sorry to hear that. its even happened to me a few times. the first time it happened my boyfriend was in the room, he found it funny, i didn't. it only happens to me on occasions, but if it's a weekly or monthly thing, i would put a disclaimer stating you are not here to flirt, or for a relationship, you are here to learn. you will still get the occasional person who will message you [so i suggest making it the first thing on your profile, bold, and underlined] but it will cut down on a lot of people. if anyone does message you asking to date or whatever, block them, don't reply. blessed be ^_^
Thank you Nekoshema. It seems whenever I post a picture if myself on anything other than Facebook (where only people I've met see it) or Twitter (where no one gives a flying fladoodling carebear), I always get inappropriate or overtly flirtatious messages, even when I'm talking about my boyfriend. I used to get pictures of penises all the time on an anonymous app (not to mention a little big of bullying) whenever I said something that was like a secret (which was the point of the app) or I just had a pic of myself. Even if my bf was in the pic with me I would get that. It just got to the point to where I had to block over half of the people that messaged me on there. Luckily, on SoM, it's not that bad. So far, I've not been bullied nor have I been sent pictures (I don't know if you can do that here anyways). But I have had people message me who obviously didn't read my profile. Thankfully, it's all been rather mild. Though this one guy asked if I was a vampire and said he thought I was because I was beautiful... >.< I'm sorry, but thinking about it now, aside from the beautiful part, it sounds rather offensive. I don't intentionally try to suck the life out of people. But I digress.
Grr, argh, patriarchy. Or, I guess now it would be kyriarchy.
What I have to say about that would veer way off-topic, but since we're all magic-wielders here, I think it's important to define and examine the nature of power wherever that applies, whether physically, or metaphysically... or socially.
Most people are just frankly conditioned by society to respect women a lot, lot less than men when it comes to personal boundaries. That's called objectification, and it's got demographic statistics to back this up as a real thing, having to do with systematic inequality in society.
Usually, "I have a boyfriend" would shut people down but even that would be problematic because that would show that the people making such advances cared more that you were like somebody else's "property" rather than that you, as a human being with feelings and a life, were not interested . And if they don't even care about that, well, that's just so narcissistic that you'd best leave them alone to flirt with themselves since it obviously doesn't make a difference what their target's life is like.
That's interesting, Aeons_Wing. I actually thought that women weren't as respected as men, but you're right that they tend to be objectified more. Even I tend to objectify other women a lot, even though I don't really mean to and I find pretty much all women beautiful. Also, and interesting note on the property thing. In the United States, which is where I live, women weren't legally more than chattel until somewhere around the 1920's and 30's. And the reason it happened then instead of later is the civil rights movement (which took a few decades to complete) and people like Alice Paul advocating for equality. And just because I belong to my boyfriend doesn't mean I'm his property. He, as well, belongs to me, but he is not just some plaything of mine; he's an actual human being whom I love and care for very much in quite a few ways. I know there are people out there who treat those who they are supposed to love as property. And I hate that. I've been in a semi controlling relationship before and it wasn't very pretty. It wasn't a romantic relationship or anything, but still, it was abusive and caused me to abuse myself. But I digress. People just send whatever they want no matter how inappropriate to beautiful women with great faces or great bodies on the internet. I remember talking to a very beautiful girl on here, but I don't think I've told her how beautiful she was, because I was more interested in the things we were talking about, which had a lot to do with magick and the covens on here. I wasn't talking to her to flirt, I was talking to her for information and friendly conversation. And that's how the mail system should be on SoM. I'm positive that that may be what it was built for. Just another way to spread information and knowledge that are at least somewhat related to the site.
