And that wouldn’t even be a thought in my head if anyone from Darklands or @itmantwerp.bsky.social stopped to think.

The thing that @itmantwerp.bsky.social is using is still intent. Intent didn’t stop their conference attendees of taking photos of me and my rope bunny mid scene without my consent. I don’t know who took that photo, who has that photo now, and what they’re doing with it.

To be honest, I’m unfamiliar with research regulation in Belgium
and the EU but there is likely recourse with a regulatory body if they admit fault.

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.

If my language is more pointed it’s because I’ve done my part to give them a pathway forward and they have continuously failed to acknowledge their own harm. There is no apology in their response. Just a self congratulatory “we’ve done good by ourselves” message to someone who has held up a mirror.

As if we haven’t dumped enough of our own unpaid labour to hold them accountable. Their credibility and lack of reflexivity beyond procedure shows they are ill equipped to doing research with (let alone on) our community.

Oh yes, there’s blatant contradictions in @itmantwerp.bsky.social’s response, as if we are not clever enough to see the blatant gaslighting of our community. We have continued to call them in, and their response is to ask for individuals to jump on a call.

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...

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 🧵

This article is specific to studying our communities in an online context, but parallels could be made to how to ethically engage in research endeavours WITH us instead of ON us.

I think researchers studying our communities, especially in the health-related fields, need to know how to ethically engage with us.

This would avoid the harm that @itmantwerp.bsky.social and @darklandsfest.bsky.social caused/is causing to our community.

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.

bsky.app/profile/rope...

Reaching out to you because our community is still waiting on hearing about how @itmantwerp.bsky.social plans to be transparent in its internal review. So far we’ve received no word except from your privacy officer (who needs training in research ethics…)

bsky.app/profile/rope...

It is genuinely painful to watch how blind this organization is to our calls. These are our communities. These are real people who your organization harmed. The harm is documented. The response has been either procedural or chilling silence. The self-congratulation is harmful to us.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

See my previous threads of the way that we’ve been treated as a community by this organization. That is not an ethics culture. That is an institution that has learned to speak the language of ethics without applying it.

The complaint was received March 16. The response defended the images, cited “high prevalence of chemsex among MSM” as justification for overriding individual consent, and said no formal mistakes had been identified. Then on March 25, this post went up.

The article is titled “Ethics is not a checklist.” I agree. A checklist would have included “do not use identifiable photos of people in kink spaces without their consent in a publicly downloadable academic presentation.”

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. 🧵

Campus is secure

Still okay, still locked down