Shorter Answer:
Yes, it's all free. That's free as in free all the time, free for all the features, unpaid subscribers (we have no paid subscribers) get everything on here. 100% free, now, later, for everyone all of the time, all subscription options free. No jokes, no bait-and switches, no fraudulently tricky this that or the other thing, just . . . free.

And that's the way it's going to stay. No, we're not gearing up to charge later. We'll still be free for all the later that will ever exist during which this site continues to exist as well.

Longer Answer:
Even though this is stated as clear as day right here at the tiptop of the FAQ and also on our index page, sometimes we still get email from women asking us if we are REALLY SURE and do we REALLY PROMISE that the site is REALLY AND TRULY free? And could we just go ahead and confirm that again JUST FOR THEM one or two or several more times?

AHEM. OK, let's put this yet ANOTHER way, for anyone who still remains the SLIGHTEST bit skeptical:

We personally challenge you to find anyplace on this site where there are instructions on how any subscriber can pay lesbotronic.com any fee whatsoever to upgrade or improve anything else regarding her subscriber experience on lesbotronic.com in any way, shape, or form via any payment mechanism. That would mean a credit card page, a postal address to send money, a 1-800 number to call something in, a NON 1-800 number to do similar, a paypal link . . . anything at all.

If you can find specific instructions anywhere on lesbotronic.com on how any subscribers can pay us any money, we'll give YOU some money. How's that?

(Important Hint: No one will ever succeed. Really.)

Shorter Answer:
It's both a personal interest (heh), and something we thought we could do for our "community" . . . or at least that chunk of it inclined to sign up for our site and play well with others on it.

Longer Answer:
We've met quite a few women via the internet ourselves . . . made new friends . . . fell in love . . . and various other gratifying states-of-mind. The opportunity to meet other queer women on the internet we probably wouldn't have met otherwise dramatically and positively changed our lives. We thought we could help spread that happiness around.

We also thought that most personal ad sites out there for non-heterosexuals (other than gay men) were lacking in important ways, usually because they were designed by heterosexuals for heterosexuals . . . with lesbians only allowed in at the end as an afterthought, if even that. We thought that as lesbians/queers, we could do better for other queers.

Finally, we thought that as lesbians, we would prefer to make our important social connections on sites run by other lesbians, or at least other really dyke-friendly queer folk. Lesbotronic.com is 100% lesbian owned and operated, and a lot of our subscribers appreciate that.

As for HOW this site can be free, we now accept advertising in some places on the site. That pays to keep us open. For a LONG time we paid for everything out of our own pockets and the site remained completely ad-free. However, as it got more popular and expenses mounted, some form of revenue generation became practically necessary. (We're not independently wealthy and we couldn't keep running it if we allowed it to completely bankrupt us.)

We offer free personals for lesbians, bisexuals, the bicurious, trans folk, and genderqueers. You can use our personals to meet any subset of those previously described folks for friends, lovers, activity partners, community, networking . . . whatever.

We also have a discussion forum for personals subscribers and/or any other of the preceding group that would like to participate in that. The forum already has a large number of discussion topics going, but new ones are welcome too.

1. You sign up. You go to the forum, you click register, you follow the instructions.
2. You validate your email address via clicking on the link in the confirmation email that's sent immediately upon completion of your forum registration.
3. You discuss whatever you like. That is, so long as it doesn't violate the "Lesbotronic Community Guidelines." Those are posted in the forum.

1. You fill out a profile, starting here.
2. You validate your email address via clicking on the link in the confirmation email that's sent immediately upon completion of your profile.
3. You wait for a bit until one of the actual human lesbians that runs this thing scans your profile with her actual human eyes for appropriateness.
4. If your profile was not judged inappropriate, we send you an email confirming your acceptance to our database.
5. You sign in and look at the profiles of those in your Search Results.
6. If you like someone(s) you see, you email them.
7. You continue communicating privately with anyone as you see fit. While you view profiles on the site, after that you take the communication to your own email accounts. Hopefully you'll also meet some great women in person!

Meanwhile, after initial acceptance, you'd just get an email confirming that and instructing you how to log in and see your Search Results (other subscribers that match your search criteria).

After that and continuing as long as you remain a subscriber, you'll be notified via email when someone new has signed up who matches your Search Options. You can log in and check yourself whenever you like, but these emails will let you know when to definitely do that.

Your email address will also have to remain valid during your entire subscribership. You can change email addresses with us, but we recommend not doing that more than absolutely necessary in order to avoid confusion.

After that, and in response to the emailed notifications, we will then IMMEDIATELY delete any profile whose email address bounces with something that's probably permanent: "user unknown," "user ID invalid," account closed," "not our customer," etc.

We also delete profiles of subscribers whose email addresses bounce due to their mailbox being too full to receive new email, but there's a "grace period" on that (no more than once in a 2-week period or repeatedly over 4-6 weeks).

Certainly, and we heartily encourage you to do so. Profiles WITH photos generally get a much better response than those without. However, in case this was a part of your question, you do have to wait until your profile is admitted before you will be able to log in to the personals area and post your photo(s).

Shorter Answer:
The personals area is as private as it can be, and still work. The forums have two different privacy levels, described in detail below.

Longer Answer:
PERSONALS: Much more private than most personals sites, and much more private than our forums. In fact, our personals are more private than any other internet personals site we've ever encountered. Anyone allowed to view your personals profile will also have filled out our questionnaire in its entirety, NOT had their profile rejected as being inappropriate, and then your Search Options must mutually not exclude each other (Search Options as defined elsewhere in this same FAQ). That means no one else (other than the site admins) will ever be allowed to see it.

Unlike a lot of other personals sites, we do not now and will never publish your profile or any details from your profile on a page somewhere as an advertisement to entice other folks to sign up. Your profile will never be made available for viewing by anyone else "just stopping by" or "wanting a trial run" or something similar, also unlike most personals sites. Again, that means that anyone else who didn't:
- also completely sign up for lesbotronic.com
- NOT get rejected
- mutually NOT exclude each other via your collective Search Options (that goes both ways)

will NEVER be allowed to see your profile.

Basically, lesbotronic.com personals are about as private as you could possibly get, but still function over the internet. As far as we know, if you want to meet those you wouldn't have otherwise via some sort of service and want it even MORE private than lesbotronic.com, you'll have to do that somehow OFFLINE (not over the internet) ONLY.

FORUMS:
General Forum Area:
Anyone surfing the internet could read what you posted. Entirely UNLIKE our personals, the General Forum Area is "out there" on the internet. This is the case with most discussion forums on the internet, nothing different here. We will say that we have NOT been bothered too much by "infiltrators" or men posing as women thus far, or any other sort of all-purpose asshat. Our service just isn't that immediately gratifying for a troll . . . it seems it's pretty uninteresting for most people other than those for whom it's actually intended. All of this with regard to the forum specifically (not the personals, they are separate) doesn't mean you need to be paranoid, it just means you shouldn't post anything in the forum that's overly personal AND then also SPECIFICALLY attached to any personally identifying info you wouldn't want non-site-subscribers to be able to see.

"Restricted Access Area" of the Forum: Only subscribers approved for that can read and post, not any other lesbotronic.com subscribers, and no one else on the internet from anywhere else at all. This is a private area for some subscribers to discuss certain topics. Approval requirements and instructions for this area are in the forum.

How will my email address be used within the personals?
What about my privacy?
Can you explain how this is not/should not be a privacy problem?

Some women have written in expressing concern about participating in a service where some other subscribers will be able to see email addresses in profiles. There seem to be 2 main concerns:

1. Will it result in spam?
No. Any information we gather within lesbotronic.com will only be used within lesbotronic.com. It will neither be shared nor sold to any person or any company or group of persons outside lesbotronic.com under any circumstances. Participation will not lead to junk mail, spam, or unsolicited advertising in your email box or via any other means in any way originating from lesbotronic.com. This policy is absolute and without exception.

WITHIN lesbotronic.com, we will not be sharing your email address with anyone other than those other subscribers that are NOT excluded by your Search Options, and you theirs. This means the overwhelmingly vast majority of even the lesbotronic.com database will never know your email address or be permitted to see or know anything else about your profile in any way.

Unlike some personals services, your profile will NEVER BE PUBLICLY PUBLISHED anywhere online for just ANYONE on the internet to access or see.
It will ONLY be behind a entrance-key-protected area, and even then only for certain non-excluded subscribers.

2. I'm worried that it's somehow an unacceptable loss of privacy that even a tiny segment of the database gets to see my/one of my email addresses.

This may have been a valid concern at some point in the past.
Say . . . about 1993.
Way back then most email addresses were the result of a workplace that handed them out or just the one hard-to-change email address that someone had as a result of a fairly expensive paid service, and many of those weren't at all anonymous.

TODAY, you can have as many email addresses as you can keep up with, as many of those as you like can also be free, and the ones you get for yourself (even most of the paid ones) can be exactly as anonymous as YOU want them to be.

For instance, you can sign up for a free email account with Gmail or Yahoo or any other paid service that doesn't list your personal info anywhere published online (which is most of them, nowadays), give yourself a nickname that is OTHER THAN your real first and last name, then avoid putting anything else specifically identifying in any publicly published profile associated with that email account. Such as:

IAmAMargaretChoFan@yahoo.com
SiameseCatLover@gmail.com
Los-Angeles-Knitting-Fiend@comcast.net
I.Heart.Isabelle.Huppert@clearwire.net

There. You're anonymous. At least, until you'd like to become less so with a particular person.

On the other end of the spectrum of anonymity, that being NOT AT ALL anonymous, you could sign up with the same email address you used in your extensive and totally public MyFriendsterSpaceBook page. That would NOT be anonymous. (Of course, if you have one of those, you're probably not so concerned about your own privacy anyhow, but that's another discussion.)

Probably someplace in the middle of the anonymity spectrum, you could sign up for a personals site with an email address from your employer, something like: SomeOfTheLettersInMyName@CompanyThatHiredMe.com.

But we really don't recommend this, and we make that clear as well in the sign-up area. Many women have used email addresses they got from an employer, we're sure many more women will. We're not going to try to stop them, but we don't recommend it.

And no, not JUST for this personals site, we don't recommend using an email address an employer gave you for ANYTHING AT ALL OF A STRICTLY PERSONAL NATURE. We think it's just not wise. We've heard of more than a few corporate employers with a nasty habit of snooping in on the email activity of their employees. The employees were initially outraged, but you see, turned out in the fine print on some paper they signed it said the employer did in fact own those employee email addresses and it was their stated legal right to monitor them, and they didn't need to tell you about it. (Unless/until you were in "big trouble.") An employer might disapprove of the nature of your online activities at work and/or via company servers, or it might just be evidence you spent some of your work time at work not working while still being paid.

Either way, if you plan to use email for personal reasons (like most folks who embrace technology appropriate to this decade), we'd recommend using a NON-employer-related email address with lesbotronic.com or ANYTHING AT ALL not directly associated with your employer.

Work email = work email only.
Personal email = personal email only.

Final comment on that, we know a lot of women out there will say, "But my employer would never snoop in on and/or care what I did with my email address!" You might be entirely correct about that, and we really hope you are. But if there ever comes a day you find yourself surprised to hear otherwise, that's gonna be a bad, Bad, BAD day. Our advice to you would be to avoid the possibility altogether, and just make a habit of using an email address your employer has no access to for anything of a personal nature.

A few women have written in saying something like, "But I DO want to use my real name and/or an identifying email address but then I just DON'T want anyone subscribed to lesbotronic.com to get it right away, not until I say so!"

No offense intended, but this is just so NOT a bright idea. Yes, we know there are websites out there that ask for your email address then promise to keep it "safe and secure" or "encrypted" or "anonymized" or "hidden" from absolutely positively entirely everyone else on the internet. We're calling bulls*** on that.

If you have personal info that you need to keep safe and secure . . . be that your real first and last name in association with any personals ad you might place, your work email address, and/or anything else you really need to keep safe and secure, you need to keep that safe and secure YOURSELF AND ALL BY YOURSELF by NOT PUTTING IT OUT THERE ON THE INTERNET.

At all. That is how you'd keep something private and safe and secure.

By avoiding putting it on the internet entirely, or not on the internet in association with anything that might be problematic for you.

Let's examine the alternative, the idea that you'd share an email address you really shouldn't be using for a personals ad, be that because it's too identifying and/or because it belongs to an employer. Rather than use a more anonymous and/or more personal email address that really would have been the better choice, you've decided to go ahead and use the email address you really should NOT be using for personal stuff. And then . . . trust total strangers and/or potentially unreliable software to somehow "keep it safe" FOR you. Is that a good idea?

NOPE!

1. We've heard of sites out there that are pretty notorious for doing lots of stuff with the email addresses they collect. They say they won't share the addresses with anyone in the larger print, but in the fine print there's something like, " . . . except we will share them with our 'trusted partners.'" Those "trusted partners" being 250 other companies you've never heard of and didn't specifically and directly consent to hearing from. And THEN you have little or no control with regard to what those other 250 companies with then do with your email address once THEY have it (perhaps they have their own list of "trusted partners" as well). (No, lesbotronic.com doesn't do this. Not even in the fine print. (We actually don't even have fine print, you're meant to be able to read all our print.))

2. Even if a site has the best of intentions with regard to your privacy, databases get hacked and cracked, and software goes buggy from time-to-time. A personals site (or most sites out there) may do their best to keep your email address private, but it's not going to be military-grade security. Don't kid yourself.

3. Companies change hands, more often than most in the internet world. Ideally, whatever privacy policy was in place when you signed up for whatever-it-is-out-there-you-signed-up for will remain in place even if that company changes hands. Ideally. But sometimes ideal isn't what we always get.

4. Even if a given service does have the best of intentions with regard to keeping your email address private, and does actually manage to do so and over an extended period of time, that service will probably still be sending you administrative email with regard to your membership on the site. Meaning, other members of the service may not get your email address, but if it's a work-related email address, your employer may still find out you're subscribed to it and/or were accessing it from work.

Meanwhile, we don't want all of the above to sound like we're encouraging rampant paranoia. We're not. (And also meanwhile, this Q&A was intended for women with concerns about sharing their email address with other similarly-minded folk anyway.) If you're an out and loud and proudly queer and don't care who knows it, congratulations! We congratulate you, and wish there were more just like you!

Being out is great. Hiding is bad. On many, many levels. All this email stuff, we're just saying:
- Don't get in trouble with your employer over anything you do on the internet, including participating in lesbotronic.
- If there IS something you need to hide from the pinheads in the world, be smart about it by following our advice above. Horror stories are interesting for everyone, but we'd prefer you internet'd safely out there.


RELATED QUESTION:
"But why can't you do a private-messaging-type service for the personals where we can send messages to each other and then get notifications at our email addresses?"

Well, most of the reasons above still apply to why that's not the best idea, nor is it necessary.

However, here's yet more reasons written by a well-known and well-regarded tech guy. If you won't listen to us, perhaps you'll listen to him:

"Why Private Messages Suck" by Paul Stamatiou

(quoting above article, but feel free to click the link above and read the whole thing on his site, if you like)

" ... Every site (featuring a private messaging system) works differently but they all require that you be logged in to read the message. Don't worry about missing a message (FROM ANOTHER SUBSCRIBER) though, most services email you to tell you a message is waiting for you. But of course, most don't want to kill their page view stats by, gasp, sending the private message (from that other subscriber) along with the email, making you click-through and login to their site ...

Last I checked, email is still alive and thriving, so why reinvent the wheel? ... Why not just contact that person over email? Sites had to answer the call of the greenbacks and implement a communication system. It's all about business these days - bounce rates, page views and keeping the user on the site longer - but selling out isn't in the best interest of the user.

Points in the case against Private Messages:

* By using email instead of private messages everything goes to one place, your email account. No need to login to 10 different websites to read something that could have arrived in your normal email inbox.
* As a dichotomy towards private messages, there are no (length-related) limitations with email.
* It's easy to overlook a new private message, especially if the user has already become annoyed with incessant email notifications and disabled them.
* Private messaging systems work in entirely different ways on different sites. That's another interface for the user to learn. That's one too many when email could have sufficed.
* Email provides your very own searchable record. You can even create a folder for each new contact, and with today's storage capacities, keep each email you get from them virtually forever."

You don't. We do not now and will never offer that option. And, we're proud of that. We never publish anyone's profile or any details from anyone's profile out on the "open internet," you have to be a subscriber and then you just get to see those other subscribers for whom your collective Search Options match (both ways). For more on this see the question immediately above, "How private is lesbotronic.com?"

Shorter Answer:
Nope.

Longer Answer:
We cannot tell you that because geography is only one of several Search Options we use. There's no way of telling you in advance approximately how many women would be within your Search Results, because we don't know what you'd indicate on all the rest of your Search Options. Since the other Search Options operate along with the geography, giving you a number of subscribers in any one area would be totally meaningless, since you wouldn't get to see all those profiles anyway. But hey, signing up is easy and free, and then you'd know!

. . . in the past and that's why now I am trying this one to see if it really is just THAT hard to find someone on the internet. So right now I need to know now if lesbotronic.com will FINALLY be the one to REALLY make a difference for ME?"

Shorter answer:
Probably not.
Not unless you change your approach.

Longer answer:
If you tried MANY other websites and were CONSISTENTLY disappointed, it's likely you need to reevaluate something about your behavior above and beyond and/or instead of merely switching websites. If many different trials across different websites have yielded the same or similar results for you, the glitch here is probably something going on with what's between your keyboard and your chair. Sorry, but hey, reality check. Don't get offended; it's here in the FAQ for everyone to read.

Maybe there are other personals websites out there that suggest you can instantly, immediately, and almost magically find your one-and-only soulmate and then somehow confirm that she is exactly that within like, a week or two, if ONLY you'd sign up for them. And then probably pay them some money.

Or maybe those other websites will somehow suggest to you that whether or not they will work for you is 100% up to the website, and 0% dependent on your own behavior.

And maybe that's the language or the expectation you had approaching this website.

Our experience as a group of fairly experienced queer women is that life doesn't USUALLY work like that. More often than not, you'll need to stick around a bit and put in some effort meeting other women with whom you have important things in common before that "lightning" will strike. Not always, but usually. And we have no magical way around that to offer you.

Well, we will say for sure that this site is free. That's certainly different.

But other than the not having to pay part, most of the results you get are up to you. Yes, we have thousands of cool subscribers, but you still have to put in some effort on your part to meet them. I mean, it's not like we're going to overnight post someone to your doorstep in a big straw basket with a "Soulmate Guaranteed" sticker on her forehead.

Soooo . . . if you were looking for a high-powered sales pitch or a hard sell approach, you came to the wrong place, babycakes.

However, while it's not a sales pitch, we do have a lot of advice to offer regarding meeting women from the internet, advice which definitely includes but is not necessarily limited to using this site.

Shorter Answer:
A "whitelist" is a list of email addresses or domain names that you tell your provider to let through their filters. "Whitelisting" is the activity of doing that for yourself. We recommend that to make sure your email provider doesn't "lose" the email we send you.

Longer Answer:
"Whitelisting" is a just a catch-all generic term for adding an email address to whatever your particular email provider calls their list for YOU whereby you're telling THEM to make sure to let email from someone ELSE's email address through. This as opposed to possibly spam-trapping it or otherwise throwing it away without your permission before you can read it. This list is something you have with the company that provides your email, not just something on your local machine (for instance, NOT just in the email program on your computer, like Outlook Express). It's also something you take care of on YOUR end. You don't email us and ask us to do it for you, we're not able to do that, you have to do it from within your own email account signed in with your password.

We've also been asked this question about whitelisting quite a few times:

"If I got some email from you, that means I'm cleared now to get all additional email you'll ever send even if I don't bother with this whitelisting thing, right?"

While your mileage may vary according to email provider, in general, NO, NOT TRUE AT ALL. It's often the case that if you fail to do the whitelisting, your email provider will let some but not all email from a particular sender through. We've also been told that's the case with all the email providers below.

Here are some other common terms for Whitelist:

Safe Sender List
Custom Sender List
Allowed Sender List
Address Book (with your email provider)
Friends List
Buddy List

Again, here's our email address:

webmistresses@lesbotronic.com

We've attempted to provide some more specific whitelisting instructions below for some of the more popular email services. These were the popular ones we were able to sign up for for free in order to get the instructions, and we did this as a courtesy. If yours isn't listed, please do NOT email us asking us how to do that. Figuring that out will need to be up to you, since . . . you know, it's your email account, not ours.

It's not possible for us to know how to operate all the different types of email in the world.

