We get asked or told a lot here, when women are seeking advice, to be nice or to only give constructive criticism. This widely stems from the many threads where we give back what we've been given or where we are standing up for the integrity of this sub.

Here's something that the new women here need to understand. The vast majority of reddit hates us. It's reddit. It's full of SJWs who would love nothing more that to shut us down or subvert this sub (and turn it into r/relationships). What you don't see is how much junk the mods here clean up that you never see. Links to porn, posting of abuse hotline numbers, people begging us to get help, trolling, concern trolls, etc. It gets bad, but most of you don't see it. The mods and the women who have been here for a long time work hard to keep this at a minimum to keep this sub alive.

Now, the second thing to keep in mind is, we are a sub that promotes self improvement. Not a sub that wants to preserve your feelings. These two cannot go hand in hand. Self improvement requires looking at the difficult things in your life that you want to change. This is never going to feel good. We all have crap in our lives that needs to be faced if we want to change it. If you don't have the courage to do that yet, then you're not ready to be here.

We are here to hold that mirror in front of your face that you might not be seeing yet. Now when we do this, usually one of three things happens (I posted this in the Simple Questions thread but I thought it could use it's own post).

1) They come in asking for advice, we give blunt advice that goes against everything they have been taught, they feel the need to protect their feelings and they get snarky and rude. We probably will act in kind. We don't have to put up with that.

2) Women come here, know we will be blunt, are a bit scared of that and will often read a tone in their head that we are just simply not using. What I mean is, they hear a snotty tone in their head when they read our responses, when in reality we were writing things out perfectly kindly only in a very straightforward manner. Read what is written. Don't assume a harsh tone. Read it in a kind tone and it will greatly changed your perspective of what we are saying.

3) What u/CoochQuarantine said:

I agree that you need a bit of a thick skin when you first come here. However, most women don't want to head the truth. When I came here I was already desperate to learn through the cruel tutelage of these women who have what I want. It takes a real wake up call to shake up those last little bits of you getting rid of the idea you're a special snowflake. When women are here who genuinely want to start internalizing the info they project that. They can hear the things they did wrong because they want another (albeit harsh) perspective. We also have to weed out the trolls. We try to have people read all the literature first before posting and most people don't. they just read a couple of threads and then want to apply it but have no desire to do any self reflection. They still defend their behaviors and that of their shitty captains.

Though, it may seem cruel, we're are not trying to be cruel. It would be far more cruel in reality to just play to your feelings.

So, ask your questions. We will be blunt, but we don't spend our time here to be mean. We spend our time here to help women out because we care about them. The best way we can care about them is to quickly cut through the BS that we were all raised with. Ask questions. If you're feelings get hurt, ask yourself why. Don't get snarky with us (if you do, we have every right to respond in kind). Simply ask for clarification. We will continue to explain as best we can. Yes, we will reach a point where if you are still asking for clarification after a 200 comment thread we might give up. But if you are truly trying to understand, this will not happen.

And after you get your answers, you still don't agree with us, that's fine. We don't expect or need you to agree. Just understand that this is not be the place for you to give advice. There are other places for you.

One last thing, don't tell us how to answer your questions (contrastive criticism only please!). You're on the internet. People are going to respond how they are going to respond. If you're not ready for that, you might want to continue lurking.