I've been seeing this mentioned a lot recently on Tumblr and elsewhere and I find it pretty concerning that people are getting warned (which has resulted in some being frozen) over being members of old, inactive RP or interest groups that were focused on mxm or fxf.

I don't know if a few people were found actually RPing sex on-site and that prompted this or if someone just has an overdue vendetta, but giving warnings out to people for simply being a part of a group seems overly reactionary. "mxm" and "fxf" does not automatically equal "porn on the forums". Even if "yaoi" or "yuri" are being tossed around, many people use this now to describe any kind of gay or lesbian relationship (which is offensive in its own way, but that's a different discussion), including ones that aren't sexual.

When the site pairs its own characters up, it seems hypocritical that you are punishing your players for wanting to do the same. Staff should delete the group if they think they break the site rules, and indeed, if staff is concerned that these groups might be enticing minors to RP sexual content, then deleting all of them without prejudice seems the right way to go, but warning users who have not even posted seems excessive. It also seems hateful when heterosexual RP groups still exist, whether this was unintentional or not. : /

As a site that openly supports LGBTQIA+ peeps and has same sex relationships between characters and openly explains what asexuality is, to warn someone over this is just baffling and downright hypocritical. I've never looked for RP partners on here and now I really don't want to. If it's not sexually explicit and not meant to prey on minors, where's the harm? It's not some greatly kept secret. It's not vulgar. It's not offensive unless you want to be offended by it.

I expected better, Subeta. I really, truly did.

I feel like we're not getting the whole story here because this is very out of the blue for a site that's loudly tooting the horn of "we accept and support everyone".

I hadn't heard about this until seeing this post, but now I'm curious what staff's response will be.

I can certainly understand removing groups that were breaking the rules and warning or freezing individual users that were contributing, but if people are getting warned for not even doing anything other than being a member of the group that seems like overkill.

I know that Neopets has a policy of not really allowing relationships between pets and stuff. If Subeta wants to enact some similar rules, it should at least be evenly and fairly enforced across the board and not just targeting specific groups.

I don't want to judge staff too much or anything yet, because as said this just seems really odd for the site. I hope this gets addressed by staff members though, and maybe we are missing some behind the scenes info.

Because people who are upset or mad about getting in trouble never say anything but the complete and absolute truth on the internet. You're probably not going to get the full story behind their freezing/warnings. AFAIK, staff doesn't go around explaining why so and so got punished, and I doubt they will here. Subeta is run by a gay man with many lgbtq staffers. Why would a site run by lgbtq people punish people for lgbtq stuff that DOESN'T break the rules?

I agree. And as I stated, I can't blame staff at all for simply deleting the groups if they feel they might encourage illegal behavior. I really wouldn't want Subeta to be known as the petsite where young teens RP porn with people in the 20s, but considering that a lot of these groups seem to be old and inactive, it just doesn't feel like the right course of action. I personally couldn't tell you half the groups I'm a member of and I would hate to be warned now for something I posted years ago.

I really don't expect them to, but if this started because only a couple of people were posting something inappropriate or because another user reported the group, it'd be nice if the warnings were reconsidered. The RP forum is pretty dead. I don't doubt that most of the individual RP groups are too, even if they do use private forums.

They don't have to get into specifics of who did what, but some sort of acknowledgement of the issue would be nice. I don't know how many users have been affected, but if people are noticing enough to be posting on the forums asking about it then it's probably more than just a few.

If they are mostly inactive groups, that does seem even stranger. Like why wait until now to do something? That's why I also feel like we're missing info, so I'll wait and see when/if staff says anything. I've never been part of any of those groups, but I feel bad if some users are now concerned about getting warnings just for being part of an old group.

[edit]And if it turns out people are lying or making this up as the reason they were frozen/warned when they were in fact breaking the rules, then that's just shitty of them.

@ Kestrel They don't just blanket warn everyone, and it's not just the forums. People roleplay via comments and Smail. Just because you don't see what they did to get a warning didn't mean that they didn't do something to deserve it. @ Laurey It's more than just that. This whole fiasco is pretty insidious, if you think about it. People- who may or may not have done something to get a warning- are using LGBTQ issues to try and get more people to sympathize with them. We have no way of knowing what they did, but people keep spreading their side of the story, garnering sympathy for them and hate for the site. Even if the staff come out and say 'this isn't true', there will still be people who doubt the staff.