If you don't already know, we'd recommend finding out anyway, because knowing how to use your email account properly can't help but be a good thing for you for a wide variety of reasons. Instructions are readily available for that for most email accounts directly from your email provider and/or their tech support.

AOL
The easiest way to is to put the above email address into your "Address Book." Click the icon for the Address Book at the top of the toolbar, click "Add Contact," then add webmistresses@lesbotronic.com. Another way, if you're using the "Custom Sender List," is to add our email address to that. Activate the dropdown "Mail" menu up at the top, select "Mail Controls" (or click "Spam Controls" if you're not using the full AOL software but just a web browser), click "Custom Sender List," then add it to the list of allowed senders. This, of course, only if you're using that list to allow senders. If you're using it to block senders, adding us to that list obviously wouldn't help at all. In that same area, you also must NOT have checked "Allow mail only from AOL members," or you will NOT get our email. We're not on AOL.

GMAIL (Google)
When signed into your email account on the internet using a web browser, add webmistresses@lesbotronic.com to your "Contacts" list (clickable text links on the left).

HOTMAIL
When signed into your email account on the internet using a web browser, add webmistresses@lesbotronic.com to your Safe List. Click "Contacts" on the left clickable toolbar. Under the next list of "Contacts Options," click "Safe List." Add it to that list.

YAHOO
When signed into your email account on the internet using a web browser, add webmistresses@lesbotronic.com to your Addresses List. Click "Addresses" at the top, click the "Add Contact" button, add it. Yahoo can still be a little flaky, if you have attempted to register and don't see your welcoming email, check your Bulk mail folder. If it is in there, use the interface to reidentify that as Not Spam or Yahoo will continue to send our messages there. If you register and also ask for forum notifications on topic replies or Private Messages and do not seem to be getting anything or not that much, check your Bulk folder periodically. All kinds of stuff can end up there.

ROCKETMAIL
Same as Yahoo (directly above)

NETSCAPE
When signed into your email account on the internet using a web browser, add webmistresses@lesbotronic.com to your Address Book. Click the icon for the Address Book at the top of the toolbar, click "Add Contact," then add it there.

JUNO
When signed into your email account on the internet using a web browser, add webmistresses@lesbotronic.com to your Safe List. Click the Options button. On the Mail Options screen, click the Safe Lists link. Put it into the "Add Address to Safe List" box and click the Add button.

EXCITE
When signed into your email account on the internet using a web browser, add webmistresses@lesbotronic.com to your Safe List. Click "Mail Preferences" on the top RIGHT of the tool bar. Under the header, "SPAM Prevention Tools, click "Safe List. Put it into the box under "Add the email address . . ." then click the "Add" button.

LYCOS
When signed into your email account on the internet using a web browser, add webmistresses@lesbotronic.com to your Sender White List. Click "Options" in the Mail toolbar. Under Mail Preferences click "Spam Filters." Click Sender White List. Add the email address above into the box under "Type a single email address . . " and click the "Add" button.

OPERAMAIL
When signed into your email account on the internet using a web browser, add webmistresses@lesbotronic.com to your Inbox Mail Filters. Click Options on the top toolbar. Click Mail Filters. Under Filter Incoming Mail go to your first available filter (Filter 1 if you've not used this feature before). Click the box next to Enable. Select the menus such that If: From equals, then enter the email address above into that box. You can then click Move Up or Move Down (it doesn't really matter) but what does is that you make sure "Then deliver to:" is marked INBOX. Then don't forget to click the Update button at the bottom.

For both areas of the site, after finishing with the sign up area, you should get a confirmation email at the email account you used to sign up. That will contain a link you will need to click to finalize your registration. If you do not click that link, you won't be able to finish registering and use the features of the site.

That confirmation email should arrive pretty much instantaneously.

Why might you not get it? 99.5% of the time it will be one of the following:

1. didn't type in email address correctly (didn't know what it actually was, what it completely was, or made a typo)
2. email account too full to receive new email
3. didn't whitelist our email address as instructed ahead of time, email provider deleted it
4. confirmation email somehow ended up in spam folder even though you did whitelist (really shouldn't happen, and if it does, we'd recommend changing email providers, but it is a possibility)
5. your email provider is experiencing a temporary delay. (Wait 30 minutes or so, check again.)
6. your email provider is having some other serious technical difficulty that is out of your control

So, first, make sure the email account you used has adequate space. Then, check your spam folder. Then, you might consider checking with your email provider, and/or checking to see that you're able to receive other email addressed exactly the same way.

In the unlikely event that ALL of that failed, try again with a different email account. Probably best anyway, sounds like that last email address wasn't working so well.

Shorter Answer:
Afraid not.

Longer Answer:
Please refer to the preceding question in this FAQ for additional details on why a confirmation email might go missing. Meanwhile, as per all the instructions in the sign up areas for both the personals and the forum, you have to sign up using a valid and available email account, then you have to confirm that it is yours and that it is valid via clicking on a link in the confirmation email. If you fail to do that:
- Forum: You won't get the necessary confirmation email with the link that must be clicked.
- Personals: We will not review the personals profile for possible acceptance.

Shorter Answer:
Afraid not.

Longer Answer:
As per the EXTREMELY LENGTHY warning at the beginning of the questionnaire that you had to click a button to confirm you read before proceeding, you do have to be able to receive the "lesbotronic.com personals email confirmation password" email in order to begin registration. Again, that means you must:

- have a valid and active email account that you can access
- have space available in that account to receive new email
- type that email address completely and correctly when registering, no typos, no mistakes
- in many cases, tell your email provider in advance to accept email from: webmistresses@lesbotronic.com

If you completed the questionnaire and are sure you didn't make a typo in your email address, that confirmation email WAS sent to your email account. However, whether or not that ALSO means it arrived in your inbox is between you and your email provider, and nobody other than you and your email provider. We have no more control over it on our end at that point. Just between you and your email provider.

And no, the way the system is set up, I'm afraid we CANNOT resend a confirmation email, it's a one time occurrence per new profile. There are multiple aspects of our site that are human-moderated, but this one is NOT. If you can't get the "lesbotronic.com personals email confirmation" email, again, your profile cannot be accepted, and we cannot resend that. It's not that we WILL not, it's that we CANNOT. It doesn't exist in any way that we can retrieve it, that's the way this works.

Did you whitelist our email address in advance as instructed? Again, as per the warning, if you didn't whitelist in advance, your email provider may have trashed the email. You could doublecheck your spam folder if you haven't already. Hopefully it's in there.

If you can't manage to locate your confirmation email, I'm afraid the profile you filled out won't be confirmed. It's gone with the wind. Sorry if that's frustrating for you, but you can't say we didn't warn you!

At that point you're welcome to resubmit the questionnaire to create another profile, but you would probably need to use a different email address, as there is only one profile accepted per email address. (Well, that's if you didn't fail to receive confirmation because of a typo. If you made a typo and you're actually aware that's the case, you probably can fill out another profile using the same email address with no typos the second time.) And then we would again VERY strongly recommend whitelisting our email address with that new email account BEFORE filling out the questionnaire again. Spelling usually counts with the whitelisting too, have to make sure you spell our email address completely and correctly: webmistresses@lesbotronic.com Good luck!

"I previously registered for the personals
OR
I previously registered for the forum
and NOW
I'm trying to login to the one I didn't specifically register for?
Why can't I login? It says I'm invalid!"

AND/OR
"I previously logged into the personals
OR
I previously logged into the forum
BUT NOW
the other one (the one I did NOT specifically login to recently)
says I'm not logged in? Why am I not logged in?"

Shorter Answer:
Because the personals and forums are are managed separately via different databases.

Longer Answer:
Unfortunately, this has confused quite a few women. But NO NEED TO PANIC, everything here is extremely simple to operate after all, once you understand the following:

The personals and the forum run on separate databases. No, there's no even vaguely practical or reasonable way to change that at this point, that's just the way lesbotronic.com evolved over time.

But the simplest explanation for what this means for anyone in terms of registering and/or logging into either is that you should think about the personals and the forum as different sites entirely.

(Yes, they were started by the same group of women. Yes, it's all still lesbotronic.com. And yes, many of the same women sign up for both.)

But in terms of registering, logging in, etc., it's as if they're:
TWO
COMPLETELY
SEPARATE
SITES.

Ergo, registering for one does NOT register you for the other.
Logging into one doesn't log you into the other.

If you want to register for the personals, you register for the personals.
If you want to register for the forum, you register for the forum.
If you want to login to the personals, you login to the personals.
And (you're with us now . . . right?) if you want to login to the forum, you login to the forum.

If you want to sign up for both the personals and the forum, we'd recommend using the same email address for both, just to avoid confusing yourself. But it's not a requirement.

Then you'll need to email us saying so. Please email us FROM THE SAME EMAIL ADDRESS you were last using with us. We will not send an entrance key to any other email address other than the one last associated with it. Send your request to: webmistresses@lesbotronic.com. When we get to it (meaning, this will not be instantaneous, it's not automated, an actual human will need to look up your entrance key and answer your email manually), we'll email you back your entrance key. Please try to hang onto it in the future!

Shorter Answer:
We entirely reserve the right to admit or reject and delete any profile we choose, either during the sign-up process or anytime thereafter.

(And yes, if you've detected a subscriber that has done one or more of the following that we've somehow missed, please DO notify us. Please be as specific as possible about which profile you are referring to and exactly what was the problem.)

Longer Answer:
Reasons we might reject a profile include but are not necessarily limited to the following:

1. Attempts to sell anything.
2. Attempts to send other subscribers to a pay-per-view site or asks them to call pay-per-minute phone numbers, or some other garbage about a "modeling opportunity."
3. Asks other subscribers to directly provide them with any financial information or requests any sort of charitable contribution.
4. A hard luck story about how broke they are, how they just got laid off or scammed in some way. (Yes, those are sad stories. But people who aren't trying to scam other people over the internet will turn to their family and friends for financial help. Anyone asking for financial help from strangers on a personals site IS a scammer, even if they don't sound like one.)
5. If we strongly suspect someone is actually a non-trans heterosexual male masquerading as another demographic entirely to sign up for this site. (And he would be masquerading, because there's no option on the questionnaire for non-trans heterosexual male. He necessarily would have had to lie and say he was something else to complete registration.)
6. If we strongly suspect the profile was authored by a minor.
7. Inclusion of any OFF internet contact info in a profile, like a telephone number or actual geographic address. (for more on the why of that, see that specific question in this FAQ)
8. We find the profile in question homophobic.
9. Unprovoked, out of the blue, unnecessary, or just plain irratonal rudeness toward the site administrators or the idea(s) behind the site itself. And yes, we are the final word on what constitutes "unprovoked," but anything even vaguely resembling:

"Obviously this site is really retarded and useless, but I'm signing up anyway because I was bored." 
"Everyone here is clearly an idiot but I'm just going to post here and let you know."  *****(note on this below)
10. Anything similar to, but not specifically along the lines of all of the above, where someone's profile does not exist primarily for its intended purpose (meeting people for personal relationships), but to solicit others for some non-personal purpose (research study, going to another website entirely, etc.). It's fine if someone mentions a website they've worked on in their profile, definitely. But if it seems like the profile would have no reason for existing other than as an attempt to generate attention for something else, that's not OK.
11. Anything not already mentioned above, but something that is clearly illegal or seems to be soliciting a clearly illegal activity.
12. If it seems the poster doesn't seem realize this is an actual personals site, not a place to try to score free photos of (insert lady part here). Really dummies, just rent or download a video:

"Right after you read this send me a photo of you naked (or at least in only panties)!"

(N.O. Go away now. And then go tell your mother you require more supervision.)

13. If we think the profile in question is clearly off its rocker and/or really JUST NOT RIGHT, in a way that more likely than not indicates a pronounced lack of sincerity on the part of the poster. No, we're not talking about discriminating against those with legitimately diagnosed mental illnesses. No, no no.

We're talking about something that would suggest a pronounced lack of sincerity on the part of the poster in such a way that also strongly suggests not a single other subscriber to this site would find the profile could possibly represent anyone with whom they'd ever care to pursue any sort of relationship.

The best way to communicate that is probably by sharing a few actual examples:

- Typographic gibberish (;lkj;lka asd;lkj a;lkjd) just to fill up the freetext areas and get the profile to submit without following those instructions in terms of including actual content.

- "High! i am an adult girl 25 years with middle area breast so i now need to get to order now XPRESS! RUSH!! SEND XTRA XPRESS!!!!! at least 110 or even MOR new girls tonite or tmrw latest to get XXX sex all over my entire bodys but only with your breasts in the exact middle zone"

(The only part we could relate to was, "High!" Thinking that a likely explanation, that is. Passing no particular judgment on substance use, we've still noticed it's best to place personal ads when you're sober enough to construct somewhat clearer and/or more meaningful sentences. Also, anyone who feels that having sex would require a minimum of 110 girls is clearly hallucinating, probably wouldn't remember even visiting our site much less completing a profile, and might later accuse of us spamming them if we emailed them confirmation.)

- i am a very good grill and nice looking for my mother to love me somuch whereishe AND and i from XTREMLEY royal family ROAYAL!!!!!"

- "Me Twi Li. Me from China. Twi love give great pleasure for womans. Man no enter Twi Jade Gate again. Some man I like, but not with me sex. Twi no work, Twi pleasure to give pleasure other womans. Twi hope pleasure many womans. Twi live Beverly Hills can have drive car all places and Twi home ok to.Twi hope many new womans frends.LOVE TWI!"

- "lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala penis hahahahahaha"

- "Ladies. Iv ur like me u wud pley wid urselvs every day n ave some sorta sex, im lukin 4 a realashinship wid som1 hu wud ave sex avery single day. sex sex sex go go go000000000000000000000000 AMEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"


***** (regarding #9 above) You know, we actually did go back and forth on that one for a bit. We knew admitting subscribers whose initial communication was something along the lines of the above didn't feel like a good time to us, nor did we imagine them to be anyone we'd ever enjoy spending any time with in any way whatsoever. However, we imagined (at the time), perhaps we should set our own egos aside for the overall community? Meaning, perhaps OTHER subscribers might find them enjoyable for . . . something? Anything?

Well, as it turns out, NO. Not at all. Not even a little bit.

Subscribers who felt an apparent need to be senselessly rude were never anything other than a source of complaints from other subscribers.
No one thought they were interesting.
No one found them fascinating conversationalists or discussion initiators.
No one wanted to get to know them better via private conversations.
No one wanted to meet them in person.

Basically, they were just annoying and sometimes distracting noise to the more sincere subscribers.

Kind of like that car alarm on your block that keeps going off for no apparent reason and everyone gets annoyed because of the incessant meaningless shriek. You could dignify it by calling it a voice, but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who found it valuable in any way or would ever want to keep hearing it. You could say those subscribers were a form of noise pollution.

And/or they were just trolls (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_trolls): "A certain breed of internet surfer whose primary motivation in interacting with anyone is to vent some of their spleen on the world. According to the internal logic of the troll, their hostility seems to be provoked by the internet community into which they're venting that spleen. However, upon further and detailed examination of whatever they could possibly be responding to, whoever said anything to them, etc., there's no evidence of anything at all that could have provoked it, not according to most rational people, anyway."

And . . . we've definitely had our share on lesbotronic.com. We're definitely not on the market for more. We're also not inclined to positively reinforce social incivility. So, if you think you've found a troll in the personals we somehow neglected to notice, please do let us know.

But, as per all the advice on trolls, if you think you've found one, just report them. Don't bother interacting with them personally, just report them.

Shorter Answer:
Nope.

Longer Answer:
Um . . . that would be a big NO. Noticing what sorts of subscribers we welcome then following the instructions to sign up should NOT be that difficult.

Other than a situation involving a problem with your email address (and lots of instructions regarding that are already above this question), anyone who manages to get rejected will usually have managed to create that situation for themselves in such a way that we are NOT eager to begin a correspondence with that person. Just . . . wouldn't be a productive or constructive use of our time.

Those situations usually involve but are not exclusively limited to:

- anything already covered above in the question, "Why would you reject a personals profile submission as inappropriate?"
- someone who couldn't be bothered to make even a half-assed attempt at their freetext areas and only filled theirs up with garbage ("I can't answer this now," "I'll come back later," "blah blah blah," etc.) such that we thought their profile would be a waste of time for OTHER subscribers. As per the VERY EXTENSIVE WARNING in the new profiles submission area that we will delete anyone that tries to waste everyone ELSE'S time in that way, that is what we do. Just like we said.

So, that would again be a big NO because we're not eager to initiate correspondences with such persons. They tend to take the attitude that it's somehow all our fault that they couldn't be bothered to follow the very simple instructions and that we should have admitted them anyway. No, and no again, and life is just too short for that brand of nonsense.

(Meaning, there's new people in my Search Results in the personals, and I thought I was supposed to get an email notification when that was the case. But I didn't get any such email.)

Shorter Answer:
If you're still an active subscriber (which you are if you're able to login and see your Search Results), we did SEND you that notification. But after we send it, whether or not that ALSO means that you will RECEIVE it is now a matter exclusively between you and your email provider. Sooo . . .

Longer Answer:
Most everyone seems to know they will miss email if they allow their email inbox to overfill and run out of space. So, that's one possibility.

But mostly we get this question for another reason, that being that many subscribers seem to think that if they get one email from us, as long as space permits in their email account, they will then necessarily get ALL future email from us.

Not true.

Many if not most email providers have an annoying habit of letting some but not all email through, particularly when the email in question is from a sender that sends a lot of email, like lesbotronic.com. THIS IS WHY WE RECOMMEND THE WHITELISTING. According to the vast majority of email providers, this is the prescribed way to ensure you don't miss email from a sender from whom you wouldn't want to miss email.

("What is whitelisting?" is another ? in this same FAQ.)

Yes. The emails are intended to be a convenience for you, but all active subscribers can login whenever they like as well.

. . . BUT still keep my personals profile active?

The emailed notifications are intended to be a convenience for you, so you'll know when would be an excellent time to login and review your Search Results. The vast majority of subscribers find them helpful.

But even if you are that rare bird that doesn't want them, sorry, no. The only way to cancel the notifications is to have your profile deleted entirely. This is because the notifications serve not only the purpose of notifying subscribers (obviously), but also alert us that we need to delete a subscriber's profile because her email address is no longer valid. (This happens when/if notification emails bounce back to us with delivery errors.) If we did not require the notifications, we'd eventually end up with a lot of "dead" profiles in our database, "dead" in the sense they'd still be in there even though no other subscribers could ever email the women described. That would be a useless waste of space and a useless waste of other subscribers' time, so obviously we don't want that.

Note: If you have the above concern because you signed up using an email address at which it really wasn't appropriate for you to receive email from lesbotronic.com, we'd recommend simply changing your email address with us to a different one at which it would not be a problem.

. . . my old email address went invalid and/or I don't think I used any of my current email addresses, etc., etc. Can you resurrect my old personals profile so I don't have to bother filling out a new one?

Shorter Answer: Nope.

Longer Answer: Sorry, but no. You can contact us and ask us if a particular email address has a profile. (You must do that from the email address in question, we will respond to no other inquiries about that.) But if the answer is that there is no profile currently associated with that email address, then that's the answer. Previously deleted profiles no longer exist in any sort of way that we could get them back. Meanwhile, if it's been awhile, it's probably to your benefit to fill out a fresh one anyway.

Related Question: "But that's not nice! You just entirely deleted my profile? Couldn't you have hung onto it, in case I came back?"

Sorry, but again, no. We just don't have the resources for that. The profiles of the subscribers that ARE active that we know are CURRENTLY interested take up a huge amount of storage space as it is. Paying for more and more storage just to store older, probably outdated profiles of previous subscribers, subscribers that as far as we know, won't be back anytime soon? That would not be a good allocation of our limited resources.

But again, you're welcome to fill out a new profile. That's way far from being any sort of significant hardship, you know? Really, no biggie.

How the Search Options work in terms of geography is that each profile only gets Search Results from the city selected in that profile. One profile = one city and one city only.

Related questions: "But I want to meet subscribers from a larger area than just my city / other cites than just my city!"
"Why don't you do that?"
"How can I expand my Search Results?"

Once upon a time, in a previous version of this website, we did offer additional and larger geographic zones to select from as additional geographic Search Options. Not just your own city, but the potential for broader areas.

And it went fairly badly. We got a lot of email from subscribers with complaints that either the zones were too confusing, or that the zones were not structured as those subscribers would best like them to be. But the subscribers that wanted something different? They didn't all want the SAME different thing. They all wanted DIFFERENT different things. Lots and lots of different different things.

