There is a big difference between posting a thread asking for advice or support on some simple issue, even if you're not a reg, and posting a thread listing all of your issues and basically asking for therapy, when that is literally that poster's only experience with the forum at all. There are lots of people who post with their personal problems and lots of people who take the time to genuinely answer them. You don't have to be a reg to be extended that welcome -- just don't be crazy and expect people to provide free, unlicensed therapy.
We are not therapists. Not only is it NOT our job to provide therapy for someone struggling with some pretty serious shit, it's extremely inappropriate to do so because, as previously mentioned, we are not therapists.
For some perspective, would you walk up to a random group of people you've never met before and just start listing all your lingering issues about your relationship with your mother and expect those people to just be like "Oh, hey, random person I don't know, thanks for telling me all about your personal problems..." How completely unhinged is that? There are LOTS of forums online for people to talk specifically about relationship problems. Like, wow, look how appropriate this one would've been: http://forums.psychcentral.com/#mental-health-support. I found that after a very simple Google search for mental health communities.
But, no, she decided to post all her baggage on a wedding forum where she knows absolutely no one, and yet we're the bad guys for being like "Uh, we're not therapists, and we don't know you. You might want to talk to people who actually know you about this or a professional..."
But I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night!
"Love is the one thing we're capable of perceiving that transcends time and space."
The Knot would never tolerate someone calling me a dyke. But someone asking me about my husband is par for the course. Because OF COURSE I am a woman. And OF COURSE I am married to a man. Those assumptions are as fucked up and stupid and rooted in hate as calling me a fucking muff diving dyke is.
So apparently wringing hands over Puerto Rican neighborhoods is okay, as is complaining about thug looters, but jokingly saying cracker is not.
Go home TK, you're drunk.
WTF - Fix the boxes - it's been YEARS ---------
I have certainly gotten the impression that TK does allow for bigotry. Not flat-out N-words and gay-bashing, but it's there.
Oh hells yes it is, and not just the forums.
The Knot rarely if ever features interracial couples, I've openly called them on the fact they for the month of JUNE they talk about "gay pride" but for the other 11 months it's a fucking lot of happy heteros with the occasional "LOOK AT THE GAY COUPLE" posting.
They use exclusively heteronormative language and nothing is gender inclusive. The Knot is for upper middle class white women marrying upper middle class white men. The women are planning the weddings while the men's cocks are getting stuck in lint traps.
Off beat bride might give some shitty ass etiquette advice but somehow they manage to use all gender inclusive language, the feature poly relationships, gay relationships, relationships with kids before marriage, all fucking races, and pretty diverse backgrounds/classes of people. Somehow they figured out how to fucking do this.
The Knot would never tolerate someone calling me a dyke. But someone asking me about my husband is par for the course. Because OF COURSE I am a woman. And OF COURSE I am married to a man. Those assumptions are as fucked up and stupid and rooted in hate as calling me a fucking muff diving dyke is.
Okay, I have to address this- my instinct is to disagree with this sentiment. That being said, I am open to being told why my instinct is totally off base and wrong and stupid.
I am trying to be very sensitive to the fact that I can not and will never fully understand the challenges you face as a homosexual female. BUT that being said, I do not believe that people making the assumption you are heterosexual when casually talking to you and making statements about "your husband" are being hateful towards you. Being heterosexual is statistically the norm. Lots of women on here have admitted to struggling to remember to always be inclusive in their language, and I'm sure I've done that too. That doesn't mean we are doing that from a place of hate and bigotry.
Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding what your saying or speak up if you disagree with my assessment. I want to know if I'm wrong about this.
So what if all the snark and meanness moved to the Snarky Brides board. Is that acceptable since that board comes with a disclaimer?
My box is invisible
I know I'm way late here, but Stage and Linger were asked to move to SB as they were snarky posters. They had no problem with this and did move much of their conversations over but were still banned cos they weren't liked by TK. TK has proven in the past that this won't change anything.
