frequently asked q&a

Hey there. This is our FAQ. We spent a lot of time on it.

If you have a question not already answered here, you can email us. However, please understand that since lesbotronic is 100% free, we don't get paid to answer anyone's email.

We do answer a lot of emails because we're generally nice and happy to be helpful.

But due to our high email volume and our large membership, we find it entirely appropriate to limit the amount of time we're willing to devote to anyone who doesn't think she should take her own time to see if we've ALREADY answered her question.

Reasonable and reasonably intelligent adults will realize this attitude is not only sensible, but completely necessary to preserve our sanity and our willingness to keep running lesbotronic for free for the reasonable and reasonably intelligent adults.

what's different about lesbotronic

much more private

no busywork, no bullcrap, no infinite noise

time-sucking rejection slashed via reality-based sorting

100% free, all options free, no charge for anything, ever

100% lesbian owned and operated

general ?s one might ask before signing up

Explain much more private.: We will never put your profile out for public viewing. We will also never sell or share your information with any other company or website.

Since profiles are not published anywhere public, this also means they will not be indexed by search engines.

Unlike many social sites, none of our member profiles originated elsewhere, nor will they be sent or displayed elsewhere.

None of our members were imported from any other site; none of our members will subsequently be posted on any other site.

Nothing whatsoever regarding any member will be syndicated, sold, or disseminated elsewhere.

Anyone allowed to view your profile will have also completed their own and NOT been rejected by our human lesbian screeners

We will also never sell or share your information with any other company or website.

Our personals are as private as possible, yet still function via the internet.

If you want to meet new people even more privately than our personals, you'll have to go off the internet only.

Explain no busywork, no bullcrap, no infinite noise.: Some say we're "not so fancy." But we fancy that actually means no time-wasting nonsense.

(In other words, no busywork, no bullcrap, and no infinite noise.)

You will NOT need to: wade through a swamp of total wankers never screened first by any human, take quizzes about totally unrelated stuff, rate the profiles of complete strangers, read 45,000 feeds involving what a friend of a friend of a friend's hamster is having for lunch, or be prompted to play a wide variety of other online games, etc.

Explain time-sucking rejection slashed via reality-based sorting.: Everyone in Your Search Results has already stated that THEY want to meet someone like YOU.

It's not just your search criteria, who you say you want to meet. It's who they say they want to meet TOO.

Not just on your end. Not just on their end. Mutual. Both ways.

Both of you are interested in the other.

At least in terms of: city, age, educational level, sexual orientation, gender presentation, biological sex, ethnicity, and relationship type desired.

(And those are quite a few criteria.)

Because we require answers to several questions regarding demographic preferences, then restrict profile views on those preferences BOTH ways (not just YOUR way), you will see fewer profiles overall than some services.

However, that's actually a good thing, because those you do see are more likely to actually be interested in YOU.

We don't try to keep you on our site as long as possible, nonsensically wasting your time, showing you profiles of people who will NOT be interested in you. (Don't take it personally, but no matter how fabulous you are and no matter how interesting you make your profile, some people are just not going to be interested in your demographic. This is true of everyone on the planet.)

In other words . . . we don't just toss everyone on the same huge heap.

It's best to be grouped with ONLY those who might want to meet YOU, and vice versa.

(For more info on exactly how the search results are calculated, see the questions below regarding search options.)

Explain 100% free, all options free, no charge for anything, ever.: Short Answer: Yes, it's all free. That's free as in free all the time, free for all the features, unpaid members (we have no paid members) 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 lesbotronic 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 asking 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 lesbotronic where there are instructions on how any member can pay lesbotronic any fee whatsoever to upgrade or improve anything else regarding her member experience on lesbotronic 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 on how any member can pay us any money, we'll give YOU some money. How's that?

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

Why is lesbotronic free? How can it be free?: Short 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 lesbians via the internet ourselves . . . made new friends . . . fell in love . . . and various other gratifying states-of-mind. The opportunity to meet other lesbians 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 profile 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, we could do better for other lesbians.

Finally, we thought that as lesbians, we would prefer to make our important social connections on sites run by other lesbians. lesbotronic is 100% lesbian owned and operated, and a lot of our members appreciate that.

As for HOW lesbotronic 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.)

Is lesbotronic secure?: This entire site is served under SSL encryption, with an Industry Standard SSL Certificate. This prevents hijacking of any and all of your personal information while it is in transit from you to us.

