New male quicksand mailing list

[coneylm]

Hello everyone. This is to announce the launch of a new quicksand mailing list. The list blurb:

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A mailing list on men sinking in mud, bogs and quicksands - either themselves or other guys.
This list is about *men* sinking and all are welcome to join, irrespective of gender or sexuality.
However, you must be gay friendly as there is likely to be discussion and fantasies of gay men sinking, possibly together. No disparaging, complaining or homophobic comments. Also, subjects must be about men only - sorry, no references to women (as that is amply covered in other lists and forums). Otherwise you'll be unsubscribed.
Members and those featured in any content must be 18 or over.
With the exception of images, please don't send attachments to the list - use file hosting sites like rapidshare.com (which is free).
Also, there is a limit on the maximum size of a message to 1Mb - if your image attachment will exceed this, using a file hosting site is probably better.
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To subscribe, send a message to: maleqs-subscribe@maleqs.com. Admin email address is: maleqs-owner@maleqs.com.

To answer a few questions:
- Hopefully people here won't misinterpret the intentions as to why this list was created. Quicksand Fans is a great place and the admins deserve kudos for setting it up and running it so well. However, currently this forum is 95% straight and although the list isn't 'gay only', it was the result of discussions with other guys who felt they'd like a place covering their own wants.
- Although there were similar lists on Yahoo, that provider has a habit of deleting them randomly and without warning. Also, spam control was quite poor. Hence a different approach.

All like-minded are welcome!

Rob.

[Duncan Edwards]

You are certainly welcome to advertise and promote your list here. Good luck and I hope it turns out to be what you are looking for.

I would like to express my profound disappointment that you feel it is a necessary thing. The moderators have made a conscious effort to provide a home for all quicksand related interests here. It may well be a chicken or the egg kind of situation that I just don't understand but we have privately discussed how the male homosexual community could feel slighted when they post so little to begin with. If you want a bigger voice then say something. I don't see segregating yourselves as a benefit to a particular group or the broader community.

Please understand the the creators and moderators of quicksandfans.com have no interest in seeing anyone leave because they feel they can't say what they want here. We have gone out of our way to make this place as non-confrontational, open, and welcoming as we know how. If perhaps we have failed in that regard please email me directly so we can be made aware of how to improve.

Duncan Edwards

[sandquick]

Well done, Rob, for getting this initiative underway.

Duncan - I really appreciate yr comments, and I admire your passion for keeping the community together. However, as a gay man who has posted material related to male clips before, it is incredibly frustrating - and actually very isolating - when replies are posted along the lines of "if only it was a cute girl instead of a guy". It happens VERY frequently. Would you rather that gay men increase their voice by responding to female clips with "if only it was a handsome guy"? Doesn't make for interesting reading.

I find it hard being a gay man sometimes, and find it upsetting when I am constant reminded how different I am when male quicksand clips on this forum are considered outside the "norm".

[Duncan Edwards]

I understand and I see what you describe happening frequently. I've been guilty of it myself in the past. Statistically speaking what you want is indeed outside the "norm" if there is such a thing. But so are furries, BBf's, anime, dry sand, etc. I guess my suggestion is that you do a bit more to make your thing more of the "norm" and not make things worse by segregating yourselves.

My two cents worth -

We've tried hard to make it easy for just about everyone to be here and if the worst thing you have to face is an occassional comment made in misguided enthusiasm then you will always have a hard time.

Please understand that even now I'm not picking on anyone but just trying to encourage some thought about this. I'm not talking about the list you are creating but the entire idea that it is needed. In my view this means we have not done a good job here at QSF. This has been discussed previously but would anyone care to comment on the addition of a separate forum for the all male crowd?

[Fred588]

My take on this issue.

1. When individual members make a statement related to what they prefer, or do not prefer, in a scene they are expressing their own view. They have an unassailable right to do that in my opinion.

2. An organization such as this, or any other forum, also has a right to limit its scope, who can join, or what people can say and do within its own domain. I find attempts to do this offensive but that is my opinion. This forum does not do this so far as I have observed, except with regard to things like spam and totally unrelated stuff. And we even have an off topic forum for much of the unrelated stuff.

3. With respect to production of video, art, drawings, etc., there is a HUGE difference between a willingness to accept, promote, or even produce material and the willingness to finance it. The latter is a purely business decision based on projections of likely return.

4. I f a producer here, such as myself, makes the decision to not finance production of certain kinds of material, whatever it is, they are making the same decision (and for the same reason) that a likely consumer of that material makes when that consumer concludes he or she cannot afford to do it.

5. Anyone here who wishes to produce quicksand-related material, to the extent the material does not cross into areas creating legal or safety issues, is quite free to use the same facilities available to other producers, and on the same basis, as other producers.

[Nessie]

This has been discussed previously but would anyone care to comment on the addition of a separate forum for the all male crowd?