Ultimately, it was also fairly insanity provoking.

So we decided it would be better for everyone (and everyone definitely includes we that run this site) to radically simplify that aspect. Any one profile is now only matched with the one city selected in that profile. Very very simple, hardly anything to get confused about now.

HOWEVER. There is a way around this for those that would sincerely like one, and it isn't difficult.

All you have to do is fill out another profile using ANOTHER (meaning NOT THE SAME ONE you were last using with us) email address, and we will process that.

You would need to use an additional email address and complete an additional complete profile for EACH additional city from which you'd like to receive Search Results.

While we are advising the use of additional email addresses as a way around our city restriction, we would ask that you be considerate of other subscribers if you choose to employ it. Meaning, please don't waste the time or try the patience of other subscribers by signing up for any city that you don't have the intention and means of visiting in the near future. And again, any additional email addresses you use with lesbotronic.com will be verified before processing and then need to be checked regularly or the profile associated with it will be deleted due to email bounce.

While the additional email address thing might seem a bit of a pain in the bum, ultimately it will provide much better geographic targeting for those that want more than just their city, and without driving we that run this thing right up the wall vainly trying to accomodate too many different requests within a general system.

Want the two major cities in your state or province, but not the third? You can do that now.

Want one city on the East Coast, and another on the West? You can do that now too.

Want one city near the border of one country, and another also near the border of the neighboring country? You can now do that as well.

(You'll just have to fill out more than one profile, and use more than one email address with us.)

If you really are interested in meeting women from an additional city, this small extra effort on your part should be worth it in the long run. If you don't feel it is . . . well . . . we'd guess you probably weren't extremely interested in meeting women from that additional city after all, and it's probably best that you just stick with your own.

We have several additional Search Options, described in detail below. No, we cannot do "custom" searching/exclusion along the lines of any of these variables, all subscribers will need to organize themselves along the lines of the Search Options already listed.

AGE:
There are 9 age ranges on the questionnaire.

Subscribers select their own age range, and then the age ranges they'd like to see for other subscribers in their Search Results. Your Search Results will only contain those within the age ranges you selected. In addition, the subscribers in your Search Results must have stated openness to hearing from those within your age range as well.

EDUCATIONAL LEVEL:
There are 9 educational levels on the questionnaire.

Subscribers select their own educational level, and then the educational levels they'd like to see for other subscribers in their Search Results. Your Search Results will only contain those within the educational levels you selected. In addition, the subscribers in your Search Results must have stated openness to hearing from those within your educational level as well.

Note: In terms of restricting your Search Results, there are not 9 levels. The exclusionary levels are:

- If you can get this form filled out, you're fine by me. (this option represents NO exclusion on this variable)
-Completed an Associate's degree and/or technical training certificate.
-Completed a Bachelor's degree.
-Completed a Master's, Ph.D., or equivalent.

SEXUAL ORIENTATION:
There are 6 different types on the questionnaire, which we feel represent an adequate range on the scale of lesbian/bisexual/bicurious/looking for a male-female-female threesome.

1. I consider myself a lesbian. I do not have sex with men currently, and think it extremely unlikely I will in the future.
2. I am primarily attracted to women, and my serious relationships are mostly with women. However, I wouldn't completely rule out a relationship with a man in the future.
3. I consider myself bisexual, and open to the possibility of a serious, longer-term relationship with a woman OR a man.
It's more about whoever attracts me next than a priority given to either gender.
4. I'm in a serious relationship with a man, and am looking for a bisexual woman to be sexually active with BOTH of us.
5. I would like to explore relationship(s) with women, but I expect my primary relationship to be with a man. Any relationship(s) with women would be separate and 'on the side.' (THIS OPTION INDICATES YOUR MALE PARTNER WILL HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO EXPECTATION OF SEXUAL INVOLVEMENT WITH WHOMEVER YOU ARE SEEKING. AND YES, 'JUST WATCHING' DOES = INVOLVED.)
6. Completely polyamorous AND bisexual. I will continue seeking romantic involvements with BOTH men and women. I'm happiest when currently involved in multiple relationships with both genders represented.

Subscribers select their own orientation and the orientation(s) they'd like to see for other subscribers in their Search Results. Your Search Results will only contain those within the orientation(s) you selected. In addition, the subscribers in your Search Results must have stated openness to hearing from those identifying as your orientation as well.

GENDER EXPRESSION:
Here are the options all subscribers can select:
-ultra femme
-femme
-butchy femme
-androgynous
-soft butch
-just plain butch
-butch studmuffin
-I refuse to identify with these restrictive labels; the butch/femme paradigm doesn't work for me.
-I have no idea.

Subscribers select their own gender expression, and then the gender expression(s) they'd like to see for other subscribers in their Search Results in terms of:
-more femme
-more butch
-I'm open to the whole spectrum. (this option represents no exclusion on this variable)

Your Search Results will only contain those within the gender expressions(s) you selected. In addition, the subscribers in your Search Results must have stated openness to hearing those with your gender expression as well.

(HOWEVER: If someone selects, "I refuse to identify with these restrictive labels . . . " or "I have no idea," they are disallowed the opportunity to restrict on that variable in terms of their own Search Options. That would be because we feel it doesn't make a lot of sense for anyone to claim indifference to and/or proclaim a philosophical rejection of the butch/femme continuum for themselves . . . yet then simultaneously insist on deference to and/or self-identification on that same criteria for anyone they might like to meet.

And then in case that last "HOWEVER" sounded like we were inherently disapproving of those that reject the butch/femme continuum . . . or suggesting that you need to identify as either butch or femme to get along here and meet lots of other subscribers . . . we are NOT, and we're NOT. We're just suggesting that you should remain philosophically consistent, and that anything less will look like metaphorical spinach in your internet teeth.

Before we enacted this exception, we received a LOT of profiles from women that refused to identify along the butch/femme continuum because it was too restrictive for THEM . . . then ALSO insisted they'd only like to meet femme women. (And no, for some reason, it was never butch women.) We're giving them the benefit of the doubt via our imagination that they didn't notice their profiles were inherently offensive to those VERY same women they were hoping to attract.

Meaning, if a particular queer woman identifies as femme, she might be open to meeting a lot of other women that identify in various DIFFERENT ways along that same continuum. Maybe butch, maybe other femmes, maybe andro, maybe she's just totally open-minded. But SHE still identifies as FEMME, and she TOLD YOU THAT in her profile. So that obviously means SOMETHING to HER.

You shouldn't think you should denigrate, disparage, or otherwise "poo poo" her identity as femme . . . or that you should belittle her identity as a person along the continuum of butch/femme as being something you're somehow above or beyond . . . then reasonably expect her to like YOU somehow otherwise or anyway.

Because that wouldn't make sense, would it?)

GENDER IDENTITY:
Here are the options all subscribers can select:
- female = assigned female at birth and still female now = cisgendered
- female and happily so, but butch enough to be mistaken for male by the unsophisticated
- trans woman = MtF = male to female transsexual/transgender
- trans man = FtM = female to male transsexual/transgender
- genderqueer - not identifying as male OR female, but neither, both, or something in between

Subscribers select their own gender identity, and then the gender identities they'd like to see for other subscribers in their Search Results. Your Search Results will only contain those within the identities you selected. In addition, the subscribers in your Search Results must have stated openness to hearing from those identifying within your gender expression as well.

ETHNICITY:
Here are the options all subscribers can select:
- White/Anglo/Caucasian/European-American
- Black/African/African-American
- Hispanic/Latino
- Asian
- Native-American
- Middle-Eastern
- Pacific-Islander
- Multiracial and/or I'm just too diverse to say

Subscribers select their own ethnicity, and then the ethnicities they'd like to see for other subscribers in their Search Results. Your Search Results will only contain those within the ethnicities you selected. In addition, the subscribers in your Search Results must have stated openness to hearing from those identifying the way you did with regard to ethnicity as well.

RELATIONSHIP TYPES:
The following are the options all subscribers can select. You can select just one, just two or three, or all of them, there is no limit here. The subscribers in your Search Results will be looking for at least one of the same relationship types you selected. Openness to a greater number of relationship types will likely result in a larger number of other subscribers in your Search Results.

- Long-term commitment / marriage / spousal equivalency / life partner

- Polyamorous Significant Other
(polyamory = open to and/or already in multiple romantic and sexual relationships simultaneously with the knowledge and consent of everyone involved. A poly relationship is more than casual and has an expectation of SOME degree of commitment and continuing future, but is not NECESSARILY as serious or committed as that of a life partner or spousal equivalent.)

- Non-sexual friendship and/or non-sexual social activity partner; getting together in person but not for sex (not JUST 'friends FIRST,' but friendship, period.)

- No-strings-attached f*** buddy or hook up; very casual intentions, non-romantic sexual partner; friend 'with benefits'

- An 'undercover' clandestine sexual relationship; I plan to cheat on my public partner so nobody else can know.

- E-mail/online chat/internet only friend. (As opposed to the other friend option, this = NO necessary or immediate emphasis in meeting OFF the internet.)

"I don't want to meet women that don't love dogs as much as I do!"

"How do I fix it so the only subscribers in my Search Results are atheists too?"

"I only want to meet fat women. Or at least, extremely curvy women. I don't think skinny women are appealing, so how do I exclude them?"

Or the meta question here, WHY CAN'T YOU / DON'T YOU / WON'T YOU ALLOW EXCLUSION BASED ON ONE OF THE OTHER QUESTIONS ON THE QUESTIONNAIRE YOU'RE NOT ALREADY USING AS A SEARCH OPTION?

Shorter Answer:
The Search Options we already use are the only Search Options we're going to use at this time. If we allowed exclusion on all items, the questionnaire would become ridiculously long.

Longer Answer:
Yes, we understand that many have a "pet" question on the questionnaire that is very important to them. We get that. We did think that every single one of our questions might be important to someone, including whichever one you have in mind.

And that would be why we put it on the questionnaire in the first place.

However, the questions that ARE already used as Search Options are the ones that are the most important to the vast majority of subscribers. And yes, we do actually know. We've done surveys.

A feeling that any other question on the questionnaire is anywhere near as important as the ones already used as Search Options would have you in the minority with regard to thoughts and feelings on that particular question. To put it another way, only a small minority of subscribers think any particular question NOT already used in the Search Options is terribly important.

So the answer to your probable question, "But WHY can't you just use THIS question for exclusion TOOOO because it's obviously SOOOOO important?" is that there are zero additional questions that should (actually) obviously be used as Search Option based on the preferences of most subscribers. All remaining questions on the questionnaire are equally likely candidates.

There's no one or two or three or four more obvious choices. All non-Search-Option questions are equally likely choices.

The only other logical thing we could reasonably consider would be to allow everyone to micro-mini-manage their Search Results extremely extensively by allowing the possibility of excluding other subscribers on EVERY SINGLE OTHER QUESTION on the questionnaire.

And yes, that's a possibility. But we think NOT a desirable one.

And that would be because, since again, a feeling that any particular non-Search-Option question is extremely important has you in the minority, we'd have to do something like follow EACH and EVERY one of those questions with:
- Do you want to exclude other subscribers from your Search Results based on this question? (yes/no)
- If yes, then which selections(s) do you want to require of those in your Search Results? (and a relisting of all possible selections)

This would have the unavoidable side effect of making the questionnaire about 3 times longer than it is already. And make it take at LEAST 3 times as long to fill out, probably even longer than that, since all of those questions would now require multiple decisions rather than just one.

How long a personals questionnaire should be is a subjective consideration, we know. But it's our current feeling that ours is a nice length. We do feel (and most subscribers would agree) that three times longer would be too much longer. Subscribers would also have substantially less energy left for their freetext areas, which we think are just as if not more important than any question we've devised.

RELATED CONCERN:
"OK, so I understand now that it wouldn't be the greatest idea to exclude on all questions because it would turn the questionnaire into something it would take a woman most of the day to fill out. But I still don't want to meet women who don't love dogs / aren't atheists / aren't fat / whatever else! And I shouldn't have to!!!"

You do not and never did have to meet any other subscriber that doesn't appeal to you, based on whatever criteria. Nope, never, not ever. The other subscribers in your Search Results only represent POSSIBILITIES. Nothing even a little bit else, unless you and another subscriber collectively make it so.

While it might be more appealing to be able to exclude based on your particular pet question, imagine a situation in which your pet question isn't asked . . . at all? At least we asked it, right? Most other venues via which you might meet other women, internet and otherwise, you'd never know upfront. You'd have to ask them all yourselves. So this way, even though you can't exclude other subscribers from your Search Results based on that question, you can make your decisions regarding who you would and would not like to meet accordingly. And isn't that really much more important?

ANOTHER RELATED CONCERN:
"But if I get emails telling me about another subscriber who is/is not (insert pet criteria here), and I go to the site to look at her profile and I don't like her, you're WASTING MY TIME! And I hate it when you waste a minute or two of my time!"

This sort of objection seems to be based on a completely erroneous assumption. That being that mere mortals are capable of designing any internet personals situation wherein every single member of your Search Results would be extremely appealing to you.

That's just NEVER going to happen.

Even if we allowed you to micro-mini-manage on every single question on the questionnaire, you would still find some subscribers less appealing than others based on the style and/or content of their freetext areas. And quite possibly their photos.

In any internet personals situation that could ever be humanly possible, it will remain the case that all subscribers will have to spend a little time scanning some profiles of people that will interest them to a lesser degree than others. We can't magically disappear that element of reality for you, sorry.

YET ANOTHER RELATED CONCERN:
"OK, so I get that it's really no biggie after all if someone I don't find appealing based on my 'pet' question is in my Search Results. But I don't want other women to waste THEIR time emailing me and then have to reject them personally. Now THAT'S a problem!"

Not really. Just state in no uncertain terms in one of your freetext areas that you're only interested in meeting other atheists or dog lovers or whatever. If it's really that important to you, it's something you should make super duper clear anyway, right?

And then if anyone emails you but seems to have disregarded your preference, feel free to delete her email and ignore her. Because she apparently didn't bother to read what you wrote and/or didn't bother to respect your stated preference, you won't need to feel bad you'll not bother emailing her back.

. . . instead of just my own city?

You actually can get Search Results from elsewhere. You'll just have to put in a tiny bit of extra effort. Please click on "SEARCH OPTIONS -- How do you do the geographic stuff?" 3 questions above for more info.

Shorter Answer:
Nope.

Longer Answer:
OK, first, we HEARTILY RECOMMEND posting a photo within your profile (over here in our advice section) for a wide variety of reasons we severely encourage you to check out.

However, we have elected at this time NOT to make photo vs. not one of the Search Options for 2 important reasons:

1. Some subscribers still don't have access to digital cameras, possibly for financial reasons.

2. Some subscribers WILL post photos, but photos that are NOT accurate representations of their current physical appearance. Like . . . a picture from extremely far away. Or just a picture of their dog. Or, a flower. Or, a picture they painted. While sharing photos of your dogs, flowers, and personal artwork is just fine, we're assuming that's not what women writing in with this question had in mind. We'd then be in the position of having to judge yay or nay on any particular photo posted in terms of whether or not it represents the probable physical appearance of an actual human, and then monitor that into the future should they change photos. We just don't have the womanpower to consistently do that right now, nor do we predict we will in the near future. We're too busy doing all the other stuff associated with running this thing.

Personally, while we can certainly understand that the ability to view a photo before any more in-depth correspondence, a phone call, or an in-person meeting would be desirable, absolutely INSISTING on one just to even consider contacting you will be limiting and/or not entirely flattering in a number of ways.

HOWEVER, if you're absolutely certain you're only interested in those subscribers who have posted photo(s):

When browsing your Search Results, your Search Results list lets you know who has not posted photo(s). If someone has not posted any photos, you would still see the pink default icon in the Photo column. If someone has posted one or more photos, that icon would be replaced by a thumbnail of one of her photos. If you want to avoid clicking on any profiles without photos, you can. Just scroll right on past them.

Then, if you're absolutely certain you only want to hear from other subscribers who already have at least one photo posted, put that stipulation in one of your freetext areas. (And we certainly hope you'll have one posted yourself as well, or you'll sound like a complete buffoon.) In the unlikely event another subscriber with no photos posted ignores your stipulation and contacts you anyway, tell her you don't want to correspond any further until she posts one. Again, we think that approach will limit you in some undesirable ways, but if that's what you want, go for it.

RELATED CONCERN:
While far from being a FAQ, one woman wrote us an impassioned email stating that her reasons for only wanting to hear from other women that provided photos upfront were not JUST about determining physical attraction or the lack thereof, but her own personal safety. Her reasoning was that if other subscribers posted a photo upfront it would "prove" that they were really and truly women, and not scary weirdo maladjusted socially incompetent men masquerading as women.

Interesting thought, but that wouldn't really be an effective strategy, not if you really think it all the way through. If some asshat of a non-trans heterosexual male was on here pretending to be a queer female for whatever pathetic reason, you think he couldn't find a photo of some woman somewhere on the internet and pretend that's also him/her, by posting that with his/her fake profile and/or sending it to you via email? He feels just fine with the enormous and totally jackass lie he is already telling by posting his profile on here at all . . . but the photo thing is how you'll catch him because that's where his scruples or personal ethics will kick in? Or . . . he won't be able to figure out where to find a photo of a woman to copy to continue his pitiful charade?

So, not so effective a strategy, that. But hey, no need to panic. We have much more extensive advice regarding meeting people via the internet in our advice section, but briefly, a MUCH better way to make sure before meeting in person would be a phone call, which we recommend anyway. That'd be a heck of a lot less convenient to fake. (What's he going to do . . . hire an actress? Pay an escort? Beg his sister?)

. . . in your list of cities in your personals. I understand that I'm instructed to select the nearest city that IS listed, but why can't you just add my tiny little town as an option?

Shorter Answer:
Too many towns, you'd likely get too few matches.

Longer Answer:
With those subscribers that don't live in a major metro that's a really obvious choice for inclusion, there are choices to be made in terms of organizing the geography. There are pros and cons to any way we'd slice it up, but after considering the various options for a considerable period of time, we think our way is best for most.

With our small-town subscribers, we'd rather force them to pick a nearby larger city and actually have a reasonable hope of a reasonable number of subscribers in their Search Results. This as opposed to letting them pick just their own teensy / sparsely populated little burg where exceedingly few queers live and then feel sad or mad or bad when we can't hook them up with very many if any other subscribers on a regular basis.

See, queers tend to live in big cities. They're born everywhere, but most migrate to larger urban areas sometime after the age of consent. See an article on this here, written by Dan Savage for The Stranger:

We're also forcing the issue because it would seem some women have a sort of . . . we don't know exactly what to call it . . . wacky tendency to experience a lapse in logic or critical thinking ability while filling out forms on the internet.

Sort of a "form-related insanity," if you will. It's fairly epidemic.

They seem to believe that if you put a button on a form for something on the internet, something they can select, click upon, etc., and that clickable object represents people, then those people should now magically materialize in very large numbers. Much MUCH larger numbers than existed before, mere seconds before the object was clicked, see. Just because they selected that clickable object and stated they would like that to be the case. On the form. Because the form was on the internet.

But the internet doesn't create a new reality, it reflects the reality that's already "out there." Yes, the exciting thing is that you can meet women you probably wouldn't have otherwise. And that really IS exciting, absolutely!

But if you have the impression there's not a lot of dykes to meet within a brief driving distance of your residence? Seen many of the exact flavor you're requesting in your local supermarket? What about . . . anyplace else near you? No?

Then guess what? They might not be there after all. At least, not many of them. Sorry. We can't plant any for you. If we could, we definitely would, but we can't.

But you'd be surprised how many lesbians from more or less the Proverbial Middle of Nowhere go to lesbotronic.com, fill out these exceedingly specific profiles in terms of all their other search criteria, then get irritated with us when the deluge of new contacts they'd hoped for when clicking their mouse all over our questionnaire fails to materialize.

So basically, we're forcing women in less populated areas to cast a wider net geographically, even if they don't do so in other ways on their profiles. This way we have a chance of connecting them with SOMEBODY they could conceivably meet in person, even if doing so isn't terribly convenient.

If it comes down to some consideration like, "I'm willing to drive 2 hours away to meet someone that seems like a good match for me, but not 5 hours, that's too far," then they can suss out the specifics amongst themselves. But at least we introduced a few possibilities they can consider and are more likely to be able to continue doing that via the wider geography, rather than no contacts whatsoever after they spent time on their profile.

Again, please understand that the reality that's being reflected here on lesbotronic.com is not a lack of sympathy for our subscribers in less populated areas. No. Rather, it's the reality that finding a compatible queer relationship is harder outside a major metro than it is within one.