Saying something will likely not end this.

Edit: A friend of mine were talking about this off-site, and she made some good points; -How would the person know there was nothing shady going on if they weren't active on the private rp group? -It's doubtful the staff was monitoring every single post in every single private group, as there are so many groups with so many private forums and threads on these forums. Someone from within had to have reported stuff they saw. -Why would they blanket punish everyone? As she put it 'It would be like punishing everyone in the Token Shop ping group because there were hackers within the group'

That's all well and good, but that doesn't address why non active members that hadn't posted at all, let alone anything explicit, were given across the board warnings. There's no reason a staff member shouldn't have browsed through member's posts to be certain that they hadn't posted anything explicit. Just giving everyone a warning on the small possibility that even 3 people out of 30 posted something explicit isn't just unfair, it's poor enforcement of the rules and bad management.

Thanks for your reply, that's really great to hear!

I know staff isn't a hateful group, it was just really concerning that something might be taken out of context and treated so harshly. I'm glad it's getting sorted out!

... I'll be honest - cuddles, chaste kisses and romantic walks under blooming cherry trees are kind of the last thing that comes to mind when I read the words "yuri" and "yaoi". :X So with that knowledge and an explanation from staff, it's not hard to see why warnings were given out. I'm glad cleared things up and that people can get their warnings removed! Superglad that skeevy groups were being cleared out too.

But I'm still wondering why foreign terms with several very different meanings are allowed when foreign language isn't allowed in public areas of the site? It's kind of a strange can of worms because, like Rasputina said, the meaning in this particular case depends heavily on the user. Yaoi/yuri by definition encompass both SFW and NSFW content, and it's a lot of work for a group of ~10 UAs to go combing through the posts of dozens of users to check whodunit and who didn't while ignoring all of their other duties on-site.

I feel that the roleplay forum rules also cover things pretty clearly as far as an official standpoint on yaoi/yuri meanings:

I just want to point out about foreign language on public areas of the site that if it's a word that literally everyone knows, like different words for hello, it's not an automatic rule break. Because everyone knows what yaoi or yuri means it can be used across board. Also it's been changed to be allowed on profiles in either text or graphics.

On the other hand, I just want to state generally that I was under the impression that the definition of those words have changed within the past ten years. I've been in the rp scene for a LONG time and spend quite a bit of time on tumblr as well and yaoi and yuri are becoming more and more used as a blanket term for homosexual role plays while specifying the genders they want used as a way of shortening shoujo and shounen ai, which feels very weeby to type and very long. (I used to use these terms, I get why people are moving from them. Bad flashbacks to my younger weeaboo years.) I feel as the use of terms change, so should site rules. I don't feel that people who use the terms generically should be punished.

In that case, the official site rules could really do with an update and some serious clarifications. D:

I'm not going to go into the weeby bits (oyy, younger me has spades of cringe about this), but I still think that a term that has two very different meanings is kind of a strange gray-area can of worms.

For example, if I post on the forums that I'm looking for a yuri RP and don't offer any other clarifications about it, you don't know if I'm asking for something SFW or NSFW. If someone reports me, we end up with a repeat of the situation here - I get a warning when I could have been asking for SFW roleplays and someone just made an assumption based on their own meaning of the term. Someone else might be looking for NSFW roleplays using the term and they could get away with it without a warning because another user sees nothing wrong with the term.

Don't get me wrong, this whole situation definitely could have been handled a little better and without unnecessary warnings, but on the other hand... The terms still cover a wide area if no other details are provided. The fact that the meaning of the terms is subjective makes it even more complicated.

I'm glad to hear these warnings are being removed. It was pretty uncomfortable to hear about so many warnings going out for people just being in fxf groups. I just wish users didn't have to rely on the forums (again) to find important information from staff. How do staff not have any record of the people they blanket-warned? I don't like that its on users to stalk the forums enough to find this and get the unfair warnings removed. What about people who are inactive, come back to a warning, and have no idea this thread exists?