They've done this over at UMD.

I have mixed feelings about it.

It's convenient for me, because all the guy stuff is in one place. I find the men in the good mudpits right away. I don't have to wade through a million girls (not to mention, mud's a minority anyway, so they're not just girls, they're girls wearing pies) to find one male mud nugget.

Probably, I used to miss good male mud material before they made the male forum, because if it wasn't clearly labeled "male", it got lost in the sea of female food-and-gunge material.

However, the male forum opened a new can of worms. The fact is that it's not at all against the UMD rules to put male messy material in the regular forum at all. But because they created a male forum, some men decided that this means that they are entitled to never, ever, accidentally bump into male material.

The result is that every single time anybody dares to post anything with a man in it in the "Messy" forum, they risk hearing the whine: "Male forum, please!" and if it's co-ed (man and woman), it could start an argument about how much "male role" is "too much", especially if the woman is dominant in the scene, dishing out the mess, and the man is on the receiving end.

I agree that the "Gee I wish it was a girl" postings are off-putting. I do like some female material but I've never wished it was a girl at all. This reaction is probably magnified for the gay male audience since in heterosexual men and women, both sexes are socially conditioned to regard the female body as sexual. Women don't tend to complain about seeing women anyway. We're used to seeing ourselves presented that way and mostly, we accept it.

And for some of us, we're aroused even if we're hetero, because we can identify with a female character even when we can't be sexually attracted to her.

However, absolutely none of that "identify-with-her" psychology applies to a gay male. They identify with men AND they regard men as sex objects.

The problem is not with the moderation of this forum. That's been handled well. However, it is a fact that most of the audience here is straight male, and mostly, they honestly do wish it was a girl and it does kinda show.

Nessie

[Billie Bonce]

I would like to comment Duncan's posts, without quoting particular words.

Yes, Quicksand Fans is rather comfortable place - in general. But no, this doesn't mean everybody feels comfortable here. The idea of making a place comfortable for everybody is Utopian. There will always be some members of any society, the minority, who would feel themselves uncomfortable with the others members of the society, either the majority or another minority. And any serious attempts to comfort that minority would result in that the minority would demand much more attention than it deserves. This applies to real life, this applies to virtual societies, too. In particular, this applies to Quicksand Fans.

Gays is a good example of a minority that may feel uncomfortable here, but if the admins would pay much attention to make their stay here comfortable, the result would be inappropriate to most members of the forum. The same with furries and anybody else whom you mentioned.

[coneylm]

I feel I have to reply to Billie Bonce as unfortunately I think his comment is a straw man.

Gays aren't looking for any 'special treatment' as the comment implies. All we are looking for is not being marginalised; sandquick has highlighted one of the key grievances - that seemingly everytime a male scene is posted there is a "pity it's not a woman" comment. Whether this is intentional homophobia, accidental or just tactlessness I don't know. What I do know is that a number of the gay guys here see it as a continual slap in the face, effectively saying that even the few scenes, images, etc. that are posted are still too many. Despite the great efforts of Duncan et al, you can't help but interpret that as you not being welcome.

As an example of how often this happens:

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2557
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2532
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2340
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2207
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2029
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1814
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=698

Maybe it does come down to what Billie Bonce has said and the majority of people here don't want to see male content. If so, creating a separate mailing list may have been the right idea and solves two problems. It's still very sad.

BTW in response to Fred588 this isn't about the amount of male content - it's about attitude of people on this forum.

Rob.

[Fred588]

I feel I have to reply to Billie Bonce as unfortunately I think his comment is a straw man.

Gays aren't looking for any 'special treatment' as the comment implies. All we are looking for is not being marginalised; sandquick has highlighted one of the key grievances - that seemingly everytime a male scene is posted there is a "pity it's not a woman" comment. Whether this is intentional homophobia, accidental or just tactlessness I don't know. What I do know is that a number of the gay guys here see it as a continual slap in the face, effectively saying that even the few scenes, images, etc. that are posted are still too many. Despite the great efforts of Duncan et al, you can't help but interpret that as you not being welcome.

As an example of how often this happens:

viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2557
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2532
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2340
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2207
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=2029
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1814
viewtopic.php?f=21&t=698

Maybe it does come down to what Billie Bonce has said and the majority of people here don't want to see male content. If so, creating a separate mailing list may have been the right idea and solves two problems. It's still very sad.

BTW in response to Fred588 this isn't about the amount of male content - it's about attitude of people on this forum.Rob.

Expression of an attitude is a matter of personal opinion. Interpretation of an expression of an attitude is also a matter of opinion.

[coneylm]

Expression of an attitude is a matter of personal opinion. Interpretation of an expression of an attitude is also a matter of opinion.

I apologise if I misinterpreted your first comment, though I must admit I did find it a little difficult to grasp your point!

Rob.