If your browser displays the "http" sections of URLs, the https (as opposed to just http) at the beginning of each shows you your connection is secure. Also depending on your browser, there may be a "lock" icon next to that URL and/or in that browser tab.

What does lesbotronic offer?: We've always been modeled after many of the lesbian bars we've visited, but online. (They serve a lot of purposes for most communities.) It's dating, it's friends, it's community, it's local groups, it's announcements, it's social whatever, but with lesbians!

You can use our personals to meet folks for friends, lovers, activity partners, community, networking . . . whatever.

We strongly encourage members to expand their range by seeking a variety of connections on the site, not just the "old-fashioned" or "traditional" idea of personals, where you look for one person for one sort of relationship, then disconnect from like-minded others until such a time as you may be looking for that one sort of relationship again. (Because that can be really tedious and restrictive.)

We also have a community discussion forum for members (like the area of the bar, away from private booths). The forum already has a large number of discussion topics going, but new ones are welcome too.

How do the profiles work?: 1. You fill out a profile.

2. 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.

3. If your profile was not judged inappropriate, we send you an email confirming your acceptance.

4. You sign in and look at the profiles of those in Your Search Results.

5. If you like someone(s) you see, you message them.

6. Hopefully you'll also meet some other members 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 members that match your search criteria).

After that and continuing as long as you remain a member, 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.

You do need to tell your email provider to accept all email from our email address, or you'll likely miss some folks.

Your email address will also have to remain valid during your entire membership. 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 members 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).

Can I post a photo within my lesbotronic profile?: Certainly, and we strong encourage you to do so. Profiles WITH photos are much more popular and successful than those without.

How do I just browse the profiles without submitting one myself?: 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 member.

For more on this see above, "Explain much more private."

Can you tell me how many members are in my area before I sign up?: Short 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 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 members in any one area would be totally meaningless, since you wouldn't get to see some of those profiles anyway. But hey, signing up is easy and free, and then you'd know!

I have tried MANY other websites and have been disappointed . . .: . . . 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 will FINALLY be the one to REALLY make a difference for ME?"

Short 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 lesbians 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 members, 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.

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

?s regarding registration, profile acceptance, receiving email from lesbotronic, and logging in

What is whitelisting? Why do you recommend that before signing up?: Short 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.

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, not just using this website.

Instructions are readily available for most email accounts directly from your email provider and/or their tech support.

If I couldn't manage to receive email and my confirmation email bounced, can I just go ahead and be active anyway?: Short 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, you have to sign up using a valid and available email account, typed correctly, and again, whitelisting in advance is best.

Why would you reject a profile as inappropriate?: Short 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 member 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 why you think there is a problem.)

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

Attempts to sell anything.

Attempts to send other members to a pay-per-view site or asks them to call pay-per-minute phone numbers, or some other garbage about a "modeling opportunity."

Asks other members to directly provide them with any financial information or requests any sort of charitable contribution.

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.)

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.)

If we strongly suspect the profile was authored by a minor.

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)

We find the profile in question homophobic.

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." (Please see the note on trolls below.)

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 or a research project 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.

Anything not already mentioned above, but something that is clearly illegal or seems to be soliciting a clearly illegal activity.

If it seems the submitter 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 watch 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 mom you apparently require more supervision.)

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 submitter.

For that last one, no, we're not talking about discriminating against those with legitimately diagnosed mental illnesses. No, no no, no no no.

We're talking about something that would suggest a pronounced lack of sincerity on the part of the submitter in such a way that also strongly suggests not a single member of 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:

ONE: 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.

TWO: "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 start profiles when you're sober enough to construct somewhat clearer and/or more meaningful sentences.

Also, anyone who imagines 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 accepted them.)

THREE: 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!!!!!"

FOUR: "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!"

FIVE: "lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala penis hahahahahaha"

SIX: "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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Note on trolls: You know, we actually did go back and forth on that one for a bit. We knew admitting members 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 members might find them enjoyable for . . . something? Anything?

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

Members who felt an apparent need to be senselessly rude were never anything other than a source of complaints from other members.

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 members.

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 members 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. 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 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.

If I register and my profile was rejected, will you email me and say so?: Short Answer: Nope.

Longer Answer: Um . . . that would be a big NO.

Noticing what sorts of members 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 via behaving in such a manner that we are NOT eager to begin a correspondence with that person.

Just . . . wouldn't be a productive or constructive use of our time.

Life is just too short for that brand of nonsense.

