“PWA-Philly” in this document refers to the PWA Philly meetup group located at pwa-philly.github.io . “The administrators” refers to the organizers of the group.
PWA-Philly operates under Chatham House Rule. You are free to use the information in PWA-Philly in other contexts, however you should not disclose the identity or affiliation of any participant or commenter in PWA-Philly.
PWA-Philly is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone. We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form.
The PWA-Philly meetup group aims to provide a safe space where contributors can disclose situations that they are currently experiencing. It’s not always the case that the original contributor will be looking for advice or feedback. Do not offer unsolicited advice of feedback without first checking the intentions of the original comment poster. Specifically, advice and feedback should only be given if the poster requested it. If in doubt, check first and use the Gestalt Protocol.
This code of conduct applies to all PWA-Philly spaces, including public channels, private channels and direct messages, both online and off. Anyone who violates this code of conduct may be sanctioned or expelled from these spaces at the discretion of the administrators.
Some PWA-Philly spaces may have additional rules in place, which will be made clearly available to participants. Participants are responsible for knowing and abiding by these rules.
- Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion
- Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment.
- Deliberate misgendering or use of “dead” or rejected names
- Gratuitous or off-topic sexual images or behaviour in spaces where they’re not appropriate
- Physical contact and simulated physical contact (eg, textual descriptions like “hug” or “backrub”) without consent or after a request to stop.
- Threats of violence
- Incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm
- Deliberate intimidation
- Stalking or following
- Harassing photography or recording, including logging online activity for harassment purposes
- Sustained disruption of discussion
- Unwelcome sexual attention
- Pattern of inappropriate social contact, such as requesting/assuming inappropriate levels of intimacy with others
- Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease
- Deliberate “outing” of any aspect of a person’s identity without their consent except as necessary to protect vulnerable people from intentional abuse
- Publication of non-harassing private communication
- Instances of Privileged Explaining
PWA-Philly prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. The administrators will not act on complaints regarding:
- “Reverse”-isms, including “reverse racism,” “reverse sexism,” and “cisphobia”
- Reasonable communication of boundaries, such as “leave me alone,” “go away,” or “I’m not discussing this with you.”
- Communicating in a “tone” you don’t find congenial
- Criticizing racist, sexist, cissexist, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions
If you are being harassed by a member of PWA-Philly, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact any of the organizers immediately.
This code of conduct applies to PWA-Philly spaces, but if you are being harassed by a member of PWA-Philly outside our spaces, we still want to know about it. We will take all good-faith reports of harassment by PWA-Philly members, especially the administrators, seriously. This includes harassment outside our spaces and harassment that took place at any point in time. The abuse team reserves the right to exclude people from PWA-Philly based on their past behavior, including behavior outside PWA-Philly spaces and behavior towards people who are not in PWA-Philly.
In order to protect volunteer admins from abuse and burnout, we reserve the right to reject any report we believe to have been made in bad faith. Reports intended to silence legitimate criticism may be deleted without response.
We will respect confidentiality requests for the purpose of protecting victims of abuse. At our discretion, we may publicly name a person about whom we’ve received harassment complaints, or privately warn third parties about them, if we believe that doing so will increase the safety of PWA-Philly members or the general public. We will not name harassment victims without their affirmative consent.
Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.
If a participant engages in harassing behavior, the administrators may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from all PWA-Philly spaces and identification of the participant as a harasser to other PWA-Philly members or the general public.