Men posing as women on zity

Food for thought. Have a verification system where you have to show your face and hold up a sign. It would only be for the verification process. None of the members would see anyone's face. I can appreciate what the moderators do. Been here 16 years. I know it is not easy.

@AnthonyRT Good idea, but difficult to effectively implement. It would be easy to substitute someone else’s pic. Or if via a live video phone call, which would be time consuming and hard (impossible?) to coordinate with someone to verify. Even then a guy could have a female accomplice to stand in. Might be a hassle that would dissuade many legitimate men and women from joining and still would be hard to keep nefarious players out.

Firstly, I don't agree that fetishism is higher among men...maybe, maybe not. I do think more women are apt to err on the side of caution so as not to seem too 'sexual' or whatever term would seem fitting and so they keep their fetish hidden from others but women have every right to indulge and acknowledge their fetish tendencies as men. I'm not a feminist but I am acknowledging that one mold isn't just for one category.

i appreciated your whole response, but this part especially because i think, in part, it speaks to cultural conditioning vs a natural gender attribute? As a gay guy who was culturally conditioned against being gay, i'm pretty sensitive to (even triggered by) what may feel like presumptive assertion.

Processing through and out of my own conditioning against being gay also got me exploring other questions like what constitutes feminine or masculine? Your response to the notion that "fetishism is higher among men, maybe, maybe not," strikes me as open, not presumptuous. i too have wondered, not just with fetish, but in general if women are more "apt to err on the side of caution" not just "so not to seem to 'sexual,' but for a larger reason of not wanting the negative (even pejorative) labels that can come from violating the 'norm.' For instance, 'locker room banter' where a guy is bragging about multiple sex partners is often lauded as a "stud," whereas that same group talking about a woman with multiple sex partners as a "slut." That's a fairly well known cultural thing, though it may be less so now than it was a few decades ago?

i wonder about the cultural norms that fly under the radar that influence us unconsciously, but may not fit as universally as we assume, or worse, may create a false or forced reality. I.e., maybe more women would express fetish desire/need if there were not conditioning towards women that makes it more challenging for them to be open in those areas than it is for men?

This never occurred to me. Of course, my sisters and wife always said I was too trusting. Thanks for the heads up!

All the posts insisting that this topic isn’t about trans people are good and important statements. Thanks for clarifying over and over.

Trans people‘s lived experience, though, is that almost all of us have been called fake at some point. Almost all of us had a phase when we were posing as another gender on the internet — yes, common phrasing is that we ARE that other gender, but not every trans person knows this about themselves from childhood on. Many of us had to become 30, 40, 50 years old and older until it finally clicked. And not every trans person can transition. So we live double lives, we call our true selves a fetish, society tells us every day that we’re fake, zity members tell me my gender doesn’t even exist and their posts don’t get moderated — I know I’m not fake and my gender exists, but many trans people are not a fortunate as me and it’s hard to live with that constant onslaught and not cave.

So yes, this topic was not intended to be about us. But everything said in it is also said about us, and many of us are actually „faking“ because even we ourselves don’t know our true selves yet. Please bear this in mind when talking about fakes and their differences to trans people.

No doubt some men pose as women on Zity for nefarious reasons to take advantage of or exploit both men and women members. Women members get more attention here - responses to their posts, likes etc. - I suspect some men posing as women do it for the attention and to boost their numbers. Either way, I would not want to interact with or trust someone if I suspected they were lying about their sex.

Food for thought. Have a verification system...

No need, fakers soon give themselves away. Though they can be a waste when searching for a mate.

I think a lot of fetish sites in general have at least a few people that pose as the opposite sex. I've encountered it on various places and, while it generally is men pretending to be women, I have encountered the opposite scenario where women pose as men. I believe it all boils down to the freedom that comes with pseudo anonymity. Life becomes mundane at the best of times and maybe people just want to experience the thrill of being someone they aren't, or perhaps some do have more nefarious reasoning, but when I've encountered it it's mostly people that are simply bored and truly mean no harm. I'm a bit of a nerd so I've encountered women posing as men, but they do so more or less to provide a sort of barrier of protection from harassment. Women get more attention and if you just want to go about your business, pretending to be a guy shakes off a lot of unwanted interactions.

I did encounter a man pretending to be a woman on another BDSM site not long ago and it honestly hurt quite a bit because I had exchanged with them several times and started to feel something. I suppose guilt got to them and they revealed that they were a middle aged, married man and posed as a lesbian in order to "not cheat". They explained that they felt if they weren't being them then it was just all pretend and didn't count. It wasn't the first time I've come across that reasoning. I ended the conversations and they didn't understand that I wasn't ending it because they were male (I'm more or less pansexual, but I do lean towards being more attracted to men), but because I don't condone cheating and no amount of wordplay would excuse that they were indeed cheating in my opinion. I've also had "lesbians" confess that they were really just bored guys that were embarrassed that they didn't have a lot to offer and wanted to get some sort of online interaction and, as has been noted, women get more attention. Some of these guys would tell me that they're straight, but would message male accounts as women to get anything in response.

I haven't been dealing with online sites like this for very long but I have picked up on ways to tell for the most part if someone is masquerading. Then again, it doesn't bother me. I like being able to share interests with people and I could honestly care less about someone's sex or gender. (I apologize if my terminology is wrong. I really don't mean to offend anyone. I have the social skills of a drunken squirrel with rabies.) I do hope that people will be honest with me eventually and, again, I don't care. But that is because my philosophy on dating is simply, if the feelings are there, I don't care. I understand some people don't share that line of thinking and it is upsetting. I can relate to that as well because, again, I've fallen for women that didn't exist, men that didn't exist, and everything in between. It sucks because I just really want to find someone that doesn't think I'm too terribly weird (I have no social skills and I'm a biological female over 6ft tall so the deck is already stacked hard against me but I keep trying.) It does make me a bit discouraged when the rug is pulled out from under me, but that's life. Disappointment is just part of existence so I just try not to let it dissuade me.

I just feel like people should enjoy their interactions with people and, if things start to move to real life or feelings start to develop, ask for the cards to be on the table. Most people who are pretending move on after getting a fix and that's that. If you don't like the way the cards fall, just consider it a learning experience, or just an experience, and find someone else. Don't let it sour you on things. It seems there are a fair number of men and women into kink of all flavors so someone has to match eventually.