I seem to be missing email from lesbotronic.: (Meaning, there are new people in my search results, and I thought I was supposed to get an email notification when that was the case. But I didn't get any such email.)

Short Answer: If you're still an active member (which you are if you're able to sign in 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 and/or they don't log into their email account for a really long time. So, that's one possibility.

But mostly we get this question for another reason, that being that many members 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.)

Can I just sign in whenever to see my search results, even if I didn't get an email alert that there are new folks in there?: Absolutely.

The emails are intended to be a convenience for you, but all active members can sign in whenever they like as well.

Can I cancel the email notifications letting me know I have new members in my search results but still keep my profile active?: The emailed notifications are intended to be a convenience for you, so you'll know when would be an excellent time to sign in and review Your Search Results. Most members 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 members (obviously), but also alert us that we need to delete a member'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 they wouldn't receive notifications that other members had messaged them. That would be a useless waste of space and a useless waste of other members' time, so obviously we don't want that.

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, we'd recommend simply changing your email address with us to a different one at which it would not be a problem.

I know I PREVIOUSLY had a profile here, but it's been a long time since I've heard from you and . . .: If you have no recent email from us, we probably deleted you in our last zombie purge. But you should try signing in to see (links always in top menu).

If none of your current email addresses are active, then neither are you and you'd need to sign up all over again (links always in top menu).

Please use an email address you plan to maintain so this won't happen again! :)

more specific ?s regarding how the profiles work in terms of sorting members, the search options we offer to determine the other members in Your Search Results, and how our search options work

SEARCH OPTIONS: How do you do the geographic stuff? How can I add more cities to my search options?: You get other members in your city of residence by default.

You can also choose up to 5 additional cities for Your Search Results.

(That means you don't have to choose any, or you could choose only 1, 2, 3, or 4 additional cities.) Choosing no additional cities means you'll stick with your city of residence only.

Choosing additional cities does NOT mean ANY member in that city might appear in Your Search Results.

It will only extend Your Search Results to those who ALSO said they were open to YOUR city of residence.

Yes, this means you may have fewer other members outside your city in Your Search Results, but it also means those other members will have consented to hearing from folks from YOUR city.

That means it's much more likely those other members will actually want to hear from you, and it makes the service much more private for everyone.

MORE SEARCH OPTIONS: How do the rest of the non-geographic search options work?: 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 members will need to organize themselves along the lines of the search options already listed.

Age: There are 9 age ranges on the questionnaire.

Members select their own age range, and then the age ranges they'd like to see for others in their search results. Your Search Results will only contain those within the age ranges you selected. In addition, the members 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.

Members select their own educational level, and then the educational levels they'd like to see for others in their search results. Your Search Results will only contain those within the educational levels you selected. In addition, the members 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:

I consider myself a lesbian. I do not have sex with men currently, and think it extremely unlikely I will in the future.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

I'm in a serious relationship with a man, and am looking for a bisexual woman to be sexually active with BOTH of us.

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

Gender Presentation: Here are the options everyone 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 or I have no idea.

Members select their own gender presentation, and then the gender presentation(s) they'd like to see for others in their search results in terms of: more femme, more butch or 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, those in Your Search Results must have stated openness to hearing those with your gender expression as well.

Biological Sex: Here are the options all members can select:

female = XX chromosomes

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

Members select who they are, and then those they'd like to see in their search results. Your Search Results will only contain those you selected. In addition, those in Your Search Results must have stated openness to hearing from you as well.

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

Members select their own ethnicity, and then the ethnicities they'd like to see for those in their search results. Your Search Results will only contain those within the ethnicities you selected. In addition, those in Your Search Results must have stated openness to hearing from your ethnicity as well.

Relationship Types: The following are the options all members can select. You can select just one, just two or three, or all of them, there is no limit here. The members 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 members 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.)

Why are there fewer lesbians in my search results than on some othe services?: Short Answer: Because DEMOGRAPHIC interest here has to be MUTUAL.

Longer Answer: Unlike some services where you see all profiles that YOU want to see, here, DEMOGRAPHIC interest has to be MUTUAL.

Both of you are interested in the other, AT LEAST in terms of your mutual search options.

Compatibility not just on your end. Not just on their end. Mutual.

Both ways, at least in terms of: city, age, educational level, sexual orientation, gender presentation, biological sex, ethnicity, and relationship type desired.

(And those are quite a few criteria.)

Some may think it's a good idea to read absolutely everyone's profile in the personals, or even everyone within the demographic that interests you.