"Totally sick of it!!!!!! Why is this happening! Why don't you f'ing fix that already???"

Shorter Answer:
Check the Search Options on your profile. They apparently need adjusting. Sheesh.

Longer Answer:
We get this sort of email every so often from a lesbian who apparently wants to be VERY emphatic that she is aggrieved. However, she's also apparently very uninformed and fairly inattentive.

She apparently set up her profile when she was in a more open-minded mood. That is, she didn't specify via her Search Options selections that she was only open to hearing from other lesbians. Rather, she set her Search Options to ALLOW bisexual women.

And then . . . I guess she forgot all about that behavior on her part. Or mistakenly recalled her actions entirely differently.

And THEN subsequently got all bent out of shape when some of the women in her Search Results had profiles with freetext areas mentioning boyfriends. Um . . . yeah.

SO, ATTENTION FELLOW LESBIANS!

On lesbotronic.com, you can decide TO allow bisexual women of various types in your Search Results. Or, you can decide to NOT.

It is UP TO YOU. It is YOUR choice.

But you'd exercise that right to choose via your own Search Options, that you would adjust by yourself.

You do not exercise it via angry emails sent to those of us running lesbotronic.com. Those emails are:

1) not nice
2) not changing anything anyway

Alrighty? Great, cheers, thanks a lot.

. . . but I'm certainly NOT open to dating women who currently have boyfriends or husbands!! I would NEVER date a woman who was also sleeping with a man! I just don't find THAT appealing at ALL! So why in the world am I getting women like that in my Search Results?"

Sorry, but we're afraid you're engaging in some faulty reasoning here. This is one of our "logical boo-boo's the polyamorous should avoid," described in our advice section. We highly recommend you go there to read our considered answer to this question. (You'll want #2, probably less #1.)

. . . that I'm a top looking for a bottom/bottom looking for a top/looking for a more specific fetish/etc.. But now there are women in my Search Results that didn't indicate they would be my ideal BDSM complement. What's that about? Can't you fix that?

Shorter Answer:
Nope. Sorry!

Longer Answer:
Lesbotronic.com is indeed VERY BDSM friendly. We're more than friendly, we're opening our metaphorical website doors wide and waving our arms all around, trying to beckon the leatherdykes inside. Whoo hoo, leatherdykes! C'mon in!

We love and respect leatherdykes.

However, with that said, the way our Search Options work for our personals is not actually BDSM-SPECIFIC. Friendly is not the same thing as specific.

Our Search Options are not based on anything related to BDSM. What they are based on is elsewhere in this same FAQ.

All subscribers are absolutely encouraged to indicate anything additionally specific about what relationship(s) they're looking for in their freetext area(s), and we'd imagine most if not everyone contacting you will honor or be in tune with that.

Also, we've received many lovely emails from women that were looking for a BDSM-specific relationship that happily found such right here on lesbotronic.com, and we couldn't be more pleased.

HOWEVER . . . if you'll be severely offended if you see someone in your Search Results that does not meet your own BDSM-specific criteria, sadly, lesbotronic.com might not be the service for you right now. Obviously you're not ever going to be required to meet anyone that doesn't interest you, but if you'll feel bent out of shape just that they're merely a possibility in your Search Results, you'll probably be unhappy with lesbotronic.com.

We imagine that subscribers that are most happy with lesbotronic.com will be the ones that are open to meeting a wider variety of women open to a larger spectrum of possible connection, absolutely including but not necessarily entirely excluding anything other than BDSM-specific relationships.

RELATED QUESTION:
"Can you recommend a BDSM-specific website just for lesbians?"

Yes, indeed we can!

LeatherDyke.com

ANOTHER RELATED QUESTION:
"Is leatherdyke.com a personals ad type website like this one, but more specifically for leatherdykes?"

We do wholeheartedly recommend leatherdyke.com, and if you meet their membership criteria, we'd wholeheartedly recommend signing up. It's a fantastic resource, it's an active forum that's well-moderated, and it's chock full of interesting content. But no, it's not a personals site per se. You can meet other women there and forge in-person relationships (and it would seem many do succeed in doing just that), but it's a forum site just like our forum is a forum. You'd meet other women by interacting with them on the leatherdyke.com forum, not just by filling out a profile.

YET ANOTHER RELATED QUESTION:
"So, can you recommend another BDSM-SPECIFIC personals site for lesbians and/or bisexual women?"

We've never been aware of any BDSM-SPECIFIC personals site just for lesbians and/or just for women (not men).

We are aware of several more mainstream BDSM-SPECIFIC personals sites that offer memberships to lesbians as well as heterosexual men. However, we're afraid we're not recommending any of those, at least not for queer women. We're not going to name names of sites here (those being the ones we do NOT recommend) because none of the women responsible for lesbotronic.com have ever signed up for any, so we're not speaking from personal experience.

However, what we've heard from other women that have is that the heterosexual male subscribers that pay to upgrade their subscriptions relentlessly and aggressively contact pretty much all the female subscribers, often disregarding their stated preferences. I guess they think they're getting their money's worth . . . or something. If you're a woman and you want to get chased non-stop by a lot of horny men, I guess that'd work out pretty well for you. If you're on there just to meet other women and wouldn't appreciate all the extra unsolicited attention from men then . . . perhaps not so much.

"Can't you put in a Search Option for that?"

Shorter Answer:
No, because that doesn't appeal to us at all.

Longer Answer:
Despite the fact that some people tend to use the word "professional" in their personal ads, that word has become so bastardized and hackneyed it has virtually lost all meaning.

The colloquial meaning: If you do something and get paid for doing that something, then you are a "professional" (fill-in-the-blank). No matter what you "professionally" do, be that assembling tacos, assembling fighter planes, or re-assembling organs during surgery, if you do it for money, you do it "professionally." Again, this category INCLUDES those who assemble tacos for a living. If you work at a Mexican fast food joint, you're a Taco Professional.

The older, more traditional meaning: A "profession" is an upper-class occupation that folks aspired to, worked tirelessly to qualify academically for during their undergraduate education, were accepted to a post-Bachelor's graduate program regarding, then continued to educate themselves formally and at great financial expense for about 5 post-undergraduate years (more or less). Finally, they would be accepted into an elite group of their peers after finishing their final degree and passing extensive licensing exams. At the barest minimum, a "profession" would require a Masters degree, usually MUCH more than that, probably a few years after the Masters and then an internship. Doctors, lawyers, Ph.D. level psychologists, etc., fall into this category.

So, without clarification, calling yourself a "professional" doesn't mean anything at all anymore. If you're a member of a particular profession that actually qualifies according to the traditional definition above, you might as well just state which actual profession that is. Or if not, just say what you do for a living. And then either way, you no longer need the trite euphemism.

Most of the questions we've received about this were wanting to exclude less "professional" lesbians from their Search Results. Curiously, it didn't seem that most asking about it actually qualified as members of an actual profession. We ultimately concluded that these women who did not IN REALITY occupy truly "professional" careers but were still requesting more "professional" lesbians were actually just trying to screen out women that didn't make some amount of money annually that they arbitrarily and secretly had in mind. (Probably as much or more as they made that year.) But rather than be honest and direct and communicate what they actually meant, they seemed to want to hide behind the vapid euphemism, "professional."

Sooo . . . what they probably really wanted was some sort of additional search criteria based on salary. To have us ask each subscriber how much she makes in a year, then set up some exclusion criteria that was salary-based. Which we're definitely NOT going to do.

But why WON'T we do it, if some subscribers want that, you may be wondering?

1. According to the way we were socialized, it's a vulgar thing to ask. So we don't feel like asking it.

2. We know a lot of women wouldn't want to reveal that on an internet questionnaire. They would answer income-related questions during the course of an actual relationship, sure, but they wouldn't want to share that stuff just to sign up for a personals site, or to have that info available to anyone else upfront when they hadn't even decided which other subscribers interested them. They would consider it none of our business, and none of anyone else's business outside of a more than casual relationship.

3. We definitely do NOT disagree with #2. Thus, we wouldn't want to lose those women as subscribers.

We shared the above with one subscriber asking about "professional" women, and she wrote back exclaiming that for HER, the idea of "professional" was neither about actual professions nor salary. She said it was about intellectual ability and educational accomplishment.

OK . . . maybe. We certainly don't say she was lying about that, no. However, one would hope you could assess intellectual ability to a large degree from a particular subscriber's freetext areas. What does she have to say about herself? How well does she communicate her story? And then to any extent you didn't get enough of an idea there, additional correspondence should absolutely provide big clues.

As for educational accomplishment, we do already have Search Options based on educational level. So, we feel that's adequately covered already.

p.s. We've heard that plumbers, electricians, and mechanics these days make crazy mad cash.

RELATED QUESTION:
"Do you have a recommendation for another site for me now that I'm all bent out of shape about what you said above?"

We do, well, sort of. No one we know has used them or even had a serious discussion about the possibility of hiring them, so we've no idea how well it works. But here's one site we've heard about:

executivelesbiandating.com

Not at all free, like us. Their fees range from $1000 to $2000 dollars, depending on whether you want them to work on finding you someone for 6 months, 1 year, or 2 years. Yup, no typo, that latter figure was TWO GRAND. But for that, they promise, "Your own personal counselor who works 24/7 for you to find you that compatible someone."

So, if you'd like to join a group of women that have paid two grand for the privilege, there it is. Any woman you'd meet via that service would no doubt need to be "more professional" (at least in the salary sense) to be able and willing to fork over that amount of cash to find a date.

FINAL RELATED QUESTION:
(yes, final for this little section, and yes, we have actually received this question quite a few times): "Can I pay the women of lesbotronic.com to help me find a date, instead of those executive people or just using your free service?"

No, sorry, we're not for hire. We're too busy running this free site. However, we did already type up really large chunk of advice right here. Those are the ideas we've cooked up over several years of running this site, and it represents the best we have to offer currently. And hey, all of that is free too.

" . . . how TRANS they really and truly ARE! Why don't you ask them if they're on hormones and/or if they've had sexual reassignment surgery (SRS)? Why don't you use THAT also as a Search Option? I see that you don't, and I want to know WHY? I THINK AS A SUBSCRIBER, I HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW! So, why DON'T you require all trans subscribers to indicate if they're on hormones and/or if they've had SRS?"

(If anyone trans, trans-friendly and/or a trans ally clicked on this just wondering how we'd respond to such, well. .... We actually have had just this sort of question more times than we care to remember. If you're a trans person with a better/additional idea about how to respond to such, we'd welcome your input. Otherwise and meanwhile, our response is the below . . . )

For whomever might have clicked on this thinking they had those actual questions and thinking they deserved an actual "answer," well . . . here are just a small sampling of "answers," but certainly NOT ALL that might be pertinent with regard to why we will not REQUIRE an answer to those questions JUST to sign up for our personals:

1. We feel it would be exceptionally and overly INVASIVE. We really don't feel we have the right to ask about someone else's medical/surgical status just to fill out a questionnaire for a personals site. For you non-trans persons out there (EVERYONE ELSE), would you think we should ask about your appendix or tonsils just to sign up for a social site? What about . . . your blood type, and/or whether or not you'd signed up to be an organ donor? NO? Not so much? That's none of our business? Gee, why NOT? Then understand that that answer applies here too.

2. We feel it would be excessively OBJECTIFYING, as if the status of someone's particular sexual organs were the exact key to their gender identity. If a woman had to have a mastectomy due to breast cancer, is she no longer a woman? What if a man had to have a testicle removed or surgery on his prostate? Is he no longer a man?

3. We feel it would be REDUCTIONIST, as if we might be suggesting a person's gender is related primarily to their access to and/or utilization of medical care. MtF? On hormones that can grow breasts? You're a woman. FtM? On hormones that can lower your voice and grow chest hair? You're a man. Lack of access to hormones? Sorry, do not pass go, you're back being the gender you didn't want to be, just because we said you were and you didn't get any hormones. (and that would be sarcasm)

4. We feel it would be CLASSIST, in that a person's access to medical care that costs a lot of money (they might not have) absolutely determines their gender. You have enough money to buy the hormones and/or surgery you might like? You're the gender you'd like to be. Otherwise, nope, you're not. (again, not)

5. We feel it would be ultimately UNNECESSARY. Definitely within the context of this site. This site, with regard to the personals, already allows you to specify if you're open to hearing from trans persons, either way, yay or nay. If you don't want to correspond with and/or meet any/either sort of transperson, YOU DON'T HAVE TO. IT'S JUST NOT NECESSARY. If you have reservations regarding and/or some sort of free-floating fear, probably everyone involved would recommend that you did NOT indicate you were open to meeting transpersons. While some transpersons are open to explaining various things about their particular situation to help you feel more comfortable, it simply will never be their JOB to educate YOU just because they exist in the world.

Meanwhile, we don't mean the above to indicate that it is anything other than just fine and dandy for a transperson to sign up and indicate whatever they'd like to indicate regarding their status or situation in any way regarding the above in the freetext areas of their profile. We're just saying it's not REQUIRED, just to sign up. Feel free to take that at your own pace, all in your profile upfront, only with interested persons as you begin correspondence, only after you meet them in person . . . whatever you like.

Shorter Answer:
You just email them.

Longer Answer:
You just email them. At their email addresses. The eamil addresses associated with their profiles. And yes, that's it. The whole deal, everything there is to know. Nothing a'tall else to understand whatsoever.

We know, this confuses some people because most sites force you to navigate a more complex system to contact another subscriber. Thus, in a perverse way, the fact this service is so incredibly simple and straightforward to use actually confuses a few people.

But since we're not going to charge you for the privilege of contacting another subscriber, we have no need to make you use another complicated system on this site just to read your messages from other subscribers. We have no need to bother, chaperone, monitor, control or otherwise fuss with your personal messages in any way. So, if you want to contact another lesbotronic.com personals subscriber, you just email her at her email address, same as you'd do if you wanted to email anyone else on the planet.

It doesn't get much more plain and simple than that!

(Except we recommend using the same email account and the same name you were last using with the personals, to best enable her to find your personals profile in HER Search Results. We also recommend putting something in the subject line of your email to her that indicates you're from lesbotronic.com. This in case she might not recognize your email as resulting from her personals profile otherwise and accidentally delete it, thinking it spam.)

How do I get messages from other subscribers?
How do I check to see if I have messages??
How do I send messages to other subscribers??

Shorter Answer: It's just your email address. Same one you used to sign up, or if you changed it with us, the last one you were using with us.

Longer Answer: It's your email address. Again, as per the sign up instructions, we don't give you your own "mailbox" here on this site for the personals. It's just not necessary. Ergo, your mailbox is simply your inbox over at whatever email address you used to sign up for our personals.

Note: Since the forum is much less private than the personals, there is a messaging thing over there that you and other subscribers can use if you don't want your email addresses displayed in the forum. Or, you can decide you don't care and have your email address displayed so anyone interested can contact you via your regular email instead and/or as well. It's your choice in the forum whether or not your posts will display your email address.

What does that mean?
Why is her profile still in here if she doesn't have a valid email address?
Should I notify you that her email address is bouncing mail?

Shorter Answer(s):
That's too bad - Could mean a number of different things - We handle this pretty well on our end of things already but nothing's perfect - Please don't bother.

Longer Answer:
Every single profile in the personals had a validated email address during the signup process, or the profile wouldn't have been admitted. Subsequently, each subscriber is sent a notification email when she has a another new subscriber in her Search Results. So, most subscribers get email from us on a fairly regular basis. (We say "most," anyone else being any subscribers whose Search Options have excluded them from getting new subscribers in their Search Results on anything like a regular basis. Those we would be emailing less regularly.)

After that, and in response to the emailed notifications, we will then IMMEDIATELY delete any profile whose email address bounces with something that's probably permanent: "user unknown, " "user ID invalid," account closed," "not our customer," etc.

We also delete profiles of subscribers whose email addresses bounce due to their mailbox being too full to receive new email, but there's a "grace period" on that (no more than once in a 2-week period or repeatedly over 4-6 weeks).

This is so subscribers that have just gone on vacation or are sick or something like that but might still come back and be interested in responding will have a chance to do so . . . but rest assured we don't let the bouncing go on too long, we will delete any profile for which this recurs. It is a fine line we're walking here, in that we DO need to delete the profiles of subscribers that have truly "left the building" . . . but we don't want to jump the gun if the subscriber is just temporarily unable to retrieve email.

If you're in a situation where some email you sent bounced, what you need to do is not just notice that the email bounced, but look at the actual error you got back from their email server. If the error is something like "mailbox unavailable" or "mailbox too full" then we'd recommend you retain your email to her and try sending it again in a few/several days, hopefully she'll come back and clean out her box and then be able to receive your email. If the error is "user unknown" or "ID unknown" or something else that sounds permanent, then it looks like you are out of luck in terms of getting in touch with her, unless she also included a personal home page that has other contact methods you might want to try. That profile will be deleted from lesbotronic.com in the very near future if it hasn't been already. Sorry that happened, but sometimes we don't find out an email address has gone invalid until around the time you do.

If you get an error back from an email server and you have no idea what it means, we'd recommend you try sending your email again in a few days.

RELATED QUESTION:
"Should I notify lesbotronic.com if I send another subscriber some email, and it bounces?"

No need whatsoever to bother. We have our own system of dealing with this already in place. If an email address goes permanently (or possibly temporarily, but repeatedly, as per the question about email bouncing above) wrong, that profile will be deleted. Email from another subscriber about that won't impact how quickly the profile gets deleted, only the responses to our own mailouts affect that. So, it's not necessary and a waste of your time.

Unlike other personal ad type services with which you may or may not be familiar, we do require you to maintain a valid email address with us, and to be continuously able to receive email from us at that email address in order to keep your profile active. (Otherwise, it gets deleted.) And then if a subscriber requests deletion, we delete that profile as well.

The profiles of other subscribers in your Search Results are presented in reverse chronological order (newest profiles up at the top), so you can quickly see who has recently signed up.

But other than that, there is absolutely NO time limit or expiration date in any way that would suggest those subscribers that have been in the database longer are no longer worth contacting.

Some who sign up are ONLY looking for their monogamous "one and only," and once they find that, they unsubscribe.

However, once such a subscriber has let us know she's found what she's looking for along those lines and not interested in looking for anything/anyone else, she'll be deleted and no longer be in your Search Results.

Other subscribers have been with us a very long time, and we think that's incredibly cool!

They include those who are open to finding platonic "just friends" relationships, women that are polyamorous, women that are non-monogamous, and women that are open to shorter-term relationships.

Many subscribers remain continuously open to meeting cool new women on lesbotronic.com, and because of that, there's no reason at all to delete their profiles or to declare them in any way less valid than anyone else. This is especially true of lesbotronic.com because there's no charge to any subscriber. Ergo, no big hurry or push to find someone/something really quickly and then unsubscribe before their last payment expires and/or their membership renews and they get charged again.

In fact, if you are similarly open to finding a wider variety of new relationships, there's no reason you couldn't remain a welcome part of lesbotronic.com indefinitely, and we hope you will.

Most subscribers to lesbotronic personals do stay active for quite a while. But some do have shorter-term goals.

In general, if you react to your email alerts by viewing your Search Results within a few days or a week of receiving them, this should only happen rarely if ever. But the longer you wait, the more likely it becomes that a member of your Search Results may have unsubscribed and/or her email address went bad and we deleted her. If that becomes the case, you may still have email, because it's impossible to "unsend" an email.

If you JUST received an email alert and can't find the subscriber mentioned even after logging in successfully and viewing each member of your Search Results, let us know by responding to that alert and indicating who you can't find. Please do that from the same email address you were last using with us. (Which should be the same one at which you received the email alert, unless you're forwarding email we send you elsewhere.)

Otherwise, if the alert is older, we'd recommend staying more current with the email we send you. That is, if the alert is more than 2 weeks old, please don't bother notifying us. Just understand you probably missed your window and try to keep up a little better later, if you'd like to avoid similar in the future.

We've received this question no less than 5000 times. No, we're really NOT exaggerating. However, most of the women asking something very similar to the above usually meant one of two very different things:

1. Would you happen to know why a particular subscriber I picked to contact did not email me back? Like, has she somehow indicated her lack of interest in me . . . to lesbotronic.com? Or do you somehow know the answer to this question in some other omniscient way?

The answers to those 3 questions are respectively: Extremely unlikely, extremely unlikely, and absolutely not.

2. Do you have some general suggestions for me that would improve my OVERALL response rate? I know you likely know nothing about any one particular subscriber's lack of interest, but can you give me some advice to help boost GENERAL interest regarding my profile and other subscribers' desire to get to know ME?

