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This post follows on from the one I made last week and covers the same issues. These being, the ever-increasing predominance of males on the site and the problems this can cause new female members being overwhelmed with messages. This was exemplified by a new female member I was recently chatting with who closed her account and left after just five days
I suggest that the ‘Who can contact me?’ button be removed from the top of the Profile page and placed in the lefthand column instead – directly below ‘Profile’ in the list (and maybe shortened to ‘Contact Options’).
Clicking this link would open a righthand sub-page in which the member can select preferences from several options. These being –
Which Members Can Contact Me?
1. Verified Members Only
2. AnyoneWhich Area Can Contact Me?
1. My City or Region Only
2. Within 50 Miles of Where I Live
3. My Country Only
4. AnywhereChoosing the ‘Verified Members Only’ option would essentially extend the current ’three day rule’ until a new member felt settled-in and comfortable enough on the site to receive a greater inflow of messages and not be completely overwhelmed by them. It would also provide an ongoing privilege to male members who are serious enough about ABF to pay for site verification.
I would also include a boxed NOTE below these options recommending that new female members start out with ‘Verified Members Only’ in order to feel fully in control of their experience on the site at least during their initial time here.
A member could change their options at any time and as often as they like. An already established exchange of messages with a member falling outside of a changed option would be retained. Also, an ‘Exclude From My Contact Options’ button could be used for sending a message to a member who falls outside any currently selected options.
Any on-topic feedback welcome
I’m going to push back on the premise here.
Women do not need this much protecting from our own inboxes.
Receiving a message does not create an obligation. I can read it or not. Answer it or not. Delete it unopened. Block the sender. Restrict contact. Ignore 100 messages while I happily talk to the one person who interests me.
An inbox is not a queue of obligations.
And women receiving disproportionate attention on a site where men dramatically outnumber us is hardly unique to ABF Heaven. It happens on dating sites, kink sites and social platforms everywhere. There will always be some sorting involved when strangers are allowed to approach one another.
What bothers me is the assumption that the solution is to decide, on behalf of new women, that we’re likely to become overwhelmed and should therefore be encouraged to limit access to ourselves until we’re sufficiently “settled in.”
I’m a grown woman. I don’t need training wheels on my inbox!
Give me good privacy tools? Absolutely. Give me blocking, filtering and control over who can contact me? Yes please.
Then trust me to use them.
I’m also uncomfortable with verification being described as an “ongoing privilege” that gives paying male members greater access to women. Verification may tell me something about a member. It does not move him to the front of my line.
And one woman leaving after five days tells us that one woman left after five days. We don’t actually know that a different set of contact settings would have made her stay, and her experience certainly doesn’t establish what women collectively need.
Some women will hate a packed inbox. Some will enjoy the attention. Some will skim. Some will delete 40 messages without opening them and never give it another thought.
That’s autonomy.
There’s an odd contradiction in trying to give women more control by prescribing how women should manage the attention we receive.
Give us the controls.
We’ll take it from there.
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