In reality, that's only true if you want to make reading them all your new part-time job . . . including reading about those NOT interested in YOU.

(Don't take it personally, because no matter how fabulous you are and no matter how interesting you make your profile, some people are just not going to be interested in your demographic. This is true of everyone on the planet.)

But rather than keep you on our site as long as possible, showing you lots of profiles of un-interested others, we try to increase mutual interest and reduce rejection by sorting both ways, MUTUALLY.

In other words . . . we don't just toss everyone on the same huge heap.

It's best to be grouped with ONLY those who might want to meet YOU, and vice versa.

I want to see more lesbians than I can now. How do I view more profiles?: If you want to see more member profiles and/or experience more interaction on the site overall than you are currently, you can:

?s some have had regarding other members, exactly which members are in their search results, and/or our policies regarding

"There are women in my search results that are JUST NOT EXACTLY WHO I WANT TO MEET!!!": "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 members 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?"

Short 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 members. 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 members 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 a search option based on the preferences of most members. 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 members 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 members 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. It would also 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 members would agree) that three times longer would be too much longer. Anyone filling it out 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 member that doesn't appeal to you, based on whatever criteria. Nope, never, not ever.

The other members in Your Search Results only represent POSSIBILITIES. Nothing even a little bit else, unless you and that other member 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 members 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 member 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 members 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 members 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 messaging 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 messages you but seems to have disregarded your preference, feel free to 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 messaging her back.

"Is it possible to restrict my search results to ONLY other members who also posted headshots?": Short Answer: Nope.

Longer Answer: OK, first, we HEARTILY RECOMMEND posting a headshot within your profile. (If you still don't know why by now, you really need to check out our advice section.)

However, we have elected at this time NOT to make headshot vs. not one of the search options.

First, some members still may not have access to digital cameras, possibly for financial reasons.

Second, some members WILL post a headshot, but something other than a terribly comprehensible representation of their current physical appearance. Like . . . a picture from extremely far away. Or through a thick fog. Or in almost total darkness.

Or it is actually a competently constructed headshot, but still a complete fail as said head is almost completely submerged within a scarf AND a hat AND some sunglasses, like they're about to stick up a 7-11.

(We're assuming those are not the sorts of headshots other members writing in with this question were actually hoping to view.)

We'd then be in the position of having to judge yay or nay on any particular headshot posted in terms of whether or not it substantially 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.

While we can certainly understand that the ability to view a decent headshot 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 messaging you will be limiting and unflattering in a number of ways.

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 members that provided a headshot upfront in their profiles were not JUST about determining physical attraction or the lack thereof, but her own personal safety.

Her reasoning was that if other members posted a headshot 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 heterosexual male was on here pretending to be a lesbian for whatever pathetic reason, you think he couldn't find a headshot of some woman somewhere on the internet and pretend that's also him/her, by posting that with his/her fake profile?

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 headshot 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 headshot 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?)

"I live in a small town/rural area/suburb of an urban area/some other place not specifically listed . . .: . . . 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?"

Short Answer: Too many towns, it might be crickets and tumbleweeds in Your Search Results.

Longer Answer: With those members 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 members, we'd rather force them to pick a nearby larger city and actually have a reasonable hope of a reasonable number of members in their search results. This as opposed to letting them pick just their own teensy/sparsely populated little burg where exceedingly few lesbians live and then feel sad or mad or bad when we can't hook them up with very many if any other members on a regular basis.

See, lesbians tend to live in big cities. They're born everywhere, but most migrate to larger urban areas sometime after the age of consent.

We're also forcing the issue because it would seem some 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 selectable 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 selected, see.

Just because they selected that 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 compatible folks you probably wouldn't have otherwise. And that really IS exciting, absolutely!

But if you have the impression there are not a whole lotta lesbians 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 come to our site, 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 selecting all the options all over our questionnaire fails to materialize.

So basically, we're forcing those 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 is not a lack of sympathy for our members in less populated areas.

No.

Rather, it's the reality that finding a compatible lesbian relationship is harder outside a major metro than it is within one.

"I am sick of hearing from your service about women who also want to be with men!": "Totally sick of it!!!!!! Why is this happening! Why don't you effing fix that already???"

Short Answer: Check the search options on your profile. They apparently need adjusting. Sheesh.

Longer Answer: We get this sort of question 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 that she was only open to hearing from other lesbians. Rather, she set her search options to ALLOW bisexual women.