As for terms, shoujo and shounen ai are really outdated terms imo. I haven't even RPed in years and those terms had already fallen out of favor in the groups I frequented. I've always seen yaoi and yuri as very basic mxm and fxf terms so I would never consider them explicit on their own. If people wanted explicit RP that would be spelled out, not just assumed because of "yuri" or "yaoi". And I can't even think of another site I'm active on that would consider the terms alone to be PG13/inappropriate/sexual/etc. I guess I'm lucky I never really tried to RP on Subeta so I didn't end up caught in this mess.

Glad to hear that! :'| I admit, I missed that part in Rasputina's post. Here's hoping things can be sorted out to be less of a headache for everyone involved.

I was member of a yaoi group here. When I became a member nothing much happend there. Except for some chitchat about yaoi characters and yaoi manga. Last couple of years my time on Subeta has dwindled very much. Hardly have the time to do my normal set of rounds, let alone be active in many groups. I was a complete none active member of that group. Not even reading the posts. Thus I got the warning when I logged in on my evening today after being away for two days or so. Thus, without looking into anything futher, I filed a ticket. And I'm cleared of the warning. Me glad. Thank you so much.

Indeed. When you think of yaoi, you think of the more sexual nature of it. But there is more to yaoi then that. For me, yaoi on here means talking about the charaters. Talking about new and interesting yaois. Things like that. It's quite logical not to write any explicit content on here. There is no section/forum here for such things. The hot and steamy thing on this site is ...... a cup of tea/coffee. :D

Good. This whole situation has been incredibly uncomfortable for me, because I was being told that I was "warranting sexual roleplay" and breaking the rules by just existing in multiple "yuri"/fxf/wlw roleplay groups, even though... I never warranted sexual RP on here, ever. I haven't tried to do RP stuff on here in years, because it just doesn't feel like a horizon that's very fruitful for me-- I'd rather just sit and work on pets and express myself that way.

There's the whole matter of words changing and evolving, and meaning being different between cultures, too; I'm so glad that's being taken into account now. I personally never really interpreted "yuri" as something explicitly 100% sexual-- I've always seen it as simply the Japanese word for the sapphic romance genre. So getting a warning related to that was.. well. I'm glad I'm not the only one who had a stance like that, especially since "yuri" and "yaoi" seem to be slowly going out of vogue as popular phrases.

There was another thing that bothered me, too: initially, I feared that there was cherry-picking going on. There was a period where the yuri/wlw/sapphic roleplay groups were getting pruned out, and warnings were going out, but the mlm/yaoi groups still existed despite people mentioning the disparity. But knowing that equal treatment is being enforced, even for the heterosexual-centered roleplay groups, is very comforting. I think sapphic women are a bit of a minority on this site, so that initial warning + realizing that other groups weren't being deleted or warned for... it was a very distressing possibility to consider. You know?

But this has a happy ending after all. I'm very, very thankful. Thank you so much for your consideration of this whole situation, staff.

Mmm. I think I need to talk about this.

You can be lgbtq and still experience prejudice towards others in the club. You can be a gay guy who displays misogynic values; you can be a queer individual who experiences transphobia; you can be trans and experience biphobia. The list goes on, and on, and on: being a part of the group doesn't automatically make you completely free of prejudice and bias towards others in the group. It's never been so simple as to being a perfect group of perfect and utter unity.

This less-than-pleasant story does have a happy ending, so perhaps that statement's value may be of question.. but I did want to just bring that up. Human beings are imperfect, they have biases and tendencies, and even if they may be a part of a group made for those with similar experiences, that doesn't free them from their imperfections.

edit x10: how many times have I edited this post? the world may never know; I am never satisfied with expressing myself, honestly, I always have more to say.

While that is true, there's been absolutely no signs of that sort of behavior on this site anywhere before. Keith and the staff have made gay and lesbian characters, strong female characters and transgender characters. I really doubt bigotry had anything to do with it, tbqh. We just had a big wedding event for two women a couple of months ago.