So apparently wringing hands over Puerto Rican neighborhoods is okay, as is complaining about thug looters, but jokingly saying cracker is not.
Go home TK, you're drunk.
WTF - Fix the boxes - it's been YEARS ---------
I have certainly gotten the impression that TK does allow for bigotry. Not flat-out N-words and gay-bashing, but it's there.
Oh hells yes it is, and not just the forums.
The Knot rarely if ever features interracial couples, I've openly called them on the fact they for the month of JUNE they talk about "gay pride" but for the other 11 months it's a fucking lot of happy heteros with the occasional "LOOK AT THE GAY COUPLE" posting.
They use exclusively heteronormative language and nothing is gender inclusive. The Knot is for upper middle class white women marrying upper middle class white men. The women are planning the weddings while the men's cocks are getting stuck in lint traps.
Off beat bride might give some shitty ass etiquette advice but somehow they manage to use all gender inclusive language, the feature poly relationships, gay relationships, relationships with kids before marriage, all fucking races, and pretty diverse backgrounds/classes of people. Somehow they figured out how to fucking do this.
The Knot would never tolerate someone calling me a dyke. But someone asking me about my husband is par for the course. Because OF COURSE I am a woman. And OF COURSE I am married to a man. Those assumptions are as fucked up and stupid and rooted in hate as calling me a fucking muff diving dyke is.
Okay, I have to address this- my instinct is to disagree with this sentiment. That being said, I am open to being told why my instinct is totally off base and wrong and stupid.
I am trying to be very sensitive to the fact that I can not and will never fully understand the challenges you face as a homosexual female. BUT that being said, I do not believe that people making the assumption you are heterosexual when casually talking to you and making statements about "your husband" are being hateful towards you. Being heterosexual is statistically the norm. Lots of women on here have admitted to struggling to remember to always be inclusive in their language, and I'm sure I've done that too. That doesn't mean we are doing that from a place of hate and bigotry.
Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding what your saying or speak up if you disagree with my assessment. I want to know if I'm wrong about this.
Just because you (general you) as an individual aren't coming from a place of hate and bigotry doesn't mean that the fact that non-inclusive language is the norm in society doesn't come from society's long history of hate and bigotry.
Not assuming that someone is straight or that they are a certain gender or just not assuming anything about a stranger at all really shouldn't be that hard. It's not harder to say partner instead of boyfriend/husband. It's not harder to say couple instead of bride and groom. It's not hard to use inclusive language, except that it is because we've been raised in this society that says it's not okay to be this way, or it's not normal to be this way or you should want to be this way so let's push those who are different out, make them feel less because those of us in the majority are so much better than the minority.
So you might not mean to be offensive or hurtful. But that doesn't change the fact that it is. And I know I'm absolutely guilty making mistakes like assuming a poster is female and with a male, because I'm white and straight and privileged and because of that so it's easier for me to forget about the hate in our society. But if I don't make an effort to change and own up to the fact that my words mean something then society is never going to change. So if when I fuck up and someone calls me out on it then I can change my behavior and the next time I hear someone fuck up I call them out on it and then we all become more aware of the impact the things we say really have.
I'm sure other posters have a more educated/less rambling answer to your question but those are just my thoughts.
@themosthappy91 (on mobile not gonna attempt quote trees) the problem with assuming heterosexuality is that I am then forced to either a) come out every single time or b) lie about who I am.
Sometimes coming out is not safe. And I have to be aware that there are people in this world who will harm me for being gay. And while that harm may not be physical (though it very well may be) it is still harm. When a stranger assumes I'm straight I have no idea how they'll feel about me actually being gay.
And lying about who I am? I've been out for 15 years. I went through hell coming out. Please do not force me to lie about who I am and hide a part of me.
The word partner is a great word. Fiance is good too (if you know the person is engaged). So is significant other.
