Thank you all for for your replies! I definitely see that ideally for everyone involved (users, community and platform) the best desirable outcome would be to not have users considering sex/romance while looking for a host/hosting/being hosted/meeting other users, and leaving outside the platform anything that consenting adults decide to do. And I agree that probably âunwanted sexual advancesâ does not cover it all, but I still think there is some gap between this ideal situation and the reality of hospex sites in order to communicate effectively to the userbase.
I discussed this with some CS friends and indeed the topic is difficult, I understand that and I will try to change perspective with a few questions Iâm wondering, please just take them as a sort of brainstorming:
- to what extent is it possible or realistic âto deter people from using the site in hopes of finding a romantic partnerâ, or in other words: to police or control usersâ hopes and intentions?
We know that people will necessarily take into consideration attraction when deciding which other new people to meet, thatâs inevitable. Donât get me wrong: I donât mean that every interaction on CS was based on that, but for sure a part of those were. Thatâs a fact.
We also know that a certain number of romantic encounters that happened between users, which is not so surprising given the user base and travel lifestyle. How can you rule out that the people involved did not have any âhopesâ when sending each other a request?
And once someone has had a positive experience of romance through a hospex site, when they find themselves again looking for a host or accepting a guest request, why wouldnât those âhopesâ be there?
- do you think the CS rule âthis website is not for datingâ was effective in achieving its desired goal, from your personal experience?
This formulation has always sounded quite dissonating and hypocritical to me compared to what I was seeing in the reality of meetups, but maybe that was just my experience of a big European city in my 20s where the CS group was very active and people were f*ing around all the time. And at the same time, Iâve seen countless CS profiles from women who had to reinforce on their profile that they were categorically not interested in âdatingâ other users even if the policy was (kinda) clear, and that for sure came from bad experiences.
But overall it felt like CS was saying âthis website is not for sexâ while most users in that age base would have replied âyes ok but just about everyone is having sex here!â. How does that click? Is it sufficient to say âyeah we know, but for what weâre concerned you need not to have sexual intentionsâ? How can a young user take that seriously when the exception is the norm, especially if theyâre someone not so aware of the power imbalance or mature in handling delicate situations? Is the platform communicating clearly to those who need to get that message the most?
In a nutshell:
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I agree that this website is not FOR dating, but letâs be clear that their users DO date, whether weâll like it or not. I think taking this into account openly can help identifying how to address the âno datingâ issue.
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I agree that it would be very dangerous and Iâm definitely NOT suggesting in any way that users could express openly whether they are âup toâ anything, .
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I also agree that some nuance is necessary to address the dating that happens, in order not to seem like the platform is promoting itself as a place where users are more keen for romance than elsewhere in the real world
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At the same time your userbase is adults and I would value the honesty in communicating that while dating happens and nobody is burying their head in the sand about it, hospex sites facilitate a delicate and specific setting (people hosting other people), which is unfortunately one where things can go wrong extremely easily.
So what I propose is to tackle proactively the reasons why things can go wrong. For example, big companies provide âmisconduct trainingâ that employees are required to attend. It could probably be useful to provide content related to âwhat can go wrongâ, incentivize users to check it, and display a badge for users whoâve done so, and maybe allowing some features only to those who have done it.
How and to what extent to implement this is to be discussed, but the advantages of being open and vocal about safety would be:
- making the userbase aware of the platform interest in having users valuing othersâ safety
- informing the users what is considered misbehavior, why, and what are the tools they can use to report misbehavior (or why their behavior has been reported)
- incentivizing discussion among users on whatâs considered dangerous or unacceptable behavior (eg. you receive a request from someone who hasnât gone through the âtrainingâ, you can tell them your more comfortable hosting people who took the time to do so. Or maybe when two people meet in person, they would find themselves talking about why they think is a good or a bad idea to have this âeducational materialâ on the website, therefore promoting talk about safety in groups, etc)
- If some machos are so pissed off that a community âforcesâ them to waste a few minutes of their time informing them about their safety policies, maybe theyâll be turned away, or they will find ways to express their discontent in groups of messages thus making it easier to mark them with a red flag
Sorry for the wall of text What do you think?