted about it, the person in charge of tweeting basically responded with "You shouldn't be offended anyway, and if you don't like it don't read our twitter."

 

Kinda feel the same way about it. I mean I wouldn't call it black because they implies the onyx color. And it would seem weird to call it African-american. I can think of much more offensive words (not that I do or would ever use them).
In fact I have dildo in "THAT" color. I suppose you could you call the all the UF's toys as "Light colored" "Medium colored" and "Dark colored". Or replace colored with naturals, like most other toys have. Uninspiring, but shouldn't piss anyone off.

 

There is this nifty phenomenon I like to call "Celebrity Silence". It prolly has a proper name but I'm not googling jack right now lol. But basically, once a person reaches a certain level of "famousness" they need to start paying more attention to what they do and say, because the public will rip you a new one if you misstep. Now you-know-who, being a flippin CEO of a very well known company (BD) doesn't seem to understand this subject at allllll and still acts and speaks like hes just another anonymous dude on the internet and not as a business man.

Now some might rise up and say "Hey, you-know-who shouldn't have to act/behave any differently just because he has the Eye of the Public on him. The People get to say/do whatever they want, so why should they get to pile on their expectations onto anybody else." I'll tell you right now, those are the same exact people who pitch fits when they go to a restaurant/business/anywhere and aren't treated as valued customers. We expect excellence when we give up our money and being insulted, belittled or threatened is very much not excellent.

 

Yeah, maybe my first few weeks working retail has desensitized me or something, because at my store LITERALLY EVERY SINGLE black item at my store rings up as "Ebony". Shirts. Shoes. Ceramics. Everything. I don't know if it's just to separate it from the abbreviation for Blue or what, but that's the descriptor on 95% of the black objects. That leads me to believe that the general public considers it a general color descriptor.

I mean, I totally understand that it has widespread sexualized use, but I really really think it was the porn industry doing what... every other industry has apparently done and used a fanciful word for black. It has widespread EVERYTHING use too. It's just people thesaurusizing. I mean, it's not my fight so maybe I"m missing why it's so offensive, and I'll admit that.

I guess if you went for Naturals though, it would imply that medium is the NATURALEST NATURAL which is actually more of a problem in my opinion LOL. As much as I think Dark Natural would be a completely fine name for that color. I don't know even.

 

@Chromosomefarm
Its no secret around here that I'm black, but I find it really (insert word here) that people would get upset that an ebony item was labeled as Ebony. That descriptor is primarily used for furniture because lets fact it, the word "black" is just not that fancy. And what kind of world do we live in where flibbin PORN gets decide the rules on naming anything. You don't see anyone changing pearl necklaces to "Clam orb jewelry" or cream pies to "Dessert with a hearty whipped topping" so yea, there is a fine line between genuinely wanting to correct ignorance and finding any reason at all to start an uproar.

 

That's a fair point and I wouldn't dream of arguing that they didn't respond badly to it, like they do most things to be honest. I guess I was just thrown by the misogyny part of it. Also, to my embarassment, I may have flubbed on doing my research a bit since I had looked at the twitter conversation since I first saw it and I misremembered some of the tweets and the general flow a bit. So, yeah, that makes more sense now.

Apparently, the peach color was originally called flesh instead. Now that is a bullet dodged much in line with the naturalest natural idea. If people are going to get on your case over ebony, they would have had a field day with flesh. Though seeing that did make me realize that it isn't like there isn't a precedent for light skin colored toys to be called flesh colored. I'm not sure if that is still a naming convention in the dildo world, but I want to say it is. I'm also uncertain if flesh colored applies to other retail avenues, though I do know that it is at least a thing in terms of speech. I have heard people call something flesh colored specifically referring to a light skin tone while excluding darker skin tones. Never really thought about it before now, but that is messed up in a way, even though I'm sure it wasn't intended at all.

 

They should have called the lighter colour Ivory, and they could all live together in perfect harmony.....

......I really need to go to bed.

 

non nonono we cant use the word Ivory. Having any kind of positive use for that word would obviously cause a surge in the illegal ivory trade. Are you trying to kill all the elephants and rhinos (sincerely, Internet Warrior)

 

I'm actually legitimately surprised they didn't. It seems so obvious (and honestly would've served as even more justification for Ebony ROFL)

 

Boyfriend is black, and he found it stupid when I told him people were having a problem with it.
And I've seen a lot of black people call themselves ebony and a good thing. It's not like certain other words.
And I could understand that they have to distinguish from the ACTUAL black color. I mean they could have gone with something candy or coffee themed like other places, but really I don't ever see the point in that stuff being labelled that way.


And also Ivory would have been a perfect word for the palest color. Seriously.

