Male erotica in the LGBT group: Why now? What's changed?

[Ms. Toad]

22. Thank you for raising the question.

I am not particularly fond of those threads - and if we were taking a vote I'd vote to keep them out.

I belong to a group of LGBT individuals which meets in person a couple of times a year. We share a lot of laughter and a fair amount of sexualized play with each other (across all gender boundaries) - which I thoroughly enjoy. If I were assigning movie ratings to the strings of photos of men here and our play they would probably be equivalent (PG or PG-13).

What we share in person is a celebration of ourselves, our sexuality, and of our relationship with each other - an integral part of reclaiming our sexuality and our spirituality as divinely intertwined.

The strings of pictures, on the other hand, feel to me like turning people into sex objects - an entirely different activity, even if they are equivalent in terms of NSFW content. Rather than building community among all of us they turn our attention outward to sex objects who are not (so far as I know) part of our community - and in doing so they turn our attention away from each other along the dividing line of sexual orientation.

So - it isn't a matter for me of credibility, but of being put off by objectified scantily clad men (in whom I have no interest) which detracts from (rather than builds) community across gender lines, when gender integration is often a challenge in LGBT groups - and I don't think this group is particularly an exception to the rule.