And then . . . we 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, 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. Those emails are:

1. not nice

2. not changing anything anyway

Alrighty? Great, cheers, thanks a lot.

"I am interested in meeting new women, but only if they're "professional.": "Can't you put in a search option for that?"

Short 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 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."

Sooooooooo . . . what they probably really wanted was some sort of additional search option based on salary. To have us ask each member 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 members 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 members 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 members.

. . . We shared the above with one member 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 member'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 many plumbers, electricians, and mechanics make a LOT of money.

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 for a social website.

(Editor note: We think executive lesbian dating might have gone of business since we typed the above. That URL now seems to have been taken over by someone else and become just another affiliate portal. But we're not sure if this means executive lesbian dating moved to some other URL instead, or is completely and totally kaput. If anyone reading happens to know, please let us know too. Thanks!)

Final Related Question: "Can I pay the women of lesbotronic 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 already wrote a really large chunk of advice we think is invaluable, links to that up top and down below. Those are the ideas we've cooked up based on our experiences running this site, and it represents the best we have to offer currently. And hey, all of that is free too.

?s regarding changing things on your own profile or the status of your profile

I have a profile active. How do I edit it?: You sign in, you view your own profile, then you click the corresponding areas. You can then edit anything on it other than your email address, city of residence, and display "name."

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

The city of residence thing is to increase the privacy of all members. We're disallowing the possibility that any one member could frequently change her urban area to view the maximal number of profiles and message them all extremely quickly in a way that wouldn't sincerely relate to her own life. Because that person might be some sort of spammer or bad actor that "got one past the goalie" of our review process.

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.

What do I do if I want to keep my profile active but change email addresses with you?: For various technical and security reasons we've elected to take care of this manually, for now.

First, we'd recommend not switching email addresses with us more than necessary because those 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.

You absolutely need to whitelist our email address with your new one as well.

What do I do if I want to keep my profile active but change my city of residence with you?: We've disallowed the option of changing your city of residence yourself to increase privacy for all our members. We're making this whole thing very unfriendly for anyone other than the sincere.

Legitimate members who really want to meet other legitimate members shouldn't need to change their city of residence that often. Hence, we're disallowing the possibility that any one member 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.

Members 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 are certainly 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

But again, please don't just email us and say any random tiny town. You need to pick from your nearest major metro, if you're not in one, alrighty? Cheers, thanks a lot!

How do I have myself deleted?

Remember, 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 and total deletion, both because we'd hope that would be fun for you AND ALSO so you don't have to submit another profile if you change your mind later.

Our more clever members don't use lesbotronic just to find ONE person for ONE sort of relationship, then disconnect socially from other like-minded members.

They use us for more, and more creatively.

You can ALSO use us to:

build a better social life overall, with and without dates in tow
meet new like-minded members to invite to events, or get invited yourself
expand your social circles, on the internet and off
keep in touch with your local lesbian community
discover other members of your tribe
lesbian social network
add new members to your gang of friends

But if you really must delete yourself, ask us to do so via an email FROM THE SAME EMAIL ADDRESS you were last using with this site. Send it to: webmistresses@lesbotronic.com

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 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.)

general ?s one might ask after signing up

"I received an email alert about someone new in my search results. But after signing in, I can't find her!: Most members of lesbotronic personals do stay active for quite a while. But some have shorter-term goals.

In general, if you react to your email alerts by viewing Your Search Results within a day or two or even a week of receiving them, this should only happen rarely.

But the longer you wait, the more likely it becomes that a member of Your Search Results may have changed her search options such that you are no longer included. If that becomes the case, you may still have that email, because it's impossible to "unsend" an email.

If you JUST received an email alert and can't find the member mentioned even after signing in successfully and viewing Your Search Results, you can 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.)

HOWEVER, please understand that even if you email us, the reason for the "disappearance" is probably still going to be that someone changed her search options.

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 a few 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.

"I messaged another member and she didn't message me back! Why?": We've received this question no less than 5000 times. No, we're really NOT exaggerating. However, most of the women asking something similar usually meant one of three very different things:

ONE: "Would you happen to know why a particular member I contacted did not contact me back? Like, has she somehow indicated her lack of interest in me . . . to the women who run lesbotronic? 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.

TWO: "Maybe the member I messaged that did not respond to me is not still active, and that's why she didn't respond?"

It's certainly not possible for us to know what's going on day by day in the personal lives of all members of our large website.

HOWEVER, if a member's profile is still active on our site, they are too, to the very best of our knowledge.