 

Don't be silly. If they named it Ivory, it would increase handwashing, leading to a cleaner and happier world!

 

I didn't really get some of that either. I think it's mainly because a lot of BD's customers are very sex positive, open, and use the internet a lot. Which easily translates to: the justice warrior folk. I get the misogynist joke thing, it wasn't so outrageous but it wasn't the best or appropriate for a business to post. I thought the transphobia thing was...well, it wasn't handled any more poorly than their other customer service things? It wasn't sensitive, and again definitely not professional but I didn't feel that it was out of genuine malice as much as ignorance. I'm curious as to the solutions that would please everyone in that scenario? (not snarky, I'm not good at customer service-y kind of things, luckily it's not my job) I would probably have told the people complaining to deal with it essentially, though I think the other person did kind of come from a place of...preemptive anger? Also, the ebony thing. I've seen plenty of things that have ebony as the color descriptor and never heard that it was offensive, but maybe I'm hanging out in the wrong spaces. I admit that I'm white and cis though so maybe I should be more scandalized and I'm just digging a hole here.

 

I think the best way I can put it is that hurting someone out of ignorance doesn't effectively hurt someone any less than hurting someone on purpose.

Say Person A steps on Person B's foot. When Person B tells them not to, Person A says Person B can't hold it against them because it wasn't on purpose. But then Person A keeps stepping on Person B's foot, over and over again. And it's never the foot-stepper's fault, because it was never on purpose... but they never stopped to think about where they were putting their foot, so they kept on hurting Person B anyway.

Now, imagine that almost everyone steps on Person B's foot. Their foot gets stepped on many times a day, often not "on purpose," but nobody is trying not to, either. Nobody is even thinking about B's feet, even though they keep stepping on them. And when B asks anyone not to, the foot steppers tend to get up in arms because it wasn't on purpose, and how dare you suggest they weren't paying attention (even though they weren't)? The foot steppers claim that this is the only way they know how to walk, and it wasn't on purpose anyway, so B just needs to stay out of their way. They encourage other people not to pay attention to B, that it's no big deal, that B just can't take the real world, their feet got stepped on once too (not acknowledging that in the same world, their feet get stepped on a whole lot less than B's).

But no matter where B goes, their foot still gets stepped on. Then, you do get the occasional person whose goal in life it is to stomp on Person B's foot. But it's not just that person. It's every other person who refuses to pay attention to anybody but their own feet -- and least of all Person B's. By the time the 1000th person in a day steps on Person B's foot, they're tired of asking people not to do something they shouldn't even have to ask for.

That was a very extended metaphor, so please excuse the mildly absurd situation, but it's the best one I have trying to illustrate this concept. P: Ignorance is just as hurtful and just as dangerous, especially willful ignorance, which is quite common.

Packagedgore, the simplest solution would probably be to use tags so that a post could be tagged both "trans" and "male," and then someone who did not want to see "trans" could filter out that tag. There are other possibilities, but that's how a LOT of sits work these days.

 

I thought that was what was being done already? I don't use the site they were talking about so I guess I thought the categories were already set up like that. That sounds like a better plan than whatever they have now!
I agree it's no less hurtful and I see how it would be terribly frustrating and upsetting. I do think it was wrong, and ignorance isn't so much of an excuse but...I just feel it still is better than malicious intent. Both are bad obviously. I hear a lot of people say ignorant things about bisexuals and it offends me. But it offends me way more when they do it from a place of hate than a place of being uneducated and maybe unexposed to the proper terminology, etc. I'm offended either way, but if I had to quantify it I prefer the ignorance.
Varka definitely handled it poorly and the proper response to the "You stepped on my foot" should ALWAYS be "I'm sorry." and the person seeks out how to keep from stepping on people again.

 

Dreaming Doll hit the nail on the head with the metaphor! But for trans people where it's fairly culturally acceptable to shit on them so imagine that there are a whole lot more people that openly and intentionally stomp on B's feet and then add to the mix people that intentionally step on B's feet but claim ignorance. After a while it becomes very difficult to tell who is legitimately ignorant and just made a mistake and who doesn't give two shits about stepping on B's feet even though they are aware of the feet and know stepping on them is wrong or even enjoy stepping on B's feet but use ignorance as their shield. So after a while B starts reacting to even true ignorance as if it's veiled malice because that is what they have been conditioned to expect.

Think of it like an abused dog. The dog gets intentionally kicked every day and hates and fears it. Now a person comes along and accidentally kicks the dog because the dog ran out in front of them while they weren't paying attention but that dog is still gonna react like it was intentionally kicked because the situation they are used to means that the kicks are usually very much intended and viciously enjoyed. That is why the trans community as a whole tends to be very sensitive and reactionary. Because they are coming from a place where the same type of things hypothetical you is saying to them in ignorance are the things said to them before they are literally murdered.