Imagine living in a world where holding your partner's hand while walking down the street could result in someone attacking you. Could mean one of you ends up in the hospital. Or dead. Now imagine in this world you get to try to figure out if you con correct someone when they say "So what does your husband do?" Because you have a wife.
The majority has to learn to make changes for the minority. Not the other way around.
@MagicInk and @bethsmiles I definitely get what you are saying- you are speaking more on a societal level than an individual level and when you put it like that I can totally get on board. Like it's hatefulness in society that has made the way we speak then norm- is that what you're getting at?
I've actually gotten a lot better at using SO since my lifelong BFF came out and that was sort of my eye-opening experience for adapting to more inclusive language (for some reason she really hates the term "partner", though now that I think about it I don't know why)... but I know I still fuck up sometimes. I would just hate for someone to think I hated them just because I slipped up- though I understand why you have to be on the defensive at all times because some people ARE deliberately making the choice to use heteronormative terms in order to exclude and marginalize non-heterosexual people.
As for what estee's saying- correct me if I'm wrong but I think in the limited number of animal species we've observed engaging in homosexual behavior, they've come up with pretty solid numbers that the incidence is like 10-20%? I really can't site anything because I'm only speaking based off a hazy memory of college biology classes so that could be way wrong... and anyway there's nothing saying incidence in humans isn't way different than all other animals, that was just kind of like a point of reference for me. The point is, heterosexuality is the norm in the experience of most people, whether or not that experience reflects reality.
Heteronormativity sucks, TBH. Growing up, I knew that men and women fell in love and got married, and there were some gay people out there but it was not talked about a lot (other than some homophobic comments by some) and it seemed like there weren't that many gay people. I don't know how to describe it, as if I didn't feel like it was an option or something, it was a very "us and them" kind of thing, IDK. I have always known I was "something different" regarding my sexuality. I didn't feel how I was "supposed to feel" towards men (FTR, I believe I can feel romantically for men but generally not sexually, and I am romantically and sexually attracted to women and non-binary people).
Now that I'm a bit older and and accepting of myself, it is still a big issue. I imagine if I get married to a woman and use this or any other website or vendor for that matter, there will be lots of "groom" talk that would make me feel unwelcome, odd, and excluded. I know TK has a "Gay Weddings" section, but really, the whole website should be for people getting married, no matter what genders or sexes the people are. Here is a blerb that puts it into words better than I am trying to:
"So what [they] are saying is that heterosexuality is normal, and therefore it is fine to depict it as such, and to see people as strange who do not fit within it, and to put different restrictions on their behaviours than we do on heterosexual people.
I'm guessing that many of the people concerned would agree that homophobia, biphobia and transphobia are bad things: it is not okay to be prejudiced towards, or to harm people people on the basis of, their sexuality or gender. However, they don't see a problem with regarding people outside of heteronormativity as somehow 'less normal' and treating them differently on the basis of that." (Source http://learn1.open.ac.uk/mod/oublog/viewpost.php?post=0&u=mjb2276&time=1313591911)
So apparently wringing hands over Puerto Rican neighborhoods is okay, as is complaining about thug looters, but jokingly saying cracker is not.
Go home TK, you're drunk.
WTF - Fix the boxes - it's been YEARS ---------
I have certainly gotten the impression that TK does allow for bigotry. Not flat-out N-words and gay-bashing, but it's there.
Oh hells yes it is, and not just the forums.
The Knot rarely if ever features interracial couples, I've openly called them on the fact they for the month of JUNE they talk about "gay pride" but for the other 11 months it's a fucking lot of happy heteros with the occasional "LOOK AT THE GAY COUPLE" posting.
They use exclusively heteronormative language and nothing is gender inclusive. The Knot is for upper middle class white women marrying upper middle class white men. The women are planning the weddings while the men's cocks are getting stuck in lint traps.