Everyone is sent an email when they've received a new person in their search results. If an email we send anyone bounces, or if they respond that they are no longer interested in lesbotronic overall, their profile and their messages get DELETED.

So again, while we are not omniscient, to the very best of our knowledge, all members still listed in our database ARE still active.

THREE: "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 member's lack of interest, but can you give me some advice to help boost GENERAL interest regarding my profile and other members' desire to get to know ME?"

Since we started messages, we've seen an 85% response rate. Meaning, in a completely average, statistically compiled across all members way, about 85% of all messages sent from one member to another get a reply.

That's actually a fantastic and well above average response rate for a personals and/or social networking site.

. . .

But that is an average. (That means some members are doing even better than 85%, some worse.)

If the messages you're sending are motivating an 85% response rate or better? You might not need our advice.

If not?

Please first consider your profile. Read and consider our recommendations in the advice area (link up top), especially "general recommendations," "constructing your profile," "cliches you should probably avoid," "HEADSHOTS (post one!)," "be open to the 'just friends' option," and "messaging/netiquette."

Then reconsider it all again, and really . . . try to be a bit honest with yourself. Give it a hard look.

Allow yourself to be self-critical.

One reason we're putting all this advice here is so everyone can access 24/7, but another reason is so we can refer folks to it, without them taking it too personally and biting our heads completely off.

If you message a lot of folks and no one responds, you may need to give your approach a bit of a look. Please do note: This is NOT us saying there's something wrong with YOU.

BUT THERE MAY BE something that could benefit from improvement regarding your approach toward others. . . .

So you're saying you already did all that? Totally? Completely? No doubt whatsoever? Your profile and the messages you send are as recommended and reflect you well?

Then, sorry to say, maybe you just hit a bad patch of luck regarding the immediate availability of the members you selected, at least during those days you sent those messages. Unfortunately, that's obviously possible.

So branch out! Contact some other members! Different members, possibly those with whom you may have more in common.

No more members, you say? NOPE, not true!

There will always be more members for you to contact. You can expand your search options, and/or your geographic options, and/or you can post in the community forum.

And that's just what you can do TODAY. Since new members sign up constantly, you can always stay tuned and contact newbies as they arrive as well (which is obviously a good idea ANYWAY).

Keep the preceding advice in mind, expand your options, and the overall social possibilities are virtually unlimited!

policies that concern all members, ?s about who is welcome, when we would decide a particular member is no longer welcome

"When would you delete someone's profile after acceptance?": Practically speaking: We will delete a profile if the member requests that.

We will also delete a member's profile if their email address goes bad, and they didn't give us a new one in the meantime to use instead.

Personally speaking, we will delete a profile if its author engages in any of the following list.

And yes, if you've found a member doing one or more of the following, please DO notify us. Please be EXTREMELY SPECIFIC about which profile you are referring to and EXACTLY what you feel the problem is.

Vague won't fly here. We need the extreme specifics.

-Breaks any of the rules regarding messaging described in the question above, "When will the women who run lesbotronic read my messages?" (yes, you should probably read that, but it's mostly common sense for most people worth knowing anyway)

-Attempts to sell anything. Any form of solicitation is forbidden here, and if any member solicits you, report them to us.

-Attempts to send other members to a pay-per-view site or asks them to call pay-per-minute phone numbers, or some other garbage about a "modeling opportunity."

-Asks other members to directly provide them with any financial information or requests any sort of charitable contribution.

-Tells you a hard luck story about how broke they are, how they just got laid off or scammed in some way, and/or now they need money for some other personal financial crisis.

(Yes, those are sad stories. But also, scams.)

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 someone they've never met in person via a personals site IS a scammer, even if they don't sound like one.

-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 OR they've provided you with more than one photo supposedly of themselves, and the two photos are CLEARLY completely different humans.

(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.)

-If it becomes obvious, either via meeting in person or a personal admission that another member is actually a 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 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 more definitive.

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

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

-Posting anything that is clearly homophobic.

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

-Posts something in their profile or via other communication that is legitimately threatening in any way. Do not try to get the last word. Report or forward any problematic communication 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.

-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 or a research project 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.

-Anything not already mentioned above, but something that is clearly illegal or seems to be soliciting a clearly illegal activity.

-If it seems the submitter doesn't seem realize this is an actual personals site, not a place to try to score free photos of (insert lady part here).

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

Really dummies, just watch a video. And then go tell your mom you apparently require more supervision.

-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. No, we're not talking about discriminating against those with legitimately diagnosed mental illnesses. No, no no, no no no.

