Community Guidelines
No Solicitation or Self-Promotion
Do not use community spaces to recruit for religious, political, or professional purposes; promote products, services, websites, podcasts, research, or other projects; solicit financial support; conduct market research; or share social media accounts for promotion or audience-building.
Protecting People’s Privacy
Identifying Information & Community Participation
Do not share in meetings or post on social media about other community members or their participation in the community without their consent.
Outside Relationships
If you share an outside relationship with another member, do not use meetings you both attend and/or community threads you both access to discuss that relationship without their consent. This includes avoiding names, hints, and other direct, indirect, or implied disclosures that could reveal private information about either person or your relationship.
Professional, Service, & Public Roles
We ask that people not identify themselves as a professional capacity but just be equal members of community. We protect people’s right to build kind communities free from the expectations of professional, commercial, service, and public roles. This includes both people in those roles and people receiving their services. If members share such a relationship, we ask that they leave it outside of kind community spaces. This guideline exists to maintain the consent and privacy of all members, regardless of their professional or public status or employment.
Seeking Help & Protecting Safety
Our privacy guidelines do not prevent anyone from seeking help, disclosing harm, or sharing information necessary to protect their own or another person's safety.
We Keep Connection in the Group by Default
The default expectation in this community is that people do not respond to private messages from other members, including during online meetings. Participation at the group level does not mean someone is available for one-on-one contact. If you would like to connect with someone privately, respect whatever response—or non-response—you might receive.
Romance & Consensual Sexuality
Our community is designed to be safe-enough for survivors of sexual slavery and extreme abuse. Our community is intentionally non-sexual and non-romantic. Discussion of sex is welcome and necessary when intended to help people address abuse, violence, exploitation, torture, and the effects of such.
Non-Hierarchical and Non-Commercial
We build kind communities together outside of commercialism, and outside of any profit-driven intentions. We observe relational agreements about community leadership, equality, and non-hierarchy––regardless of a person’s professional status, title, licence, academia, research, lived experience, or other credentials.
Our guidelines are community-made and updated regularly. Here is a link to a shared document for people who want to help write and edit the guidelines. Reflections, notes, fragments, and stream-of-consciousness writing is all most welcome!
Keep discussion of voluntary sexual interests, practices, and experiences—including sex positivity, kink, BDSM, paraphernalia, and similar topics—outside of community spaces. These topics are outside the purpose and boundaries of our community.
Relational Agreements for Kind Meetings
Intention of Kindness
The most important thing that we do together is accept each other’s reality with the intention of kindness. Our relational agreements work like guardrails. They let us benefit from being together without unintentionally hurting each other. If anyone forgets or has trouble following an agreement, anyone can kindly ask that it be read out loud again. Anyone who engages in violent, sexual, threatening, or similarly harmful behavior toward others will be asked to leave.
Community-Led
Meetings themselves are community-led. Rotating volunteers make meetings possible: a space steward arrives early to unlock the door, set up chairs, and attend to venue-specific needs. A timekeeper helps keep track of time. Volunteer roles hold no authority. We agree to treat each other as equals. Laughter and tears are welcome. It is okay to have and acknowledge all feelings. It is okay to express anger at situations, but not toward each other in the meeting.
Privacy
In order to be vulnerable, the environment must be made safe enough to do so. This is why we assume privacy by default. We agree to not share personal details about anyone without their permission, and to refrain from posting about members on social media.
Our privacy guidelines do not prevent anyone from seeking help, disclosing harm, or sharing information necessary to protect their own or another person's safety.
Respecting Different Needs
We agree to respect all of our needs and limitations without requiring proof or explanation for why people may have them. Many disabilities are invisible. We agree to hold this reality together with care and do our best to support each other where we can.
Harm
Some of us may be dealing with harm, abuse, neglect, violence, or exploitation in our lives; as effects from the past and/or ongoing experiences. We agree not to assume anything about someone’s life, or about how someone is doing.
Vulnerability
We agree on making this space kind enough and safe enough to just be direct about our lives. Some people may be struggling with suicidal thoughts, self-injury urges, dangerous situations, or carrying something very heavy alone––sometimes without any way to let others know. When someone shares bravely about difficult circumstances, it’s okay to not know what to say. Sometimes offering support just looks like being with somebody and acknowledging their pain.
Friendship and Hurting Each Other by Accident
Making mistakes is simply part of being human. When conflict arises, it is often due to a misunderstanding. We agree to treat mistakes as mistakes, without treating anyone like something is wrong with them for making one. We know that we might accidentally hurt each other, and we support both protecting ourselves and accepting that accidents happen.
Our relational agreements are community-made and updated regularly. Here is a link to a shared document for people who want to help write and edit the guidelines. Reflections, notes, fragments, and stream-of-consciousness writing is all most welcome!