Off beat bride might give some shitty ass etiquette advice but somehow they manage to use all gender inclusive language, the feature poly relationships, gay relationships, relationships with kids before marriage, all fucking races, and pretty diverse backgrounds/classes of people. Somehow they figured out how to fucking do this.
The Knot would never tolerate someone calling me a dyke. But someone asking me about my husband is par for the course. Because OF COURSE I am a woman. And OF COURSE I am married to a man. Those assumptions are as fucked up and stupid and rooted in hate as calling me a fucking muff diving dyke is.
Okay, I have to address this- my instinct is to disagree with this sentiment. That being said, I am open to being told why my instinct is totally off base and wrong and stupid.
I am trying to be very sensitive to the fact that I can not and will never fully understand the challenges you face as a homosexual female. BUT that being said, I do not believe that people making the assumption you are heterosexual when casually talking to you and making statements about "your husband" are being hateful towards you. Being heterosexual is statistically the norm. Lots of women on here have admitted to struggling to remember to always be inclusive in their language, and I'm sure I've done that too. That doesn't mean we are doing that from a place of hate and bigotry.
Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding what your saying or speak up if you disagree with my assessment. I want to know if I'm wrong about this.
Actually, very few people are 100% heterosexual and very few are 100% homosexual. Most people are in the middle. Ever heard of the Kinsey scale?
As for what estee's saying- correct me if I'm wrong but I think in the limited number of animal species we've observed engaging in homosexual behavior, they've come up with pretty solid numbers that the incidence is like 10-20%? I really can't site anything because I'm only speaking based off a hazy memory of college biology classes so that could be way wrong... and anyway there's nothing saying incidence in humans isn't way different than all other animals, that was just kind of like a point of reference for me. The point is, heterosexuality is the norm in the experience of most people, whether or not that experience reflects reality.
The opposite of heterosexuality is not homosexuality. The fact is one can identify as not heterosexual and still not identify as homosexual. They can also be in a heterosexual relationship and still not identify as heterosexual.
I also didn't touch on in my original response to you but it is also important to not assume everyone here is a woman. Because dudes get married too. And that's not even touching on the non-binary gendered people.
It is interesting for sure that TK has a subforum for gay weddings but absolutely nothing is geared toward men at all. This whole wedding planning thing is wimmenz work.
It is interesting for sure that TK has a subforum for gay weddings but absolutely nothing is geared toward men at all. This whole wedding planning thing is wimmenz work.
Well...I guess if there are two guys then whoever is planning the wedding is the woman right? I mean SOMEONE has to be the woman in the relationship. Just like in my relationship, one of us is the man. I think it's me cause I got short hair and the wife is pregnant, plus she cooks. So I must be the man.
One of the moderators is a man. He did most of the planning for his wedding and is a wealth of information to others planning. Men are completely capable of functioning on this site and using it to plan a wedding, you just might not have had the pleasure of interacting with them.
One of the moderators is a man. He did most of the planning for his wedding and is a wealth of information to others planning. Men are completely capable of functioning on this site and using it to plan a wedding, you just might not have had the pleasure of interacting with them.
That's lovely.
But it doesn't change the fact that The Knot uses exclusively language for women marrying men.
The Knot is not as inclusive as they like to pretend to be.
I am talking about The Knot as a whole. Not the forums alone.
One of the moderators is a man. He did most of the planning for his wedding and is a wealth of information to others planning. Men are completely capable of functioning on this site and using it to plan a wedding, you just might not have had the pleasure of interacting with them.
He's obviously very comfortable with disclosing this.
One of the moderators is a man. He did most of the planning for his wedding and is a wealth of information to others planning. Men are completely capable of functioning on this site and using it to plan a wedding, you just might not have had the pleasure of interacting with them.
That's lovely.
But it doesn't change the fact that The Knot uses exclusively language for women marrying men.
The Knot is not as inclusive as they like to pretend to be.
I am talking about The Knot as a whole. Not the forums alone.
