I know nobody likes subreddit dramas, but I think our community might be experiencing difficulties that need to be resolved. I have some context to the recent discussions regarding actions of one of our mods, which I believe may be useful
I got inspired by a recent two posts by u/Appropriate_Cut_3536 alias u/GynarchGal, or more specifically her comments under the 1st one. If I understand correctly, she raised concerns over recent behaviour of the other moderator of our subreddit, u/Rocky_Knight_. I've also had a couple notable experiences with him, so I've thought I'll share them, to give her perhaps more context, as well as to encourage others who could potentially been in similar situations to speak up. To clarify, this is not meant to be a hate-post, my opinion on the involved is complex and not unambigous, but forming your own thoughts on this is encouraged.
So, as I said, I've always had pretty mixed feelings towards RK's activity. Some of his posts are truly excellent, providing scientific data, interesting articles or a good feed for thought. On the other hand, some other, especially his early ones, were odd. Some were pretty bland, just repeating that women are superior or other very basic stuff about gynarchy. He used to attach stock or AI-generated images of confident-looking women with added captions on them, presumably written by him: example 1, example 2. He also embedded these in otherwise somewhat more substantive posts: example 3, example 4. While there was technically nothing wrong with them, they gave an uncanny vibe, IMO. These pictures were made in the exact same fashion as sexual caption-images found in NSFW subreddits. He stopped adding them upon AWomanXX42 expressing her opinion they hadn't been adding anything to discussions and thus were unnecessary.
Another thing raising my suspicion is the fact he's been a mod of r/ChristianMatriarchy, which appears to heavily loaded with explicitly fetish content.
Around 2 years ago, I've experienced an odd situation with our subreddit's then-mods upon reporting a post, which I believed broke the rule prohibiting fetish posting. It was apparently deleted by Reddit automatic filters, but you can access it in the archive. The issue was an attached AI-slop image presenting a woman holding a man on a lead (content warning). One's gotta be 5 years old not to catch the BDSM reference. Yet the person responding to my report in modmail argued it was not. They added the poster was Viktor Gülbadamov, the then-owner of the subreddit—a profound porn addict only (poorly) disguising himself as genuine gynarchy supporter—implying they won't/can't touch him. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to recover this modmail now, I think Reddit changed how it works in the meantime, so it's just my word. I don't have any solid proof it was RK with whom I talked either. However, I suspect it must've been him by the style of his speech, he dodged concerns of fetish-y nature of disputed content in very similar manner as he did in a later episode described below. He also used to be the most active mod at the time, and I know him and Viktor were indeed good friends, they used to be the sole 2 mods earlier, so one had a reason to cover for the other.
And then there was the "incident". That's how I call a particular post RK made around a year ago. I think there's not much to describe here, his actions speak for themselves. I highly recommend looking into it, be beware of potentially unsettling content though. While the text of the post itself could maaaybe be defended as just very awkwardly written, he left no doubts about his intentions by how he interacted in the comments >!(there should be a "load comments" button at the bottom)!<.
I reached to him via DMs expressing my distaste and urging him to take responsibility—you can see the full thing on the screenshots below (I attached two display versions: one for best readability on phones, and one for PCs below it).
In my opinion, he tried to diminish his fault and instead of either admitting to or at least denying fetishising gynarchy, he mostly dodged the concern ("fetish? what fetish?"). He used bland, corporate-style speech, trying to pull the wool over my eyes. I was very dissatisfied with his responses, but upon his rigidity, I gave up arguing. Of course, the post was quickly deleted, but I've been able to recover it through the archive tool. He later made a "corrected", cleaned version, which to me was genuinely hilarious. The fixation on hand washing and a few banal statements, such as "we men have to do better", made little sense on their own in the context of gynarchy. If it discussed the issue of public health across genders in a broader light, it'd have been actually substantive. To me the sole purpose of that "improved" post was cleaning up his image (or should I say, washing his hands LMAO).
Since then, he made a lot of really high quality posts, I must admit. While I still felt he should've taken more responsibility for the "incident", it seemed he genuinely wanted to improve and I had hope in him. Nobody's perfect, I've also behaved awkwardly over the internet and our subreddit a few times (although, to my best good-willed knowledge, never crossed the sexual line). But now, as new concerns towards him are raised, his growth is at question again.
It's understandable one can struggle. However, I think it would be wiser to not to serve such important role as a moderator of a subreddit like ours, if you have unresolved issues like this.
To u/Rocky_Knight_, if you're reading this. I hope you won't take this post down and/or ban me for criticism. That wouldn't make you look good.