And about the sexist things. I refer you to this diagram:

Jokes are on the bottom of that pyramid but they reenforce the type of thinking that leads to the top of the pyramid. I know some people are gonna instantly stop listening the second I start explaining this next thing but it's not trying to draw a direct parallel. It's trying to illustrate the way this line of thinking can progress.

This pyramid is exactly how nazi germany happened. Hitler started making speeches that stereotyped Jews in a negative light. He drew clever pictures that stereotyped Jews as miserly and unpatriotic, saying that even though they supposedly had the means they didn't do enough to help germans recover after WWI. After the people of germany started accepting those ideas as truths he stepped it up a little, openly insulting Jews and blaming the poor economy on their miserly ways (see scapegoating on second level) then as the nazi party became more powerful they started creating jewish slums and segregating schools and doing the other things on the third level. By this point it had become a 'truth' in german culture that Jews were the problem and were less valuable and therefore these bad things against them were justified because the jews had been dehumanized. Then acts of violence started to happen, forced registration, violently enforced curfews, vandalism of jewish stores, but everyone accepted it because it was 'only' happening to the jews after all. Now it's generally accepted that the average german didn't know that jews were being systematically killed in a genocide but they also didn't ask questions when all the jews were forcibly moved out, because they didn't think of the jews as people, they thought of them as a scourge on society. (This is also a very similar progression to what happened in Rwanda)

Now it's obvious that genocide isn't anywhere near the same thing as making racist/sexist/transphobic jokes but they are related and it normalizes the kind of thinking that allows people/societies to progress along the pyramid. This is why it's important to strongly discourage things like duke's twitter "joke". Because even though it's "just a joke" it has it's roots in very dangerous things.


I also feel like I should qualify this information. I'm an anthropology student and this is how I've been taught by professors about how things like rwanda or nazi germany happened. I actually wrote a paper on the subject of nazi germany and this exact progression. It isn't a crackpot theory it's something that is widely accepted in anthropological and sociological academic circles.

 

*Wall of text alert*

For the sake of balance, I feel I should play devil's advocate here.

While Varkha may well have over-reacted to the trans thing, we only have one side of the story. The channels on toypics might well be a bit over-simplistic, but there was nothing to say that person couldn't post videos at all. I think the whole point of using the simple channel system was to provide something inclusive- less seedy and intimidating than the big sites which, tbh, are filled with some disturbing individuals (amongst the viewers anyway).

Porn videos are an entirely visual medium- in the case of toypics, in the crudest sense, people browse through the Guys+toys channels precisely because they want to see naked males (i.e. dicks and/or asses). If they have to wade through videos where people have tagged themselves as guys but are clearly physically different to someone born male, then they're not going to be happy and they'll stop visiting. If the site was set up so that there was a specific Trans male channel, I still don't think that would have stopped the person in question posting in the Guys+toys section.

Just because it's run by someone from BD doesn't mean they have to run it like a business, because it's not- it's a different project meant to let people take their sharing experiences a stage further. By posting videos on it, users agree to abide by the rules and conditions. It's entirely possible we've only seen a few cherry-picked screenshots- for all we know, Varkha may have received a stream of abuse and eventually gave up and removed the user entirely.

I don't want to start a massive argument with Keely, but I must take issue with a few points in her last post. Firstly, while I fully accept that trans people have a hell of a time and may be sensitive and reactionary, it doesn't help their cause any to go provoking controversy when it doesn't serve any purpose. In the case in question, it seems like the trans guy stuck his foot out with the express purpose of having it stepped on. In what you've said there doesn't seem to be any recognition that he might be at fault in any way- all the blame is entirely placed on Varkha's shoulders because, in the words of people here, he's either ignorant or he's malicious. He may well have had good reasons for doing it, but hasn't shown everybody because he respects the other person's privacy.

Unreasonable behaviour is unreasonable behaviour, no matter who its coming from. Using the oppression of your minority group as a justification for making someone else's life difficult when they were trying to act in good faith at the outset really doesn't help anybody.
In the same vein, the sexism and the genocide pyramid analogy is frankly not a good one, and in this case I think you may be overstepping the mark somewhat. Jokes can be part of what leads down the slippery slope to mass murder but in the vast, vast majority of cases, they don't- people are grown up enough not to take it seriously. The snooty reaction to criticism of the joke didn't help, but the furor over the joke itself makes me roll my eyes- it's not going to lead to the gas chambers.