The answer to that question is ABSOLUTELY! In fact, we've put together an area on this site just to assist our subscribers with this exact sort of thing. However, being that our advice is too comprehensive to get it entirely within this FAQ, that area is now here (click).

You login to the personals area, you view your own profile, then you click the corresponding areas. You can then edit anything on it other than your email address and city of residence.

Related Question:
Why can't I edit my email address and city of residence in the personals area? (More on the email thing below.)

The city of residence thing is to increase the privacy of all subscribers. Meaning, we're making this site very unfriendly for anyone other than the sincere. "Real" subscribers who really want to meet other "real" subscribers in their own urban area and surrounding shouldn't need to change their city that often. Nor do they have any legitimate need to view the profiles of other subscribers that are not within their actual geographic range. Hence, we're disallowing the possibility that any one subscriber using one email address could frequently change her urban area to view the maximal number of profiles in a way that wouldn't sincerely relate to her own life.

You CAN sign up with one email address and then ask us to change your city for you. But then we're going to note when last you did that. If someone tries to do that overly often in a seemingly illegitimate fashion, we'll just delete the profile.

I tried to do that in my own profile area, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do that.

Shorter Answer:
You're right; there's no way to do that in the editing area. For various technical and security reasons we've elected to take care of this by hand, for now.

Longer / The Rest of The Answer:
First, we'd recommend not switching email addresses with us more than necessary because subscribers that do that tend to get confused.

Second, we'd ask you not to switch email addresses with us more than necessary because it's going to be a slight pain in our bum each time you do it.

But we do understand sometimes this is necessary. So:

Please email us FROM THE SAME EMAIL ADDRESS you were last using with us.
Send it to webmistresses@lesbotronic.com
In that email you also need to tell us what you'd like your new email address with us to be.

When we get to it (meaning, this will not be instantaneous, it's not automated, an actual human will be making this change manually) we'll send an email to both the old and new email addresses, confirming that for you and making sure the new email address is valid.

"I tried to do that in my own profile area, but there doesn't seem to be a way to do that."

Shorter Answer:
You're right; there's no way to do that in the editing area.

Longer / The Rest of The Answer:
We've disallowed this option to increase the privacy of our subscribers. Meaning, we're making this site very unfriendly for anyone other than the sincere. "Real" subscribers who really want to meet other "real" subscribers in their own urban area and surrounding shouldn't need to change their city of residence that often. Nor do they have any legitimate need to view the profiles of other subscribers that are not within their actual geographic range. Hence, we're disallowing the possibility that any one subscriber using one email address could frequently change their urban area to view the maximal number of profiles in a way that wouldn't sincerely relate to their own life.

Subscribers CAN sign up with one email address and then ask us to change their city for them. But then we're going to note when they last did that. If someone tries to do that overly often in a seemingly illegitimate fashion, we'll just delete the profile.

OK, so YOU'RE not illegitimately trying to do any illegitimate thing whatsoever, you just moved/are moving and want to change your city with us?

Just email us from the same email address you were last using with us, and tell us where you live now. Send it to: webmistresses@lesbotronic.com HOWEVER, you can't just email us and say any random city. These are all the "cities" we serve. If your exact city of residence is not on here, just like on the questionnaire, you'd select the one closest to you.

UNITED STATES

ALABAMA
Birmingham
Huntsville
Huntsville
Mobile
Montgomery

ALASKA
Anchorage
Juneau
Nome

ARIZONA
Flagstaff
Kingman
Phoenix
Tucson

ARKANSAS (matched as one city)

CALIFORNIA
Bakersfield
Fresno
Los Angeles
Redding
Sacramento
San Diego
San Francisco

COLORADO
Denver
Durango
Grand Junction
Pueblo

CONNECTICUT
Hartford
New Haven or Bridgeport
New London or Norwich

DELAWARE (matched as one city)

FLORIDA
Jacksonville
Miami
Orlando
Pensacola
Tallahassee
Tampa or St. Petersburg

GEORGIA
Atlanta
Augusta
Savannah
Valdosta

HAWAII (matched as one city)

IDAHO
Boise
Idaho Falls

ILLINOIS
Chicago
Peoria
Springfield
Evansville

INDIANA
Indianapolis
South Bend

IOWA
Cedar Rapids
Des Moines
Sioux City

KANSAS (OR MISSOURI)
Colby
Leavenworth, Kansas or Kansas City, Missouri
Topeka
Wichita

KENTUCKY
Lexington
Louisville
Paducah

LOUISIANA
Alexandria
New Orleans
Shreveport

MAINE
Bangor
Portland

MARYLAND
Baltimore
Cumberland
Salisbury

MASSACHUSETTS
Boston
Cape Cod
Detroit
Springfield

MICHIGAN
Bay City
Detroit
Grand Rapids
Marquette

MINNESOTA
Grand Forks
Minneapolis or St. Paul

MISSISSIPPI
Biloxi or Gulfport
Jackson
Tupelo

MISSOURI (or Kansas)
Leavenworth, Kansas or Kansas City, Missouri
Springfield
St. Louis

MONTANA
Billings
Missoula

NEBRASKA
Omaha
Scottsbluff

NEVADA
Las Vegas
Reno

NEW HAMPSHIRE (matched as one city)

NEW JERSEY
Cherry Hill or Trenton
Newark

NEW MEXICO (or Texas)
Albuquerque
Las Cruces, New Mexico or El Paso, Texas

NEW YORK
Albany
Binghamton
Buffalo or Rochester
Manhattan or any NYC borough
Syracuse

NORTH CAROLINA
Asheville
Charlotte
Raleigh or Durham or Chapel Hill
Wilmington
Winston Salem or Greensboro

NORTH DAKOTA (matched as one city)

OHIO
Cincinnati
Cleveland
Columbus
Toledo

OKLAHOMA
Oklahoma City
Tulsa

OREGON
Eugene
La Grande
Medford
Portland

PENNSYLVANIA
Harrisburg
Philadelphia
Pittsburgh
Wilkes Barre or Scranton

RHODE ISLAND (matched as one city)

SOUTH CAROLINA
Charleston
Columbia
Greenville

SOUTH DAKOTA
Rapid City
Sioux Falls

TENNESSEE
Chattanooga
Knoxville
Memphis

TEXAS (or New Mexico)
Austin or San Antonio
Dallas or Fort Worth
Houston
Las Cruces, New Mexico or El Paso, Texas
Lubbock or Amarillo

UTAH (matched as one city)

VERMONT (matched as one city)

VIRGINIA
Norfolk
Richmond
Roanoke

VIRGINIA (or Washington D.C.)

Washington D.C. or Arlington, Virginia

WASHINGTON STATE
Seattle or Tacoma
Spokane

WEST VIRGINIA (matched as one city)

WISCONSIN
Eau Claire
Milwaukee or Madison

WYOMING
Casper
Cheyenne or Laramie
Rock Springs
Sheridan


CANADA

ALBERTA
Calgary
Edmonton

ATLANTIC PROVINCES
Fredericton
Halifax or Dartmouth
Moncton

BRITISH COLUMBIA
Prince George
Vancouver

MANITOBA
Brandon
Winnipeg

NEWFOUNDLAND (matched as one city)

NORTHWEST TERRITORIES (matched as one city)

ONTARIO
Ottawa
Toronto

QUEBEC
Montreal
Quebec (Quebec City)

SASKATCHEWAN
Regina
Saskatoon

YUKON (matched as one city)


AUSTRALIA

NEW SOUTH WALES
Canberra or Wagga Wagga
Grafton
Sydney or Newcastle

NORTHERN TERRITORY
Alice Springs
Darwin

QUEENSLAND
Brisbane
Rockhampton

SOUTH AUSTRALIA - Adelaide area

TASMANIA -- Hobart area

VICTORIA -- Melbourne area

WESTERN AUSTRALIA
Kalgoorlie-Boulder
Perth


NEW ZEALAND

NORTH ISLAND
Auckland
Wellington

SOUTH ISLAND
Christchurch
Dunedin


EUROPE

UK and IRELAND
Dublin (Ireland)
Belfast (Northern Ireland)
Liverpool (Northern England)
Manchester or Sheffield (Northern England)
Birmingham (Southern England)
London (Southern England)
Edinburgh (Scotland)
Glasgow (Scotland)
Wales

FRANCE
Bordeaux
Dijon
Limoges
Lyon
Marseille
Paris
Reims
Rennes

GERMANY
Berlin
Bremen
Cologne
Dresden
Frankfurt
Hamburg
Hannover
Kassel
Leipzig
Magdeburg
Munich
Munster
Nurnberg
Stuttgart

SCANDINAVIA
Bergen (Norway)
Oslo (Norway)
Goteberg (Sweden)
Stockholm (Sweden)
Copenhagen (Denmark)
Helsinki (Finland)
Tampare (Finland)
Iceland

BALTIC STATES
Estonia
Latvia

NETHERLANDS - BELGIUM - LUXEMBOURG
Brussels (Belgium)
Amsterdam (Netherlands)
Rotterdam (Netherlands)
Luxembourg

IBERIAN PENINSULA
Lisbon, Portugal
Porto, Portugal
Barcelona, Spain
Cordoba, Spain
Madrid, Spain
Pamplona, Spain
Salmanca, Spain
Seville, Spain
Valencia, Spain
Valladolid, Spain
Zaragoza, Spain

ITALY
Bologna
Milan
Naples
Palermo
Rome
Turin
Venice

CENTRAL EUROPE
Bern (Switzerland)
Zurich (Switzerland)
Innsbruck (Austria)
Salzburg (Austria)
Vienna (Austria)
Brno (Czech Republic)
Prague (Czech Republic)
Kosice (Czech Republic)
Hungary
Liechtenstein
Monoco
Poland
Slovakia

BALKAN PENINSULA
Albania
Bosnia or Herzegovina
Croatia
Greece
Macedonia
Malta
Montanegro
Romania
Serbia
Slovenia

EASTERN EUROPE
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Belarus
Bulgaria
Georgia
Moldova
Ukraine

MIDDLE EAST / SOUTHWEST ASIA / WEST ASIA

Afghanistan
Bahrain
Cyprus
Iran
Iraq
Israel
Jordan
Kazakstan
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Lebanon
Oman
Pakistan
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
Syria
Tajikistan
Turkey
Turkmenistan
United Arab Emirates
Uzbekistan
Yemen

RUSSIAN FEDERATION
Moscow
Nizhny Novgorod
Novosibirsk
Samara
St. Petersburg
Vladivostok
Yekaterinburg

EAST ASIA
China
Mongolia
North Korea
South Korea
Taiwan
Tibet

JAPAN
Fukuoka
Sapporo
Tokyo

INDIA AND SOUTHEAST ASIA
Bangalore, India
Delhi/New Delhi, India
Kolkota (Calcutta), India
Mumbai (Bombay), India
Bangladesh
Bhutan
Brunei
Burma/Myanmar
Cambodia
East Timor
Indonesia
Laos
Malaysia
Nepal
Phillipines
Singapore
Sri Lanka
Thailand
Vietnam

OCEANIA
Fiji
Kiribati
Marshall Islands
Micronesia
Nauru
Palau
Papua New Guinea
Samoa
Solomon Islands
Tonga
Tuvalu
Vanautu

MEXICO
Acapulco
Cozumel or Cancun
Guadalajara
Juarez
Leon
Mexico City
Monterrey
Tijuana

CENTRAL AMERICA
Belize
Costa Rica
El Salvador
Guatemala
Honduras
Nicaragua
Panama

CARIBBEAN / WEST INDIES
Cuba
Haiti / Dominican Republic
Jamaica
Puerto Rico
(All the rest of the islands, including Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Barbados, Bermuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Martin and Sint Martin, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago)

SOUTH AMERICA
Argentina
Bolivia
Brazil
Chile
Colombia
Ecuador
Guyana
Paraguay
Peru
Suriname
Uruguay
Venezuela

AFRICA
Egypt
Kenya
Morocco
Nigeria
Cape Town, South Africa
Durban, South Africa
Johannesburg, South Africa

Ask us to do so via an email from the same email address you use with this site. Send it to webmistresses@lesbotronic.com

Please note a couple of things about deletion:

1) If you're no longer on the market for someone new to date, you can just edit your relationship status on your profile to reflect that and limit yourself to seeking platonic friendships via types of relationships sought. We'd recommend that instead of complete deletion, both because we'd hope that would be fun for you AND ALSO

2) If you want to submit another profile and become active again in the future, you'll have to use another email address to do that. Meaning, we only accept ONE profile submission PER email address. To limit the number of spammy submissions we must spend time reviewing and deleting, and thus help preserve our sanity, our system is set up to reject any attempts at additional profiles from a previously used email address. The one profile per email address situation remains the case EVEN AFTER a profile associated with a particular email address is deleted. Once a particular email address has been made active within our personals for the first time, the profile submission area will not accept any additional profiles using that email address. So word to the wise, if you have your profile deleted, then later decide you'd like to be active in our personals again, you'll need to use an email address never used within our personals before to get another profile to submit.

We will not delete a profile based on an email from any email address other than the one currently listed in the personals profile.

If you have lost access to the email address you were last using with us and cannot correct the situation via requesting assistance from your email provider . . . you still shouldn't worry much about it. If you have truly lost control of that email account and simply cannot get it back, it's going to fill up quickly and start bouncing mail in the near future. At that point, the profile will be deleted automatically all by itself due to email address failure, as per the rules below regarding, "When will you delete someone's personals profile?"

(Please also note that your profile will most likely NOT be deleted mere moments after you request that. As per all the instructions everywhere else on the site, we are not able to read our lesbotronic.com email 24/7/365, we have other life stuff we have to go do on a regular basis. We will get your profile deleted within a reasonable amount of time, just as soon as that's possible for us.)

What are the exact reasons you would do that?

PRACTICALLY:
1. If the subscriber requests that. If you want your profile deleted, please see "How do I have my own profile deleted?" in this same FAQ.

2. If the email address associated with the profile goes bad. A more detailed explanation is in this same FAQ ("I sent an email to someone whose profile I got from lesbotronic.com and my email bounced. What does that mean? Why is her profile still in here if she doesn't have a valid email address? Should I notify you that her email address is bouncing mail?"). No, you do not need to report anything about anyone else's email address.

MORE PERSONALLY:
(And yes, if you know you've detected a subscriber that has done one or more of the following that we've somehow missed, please DO notify us. Please be as specific as possible about which profile you are referring to and exactly what was the problem.)

1. Attempts to sell you anything. Any form of solicitation is forbidden here, and is anyone does that to you and/or in their profile, report them to us.

2. Attempts to send you to a pay-per-view site or asks you to call pay-per-minute phone numbers, or any sort of garbage about "modeling opportunities."

3. Asks you to directly provide them with any financial information or asks you for a charitable contribution.

4. Has a hard luck story about how broke they are, how they just got laid off or scammed in some way. (Yes, those are sad stories. But people who aren't trying to scam other people over the internet will turn to their family and friends for financial help. Anyone asking for financial help from strangers on a personals site IS a scammer, even if they don't sound like one.)

5. If it becomes obvious, either through meeting in person or them providing more than one photo of themselves that:
- they are using a photo of another human entirely and representing that as themselves in their profile
- they've provided you with more than one photo supposedly of themselves, and the two photos are CLEARLY different humans entirely (No, we don't mean if you think the photo is unjustly flattering and/or not recent enough. We're talking about a situation where someone is clearly representing a photo of another human entirely as being one of themselves.)

6. If it becomes obvious, either meeting in person or a personal admission that another subscriber is actually a non-trans heterosexual male masquerading as another demographic entirely to sign up for this site. (And he would be masquerading, because there's no option on the questionnaire for non-trans heterosexual male. He necessarily would have had to lie and say he was something else to complete registration.) As "evidence" we will also accept profiles published elsewhere using that same email address, but this time the author admits to being male. However, we can't realistically accept "just your hunch." We need something concrete and more definitive.

7. If you become aware in a way you can concretely describe to us (meaning, more than just a hunch) that the subscriber lied about being 18 or over and is in fact younger.

8. Inclusion of any OFF internet contact info in a profile, like a telephone number or actual geographic address. (for more on the why of that, see the next question in this FAQ)

9. Posting anything that is clearly homophobic.

10. Unprovoked, out of the blue, unnecessary, or just plain irratonal rudeness toward the site administrators or the idea(s) behind the site itself. And yes, we are the final word on what constitutes "unprovoked," but anything even vaguely resembling: Obviously this site is really retarded and useless, but I m signing up anyway because I was bored.  Everyone here is clearly a bunch of idiots but I m just going to post here and let you know.  *****

11. Anything similar to, but not specifically along the lines of the above, where someone's profile does not exist primarily for its intended purpose (meeting people for personal relationships), but to solicit others for some non-personal purpose (research study, going to another website entirely, etc.) It's fine if someone mentions a website they've worked on in their profile, definitely. But if it seems like the profile would have no reason for existing other than as an attempt to generate attention for something else, that's not ok.

12. Anything not already mentioned above, but something that is illegal.

13. Any typographic gibberish (;lkj;lka asd;lkj a;lkjd) in any of the freetext areas, seemingly just to fill up the freetext areas and get the profile to submit/be edited without following those instructions in terms of including actual content.

14. Sends email, posts something in their profile or via other communication that is LEGITIMATELY THREATENING in any way. Do not try to get the last word. Forward any problematic emails to us, we will delete the profile.

Above and beyond those ideas, if we are ever presented with evidence that someone is behaving in any other SERIOUSLY inappropriate way, we will also be happy to delete the profile.

However, please remember that we are not responsible, legally or otherwise, for choices that you make around who to meet and what to do with those people, those are your own adult choices. If there's a serious problem, above and beyond telling us about it, you should contact the police. No personal ad site can be your legal enforcer, but hopefully the actual law could.

(further note on #10) ***** We actually did go back and forth on that one for a bit. We knew admitting subscribers whose initial communication was something along the lines of the above didn't feel like a good time to us, nor did we imagine them to be anyone we'd ever enjoy spending any time with in any way whatsoever. However, we imagined (at the time), perhaps we should set our own egos aside for the overall community? Meaning, perhaps OTHER subscribers might find them enjoyable for . . . something? Anything?

Well, as it turns out, NO. Not at all. Not even a little bit.

We admitted subscribers posting along the lines of the above for a time, and found them to be nothing other than a source of complaints from other subscribers.
No one thought they were interesting.
No one found them fascinating conversationalists or discussion initiators.
No one wanted to get to know them better via private conversations.
No one wanted to meet them in person.

Basically, they were just annoying and sometimes distracting noise to the more sincere subscribers.

Kind of like that car alarm on your block that keeps going off for no apparent reason and everyone gets annoyed because of the incessant meaningless shriek. You could dignify it by calling it a voice,  but you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who found it valuable in any way or would ever want to keep hearing it. You could say those subscribers were a form of noise pollution.

And/or they were just trolls (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_trolls): "A certain breed of internet surfer whose primary motivation in interacting with anyone is to vent some of their spleen on the world. According to the internal logic  of the troll, their hostility seems to be provoked by the internet community into which they re-venting that spleen. However, upon further and detailed examination of whatever they could possibly be responding to, whoever said anything to them, etc., there's no evidence of anything at all that could have provoked it, not according to most rational people, anyway."

And . . . we've definitely had our share on lesbotronic.com. We're definitely not on the market for more. We're also not terribly inclined to positively reinforce social incivility. So, if you think you've found a troll in the personals we somehow neglected to notice, please do let us know.

But, as per all the advice on trolls, if you think you've found one, just report them. Don't bother interacting with them personally, just report them.

What sorts of problems with another subscriber's profile are you going to take seriously?

(Please see the previous question for complete details.)

And why would you delete the profile of someone who did?

Shorter Answer:
We don't think it's a wise thing to do, and we told you so.

Longer Answer:
First of all, if your legitimate profile got deleted because of that, we apologize for the slight inconvenience. However, we do suggest it's only a "slight" inconvenience because we did warn you in the profile submission area that we would do exactly that. Also, if you think your legitimate profile was deleted because you accidentally included that info, you can resubmit a new profile that does NOT. Unless you previously submitted something otherwise problematic or inappropriate, there's no prejudice around resubmitting.

Second, we'll continue to delete profiles containing telephone numbers or physical addresses. We think that's just not smart behavior, and not the best way to go about meeting people on the internet. You should really screen new contacts via email or other relatively anonymous internet contact methods FIRST before giving out more specifically physically "real world" geographically-locating personal information. For more on our thoughts regarding safer behavior on the internet, please see the safety area in our advice section. If you feel you might be naive about safety issues regarding meeting people in person with whom you initially made contact over the internet, please DO visit that link before you do anything else.

