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The Advice Archive

Forum Authorisation

Please note that this page is now historical. It refers to parts of the T-Vox website that no longer exist

The T-Vox forum system is designed to offer a friendly and safe environment for genderqueer, intersexed and transsexual (GQ/IS/TS) people, as well as their friends and family, to talk about any issues they have or seek help they might need. We believe this is only possible through the use of a security system we call Forum Authorisation; whereby the forum system is only visible to those authorised to see it. This page explains how to get authorised to see the forum as well as explaining how the forum is set out.

 How To Get Authorised

In order to see the forum system we need to know a little about you and also ask your permission to hold some data about you on our servers. We don’t hold much data and most of this data is supplied voluntarily, should you wish to add it. Click here to see what data we hold and why.

To get authorised we therefore ask you to answer the following questions. You can either e-mail these answers to our moderator email address (moderators@t-vox.org) or send a Private Message via the forum to our administrator account (‘snowflake’). Our questions are:

  • Which forum set are you asking to see? (‘Friends and Family’ or ‘GQ/IS/TS’. Please note that users cannot be on both the GQ/IS/TS and Friends and Family fora.) See Why can’t I be on both?, below
  • Can you tell us a little about yourself? (We’re not looking for your life story as such, we ask this as it’s the best method we have found to prevent trannychasers getting onto the forum)
  • What is your forum username? (please register on the forum before asking for authorisation, we can’t grant forum access to anyone without a forum account)
  • Have you read and understood the T-Vox Rules and Regulations and do you agree to abide by them?
  • How old are you? (we have to have a separate list of forum authorisations for minors or we’ll get filtered out by parental control programmes)
  • Do you agree to us storing a limited amount of information about you on our servers in order to facilitate the running of the T-Vox forum and website? (Click here to see what data we hold and why)

Why Do We Ask These Questions?

The reason we ask for an autobiography is because a lot of the applications we get to see the forum are from people who are either looking to take advantage of transsexuals for their own sexual gratification or are looking to preach at transsexuals for being an affront to their religion. Hence we need to protect the transsexual part of our membership from these people, so we ask for a little info about you to sort the people who should be able to access the Forum from the people who shouldn’t. We’re sorry that some of you may have issue with this but please rest assured that we don’t keep this information (in fact we destroy the messages sent to us once a member is added to the authorised list) and we don’t use it for any other purpose than determining whether or not to add someone to the authorised list.

Failure to comply with all of the above will result in us not being able to allow you access to the Forum simply because we won’t have enough information to determine whether or not you’re TS/IS/GQ or whatever and we can’t take the chance that we’d be letting in someone who shouldn’t be there. It’s harsh, it’s longwinded but it works and we cannot see a viable alternative.

Why can’t I be on both?

The forums are split between GQ/IS/TS and Friends and Family because of our safe space policy, which boils down to a principle that people should be free to say what they actually feel at that time, without fear of causing upset to people on ‘the other side’. To use transition as an example, a parent having trouble with their child’s transition may have feelings that they know will be upsetting for a transperson undergoing transition to hear, but the parent needs to discuss these feelings with other parents in order to work through them.

There are a number of fora on the Internet where discussions are not split in this way. On many, it has caused conflict because of opposing viewpoints, and because of people wading in on issues they cannot understand first-hand, if at all. This goes completely against the reason T-Vox is here, and is best avoided by having areas in which people can post without those who can’t share their experiences seeing what they are talking about. This does not mean T-Vox has two fora that are completely separate of course; the majority of the forum is shared-access. We simply have a couple of areas where discussion groups are duplicated so the safe space can be maintained.

In Case of Problems

While we’ll do everything in our power to reply to all emails received at the moderator address, please not that we sometimes have email issues due to server overload and there are also times when we’re just very busy. If you don’t hear back from us within 24 hours, please contact us again. We apologise for the inconvenience.