I haven't voiced an opinion on the whole incident because I wasn't there and frankly, I have thoughts on both sides that I don't think are so earth-shattering. But I do have to agree with this. It doesn't take more than five minutes of browsing through TK to see it is very much designed for women who are planning marriages to men. Just because they may occasionally highlight a gay couple or occasionally feature content for the groom, and just because grooms and non-heterosexual folks might wind up finding this site useful doesn't mean they aren't VERY focused on heterosexual couples that follow the "traditional" path of "woman plans wedding, man just shows up."
One of the moderators is a man. He did most of the planning for his wedding and is a wealth of information to others planning. Men are completely capable of functioning on this site and using it to plan a wedding, you just might not have had the pleasure of interacting with them.
He's obviously very comfortable with disclosing this.
Hi, whomever you are!
-----------------------------
It's not a secret. His SN is vegasgroom, for fuck's sake. He mods the Vegas board and just doesn't post much on the other boards now that he's married. He's been around for years, though. I remember when he posted his wedding pictures. He and his wife are hot. Anyway, he's active enough on his own board, as required of a mod.
One of the moderators is a man. He did most of the planning for his wedding and is a wealth of information to others planning. Men are completely capable of functioning on this site and using it to plan a wedding, you just might not have had the pleasure of interacting with them.
He's obviously very comfortable with disclosing this.
Hi, whomever you are!
-----------------------------
It's not a secret. His SN is vegasgroom, for fuck's sake. He mods the Vegas board and just doesn't post much on the other boards now that he's married. He's been around for years, though. I remember when he posted his wedding pictures. He and his wife are hot. Anyway, he's active enough on his own board, as required of a mod.
Gotcha. I and many others don't go to the Vegas board, for obvious reasons. Photokitty's post did make it sound kinda secretive. Could've just said that.
I wasn't really under the impression that the location boards had a heavy mod presence, but Vegas being a popular wedding destination, that makes mores sense.
Duh @FiancB, how the fuck could you not know about the male mod on a local board? He's super obvious about his penis.
So wait, it's okay for a mod to say "for fuck's sake" to another poster, but Ashley's sig was too much? Just trying to figure out the rules. I'll mosey on over to the 6-page KnotGods Q&A thread now.
Duh @FiancB, how the fuck could you not know about the male mod on a local board? He's super obvious about his penis.
So wait, it's okay for a mod to say "for fuck's sake" to another poster, but Ashley's sig was too much? Just trying to figure out the rules. I'll mosey on over to the 6-page KnotGods Q&A thread now.
I don't think we can base anything off of what Ashley got banned for, cuz that seemed to just be arbitrary nonsense based on nothing...
Yep the mod list is super secret. And it would take a genius to figure out he is a dude with the user name VagasGroom.
People on CC probably don't know who the NEY and Just Engaged mods are either bc they don't stray much from their boards. I just didn't name him bc I didn't think I needed to risk dragging him into a thread he might not want to participate in.
While it would be nice if TK was a little more neutral, it comes down to marketing and money. Brides are brides regardless of if they are marrying another bride or a groom. TK is about as likely to start marketing to dudes as Joann's or Michael's.
I'm sure , it's not that they don't want those demographics in their customer base, but bc businesses cater to the largest demographic which brings in the most money. It's not about promoting a hetero agenda, it's pandering to your market base. When the industry realizes the money they could be making off of gay marriage the marketing and messaging while change. Everyone is expecting a little too much for a corporation, it's not a non-profit or government agency.
Duh @FiancB, how the fuck could you not know about the male mod on a local board? He's super obvious about his penis.
So wait, it's okay for a mod to say "for fuck's sake" to another poster, but Ashley's sig was too much? Just trying to figure out the rules. I'll mosey on over to the 6-page KnotGods Q&A thread now.
