Men: We Gotta Do Something About the Awful Ones
I’m directing this message to the vast majority of guys here: respectful, judicious, boundary-sensitive, wholesome, welcoming, patient.
We really need to figure out a “hair community” enforcement system around the absolute shit-load of horrible men within this world. (Yeah, they’re not a majority, and yeah, there are still enough to ruin the day of almost every woman who posts something.)
I’ve interacted with not one, but two separate hair account-running women today, who both are backing away from posting. I’m tired of accepting this, but sure, let’s assume a certain amount of creepy entitlement, or objectifying sociopathy behind the veil of anonymity, is normal on the internet. It sucks but let’s price that in. What was set me off today is that both said they’d been threatened with sexual assault, over, what, not doing things with their hair one guy wanted? That’s psychopathic!
I’m tired of accepting that this is just how it is on the internet for women. I’m tired of needing them all to be resilient and I’m tired of the way these guys make the rest of us look.
I don’t know what the systemic answer is, but I don’t want to stand idly by anymore. Sure, experienced women know to block the creeps. But I’m done not calling a creep a creep every time he posts something creepy, or worse.
A fetish community is a strange thing. It’s intensely intimate and vulnerable, and is a community built bonding over something socially taboo, or even flirting with antisocial behavior. It is a place that should be welcoming, non-shaming, and full of support.
To me, this is all the more reason to enforce our own social shaming actively. We don’t kink-shame here, but we will shame non-consensual antisocial behavior. You’re not a creep for liking hairjobs or RPs or capes or CNC scenarios, you’re a creep for being an active psychopath.
Maybe there’s a kink community someone wants to build for real, not-roleplayed psychopaths to just bump up on each other with no social contract. That’s not here, and that’s not something I want to accept.
I hope this doesn’t give the impression that I believe women in the fetish community need the men fighting a battle for them. The fact that any women are active in this community at all is a testament to how good a job they’re doing fighting for their own sanity and a space to get their own pleasure from this fetish.
But I would sure like it if maybe these guys felt a lot less safe doing that. Losing access to content, friends, posting privileges, videos.
The hair community did a pretty good job blackballing Voldemort. Maybe it’s time to mop up all the “death eaters”, too.