Irritable Bowel Syndrome Message Boards | Re: In the interests of full disclosure...

I voted yes initially, but now I wish I would have voted no. I think Heather was right in the first place to disable it.

I am also very unhappy about the whole porn discussion -- because it triggered posts mentioning we have "very young posters". Maybe we do -- but these boards are not designed to be boards for kids. The majority of us are adults with IBS, and adults with IBS are bound to have problems that might not be the best viewing material for children. The living room was designed to be off-topic-land and a LOT of us use it for a place to get advice when our usual resources aren't satisfactory. A lot of us are intensely isolated because of our IBS and, sad and pathetic as it may seem, may not have any friends we know well enough to ask some of the questions that many of us ask on the boards.

Teenagers are old enough that they have seen and heard stuff FAR worse than you'll ever find on these boards. Kids who are younger -- well -- their parents had better be supervising their Internet activity, and it is up to the parents to decide if the site has appropriate content.

I am struggling with endometriosis, a gynecological condition, and I've posted a lot of "embarrassing female stuff" that might be argued as inappropriate viewing for a 9-year-old. Well, I'm sorry, but these boards do not cater to 9-year-olds. If you are 9, your parents should be screening what you look at, and your parents should decide whether or not they are comfortable with their kids reading the kind of posts that get generated here. It's not like any of us are posting sexually explicit descriptions of what we did last night!!! (But maybe because most of us spent last night on the couch in sweatpants watching "Desperate Housewives.")

I LOVE the living room. It keeps me sane. I have no friends right now. Yes, this makes me sad and pathetic, but being so sick has kept me completely isolated -- I don't have the time/energy to join a club or anything to make new friends, and I've lost the few friends I did have because they haven't cared enough to stick around through the bad times. I don't want to get to the point where I can't post about my problems because someone might get offended. And I don't want to do the PM thing, because I am totally insecure and thinks that no one really likes me and I would not impose upon anyone by PM'ing them with a question. With posts you know that someone is responding because (s)he genuinely WANTS to.

Anyway, I like the LR just the way it is, and I don't want it changed. I want to hear what EVERYONE has to say, even if I may ultimately disagree with it. I skip over stuff I don't want to read, and if I start finding myself irritated with something, I back off and go to another thread. Years of being a liberal in my husband's ultra-conservative family has taught me to try to keep my mouth shut when possible.

OK, anyway, that's what I think. If it matters. Which probably it doesn't. But I wish I had voted no. So if you haven't voted, vote no for me to cancel out my yes!!

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jen

"It's one of the most serious things that can possibly happen to one in a battle -- to get one's head cut off." -- LC

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