This is boiling down to an elementary grammar issue. Do we need to have a grammar lesson? Shall we can all diagram the sentence to determine which word is the subject and which is the verb? A third grader could tell you who or what the "fuck" is fucking in each case. When the subject of the fucking is a member of TK or TK itself, it is a violation. It's basic grammar, not rocket science.
photokitty said:. Everyone is expecting a little too much for a corporation, it's not a non-profit or government agency.
Oh, I'm not expecting. I'm just pointing out that while XO Group pays lip service to being inclusive and accepting and not tolerating hate or bigotry, they don't actually feel that way at all. If they did, they'd change what they say. Clearly they don't give two shits. But they don't want to go all Chick Fil A cause queer money is still green.
So for June (gay pride month) they'll talk all about gay weddings. And on occasion they'll show a few queers. And that'll be enough to keep people from really getting up in arms.
photokitty said:. Everyone is expecting a little too much for a corporation, it's not a non-profit or government agency.
Oh, I'm not expecting. I'm just pointing out that while XO Group pays lip service to being inclusive and accepting and not tolerating hate or bigotry, they don't actually feel that way at all. If they did, they'd change what they say. Clearly they don't give two shits. But they don't want to go all Chick Fil A cause queer money is still green.
So for June (gay pride month) they'll talk all about gay weddings. And on occasion they'll show a few queers. And that'll be enough to keep people from really getting up in arms.
I totally understand what you're saying.
I guess though for me it would be like not eating frosted flakes bc they don't have commercials of biracial families like cheerios does. I don't assume a corporation is exclusionary unless they say so, I just assume that are appealing to their demographic, bc money, yo.
I sure as hell haven't eaten a single delicious hate chicken single Chic Fil A made it's stance known. Hobby Lobby - yeah, you're dead to me. Macy's gained points in my book when they made a wedding ad with 2 grooms on the cake, but I'm not going to stop shopping at Dillard's bc they haven't run a similar ad - I don't think pandering is the same thing as tolerance...it's all driven by the all mighty dollar.
I want to say something about the larger issue (what I think we're really getting at here - prejudice posts) - please don't assume bc we (mods/admins) tolerate UO (unpopular opinions) or that we agree with UOs or like reading them, let alone leaving them on the site.
The truth is, the TOS allows for users to have UOs as long as they don't use those UOs to attack other users. Hate speech and racial slurs are also violations, obviously. But posting an ignorant and/or prejudice opinion is not a violation in many cases -- nomatter how much it also enrages mods or admins. Don't mistake our enforcing the TOS as agreement. Unfortunately you can have a UO or be a rather awful person and still stay within the parameters of the TOS. I could give examples, but I would feel like I was calling people out. If anyone wants to PM to ask about specific instances I would be happy to offer my opinion and explanation why a post was not a violation.
Re: Whaaaaaat is going on here?
"Love is the one thing we're capable of perceiving that transcends time and space."
Sometimes coming out is not safe. And I have to be aware that there are people in this world who will harm me for being gay. And while that harm may not be physical (though it very well may be) it is still harm. When a stranger assumes I'm straight I have no idea how they'll feel about me actually being gay.
And lying about who I am? I've been out for 15 years. I went through hell coming out. Please do not force me to lie about who I am and hide a part of me.
The word partner is a great word. Fiance is good too (if you know the person is engaged). So is significant other.
Imagine living in a world where holding your partner's hand while walking down the street could result in someone attacking you. Could mean one of you ends up in the hospital. Or dead. Now imagine in this world you get to try to figure out if you con correct someone when they say "So what does your husband do?" Because you have a wife.
The majority has to learn to make changes for the minority. Not the other way around.
But it doesn't change the fact that The Knot uses exclusively language for women marrying men.
The Knot is not as inclusive as they like to pretend to be.
I am talking about The Knot as a whole. Not the forums alone.
So wait, it's okay for a mod to say "for fuck's sake" to another poster, but Ashley's sig was too much? Just trying to figure out the rules. I'll mosey on over to the 6-page KnotGods Q&A thread now.