My aunt bought a coffee mug that makes a joke about keeping men as pets with a cartoon picture of a leashed dog to emphasize the point. Did I find the joke funny? No. Did I chastise her about it? No, because I know she's an adult who knows where the joke ends and real prejudice begins. Is the joke acceptable because men aren't considered an oppressed group? That's up to you I guess...

Waving the genocide pyramid at people and telling them they always have to watch what they say smacks of thought-policing and is also insidious because, ultimately, it demands that people obey your version of right and wrong.

*Optional end of message here*

As a historical nitpick, and having devoted quite a lot of my life to studying Nazi Germany, I must also take issue with the popular myth that Hitler somehow turned a peaceful, democratic people into a nation of murderous antisemites. The fact is, antisemitism was always there in Central Europe, lurking beneath the surface as a relic from the Middle ages- there wasn't much persuasion needed. Pretty much as soon as WWI had finished, Hitler sprang up and started blaming the Jews for Germany's downfall, but for most part during the Twenties, nobody outside a few thousand fanatics took much notice of the Nazis- that's why they tried to take over by force in 1923. They had failed to tap into the undercurrents of antisemitism because things were relatively stable in Germany in the mid-to late 1920s- why rock the boat?

When the Great Depression hit, the German economy collapsed and people were unemployed and thrown back to times of hunger- they were suffering, angry, and looking for someone to blame. Hitler was still spouting the same rhetoric he always had been, but suddenly he gave a lot of people the easy answer they were looking for (even though the majority still didn't vote for him).

I suspect the crude antisemitic propaganda that ensued was mostly aimed at indoctrinating children and the gullible. Most Germans were well educated, so I can't see a lot of them being truly swung by cartoons with big noses. The previous relative prosperity of the Jewish population and the fact that many leaders of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, and the attempted Communist coup in Germany in 1919 were Jewish, was probably reason enough for already suspicious people to want the Jews purged. Hitler warned them of a great Jewish-Bolshevik conspiracy, and since there were a few grains of truth behind it, people didn't have a hard time believing it. The fact that all of the confiscated Jewish homes, businesses and belongings suddenly became up for grabs probably didn't hurt either.

Violence against the Jews from 1938 onwards was likely shrugged off by most Germans because they were still mostly used to (and preferred) an autocratic system of government. To them, it was simply a way of keeping order and removing enemies of the state- violence had already been used to crush left-wing parties and the SA, and Hitler was applauded for it. Concentration camps inside Germany had already been set up and accepted as a way of dealing with internal threats- so what if a bunch of Jews were sent there as well? There was no more instability, and the vast majority of the people were secure- as long as they accepted the new order (and weren't members of any small targeted minorities), they were left alone.

Violence hadn't been used against most Germans because they were enthusiastically loyal- the dramatic improvement in the economy, the military, and the fact that other countries were simply handing over land out of fear, forged a toxic bond between Hitler and the majority of Germans- they loved their Führer. Yet despite all of this, most of the killing of Jews was conducted outside of Germany, hidden away for fear of upsetting the people back home- Hitler himself called it 'the Devil's work'. For all the efforts to dehumanize the Jews, there were no serious public calls for them to be slaughtered, and those who carried out the Final Solution knew it was a crime (albeit a necessary one in their eyes). Even some indoctrinated SS men (and women) had a hard time killing innocent people without remorse- there were problems with suicides amongst the Einsatzgruppen death squads, and many personnel in Death or Concentration camps developed serious mental issues like split personalities.

News probably trickled back about some of the killings, and a few people made a fuss but for the most part people were happy to swallow propaganda about the smiling Jews living in pleasant camps somewhere in the east. In their minds, there was nothing to be gained by stirring up trouble when Germany was locked in a mortal struggle with Bolshevism- support the war effort and let the state deal with the enemy within. They simply didn't want to know until they were forced to confront the reality after the war.

Likewise, in Rwanda, the Hutu political elite exploited hatreds that were already there. The Tutsi minority had for centuries been the ruling monarchical elite and held the majority Hutus in a state of serfdom, enforced later by German and Belgian colonial powers. Independence from Belgium in 1962 was preceded by several years of instability as the Hutus tried to overthrow the Tutsi monarchy. When this was achieved, most of the Tutsi ruling class fled over the border and started an organization to try and reunite the country. This later formed into the Rwandan Patriotic Front, the armed wing of which invaded Northern Rwanda in 1990. It wouldn't have been too difficult for the Hutu government to convince its people that the Tutsis were coming back to oppress them again, and needed to be removed entirely.

There's a lot more background to these genocides than a simple dehumanization effort- they undoubtedly played a major part, but there were also underlying historical grievances (real or perceived) that played a major role. Same as with the killings in the former Yugoslavia.

To try and draw parallels between these events and a joke one guy made about how he likes his women.....please, just don't.