We're talking about something that would suggest a pronounced lack of sincerity on the part of the submitter in such a way that also strongly suggests not a single member of 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:

ONE: 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.

TWO: "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 start profiles when you're sober enough to construct somewhat clearer and/or more meaningful sentences.

Also, anyone who imagines 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 accepted them.)

THREE: 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!!!!!"

FOUR: "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!"

FIVE: "lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala penis hahahahahaha"

SIX: "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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

-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."

Or . . . anything like the above that would lead any reasonable person to conclude whomever saying it is a useless troll.

Note on trolls: You know, we actually did go back and forth on that one for a bit. We knew admitting members 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 members might find them enjoyable for . . . something? Anything?

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

Members who felt an apparent need to be senselessly rude were never anything other than a source of complaints from other members.

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 members.

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 members 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 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.

When and why might I want to report another member?: What sorts of problems with another member's profile are you going to take seriously?

Please see the immediately preceding question for a list, but . . . that list is pretty much when and why and what we would take seriously.

What if I have a problem with another member's profile NOT listed above within "When would you delete someone's profile after acceptance?": and/or

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

Short Answer: The bar for misbehavior that would cause us to delete a member 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 profile after acceptance?" 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 would you delete someone's profile after acceptance?" we do want to delete anyone that's behaving in a legitimately inappropriate fashion.

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 member 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 nor 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 member who was "evaluating" other members 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 member reported completion of an advanced degree, yet sent her a message that sounded as if she 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 areas.

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 clear our bar for delete-worthy misbehavior.

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 member 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 member 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 member or thinking most others members might not like her either, that standard has probably not been met. We'd advise you in that situation to merely avoid messaging and/or avoid reciprocating any messages 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.

"Another member messaged me and I think there's a problem . . . ": " . . . I just imagine (but don't actually know for sure) that this is a heterosexual male posing as someone else, they sent me a message I think was rude or too explicit, etc., and/or I told them I wasn't interested and they're still messaging me. I'm beginning to feel harassed!"

While it has NOT been our experience 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 members, 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 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 has happened several times more often than the scenario above is that a seemingly random person from the internet at large emailed us complaining about some sort of "harassment" they felt should severely concern those of us in charge of lesbotronic . . . 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 get someone from lesbotronic to pay attention to them, 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 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.

Accordingly, if you have received messages from another member that you feel have been severely and/or repeatedly inappropriate, you should still report it to us, but please keep all of the following in mind.

We're not interested in anonymous reports of unverifiable or otherwise vague harassment allegedly perpetrated by anonymous other people.

We need:

ONE: the email address you were last using with lesbotronic (you can message us on the community forum, or email us from that same email address)

TWO: specific details that would identify the profile of the person bothering you, including their member "name"

THREE: a very clear idea about why messages they sent you were troubling and unsolicited by yourself

If you're not willing to immediately provide us with all that information, we will not be able to take you seriously or continue responding.

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 internet messages only for a period of time before meeting and judging the amount of information and its sincerity in those messages, 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 some sort of internet message 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 member to lesbotronic 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.

"If this is "lesbotronic.com" and it's run exclusively by lesbians: Why do you allow bisexual women? Why do you allow trans women? I have very serious concerns regarding lesbotronic and lesbian vs. bisexual vs. trans women?": If you have any concerns about lesbotronic and lesbian vs. bisexual vs. trans women, please click on our special pullout section, sexism sucks . . . as it was getting too long for the FAQ.

"Why do you allow CHEATERS to sign up?": "Isn't that just very Very VERY WRONG? Why can't you just STOP cheaters?"

Short Answer: We are not responsible for the morality of others. We also think it's better for all lesbotronic members, "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, 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? 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 fashion, then expecting anyone on our end to be able to reply both briefly and helpfully.

No. It isn't.

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 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 members 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 members of 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:

First, 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 members of lesbotronic, if not anyone else.)

Second, give all other members 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 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 member 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 members 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 messages just like the one above. And surely you would prefer to avoid THAT.

Other Related Questions: Do we condone cheating? Is anyone at lesbotronic a "fan" of cheating?

No. In fact, elsewhere on this site in our advice section, we specifically relate our collective idea that cheaters**** (see note below) 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 (see note below) 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 member about HER life? 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 open and honest 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 folks 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.