Third, and while this has only happened about 4 times in as many years, we have had a few "pranksters" attempt to submit profiles containing the email addresses, telephone numbers, and/or physical addresses of women they knew, but who had NOT actually intended or consented to sign up for this service themselves. The women described or referenced were being "pranked" by someone attempting to surreptitiously sign them up for our service, thinking it a funny "joke."

We don't find this amusing, and I'm sure most of our subscribers who also have a lot of legitimately important stuff to do with their day wouldn't either. We find it a giant and fairly pathetic waste of time, for everyone involved. (File that under: Some People Really Need to Get a F******' Life Already, Sheesh!)

Fortunately, our newer (currently active) system does require users to validate their intent to sign up via email at the email address submitted, so that negates anyone's ability to finalize a registration with an email address not actually their own. As for the telephone numbers and physical geographic addresses, we'll continue to delete any profile containing any of that, so that will finish negating anyone's ability to "pretend" to be someone else to submit a profile and have that person be "pranked" in any significant way.

And if you were reading this thinking you might "prank" someone, we'd again, encourage you to find a constructive hobby already.

OR
"I met someone from lesbotronic.com, and it turned out that she LIED about something really important on her profile (but still NOT listed in the reasons under, "When will you delete someone's personals profile?")!!!! I want to tell you about that so you can take action."

Shorter Answer:
The bar for misbehavior that would cause us to delete a subscriber that didn't want to be deleted is high. If the "problem" you are having with her doesn't clearly qualify as one of the reasons listed 2 questions up under, "When will you delete someone's personals profile?" please consider carefully whether or not the "problem" truly merits your time and ours in reporting it.

Longer Answer:
We've received a few "misrepresentation reports" over the years. Again, as detailed extensively in the answer to the question here in this same FAQ, "When will you delete someone's personals profile?" we do want to delete anyone that's behaving in a truly disturbing or really legitimately, really inappropriate fashion, and/or anyone that is threatening to anyone else in any way.

HOWEVER, please note the bar for misbehavior that would cause us to delete someone is high. We're not inclined to censor or delete anyone in the vast majority of instances that are even slightly questionable. Merely thinking another subscriber is a bit of an ass and/or possibly prone to disseminating a few minor untruths about themselves won't cut the mustard here.

Please also try to understand our position that it is neither practical or possible for us to constantly police everyone that might sign up for our site. We do need to confine our concern exclusively to those situations where things are much LESS questionable.

For example, over the course of one month we received dozens of emails from a subscriber who was "evaluating" other subscribers in terms of how much education they reported they'd received on their profile vs. her own estimation of their probable educational level and general literacy. And when she imagined she'd found a discrepancy, she wrote in to "keep us updated on who was confused about education" so that we could "immediately take the most appropriate action."

She would say one subscriber reported completion of an advanced degree, yet had written her an email that sounded as if the sender could not possibly have graduated from high school. She would report that another's multiple choice answers regarding her educational level didn't mesh with other details shared in her freetext area. Yet another woman needed to be "reported" because she admitted not noticing the difference between "graduated from high school" and "attended graduate school" when filling out her multiple choice questions. She'd clicked "graduate school" instead of "graduated from high school," but reportedly didn't rush to correct that on her profile when our "reporter" informed her of her error.

Um . . . no. Our "most appropriate action" was . . . to do nothing at all. As we told her multiple times, this is not the sort of thing that would meet our standard of truly disturbing and/or legitimately inappropriate.

Did it meet a strictly personal standard of inappropriateness and undesirableness for the woman that was repeatedly writing us? Apparently it absolutely did, and that's absolutely fine. She gets to make her own decisions regarding who is appropriate for HER to meet in HER own life.

And anyone else reading this? If such a subscriber doesn't meet your standards in terms of who YOU'D like to meet, that's appropriate too. Your standards, your choices.

It just doesn't meet our standards in terms of how badly a subscriber would need to behave in order to get deleted.

Meanwhile, while we will never be the height/weight/age/educational level police, if something truly disturbing happened, then yes, we want to know about it.

Generally, if it's a question of you merely not liking the subscriber or thinking most of our subscribers might not like her either, that standard of truly disturbing and/or legitimately inappropriate has probably not been met. We'd advise you in that situation to merely avoid contacting and/or avoid reciprocating any correspondence with the person that offended you and/or anyone else that doesn't strike your fancy for any NON-serious reason.

And then even MORE generally, we'd encourage you to seek out individuals you like, interact with those, and leave behind the rest. We mean that on the site specifically as well as in life in general.

. . . with this person: I just imagine (but don't actually know) that this is a non-trans heterosexual male posing as someone else, they sent me email I think was rude or too explicit, etc., and/or I told them I wasn't interested and they're STILL emailing me. I'm beginning to feel harassed!

While it has NOT been our experience in the years we've been operating lesbotronic.com that idiotic heterosexual men intending to harass women online are often attracted to our service, it has happened a few times.

When it became clear that it had, we deleted the profile in question and encouraged the man involved to realize he wasn't likely to get anywhere that would be pleasurable for him with our subscribers, with the complaints we'd already received serving amply as evidence of that notion. Really, since there are so incredibly many internet services that ARE for non-trans heterosexual men looking for women that might be interested in them, signing up for one of the few that clearly isn't is pretty ridiculous if not downright idiotic behavior.

HOWEVER, what's happened several times more often than the scenario above is that a subscriber to lesbotronic.com complained of some sort of "harassment" . . . but then when we attempted to determine who might be the harasser, what might be the appropriate action to take, etc., they bizarrely seemed to want to continue emailing back and forth on and on into the future while simultaneously AVOIDING the provision of any actually relevant and identifying information. This pronounced avoidance of providing any relevant info continued despite repeated and very specific requests on our part.

We ultimately ended up concluding some of these "reports" were fabricated and the "harassees" were actually motivated to have someone from lesbotronic.com paying attention to/corresponding with them for whatever odd reason, and falsely reporting "harassment" was the inappropriate method they chose to get that attention.

Ultimately, WE have been the ones harassed more than anyone else!

So . . . if you have been getting email from another subscriber that you feel has been severely and/or repeatedly inappropriate, you should still report it to us, but please keep all of the following in mind and consider your report accordingly. And again, in case it wasn't already apparent, we sincerely don't mean to be rude if you were somehow harassed, but we'd ask that you respect our time and our situation as well.

We're not interested in anonymous reports of unverifiable or otherwise vague harassment allegedly perpetrated by anonymous other people. We need the email address you were last using with lesbotronic.com, the email address used on the profile of the person bothering you, at least one copy of some of the troubling email in question COMPLETE WITH SOURCE/INTERNET HEADERS (this means you'll need to forward it to us along with your explanation of why, not just paste a copy of it in your message field), and a clear idea about why this communication was troubling and unsolicited by yourself.

If you're not willing to immediately provide us with these things, we are not going to be able to take you seriously.

With lesbotronic.com as with almost everything else in life, the ultimate decision about how to use our service, with whom to meet, where/how to meet them, and how much personal information to divulge and when during that process is UP TO YOU. Favoring profiles that contained more and more sincere-sounding information in the freetext areas, exchanging email for a period of time before meeting and judging the amount of information and its sincerity in those emails, a phone conversation before meeting, and meeting in a public place for the first time and/or bringing a friend are all excellent ideas. Using your common sense and respecting your intuition are excellent ideas as well. If you begin to suspect there is something flaky or dishonest about someone, you're probably right. Respect that, and move on.

The best response to someone harassing you via email is not to fire back several angry responses of your own, but to stop responding entirely. People with time to spend harassing other people want you to validate them by returning their attentions, even if you do so negatively. Resist the urge to respond and they'll get bored and move on, probably a lot more quickly than you might imagine.

If you convince us another subscriber to lesbotronic.com is harassing you we WILL delete their profile and possibly report them to their internet service providers. You will have done a service for the lesbotronic.com community for which we will be grateful. However, any other action is up to you. We are not law enforcement. If you think some sort of law enforcement might be necessary in your case then that's who you'll need to contact.

"That ain't right and I don't like it. Why don't you just stop that already?"

Shorter Answer:
We're not in the business of defining lesbianism for other people. You can define it for yourself and for those with whom you'll spend time (and there are even Search Options for that on this site). We just won't do it FOR you.

Longer Answer:
When lesbotronic.com first opened its internet "doors," we actually did imagine the site to be exclusively for lesbians. Since that's what we are, that's who we thought we were capable of designing a site to serve, so that's how we set it up. And many lesbians signed up and continue to do so to this day, which makes us very happy. Lesbotronic.com remains a site for lesbians, now and always.

HOWEVER, what we did NOT predict were the large number of bisexual women that quickly started signing up right along with the lesbians.

There weren't any questions on the original questionnaire to assess lesbianism vs. bisexuality, because again, we just hadn't imagined bisexuals would be interested. But we gradually learned that they absolutely were and absolutely were signing up, sometimes via feedback from other subscribers, sometimes via reading their freetext areas.

At first, it just puzzled us, because we thought our site was pretty dyke-specific.

Later, we started getting a lot a LOT of feedback from the lesbians, but it was extremely mixed and extremely polarized.

A good sized chunk of our exclusively lesbian subscribers wrote in feeling very annoyed or angry or even violated that we would "intentionally" (even though that wasn't exactly the case) allow bisexual women to become a part of the group of women in their Search Results. They were NOT having any of that, they thought it was offensive and unwarranted, and they wanted us to know that in NO uncertain terms.

Another but different good-sized chunk of our exclusively lesbian subscribers wrote in saying that they were NOT bothered by the presence of the bisexuals. In fact, they thought it was rather progressive and open-minded of us to "allow" (even though that wasn't exactly the case) bisexual women to sign up, and they congratulated us for it. Their thinking was something like, "If some bisexual grrl wants to date a lesbian, then bring it, it's cool and so am I."

In the meantime, we also gave the matter some more thought ourselves, and realized our initial surprise that bisexual women were signing up was actually rather naive, if not downright preposterous.

We realized that any intimate (define "intimate" however you like) relationship between two women could be defined as a lesbian relationship. Even if that's a connection between two women that are merely "bicurious" and have announced that to each other, whatever they might explore together could be defined as a lesbian connection or relationship. Hence, "lesbotronic." We're not sure what a bisexual connection would be unless a minimum of 3 people representing multiple genders were involved intimately during the same set of moments . . . but . . . well . . . stopping now. (I'm sure you get the idea.) So, it really DOES stand to reason that bisexual women looking for new intimate relationships with other women (lesbian or bisexual) would look on a lesbian site for that.

So, again, some lesbians have written in complaining that bisexual women are allowed to sign up, and requesting that no longer be the case. Not just that they don't want to hear from bisexual women via their OWN subscription here, but that no bisexual woman should ever be allowed to sign up for anything on the site.

So no to that, we're not excluding them. Bisexual women are absolutely welcome here.

HOWEVER, those lesbians that do NOT want to hear from bisexual women via their subscription here, DO NOT HAVE TO HEAR FROM THEM. If YOU want lesbotronic.com to be your personals site that only matches you, as a lesbian, with only other lesbians, it can be precisely that site for you. You can totally opt out of hearing from anyone other than other subscribers who identified as lesbian. It's easy as pie to do via your Search Options.

So really, your wishes are respected as well, in terms of your personal interaction with lesbotronic.com. The way our Search Options work, subscribers must define themselves along a continuum of lesbian to bisexual to bicurious, and also select who they are open to hearing from on same. This actually wasn't the case when we first started the site, but it definitely is NOW, in response to this exact controversy.

It's completely possible via our Search Options to define yourself as strictly lesbian and exclude anyone not also defining themselves as such. It's also possible to define yourself as bisexual and only hear from other bisexuals. Or to define yourself as only wanting "something on the side" and be matched with same. Or, you could be open to hearing from everyone and/or some subset of the above. So along the lines of that discussed in this paragraph, lesbotronic.com can be whatever you'd like it to be for YOU.

Meanwhile, any readers out there still feeling argumentative about the wisdom of this choice should realize that lesbians, bisexual women, bicurious women, trans folk and genderqueers do often date each other. Yes indeed, they certainly do. That doesn't mean YOU have to date anyone in that set that YOU don't want to date. Nope, never, not ever, not at all.

But to assume for all lesbians everywhere that they want to avoid dating bisexual women, bicurious women, trans folk and/or genderqueers is simply not your job. For YOUR life, absolutely. For everyone else's life too . . . nope.

Do you also welcome . . . ????

- a BUTCH that wants to meet other BUTCHES
- a femme that wants to meet other femmes
- an andro that wants to meet other andros and/or anyone else
- a label-rejecting and/or label-oblivious sort who wants to meet similar and/or anyone else
- any queer chick at all who just wants to meet other queer chicks already, gimme a f'ing break

Shorter Answer:
YES! Come right on in!

Longer Answer:
We do get something like this question on a fairly regular basis, and quite frankly, we find it a bit curious. And by a bit curious we mean . . . we're not exactly embracing societal norms over here just by being our own lesbian queer-identified selves in our own lives, much less running a website like this one.

Soooo . . . why would we go as far as we've already obviously gone on the non-conformity front . . . but then suddenly halt, stop short, then suddenly insist on some sort of conforming, totally arbitrary, and not at all necessary policing sort of nonsense just on THIS variable?

(Answer = We don't. And, we won't.)

Yes, the butch on femme thing is the "traditional classic," the "old school" choice. And we do think that dynamic is exciting and fabulous, not to mention firmly grounded in historical traditions. Butches who want to meet femmes and femmes who want to meet butches ... C'mon Down!

But ALSO . . . BUTCHES that get turned on by other BUTCHES? Welcome! We want YOU to sign up TOO!! Yes, please!

Meanwhile, while we certainly were not LYING above when we phrased the original question the way we did . . . we weren't exactly laying all our cards on the table. We phrased it that way because it: seemed to make the most sense for everyone, was the most logically congruous, made the most sense just in case anyone in the other categories might have that question in the future, and because we're trying to create the most comprehensive FAQ here.

When we say we weren't exactly laying all our cards on the table, what we meant was . . . curiously . . . in the entire history of this site, no one other than a butch that wanted to meet other butches ever felt the need to ask us for any sort of permission. A butch interested in meeting other butches was the only permutation here that ever seemed to have any doubts whatsoever as whether or not they were welcome.

Femmes that want to meet other femmes just sign up all over the place. They never thought to ask permission. And, that's great! Same for andros, same for the label-rejecting and the label-oblivious sort. And that's also great! And then obviously, butches wanting to meet femmes and femmes wanting to meet butches never felt the need to ask permission either, and that still continues to be great.

It's only ever been the butches that wanted to meet other butches that seemed to think perhaps they should check with us first. Like . . . we were just gonna smack 'em upside the head otherwise . . . or . . . something?

???

If someone wants to write in and give us their unique take on that, we're listening.
But meanwhile, that's why they were the ones emphasized above, just in case they needed that.

So . . . again . . . BUTCHES WHO WANT TO MEET OTHER BUTCHES . . . WELCOME!!! (please now picture us with big smiles and welcoming-like beckoning hands)

Please see the question above, the one with 3 triangles.

Please see the question above, the one with 3 triangles.

Please see the question above, the one with 3 triangles.

No. Just N.O. NOOO. These particular personals are not for you. This one little corner of the internet = actually not designed just for you. But hey, pretty much all the other personals websites IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE actually ARE, and there's about a kajillion of them.

All for YOU, non-trans heterosexual guy!

Please try not to be a total asshat and respect that this is one of the few sites that isn't. Thank you for understanding.

Related Question:
But you allow women married to non-trans heterosexual men to sign up, right?

Yes, but then tell HER to sign up. And be honest about having a husband.
To put it yet another way, non-trans heterosexual men don't get to sign up all by themselves, they'll need their female significant other along for the ride as well.

That is, non-trans heterosexual men who continue to live their lives publicly as non-trans heterosexual men, but wear some womens' clothing exclusively in private as a fetish?

Shorter Answer:
No. This is not the website for you; the women signing up here are NOT the best audience for a personals ad from you.

Longer Answer:
Are you at least contemplating estrogen or surgery? Or, crossdressing in public? Do you self-identify as a woman? Are you in any way committed to your identity as a woman other than those times when hardly anyone is looking?

(No, this is not a request to send us email answering those questions for us. Those are things to think about just on your end.)

If no to all of those, then sorry. This site is for women and trans folk and genderqueers who are looking to meet similar. It's not open to non-trans heterosexual men. If you live your life publicly as a non-trans heterosexual male but only crossdress in private for strictly intimate reasons and have no plans to make femininity any more a part of your life than that, we don't consider you trans. We consider you a non-trans heterosexual man with a crossdressing fetish.

Not that there's anything wrong with that. Not at all. But our site is for a specific audience, described above.

And while we do get a few men periodically asking us about this issue, quite frankly, YOU don't need us either. You might imagine you do, but really, you DON'T.

There's roughly 48 trillion personal ad sites out there engineered specifically to help non-trans heterosexual men find heterosexual women. Which is what you are, and what you're looking for. Women don't sign up for this site to look for non-trans heterosexual men who live their lives as such except for a few moments in private.

And heterosexual or even bisexual women who are currently looking on the internet for a non-trans heterosexual male partner? They don't go to sites run by lesbians to do that. They go to sites designed for heterosexuals. So even if a woman is bisexual? If she's on the internet looking for a heterosexual male, she'll be doing that ELSEWHERE.

We had several email exchanges with the men described immediately above, and a few said, "But most straight women don't want to date a man who crossdresses!" 

(Um . . . are you noticing that's not actually our problem? Quite possibly not. But just to be nice, we'll go ahead and address it anyway.)

You're right. Most straight women don't want to date a guy who crossdresses occasionally. Nope.

But you don't really need your personal ad to appeal to MOST straight women, do you? That would really be a bit much. You don't have that kind of time, nobody does. You only need to appeal to a few or several or even a few dozen women, and we imagine you can manage to do just that IF you put in the necessary effort on a site THAT IS APPROPRIATE for you to do just that.

Cast a wide enough net (again, on sites that welcome non-trans heterosexual men), and you'll find some. Meanwhile, it's the case that most heterosexual women don't want to date a guy with a fetish of ANY unusual variety. Nope, they don't. So really, the boat you're in with the crossdressing isn't even as tiny as you're probably imagining. Men with unusual fetishes usually have to cast wider nets than those that don't, and again, that's any fetish.

No, we can't recommend any such sites for heterosexuals, because we don't concern ourselves with such things, but we don't need to for your sake. Again, 48 trillion personal ad sites out there just for you. Do your own search, you'll find at least a million. The world is mostly designed for heterosexual men. Just not THIS one site.

Furthermore, even if you lied and submitted a profile with us anyway, we're not your target audience. This is a site designed by lesbians. Trust us on this. If you insisted on signing up anyway, you'd just get flak and complaints, probably not as politely worded as the above. Dykes and queers have a history of getting justifiably annoyed and more than a little angry when space designed just for them is invaded by someone who was specifically asked to stay away. Really.

"Isn't that just very Very VERY WRONG? Why can't you just STOP cheaters?**"

Shorter Answer:
We are not responsible for the morality of others. We also think it's better for all lesbotronic.com subscribers, "cheaters" and "non-cheaters" alike, that the "cheaters" feel they can freely identify themselves.

Longer Answer:
Regarding the question of whether or not we should allow CHEATERS to sign up for lesbotronic.com, and the idea some seem to possess that WE should somehow be able to just STOP the cheaters in their tracks, below is one actual email we received. We're quoting this email just because it was the one we had handy while writing this FAQ, but it's more or less representative of about 150 others:

"How can you allow people who are lying to their lovers about being monagamus to date others knowing they are lying and cheating. That is not fair to their lover and very unethical. What does that say about the ethics of lesbotronic.com? Do you really think that is fair to their lover who has to be faithful to someone who is screwing around with others freely? Why would we want to date someone like that? What about moral standards? I pity their lover as well as the fool who dates them. How can you be for marriage and still allow people who lie to their lovers to find people to screw around with openly on this dating service. It makes me have nightmares to know women are doing this to their lover."

First, we'd say . . . this isn't really an actual legitimate question, is it? At least, it's just NOT a "question" in the sense of one person desiring some nugget of practical information from us, phrasing a request for that in a reasonable manner, then expecting anyone on our end to be able to reply both briefly and helpfully.

