A really helpless @octoberrex.bsky.social at my birthday party yesterday 🥵

Thanks @jazwithrope.bsky.social for one final birthday torture right before bed

A nice afternoon hanging out with @jazwithrope.bsky.social

Toying and exploring with @boundboygary.bsky.social is always a delicious time.

Reconnecting with my love @jazwithrope.bsky.social.

I see darklands are going full hog with the slop this year with a full Ai advert. Fuck that shit. Given the price of tickets, the cost of freaking water in the place and the sheer foot traffic they have. Choosing to use ai slop says everything about it. Fuck off.

Which one of the #Darklands passes has the privacy opt-in to be free from being studied by straight chemsex anthropologists? Or at least the opportunity to choose?

I think I'm washing my hair that weekend.......

Too expensive, don’t like they’ve buried their head in the sand when the community had issues/concerns. Nah.

Not considering going to Darklands again just because of the breach of privacy from that chemsex conference, but also...the AI art and assets used throughout the event 🤢

Why is it so hard to acknowledge that they made a mistake and seek a path to avoid repeating it? Damn, even as an individual, I have needed to do that in some of my scenes. Not acknowledging errors destroys trust instead of preserving it.

It is explicitly said to be a behind the scenes tour at Darklands, not just crossing Darklands to view Kink Responsibly.

Interestingly, their own brochure doesn't mention anything g about the Kink Responsibly exhibit, it mentions Darklands as a whole: bsky.app/profile/rope...

Ropes By Asher@ropesbyasher.bsky.social · 5mo ago

In the response above @itmantwerp.bsky.social claims this wasn’t a study or observational research visit, but their own festival program marketed it as exactly that. You can’t hide behind good intentions when your own materials tell a different story: www.itg.be/en/events/in...

Had an email too, let me know the best way to share with you. Only the quickest of looks and it’s a load of shit but offering to meet online at least.

so they are hiding behind the "study visit" definition then? how do they (and Darklands for that matter) explain the presence of 120 researchers when the events for the day were already begun? Shouldn't that have paused them and go "maybe we should come back another day?"

My response to @itmantwerp.bsky.social's internal review process, calling out a continuation of the same pattern: concerns raised by community members are absorbed into the institutional process and returned as findings of no formal fault.

Here is the follow up from @itmantwerp.bsky.social around their ethical breaches at Darklands. I’ll analyze over the next coming days how their response is insufficient, but please take a moment to read 🧵

Sharing a slide from my intervention on Wang, S., Wang, N.-C., & Lee, W.-C. (2026). Methodological and ethical considerations in LGBTQ-focused online ethnographic research: A systematic review and a human-centered framework in the International Journal of Qualitative Methods.

It’s time that @itmantwerp.bsky.social responds to us about transparency. After sending a letter telling our community that photographing people in states of undress without consent was fine, actually, their staff are on here promoting an article about what a great ethics culture they have. 🧵

Raffaella Ravinetto@rravinetto.bsky.social · 4mo ago

"Ethics is not a checklist": what does ethical research look like in a #GlobalHealth context? From our Institutional Review Board of @itmantwerp.bsky.social, Jared Howes reflects on the opportunities of a shared #ethics culture across the institute and its global network www.itg.be/en/health-st...

Campus is secure

Still okay, still locked down

Currently barricaded and on lockdown at UOttawa. Stay safe everyone!

@anthropic.com's Claude and Deepseek flagged ethical problems differently. Claude cited specific queer scholars by name and questioned whether the IRB system is even calibrated for this kind of research.

This slide from my presentation is one I keep thinking about. Claude and DeepSeek verbally refused to help with an unethical research design. Neither said, "You're right, let's proceed." Claude offered alternatives, and DeepSeek hallucinated findings AND claimed to be a Queer researcher.

New tattoo, red ropes inspired by @ropesbyasher.bsky.social

What needs to happen is an acknowledgement of wrongdoing by ITM and Darklands. Retraining in medical ethics and enforcement of ethical oversight policies. Explicit language in Darklands participation agreements to prohibit such external observation and data collection without informed consent.

I'm not saying ITM's conduct falls to that depth. But this is the reason why medical ethics is important. To treat people like laboratory curiosities, with the tacit approval of Darklands organizers, is DEEPLY insulting. Bringing outsiders into a safe space you claim to provide is a betrayal.

It doesn't matter if the objectives and intent are honorable if in the conduct of one's research the participant's rights are violated. In medicine, the ends cannot justify the means. That's how we got Mengele; Guatemala and Tuskegee; Unit 731. The list is a lot longer than most people think.

While Darklands isn't my cup of tea, I recognize that there is a long history of dehumanizing and stigmatizing attitudes toward marginalized groups by the medical sciences, and that everyone would benefit from learning about that history, so that we do not repeat those mistakes.

When I read that part of the response, my immediate reaction was "WTF?" followed by intense revulsion. It brought back traumatic memories I had as a closeted gay kid during the HIV/AIDS crisis and how even supposedly objective scientists used language that framed us as plague spreaders.