(note you were supposed to see from above) Again, in case it wasn't already abundantly apparent, our idea of "cheating" does not not and will never include the openly polyamorous and relationships that are openly poly.

miscellaneous ?s

"Why do you have ads cluttering up the site in some places?": "It would be so much better if you didn't."

Short Answer: While we know most folks don't like ads, we think you'll find we've kept ours to a tastefully low ebb. Also, members are never emailed ads, and never texted at all (by this service itself, we mean, obviously).

Longer Answer: In addition to the tastefully low ebb celebrated above in the Short Answer (heh, ahem), many of the ads probably are pretty useful for folks, and we don't think that's a bad thing, not at all. We do actually limit ad content/anything we'd ever promote to tasteful and appropriate stuff we do actually imagine many of our members might actually enjoy? Actually?

But honestly, it also 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 members.

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 members.

#2: Ask for donations. (Hey, how generous is everyone feeling?)

But really, even if we went in that direction (which again, we're still not, but for the sake of argument), 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.

How do I advertise on lesbotronic.com?: We've experimented with a wide variety of ad options and affiliate programs, and . . . we still are.

So if you want to advertise with us, you can email us and suggest something!

HOWEVER, before doing so, please understand that we don't have very many advertising slots, and are not planning to add more. This means that if you want to advertise here 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.

Please don't bother contacting us to ask us to advertise someplace on the site we are not already. Not going to happen.

Please also be as SPECIFIC and DETAILED as possible when you contact us, the first time.

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 yet; 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.

Please also understand upfront any ad content we'd display has to be kept "PG-13" or "Safe for Work." We are also unable to display ad content for "adult" services, even if the ad content itself remains "PG-13." And no, we are not able to make any exceptions, truly, please don't waste your time asking.

So if you'd still like to email us, please do so at: webmistresses@lesbotronic.com

"Why can't members send "winks," or "nudges" or just "poke" each other online . . . ": . . . rather than having to send a whole message?

Short 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 message.

It means a feature on some personals websites where someone can send another member 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 words.

It's just a wee graphic that the member is notified another member wanted them to receive. Not something personalized for anyone at all, 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, in the absense of nouns, verbs or even adjectives, exactly what meaning would you glean 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?   Winkily nudge back?

And then what?   Go again?   Another round of aggressive blinking?

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 words.

Soooooo . . . 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 old-fashioned, we maintain our steadfast belief in the awesome power of actual sentences.)

"Why can't you get/have/attract more (insert desirable quality here) lesbians?": In the first few years of lesbotronic, we usually got this question with regard to lesbians of color. These days we're pleased to receive that particular question less frequently, because we now have a significant number of lesbians of color in quite a few cities. So that's definitely an improvement.

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

We're not in any way actively soliciting or NOT actively soliciting anything or anyone in particular, other than lesbians who want to participate in lesbotronic. We want ALL of them. :)

So if it's something on our questionnaire, then it is already ABSOLUTELY the case that we'd like AS MANY (insert desirable quality here) lesbians 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.

"What does "lesbotronic" mean? Did you make it up? Is it like "The Bionic Woman?": "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 a website where lesbians could connect with other lesbians electronically.

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 lesbian 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. 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 lesbian, 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 lesbian 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?

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.

Why is the questionnaire so very long / so medium-length / so very short?: We've received a LOT of feedback on the questionnaire, probably more than any other aspect of this website.

However, it has 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 moron 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 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.

. . .

So 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 members most of the time, it's completely impossible for us to make it 100% pleasing for 100% of members or potential members 100% of the time.

That website does not, can not, and never will exist.

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.

Do you do background checks? How do I know someone here isn't an ax murderer?: Shorter Answer: NO, and . . . . not at ALL, you DON'T!

We don't do background checks on ANY member, nope, not at all.

We also guarantee not a single solitary thing regarding any member'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., 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 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 many lesbians 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.)

"I received a strange email claiming to be from lesbotronic saying I've "won a contest" OR:: "need to collect my prize" and/or "need to send my financial information for a real estate situation" and/or "need to collect my huge piles of cash" and/or "need to register my winning lottery number" and/or "need to sign in for important real estate data" and/or "need to send my 'secret code' in for valuable winnings" and/or "need to send in my address and other personal info for my unexpected estate claim!!!!!" and/or

(anything else equally ridiculous or improbable-sounding along the lines of the above)

Is this valid? Should I respond?

Short Answer: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

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.

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 that might mean some folks in the world would 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 members 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 are NOT actual members 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 members 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 over the 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?

We have 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 community forum, the profiles, 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.

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.