No. It's really the eruption of one person's righteously felt moral indignation . . . disguised (but only very transparently) as a "question" . . . then lobbed in our general direction.

And that would be because it was gratifying for the author to experience that righteously felt moral indignation in the intense way she apparently did while sending the email.

Basically, "questions" like that one are the result of the author wanting more humans out there in the world (presumably more than she already knows personally) to know she finds herself to be more high-minded and upstanding than a bunch of OTHER humans out there in the world. Probably she'd like all lesbians everywhere to hear about her self-congratulatory self-assessment. (However, that would require a HECK of a lot more effort from her on the emailing front.)

BUT, because her righteously felt moral indignation came to such a rapid boil, she felt she simply couldn't go to bed that night without sending a snarky email to SOMEONE, so she settled for us because . . . ??? Perhaps because we at lesbotronic.com are the arbiters of whether or not women everywhere cheat, especially if it involves another woman too? Except, oh LOOK, nope, not at all.

You could also imagine an email like the one above as a clumsy attempt at a philosophical debate. But to any extent we're interested in engaging in debates on philosophical issues, we can almost guarantee that we will NOT choose authors of snarky little emails pretending to be questions as debating partners.

Anyway, we're including this "question" in the FAQ for anyone that might want to ask us about this in a more legitimate and straightforward way. (Even though so far NO reasonable-sounding person has EVER written in about it, someone eventually might.)

Something like: Do you really think it's a good idea to have options on your questionnaire whereby the authors of personals profiles can indicate they are looking to "cheat" on a significant other? And then also a good idea to include that in your Search Options, so all other subscribers can sort by who they would or would not like to hear from on that variable as well?

So, in case you hadn't already guessed, the answer to THOSE two much more direct and specific questions would be YES.

We think there are basically three options here:

1. Pretend we live in a G-rated instead of an NC-17 world, and that no one who wants to cheat on anyone else would ever even consider signing up for our site. (We already have more than ample evidence for FALSE, hence the word "pretend.")

2. Put a big sign on the front of the site that says, "CHEATERS NOT ALLOWED HERE! THESE ARE OUR RULES!"

And then assume that would entirely repel all cheaters. Because it's a safe assumption that if we had such a rule and made it apparent to everyone, no one would EVER break our rule and sign up anyway, right? No one would ever decide to sign up anyway and just avoid mentioning the fact they were looking to cheat during the sign-up process so we wouldn't know what they were up to . . . right? Right?

Um . . . NOOO and again, NOOOOOO. If someone already wants to "betray" a partner by breaking the rules established during an ongoing and supposedly important personal relationship, what sort of problem would it be for them to "betray" a website and/or the (so far) completely anonymous other subscribers on it?

We're thinking, no problem at all.

3. Accept what our experience, both with this website and as humans in the world, tells us is the essential reality here. That being, cheaters exist, they will continue to exist, and some of them are going to sign up for this website.

Sooo . . . we accepted #3 as the inescapable truth. Then, we attempted to deal with that in the most constructive way possible. Which was:

- Give cheaters an option to select that indicates that that is what they want to do. This gives them the option to sign up and be honest during that process. Well, honest to the other subscribers of THIS website, if not anyone else.

- Give all other subscribers the option to select that they do NOT want to hear from self-identified cheaters, if that is in fact the case. To the extent non-cheaters don't wish to be contacted by cheaters in any particular municipality, it could very well become the case that most cheaters there hook up only with other cheaters much more often than not. And that might also be best for everyone.

Can we guarantee that all would-be cheaters will select the option that most honestly represents their situation and their intentions? Of course not. Please refer to the preceding discussion on reality.

However, a LOT of them WILL. This is no experiment; we already know this to be the ongoing case. Lots of women signing up for lesbotronic.com do this every single day.

And the would-be cheaters that are on the fence about admitting their intentions vs. not? REALLY, you REALLY should, practically speaking and for your OWN benefit.

First, any other subscriber you might manage to hook up with is going to figure out SOMETHING is up, if you try to proceed into that relationship without admitting the whole truth. You'll be acting all sketchy, generally twitchy, and suspiciously avoidant. You won't be able to spend time with her whenever and wherever without "looking over your shoulder," either literally or figuratively or both. You and your new contact may as well plan to avoid that unpleasant husband (or whatever) TOGETHER. May as well find someone who's down with that scenario from the get go, or else she'll be back out of your life in an indignant huff. Probably a lot sooner than you previously imagined.

Second, if you try to pretend you're not looking to cheat and other subscribers figure out that you ARE, but are trying to pull the wool over their eyes about it, you're likely to get a slew of emails just like the one above. Surely you would prefer to avoid THAT.

OTHER RELATED QUESTIONS:

Do we condone cheating? Is anyone at lesbotronic.com a "fan" of cheating?

No. In fact, elsewhere on this site in our advice section, we specifically relate our collective idea that cheaters** usually get caught, their personal relationships get damaged as a result more often than not, and then it's no fun for anyone. And "no fun" would be our most minimal prediction of the probable damage report. We do predict damage for the cheater as well as the "cheatee."

Do we think we're facilitating cheating via this website?

No. We don't think we have the power to stop cheating in any overall sense when something like ALL LESBIANS EVERYWHERE are concerned. We just don't think we have QUITE that much power, not by a LOOOOOONG shot. Because if we did think that, that would mean we find ourselves to be God or Goddess-like. And last time we all individually looked in the mirror, no Goddess-like abilities made themselves apparent.

Do we think there could ever be a situation that justifies cheating? Or at least where cheating is not ethically WRONG?

Sure.

OK, we'll let you recover from your shock there for a few seconds.

...

...

We're still not promoting "cheating" as a healthy lifestyle choice, no, not at all. LIke we said before, repeated cheating** usually results in Nothing But Trouble.

But we don't think it's generally intelligent or constructive to think entirely in black-and-white terms. Blanket statements about any group of people or any activity always end up being both unfortunate and untrue. No one is able to conceive of all the situations that might induce "cheating."

Furthermore, no one is able to conceive of the entirety of the substance of all the lives of all the women that might sign up for our site and say they wanted to cheat on someone else.

Can you ask an individual subscriber about HER life? Well, if you both sign up and your collective Search Options do not exclude each other, of course you can. And then you might know more about HER.

But can you make any reasonable blanket statement about ALL would-be cheaters who ever signed up for this site and/or ever will in the future?

No. You can't do that accurately.

You just don't know. And you never will.

Maybe someone has an abusive husband, but just simply can NOT extricate herself from some otherwise undesirable relationship for some complex set of reasons that you've been fortunate enough to avoid in your OWN life, so you probably can't completely imagine them. Or maybe she's in some other unloving situation that she just can't leave, but still wants to find some love or affection to help gratify her own existence before she shuffles off this mortal coil. You may not understand it or condone it or desire any personal involvement with it. And, that's fine. But sometimes, you should still just cork your own whine with regard to HER situation.

Or maybe she and her significant other "cheat" on each other on a regular basis, and that's totally OK, with THEM. Confused now? Yes, this stuff can be.

There's sometimes a gray area between "cheating" and "open relationship," or what most more enlightened folks would consider honest and open polyamory. That area for many couples is a sort of, "I don't care what you're doing and with whom, and I don't want to hear anything about it. Neither should any of our mutual friends. All you have to do to keep me happy is keep whatever 'cheating' you do a secret from the folks we need to keep it a secret from AND keep it from ever negatively affecting ME in any way." (As an example of this type of arrangement, many have used what many have hypothesized might be the case in the marital relationship of a certain previous American president.)

Those persons would probably pick the "cheating" option as the closest to their actual situation on our questionnaire, because it's closer to the truth than most folks' definition of open and honest polyamory. Meaning, you're not going to have a relationship with them that's going to be out in the open to everyone, it would be a more clandestine affair. However, that doesn't necessarily mean their significant other would be anything in the ballpark of heartbroken if they discovered their spouse got busy with another human . . . as long as certain other people in their lives remained firmly under the (mistaken) impression they remained traditionally monogamous. Like . . . other more conservative family members, their boss, or maybe their kids. Or you know, the mass media and/or certain subcommittees, if we're talking about high-profile politicians.

We're not saying that sort of situation is going to work out. We're also NOT saying it WON'T. We're merely saying we don't have a problem with it, ethically OR philosophically. Furthermore, why SHOULD we?

And really, should YOU spend a lot of your OWN time and energy worrying about these sorts of choices made in the intimate personal lives of other people you DON'T EVEN KNOW?

Similarly, and via the personals, we'd encourage you to simply seek out individuals you like and with whom you are compatible (according to your ideas regarding cheating and anything else under the sun), interact with those, and just leave behind the rest. We mean that on this site specifically as well as in life in general.

**** Again, in case it wasn't already completely apparent, our idea of "cheating" does not not and will never include the openly polyamorous and relationships that are openly poly.

We've experimented with a wide variety of affiliate advertising, pay per impression, pay per click, and pay per response options. So far we've consistently received the best results from Google Adwords and Adify's Lesbian Ad Network, although we also run a few other programs for variety. We also don't have very many advertising slots on the site, and have no immediate plans to add more. This means that if you want to advertise on our site and we decide your program sounds promising, you'd be included in the rotation for the existing slots, not that we're going to add more and more slots all over the place.

So really, what this means for any potential advertiser is that they'd probably get the best results/most exposure just by advertising on our site VIA Google Adwords or Adify/Lesbian Ad Network, since we already have that in place. It seems the options they offer increase practically monthly; we'd imagine you could find something to your liking already within one of those programs.

We've also been contacted by many various organizations that wanted us to replace one of our current ad slots with one of their own. However, most of those offers were not all that worthwhile.

In addition, the appeal of both Google Adwords and Adify/Lesbian Ad Network is the minimal lack of programming, monitoring, and day-to-day managing required from us. We're usually happy to provide any interested parties with basic demographic information, but some have wanted us to collect detailed info on page views, other page stats, unique visitors, etc. The shorter answer to those sorts of questions is: A lot. The longer answer is: We don't have the time to micro-monitor that stuff; we're busy running this site in many other ways.

So. If you would still like to advertise here but NOT via Google or Adify/Lesbian Ad Network, feel free to send us your information to webmistresses [[at]] lesbotronic [[dot]] com. Please be as specific and detailed as possible within that original email. Please do not just email us suggesting general "opportunities" or requesting time for a "conference call," etc. We are frankly communicating upfront that we're not eager to spend time on the phone with people we don't know; our preferred form of communication is email. Also, if you send us a very vague email, we will imagine you are not a potential advertiser but actually a salesperson for some service you're hoping lesbotronic.com will purchase from you (because we get that sort of email constantly too), and we're unlikely to respond. Thanks for understanding.

. . . queer women/genderqueer/transfolk, etc. I don't mean something that would constitute a reason for deletion of another site subscriber, but something else going on in my life. Should I write you a long email describing that problem, and ask for your advice?

Shorter Answer:
Not the best idea, we have a better one.

Longer Answer:
Please don't take this the wrong way, it's nothing personal. But we'd really rather you did NOT. It's not that we're a bunch of heartless uncaring meanies, but rather that we get a LOT of email, and we might not have time to answer in a timely fashion. In addition, while we find it flattering that you imagine you might value our advice on your personal issue, we might not have a lot of advice to offer at the moment.

HOWEVER, that does NOT mean you can't use the site in general to look for answers/opinions/feedback. Please sign up for the forum, and post your issue there instead of emailing it to us. We'll see your post over there, and if we have something we think might be constructive to offer, we'll offer it over there. But then if we cannot or do not, we won't have to feel bad you wasted your time typing your whatever only to us, because there are thousands of other subscribers in our forum and some of them probably do have something constructive to offer. In addition to that, your issue and others' responses can be seen by other folks as well, and that might benefit them too. You can always post whatever you like in the forum in a way that doesn't include any identifying info.

. . . rather than having to compose whole emails?

Shorter Answer:
We have no plans to implement anything like that because . . . we simply don't wish to do so.

Longer Answer:
OK, first, this doesn't mean, ";)" or similar typographic emoticons included in a profile or emailed correspondence. It means a feature on some personals websites wherein one can send another subscriber a "wink" (or the tiny graphical representation of a "nudge" or WHATEVER) and nothing else. This is sent not along with, but in lieu of anything at all containing words. It's just some sort of tiny graphic that the subscriber is notified another subscriber wanted them to receive. Not something personalized for either subscriber, just some little prefabricated pic of a winking eye or somesuch the site has in its system.

We admit, at first that sort of thing seems cute. Maybe getting your first few "nudges" would feel fun too.

But before long you'd probably begin to imagine you'd wandered into the Land of Senselessly Baffling Internet Gibberish. If someone could send you a "wink" on lesbotronic.com, in the absense of nouns, verbs or even adjectives, exactly what meaning will you be gleaning from that? And is that the same meaning the sender intended?

Who the heck knows? We don't, likely you wouldn't either.

And then, what do you do? Wink/nudge back?

And then what? Go again? Another round of winking?

We're thinking ultimately, that won't be so gratifying. And to get to anything that would be, eventually one of you will have to go ahead and communicate using your actual words.

Sooo . . . we think you might as well cut to the chase, save a llttle time, and simply start there. With the words, that is.

(Even if some of you might consider it a bit old-fashioned, here at lesbotronic.com we maintain our steadfast belief in the awesome power of actual sentences.)

Shorter Answer:
We have a very large number of subscribers and very little patience for trolls. This is not the best environment for a live chat room.

Longer Answer:
OK, first, the discussion forum itself IS an internet "lounge" in which chatting about various things is heartily encouraged. Barring the occasional technical issue, it's available "live" and 24/7/365. Women have great discussions in there, it's just that it's much less likely that you'll get a response to one of your posts in 60 seconds or less. (You'd probably get a more considered answer, but later.) So, there's that.

But you probably meant some sort of real-time thing that scrolls quickly down your screen, into which folks type tiny one-line word snippets that are hyperactively scampering away as soon as you see them like . . .

a/s/l?
21-female-Arkansas
LOL, I lived there once
;)
i luv lucy lawless!
Ark ROCKS!!!
NOOO!--- me iz hater of evryting arkansas
me 2!!!!!!
wut R U wearing right NOW?
hi i jus got here who is here?
hey LL fan RU in Dallas?
no i M not, l.a. 4 me
OMG I am in l.a. 2! :)
U sound hot, ark! R U hot?
who wants 2 meet me 2nite? LOL!

Some like them. We don't, at least not for a site like this that accepts a very large number of subscribers without meeting most in person first.

The ideal of a chat room is that it would LIKE to resemble worthwhile discourse between at least vaguely intelligent and above the age-of-consent adults with a mature approach to many topics, including human sexuality.

Repeat, it would LIKE to resemble that. Ideally.

But largely, most chat rooms don't accomplish this. No matter the intended clientele of any well-intentioned chat room, most quickly get relentlessly populated by teen boys and/or those with a similar mentality.

The "chat room" medium seems to almost unavoidably attract the lowest common denominator, often those who aren't attracted to or desired by or involved in or qualified in any way whatsoever for the other features of the website hosting it. And then if anyone more desirable and/or better-intentioned and/or higher-minded was ever there before, they quickly leave in disgust because someone harassed them or suddenly asked them what they were wearing in the most idiotic and asinine way possible.

Some even retain that negative experience, take it personally, and irrationally blame it on the website in question, rather than just on the idiots that were allowed to participate in the chat room. We've seen this sort of thing before, and it's not something we'd like to see repeated within the bounds of lesbotronic.com.

We could avoid it if we took shifts "babysitting" the chat room. But we really are too busy with other things to do (including the other features of this site) to even consider doing that regularly. Plus, it might completely destroy our will to live.

If you're within a very unique and very tightly controlled environment with rigorously monitored and ruthlessly enforced membership criteria that you know excludes anyone other than an EXCEEDINGLY select population with whom you already know you'd like to chat, chat rooms might provide something valuable . . . MAYBE. But meanwhile, they still don't provide much if anything beyond a more measured conversation in a regular forum. Which we already offer.

Otherwise, chat rooms are notorious troll magnets. They are the internet destination of choice for anyone pretending to be someone else. (If you're a man pretending to be a woman and would like to share some typing with other men pretending similar and/or the very occasional woman pretending she'll EVER meet any man she met in a chat room later in real life, then by all means, seek out many chat rooms.)

Additionally and apart from the probable troll factor, anything that can and wants to be rapidly typed into a hyperactively scrolling and completely temporary environment for a mostly anonymous crowd probably isn't extremely worth saying. We didn't coin this term and unfortunately don't know who did . . . but have heard chat rooms described as "word barf."

Based on our experiences on many sites with chat rooms, we can't broadly disagree.

If you are honest about who you are and even remotely serious about what you have to say, we'd recommend putting your thoughts into environments that tend to promote more intelligent and/or individualized discourse. That would be those where they will stick around longer than the 45 seconds it will take them to scroll off into the ether. Your thoughts deserve it. Or . . . if they really and truly don't . . . work on developing better thoughts. It's best for everyone, including yourself.

(Note: By "chat room" we DON'T mean individual instant message/one-on-one personal chat situations, and/or those that are more like a private personal phone call or conference between pre-selected individuals, but typed and online. That might be a nice intermediate option for many between email and phone. Our definition of "chat room" here refers to the larger free-for-all babble-fests that invite anyone at all to stop by and barf some words.)

Way back when we first opened our internet doors, we usually got this question with regard to queer women of color. These days we're pleased to receive that particular question less frequently, because we now have a significant number of queer female subscribers of color in quite a few cities. So that's definitely an improvement.

But meanwhile, this question and answer could conceivably apply to anything at all on our questionnaire.

We're not in any way actively soliciting or NOT actively soliciting anything or anyone in particular, other than lesbian/queer/bisexual/bicurious/trans/genderqueer folk who want to participate in lesbotronic.com. That last list? We want ALL of them. :)

Ergo, if it's something on our questionnaire, then it is already ABSOLUTELY the case that we'd like AS MANY (insert desirable quality here) AS POSSIBLE. It's not at all by our design or intention that many or most in the database have self-identified as (insert quality the asker of the ? desires less here), that's just who has signed up thus FAR.

If you'd like to see more (insert desirable quality here) in our database and are aware of a good website that seems to attract more (insert desirable quality here) than we do, and that site is or might be open to doing a link exchange or listing our site as a resource for their visitors for free, let us know, we'd be more than happy to review that and contact the appropriate parties.

However, please understand in advance, since we are a free service, we don't pay for advertising. A link exchange or a free listing would be the only way we could attract more (insert desirable quality here) than we already are.

"It would be so much better if you didn't."

Shorter Answer:
Actually, we agree. Sort of.

Longer Answer:
What we mean by the shorter answer is many of the ads probably are pretty useful for folks, and we don't think that's a bad thing, not at all. We imagine those that are really intent on meeting lots of women ASAP might sign up for other services as well. We don't find that logically inconsistent or troubling in any way. Especially if someone wants to meet lots of other women quickly, she might benefit from signing up for a variety of things.

But honestly, the most important reason is it currently costs a good-sized chunk of change to keep lesbotronic.com going. And sadly, we are not independently wealthy.

We decided when we started this thing that we would always keep it free for subscribers.

We didn't have any ads anywhere on it for a LOOOONG time, and we paid the smaller bills to keep it going out of our own pockets.

But gradually, as the site got more and more popular, it became more and more expensive to operate.

We never envisioned the site as something that would MAKE us a lot of money. And that's fine.

However, we also didn't envision that lesbotronic.com should make it too challenging for the women who donated their time to run it to pay their OTHER bills. And in order to avoid that, some form of revenue generation to feed our rapidly growing gigantic internet baby eventually became necessary.

So, realistic options?

1. Charge our subscribers (what most personals sites do).
2. Ask for donations. (Hey, how generous is everyone feeling?) But really, even if we went in that direction, which we didn't feel like doing and most likely never will, it's really hard to run a site with regular substantial bills exclusively on donations. That would be because it's next to impossible to plan how one will get those bills paid since human generosity is inherently unpredictable. Meanwhile, the bills to keep the site on arrive on an exceedingly predictable schedule, and they're not optional.
3. Put ads on some areas of the site.

We chose Door #3. Of course, Door #4 could have been letting lesbotronic.com die due to lack of funds. We didn't choose that either.

Obviously, you don't have to click on any of the ads if you don't wanna. But to complain about their presence is a little . . . well . . . unappreciative of the service we offer, and more than a little rude. Please dial that back.

Bionic  wasn't a word we had in mind when we registered the domain, but that's pretty funny. And if you enjoy thinking about Bionic Women when also thinking of lesbotronic.com, you'll get no objections from us.

