this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2023
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I've always taken the volcel stuff here to be more about not letting the forum attract creepers. On reddit any time there's a girl in a pic 80% of the comment section will just be :awooga: shit, which is alienating as fuck.
Ideally, it works as that, and by extension as a protection for our ace and sex-repulsed comrades. It's important to foster a site culture where :awooga: is not accepted. But i don't know if everybody is aware of that intention, i've had people LARPing as volcel police when i was simply discussing my sexuality in a decidedly non-horny manner (i was actually talking about how not horny i am, how i fit into the alloace spectrum and how i felt various kinds of non-sexual attraction to people), and i don't think i should be subjected to something like that in a militantly LGBT-inclusive space.
Not to mention that for a lot of people, the volcel bit quickly verges into chastity play and like all forms of BDSM, that doesn't work spontaneously with complete strangers. You can't do kink without establishing consent and rules and boundaries in advance. I'm not saying that to kinkshame, i've had lots of fun with chastity play myself in the past, i'm just saying that it's not something i want to engage in with randos on a leftist shitposting forum. It's as transgressive as sexualizing it when i talk about my tits merely as a gender-affirming part of my transition process, something a lot of people struggle to understand as well.
So yes, the volcel bit is a safegurad against the sexualizing horny culture that's all over the rest of the internet and it's a good thing we're making this effort, but there's both cases were people take it too far, cases where it achieves the opposite and cases were people suddenly forget about it.
i found out about the volcel police just by encountering the memes here and it was immediately obvious that it's there to prevent this place becoming yet another porn aggregator and all around misogynistic shithole.
i love it.
i havent seen any ... ahem... perversion of the meme so far.
like i said, i'm speaking from personal experience on all of these points. That's rare, we're generally on a good track, but some people don't fully get what the volcel bit is about.
This site is no different, it's just all blush emojis and submissive "jokes" instead.