cross-posted from: https://rqd2.net/post/41111

Zoo Community (zoocommunity.org) is a big pro - contact zoo forum which has many smaller sub forums. I was active there some time ago and would like to share my experiences with you. So here is a short review about Zoo Community!

“Game” features: With posting and commenting you can gain the so called “zoo points” which you can use to buy tokens for your profile. For example the otherkin star. You can also donate points to other users. Every token has their own price and all in all I think it’s a fun way to keep users active on the forum.

The environment: The users there seem to be mostly friendly and supportive. The arguments which I saw were always polite and I feel like they actually have the goal to honestly understand each other. I never saw someone insulting others. All in all it felt like a safe community to be with. I also posted some stuff there and had never problems with any users.

Moderation: I think that they have such a safe community is not only of the people there in general but also of the moderation. Mods/Admins do have a polite way to talk to their users. In private messages and public.

But there is a thing which I have to give some criticism. And this topic kinda “destroyed” my good impression of ZC. The way how they deal with certain types of paraphilias is discriminating. For example, I got an direct message from the Admin who told me that my openly identification as a pedophile would have got me almost banned. Instead of banning me they just removed that information from my bio.

Still discrimination.

The reason behind that was that it’s for the safety of the community members. And I ask myself, safety from what? And when you think that was weird, Well it gets worse.

You know the Saint Zoo review which I posted here? https://rqd2.net/post/40340

It was originaly from ZC. I just changed some phrases. I am very happy that I still had the full review in my notes because they removed a part of it. They removed the part where I gave criticism to a chapter which didn’t told the difference between pedophilia and child sexual abuse. And the reason where: “Banned topic”. The thing is that they didn’t even contacted me. Not before they removed it and not after they did. So I wrote an E-mail with all my questions. And can you guess what happened? Nothing. I even sent the E-mail twice (I think?) in case it just didn’t went through. I had to wait months for an answer. And I think if I didn’t send the admin an dm I still would not have one. Yes, one of the mods told me that the admin has times where they aren’t at this website at all but it’s weird when it takes some months long.

Every other user who read that review didn’t told me they have a problem with that part of the review. Even one of the mods told me they don’t see a reason for removing it. Here is btw the ZC Post: https://zoocommunity.org/thread-1952.html

Here the E- mail which I wrote:

Dear ZC team,

Yesterday I looked at my review of the book Saint Zoo, only to find that it had been edited by a mod. This in itself is not a problem for me, however there are things I would like to point out.

  1. I would have very much liked to have been informed of the change to my post in advance. Either by comment or by direct message.

  2. the reason why the post was edited is not yet clear to me. I would very much appreciate a more detailed explanation, as I am not yet very familiar with “banned topic”. What exactly was the mistake? Was it addressing paedophilia? The way I addressed it? I think it’s important to find out in order to avoid future mistakes.

  3. what exactly was edited or, in my case, deleted. Personally, I can understand not wanting the topic of paedophilia to take on a large scale in the forum, as zoophilia is often equated with paedophilia. However, my post was not a larger discussion about this topic but a brief comment on what could have been done differently to avoid stigmatisation. All the more reason why I would like a more detailed explanation (see point 2).

Here is the original post without editing:

(Insert ZC post whithout the removed chapter which was “There is also a chapter what is called “Tierliebe und Säuglingsliebe”(Love to animals and love to Babies). In this chapter Chihiro is talking about the difference between pedophilia and zoophilia which is very important I think. Since they are many people who see it as almost the same thing. But I didn’t saw a short mention that pedophilia in itsself is not an action. I think it’s important to do this because of the stigma about that topic.”)

I would be very pleased to receive feedback and also a possible compromise, as the full contribution is really important to me.

Yours sincerely, Ayana

Btw, we did not find a compromise.

This whole experience made the other nice experience on there slowly fade away. It shows me that the bigger zoo community/zeta zoo community does have a discrimination problem.

My conclusion from the whole thing is that ZC can be a nice place but it’s defenetly not pro para. Even when I get that the forum is meant to be a mainly zoo thing I don’t think they should silence the existence of other paraphiles in the zoo community.

I would love to share this review also on zoocommunity.org as a link but I am sure it is not allowed there.

If you want to make your own picture about that site don’t hesitate to register. I would love to hear your experiences if you had/will have any.

Thank you for reading!