But actually, what we wanted to do when we started the thing was create our own little word that was some amalgamation of "lesbian" and "electronic" and/or something indicating the internet, obviously to indicate a website wherein one might connect with other lesbians electronically. In the city in which we lived at the time, "lesbo" was a popular slang term for lesbian, used by some homophobic idiots as an insult, similar to dyke. Probably not as popular as dyke, but somewhere in the same ballpark (of course, that was a few years ago, in our observations dyke has become much more popular now). After a bunch of brainstorming, lesbotronic was the word we came up with that we liked the most at the time. We'll not burden you with our lesser alternatives. ;)

Meanwhile, we've since been informed that urbandictionary.com has its very own definition for lesbotronic: "gay tendency, reference, or feeling." 

Based on that, some folks wrote in asking if WE were personally responsible for inserting this particular word into the queer vernacular, or had we somehow invented some word at the same time as someone else on urbandictionary.com, or was this a reference to some other phenomenon we were honoring with our domain name? We swear we DID invent it ourselves independently (during a little party involving several pitchers of margaritas, actually), and hadn't yet heard it outside our little circle. We were actually pretty surprised to see it as a definition of anything anywhere outside our site, or to see our little word anywhere else at all (not referencing our site). And actually, according to godaddy.com (a popular domain registrar), urbandictionary was created sometime in 2001, whereas we registered lesbotronic.com in 1998. However, there's no reference to our site on urbandictionary nor any indication of the chronology of the definition. Bummer. So urbandictionary.com didn't predate us with its definition, but that doesn't necessarily mean someone else didn't. But if someone else did predate us, it wasn't apparent in their definition. In any case, no one registered it as a domain, so we think we were at the very least the first ones who felt strongly about the whole thing.

So we then did a Google search for lesbotronic, looking for any additional clues. Most of the references were actually already about our site, but we also found one regarding a band called "Pintsize" that entitled their self-described "new heavy metal disco song," Lesbotronic.  According to amazon.com, that album was released in 2005. Heavy metal AND disco? Er. Hmmm. Good luck with that, seems a fairly challenging synthesis. Did the song's title have anything to do with us? We don't know and didn't bother contacting them, but based on a brief viewing of the band's myspace page, we're thinking probably not. But hey, cool song title! (grin)

We gave up after about 20 pages of Google results. Or rather, we just got bored. But we maintain that if there were folks on the internet that could potentially lay claim to the invention of the term "lesbotronic,"  especially with regard to anything dykey, they didn't document themselves very well, definitely not before we did. So um . . . there.

Finally, one woman wrote in to say that a character on the popular Showtime TV series Queer as Folk (no longer in production, but as of this writing, still frequently played on a few networks) used our little word. However, upon viewing of the recommended episode in question with a remote and repeated rewinds, it seemed the word in question was actually something like les-bee-onic.  It WAS used to indicate things of a dyke-y nature, but NOT quite the same sounding word. No "tronic" sound with a T. As far as we know, no other episode of this TV series nor any other have used our word.  Too bad.

If anyone else notices any instances of "lesbotronic" floating around that don't specifically already deal with our site, feel free to let us know. If we find it sufficiently amusing, we might mention it here.

We've received a LOT of feedback on the questionnaire itself, probably more than any other aspect of this website. However, it's been extremely mixed. Here are some examples below. Some are actual word-per-word emails we saved for our own amusement, while others are a rough facsimile of a certain type of compliment or complaint. We have sort of been tallying it over time, not saving all the responses, but we have read them and logged the "type."

-------

About 5% - Your retarded questions are stupid/boring/trivial/total BS and now I totally hate you!!!!!!!!! You SUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(We tend not to correspond with these. Partly because they seem really adolescent and hostile, but mostly because we just don't tolerate excessive punctuation all that well.)

About 11% - I liked SOME of the questions you asked, but you asked FAR too many. I don't know how you could expect hardly any women at all to complete that questionnaire since it is WAY too long. I totally know that your service will never be even SLIGHTLY successful until you quit asking so many damn questions and just focus on your few decent ones.

(For the above sort of complaint and the ones who shared, the questions they DID favor other than the ones that were extremely basic (like geography) were various, not at all the same questions. There's never been any clear or consistent pattern. All questions other than the ones already used as search criteria are about equally as likely to be thought completely unnecessary OR absolutely essential.)

About 62% - Wow, I love this! Such funny and insightful questions, and fun to fill out! I liked that you asked about such a wide variety of things, and the choices you offered really reflected an enjoyable sense of humor and a nuanced understanding of the lesbian community. And totally free to boot. I'm looking forward to really getting to know other women via your system. Bravo! You guys ROCK!

About 22% - I DO understand what you're TRYING to do here, with the questionnaire that's longer than most personals services. But just these questions, will NEVER be enough for something REAL. If you really want to offer lesbians something that is REALLY comprehensive, you need to go DEEPER, and you need to ask MORE. Asking more is the only way to get more. Your questionnaire thus far doesn't yet probe the REAL reality of how REAL lesbians really feel. Real lesbians are more sensitive and have deeper issues than your questions really probe. Frankly, I'm surprised you don't seem to understand that already. Maybe you should try to understand what lesbians (other than just yourselves) REALLY care about? If you agree, I can recommend some books you should read.

-------

In short, we do welcome feedback, and we do read and consider anything that is remotely reasonable and constructive. But please also realize that while we hope our service is pleasing and will remain so for most subscribers most of the time, it's completely impossible for us to make it 100% pleasing for 100% of women 100% of the time. That website does not, can not, and never will exist.

It's all a juggling act. And our "balls," as it were, are absolutely already in the air.

And we'd ask you to keep that firmly in mind when you contact us.

Additional note: If you have an idea of an additional option we should add to one of our pre-existent questions, we might incorporate that input. If you have an idea of another whole question we should add, it's still possible we'd incorporate that input too, but it's less likely. Not because we necessarily doubt your question-writing ability, but because we think the questionnaire already covers a pretty broad range of topics, and it's already a length we're not eager to surpass.

Please read the answer to the previous question.

Shorter Answer:
NO, and . . . . not at ALL, you DON'T! We don't do background checks on ANY subscriber, nope, not at all. We also guarantee not a single solitary thing regarding any subsciber's ax murdering status. (Please refer to our Terms of Service.) If you decide to participate in our service, you'll have to determine for YOURSELF who is and who is not an ax murderer.

Of course, deciding who you want to meet and who you don't, who you want to spend time with and who you don't, who you might want to date seriously and who you don't, etc., etc., is something that every single adult human has to develop their own ability to do in order to function in life in general . . . right? This isn't nor should it be represented as anything different.

You'd decide all by YOURSELF that you are convinced that any particular person is worth meeting and not at all the ax type by using your own common sense and following a few commonsensical precautions. If you don't already have a very good idea what those are, we have helpful advice in our advice section.

Longer Answer:
(You have noticed that this site is free . . . right?)

There are matchmaking services that do public records background checks to flag criminal records, traffic violations, DUI's, bankruptcies, marital status, and divorces.

Of course, they're far from being free. You'll pay quite a bit to get someone else to do that for you.

There's another one out there that threatens to legally prosecute anyone using their site who turns out to be married or a convicted felon.

But again, not at all free.

Would we institute something like that in the future? Seriously doubt it. Again, we do want to keep the site free.

But other than the issue of cost, we're also not in agreement with most of that stuff philosophically or practically. We think services like that often provide a very false sense of security for their members.

Not to encourage rampant paranoia, but some folks would say the most successful criminals are the ones who do NOT get caught.

You do realize that in order for there to be a public record of something, it would have to have been formally adjudicated, right? That would mean the bad thing someone did was illegal, AND they got caught, AND convicted or otherwise officially recorded as having been the perpetrator of whatever-it-was in a court of law. Because otherwise, no service out there would be able to "flag" it.

So first, there's the very real issue of whether or not a criminal has actually been caught. We're not aware of any statistics on that, and it might very well be practically unstudiable. However, we imagine that if some sort of percentage could somehow be known, it probably would not be encouraging.

Furthermore, someone could constantly conduct themselves in very hurtful and/or dishonest ways in all their relationships, but in no way that was specifically illegal.

For a lot of people (including lesbians living anyplace same sex marriage is still illegal), legal marriage doesn't apply to the idea of "cheating." Even if you do live in one of the more enlightened geographies, what about live-in non-married significant others? That's what queers have been doing for . . . we dunno, but at least the last 200 years or so.

Someone could have an unmentioned squeeze at home, 3 more girlfriends on the side, be lying to everyone about everyone else, and simultaneously be looking for new women to deceive in the personals. No "background check" could ever completely reveal that state of affairs.

Meanwhile, if you and a new internet contact want to mutually do public record searches on each other before meeting in person, that's something you can still definitely pursue. We're certainly not stopping you. We're just not going to do it FOR you, nor will we overcharge you for taking that task off your hands.

We think your most important weapons against "wrong" people are your own well-honed common sense and your own instincts. No website could ever produce a form of dating that would be completely risk-free, despite what some willing to take lots of your money to tell you otherwise would have you believe.

Finally, we think choosing to place your safety and emotional health in the hands of someone else simply is not wise. No one else is ever going to be as invested in your own safety and well-being as YOU will be, no matter how much you pay them.

(But we do have a nice-sized amount of safety advice you can follow on your own in our advice section. It's all free, and it all encourages you to take your own safety and security into your own hands.)

- "need to collect my prize"
- "need to send my financial information for a real estate situation"
- "need to collect my huge piles of cash"
- "need to register my winning lottery number"
- "need to sign in for important real estate data"
- "need to send my 'secret code' in for valuable winnings"
- "need to send in my address and other personal info for my unexpected estate claim!!!!!"
- (anything else equally ridiculous or improbable-sounding along the lines of the above)

Is this valid? Should I respond?

Shorter Answer:
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

For your own future reference, here's one website with some more information on Top Online Email and Internet Scams.

Longer Answer:
Unfortunately, we've received many questions about this sort of total and complete garbage.

This sort of crap is NOT AT ALL coming from lesbotronic.com.

Repeat, NOT COMING FROM LESBOTRONIC.COM.

We have no "promotions" going on anything like the above, never have, never will.

Frequently, and very unfortunately, various reprobate criminals out there in the world will use the word "lesbotronic" (OR lots of other popular domains, not JUST us) to attempt to perpetrate some form of scam. The actual domain owners (like us here at lesbotronic.com) didn't actually send you the email, it was really sent by some reprobate scammer/spammer trying to collect information on people, probably to attempt identity theft and/or credit card fraud.

This frequently happens to a variety of popular sites, it's usually referred to as "domain spoofing." More on domain spoofing.

Specifically, "Domain spoofing refers to the use of someone else's domain name when sending a message and is part of the larger problem of spoofing (the practice of forging the sender's address on e-mail messages). Domain spoofing can also be used by malicious individuals in phishing scams, which try to lure consumers into divulging sensitive personal information by pretending the e-mail is from a trusted source, such as a consumer's bank. Disclosure of such information can lead to identity theft and other online consumer fraud."

I guess some of those aforementioned reprobate spammer/scammers noticed we have a popular site, thought some of our subscribers might think us a "trusted source," so they've appropriated the word for their own illegal purposes. And again, this can happen to any totally legitimate domain. In fact, sadly, it's actually MORE likely to happen with an older domain that has a lot of subscribers but does NOT do anything nefarious with their info. Those are the ones the criminals think people will trust enough to just hand over whatever identity-theft related info they'd like to have.

Meanwhile, this problem is definitely NOT about hacking, nor is it in any way shape or form about OUR database, nor does it mean our database was compromised in any way. Most of those receiving spoofed email aren't actual subscribers and/or customers of whatever is being spoofed.

Please also notice lesbotronic.com does not and never will collect the type of information on any of our subscribers that could conceivably be used for identity theft and/or credit card fraud.

AGAIN, NOTHING that could ever be used to perpetrate any form of theft.

Really, you should never provide any significant personal info to any organization that initiates contact with you via email, or provide any significant info about yourself via email for anything you did not personally and specifically previously request.

And for those organizations with which you do have significant and important financial business, they won't ask you to email them important stuff. They'll do it via phone or in person. But just to make things super duper clear, here's a list of things we've heard the scammers are requesting supposedly as lesbotronic.com:

Full Birth Name
Social Security Number or Other ID
Home Mailing Address
Country of Birth
City of Birth
Date of Birth
Legal Marital Status
Name of Legal Next of Kin
Mother's Maiden Name
IRS Designated Occupation
Checking Account Number and Name of Bank
(any) Credit Card Number

See ALL THAT STUFF ABOVE, the sort of stuff that someone could potentially use to perpetrate identity theft or credit card fraud?
Lesbotronic.com has NEVER and WILL NEVER ask for any of that stuff!

Oh, and we also don't send you anything and request that you RESPOND to any email address other than one AT lesbotronic.com. The last domain spoof we became aware of spoofed the email as supposedly coming from our email address, but asked readers to reply to a YAHOO email address. That would be another clue (but it doesn't have to be Yahoo, it could be anything other than lesbotronic.com).

We never send out anything at all except those emails that are directly related to things on the lesbotronic.com site, the forum, the personals, etc., or answers to any questions you send us yourself.

Please note: ALL OF THOSE COMMUNICATIONS WOULD BE INITIATED BY THE PERSONS SIGNING UP FOR THEM.

We never send out any random garbage, nothing ever requesting you send in a lot of personal info to win "cash prizes." Never, never, never. I don't think any reputable site would.

We will also never send you any attachments, never ask you to execute any software. Also no requests for payment, any payment information. If a particular email looks fishy, you're welcome to forward it to us and ask if we sent it, but really, even that's probably not necessary. Unless it's very clearly something from the site related to something you did sign up for here, you can assume it's spammy garbage and just trash it.

Also, no, there isn't anything ELSE we can do about it, other than to advise you not to respond to it. (Since we didn't send it in the first place, no, we can't "stop sending it to you now.") And no, it actually was NOT sent on behalf of us. No. No NO NO NO NO.

Thanks.

Did lesbotronic.com give out my address?

As per our posted Privacy and Security Policies, we NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER!!! give or sell your email address to any marketing organization . . . or any other organization of any type.

Once again, that would be NEVER!

The only people that get your email address are other subscribers, and only those in your Search Results. No personals profiles are publicly accessible.

If you are receiving junk mail, it was NOT sanctioned or encouraged by lesbotronic.com in any way, shape, or form. We never email you anything other stuff directly related to whatever you signed up for here, and/or responses to questions you email in yourself.

Privacy And Security Policies

How We Use Information We Collect Via Our Personals

All information submitted via our personals service is made available only within the personals service to other subscribers to the personals service and the personals administrators, and only for the duration of continued voluntary participation in our personals service. It will neither be shared nor sold nor rented to anyone outside lesbotronic.com personals. And when we say lesbotronic.com, we mean ONLY lesbotronic.com. We do not have other "partners" or other "approved business parties" or other "approved communication providers" or any other unnamed third parties.

Participation in our personals WILL lead to email from lesbotronic.com directly related to the functioning of the personals service and any other updates or notifications we feel are necessary for your continued participation, as long as you continue to participate. We may also respond to individual subscriber requests for additional information via email. Participation may also lead to communications from other personals subscribers via the contact methods you provided for the personals service for that use. Participation in our personals will NOT lead to junk mail, spam, or unsolicited advertising from lesbotronic.com in your email box or via any other contact method you provide.

If you request that your personals profile be deleted, it would be entirely deleted and any information within no longer made available to anyone within our personals service. If your personals profile was deleted, you would no longer receive email from lesbotronic.com regarding it or your participation in our personals service.

The only exception to the above policies might involve any illegal, unauthorized, or otherwise criminal use of our website by a subscriber or any third party. If we were legally required to disclose information about any illegal, unauthorized, or otherwise criminal use of our website during an investigation of such, if some form of information disclosure would protect against misuse or unauthorized use of our website, or if some form of information disclosure became necessary to enforce compliance of the policies of our website, we would disclose information related to that abuse and/or those abusive parties.

There is nothing in any fine print that would indicate or provide any additional exceptions to the above. (Actually, we have no "fine print," you're meant to be able to read all our print.) But no additional exceptions, and no additional exceptions to the rule of no additional exceptions, etc.

Privacy Policies

Please note that there are two completely separate areas of this site: the PUBLIC DISCUSSION FORUM, and the PERSONALS. You can sign up for either, or both. Registering for one does not register you for the other.

The PUBLIC DISCUSSION FORUM is a public area. It exists so that members representing various demographics spread across a large geography can discuss a variety of topics. You can interact with many members there that you would not otherwise have had the opportunity to meet via the personals, due to geographic distance and/or other factors. A valid email address is required to sign up. However, you can specify via your forum preferences if you would or would not like that email address available on any of your posts (available to anyone other than the forum administrators). You also have the opportunity to provide a few other forms of internet contact information, or, the opportunity to AVOID providing such. Similarly, anything you post in the public discussion forum has been posted in a public discussion forum for anyone wishing to read it. (Because that's the point.) What this means for all participants is that if you don't want something posted about yourself in a particularly identifying way and/or a particular form of contact information provided for yourself, don't post it in that way and/or don't provide it.

It's possible to participate in the forum in a way that would allow interested parties to contact you personally. You could post a photo, include some personal contact info for display, post an inviting introduction about yourself, and subsequently use the forum as a way to actually get to know other participants in "real life." It's also very possible to participate in the forum in a much more anonymous way. You could use a non-personally-identifying user ID or pseudonym, fail to post a photo, and avoid putting anything into any of your posts that would identify you in "real life."

(Incidentally, all of the above is true of most discussion forums on the internet. We're just pointing out that ours is not unique in this regard.)

Whichever direction you choose to go with regard to the above is up to you. Just be aware that the forum is a public place and make your decisions responsibly and accordingly.

The PERSONALS is much more private than the public discussion forum. Anyone allowed to view your personals profile will also have filled out our personals questionnaire in its entirety, NOT had their profile rejected as being inappropriate, and then your search criteria must mutually not exclude each other (our search criteria as defined in this FAQ). That means no one else (other than the personals administrators) will be granted access to your profile.

Unlike a lot of other personals sites, we do not now and will never publish your profile or any details from your profile on a publicly available page somewhere as an advertisement to entice other folks to sign up. Your personals profile will never be made available for viewing by anyone else "just stopping by" or "wanting a trial run" or something similar, also unlike most personals sites. Again, that means that anyone else who didn't:

also completely sign up for lesbotronic.com personals
NOT get rejected
mutually NOT exclude each other via your collective search criteria
will NOT be granted access to your profile.

Basically, lesbotronic.com personals are about as private as you could possibly get, but still function over the internet. If you want to meet new people in a way that's more private than our personals, you'll need to somehow do that OFFLINE (not over the internet) only.

HOWEVER (and we hope this is already common sense for most of you), what you post in your personals profile IS available for viewing by those within your Search Results. We will not put it "out there" on the internet, we will not publish it offline, we will not make it available to other lesbotronic.com personals subscribers who are NOT within your Search Results. But what you put in your personals profile IS intended for viewing by those WITHIN your Search Results. Anything you DO want those within your Search Results to see? That's what you put in your personals profile. Anything that you do NOT want others within your Search Results to see? Do NOT put that in your personals profile.

Links to Other Websites

Lesbotronic.com includes links to other websites whose privacy practices may differ from those described above. If you submit personal information to any of those sites, your information is subject to their privacy statements. Lesbotronic.com's privacy statement does not apply to information you may submit to those sites. We encourage you to carefully read the privacy statement of any website you visit.

Terms Of Service

When you use any and all areas of lesbotronic.com, you understand and acknowledge that it is strictly informational in nature.

We can't guarantee the accuracy of the information provided, endorse or recommend any subscriber, or accept responsibility or liability for any events arising from the use of this service.

The service that we provide and the information within is certainly intended to enhance your social and romantic life.

However, lesbotronic.com is not and cannot be your chaperone, your nanny, or your personal security guard.

As with most things in the lives of adults, the ultimate decision about what to do and with whom is up to YOU.

Please conduct yourself with normal caution and good common sense, in this and in the rest of your endeavors.

Links to Third-Party Sites

Lesbotronic.com contains hyperlinks to websites operated by parties other than lesbotronic.com. These hyperlinks are provided for your convenience, education, and/or entertainment only. Lesbotronic.com does not control websites other than this one and is not responsible for their contents or operation. While we have linked to other websites we imagine our visitors might also find helpful, the inclusion of hyperlinks to other websites does not imply complete and unreserved endorsement of all material on those websites by lesbotronic.com.