Explanation: Anti-oppressive practices are often misunderstood or criticised in other environments. Anti-oppressive practitioners are used to having to slip into educator mode or defend our ways of being in the world. The Centre offers a welcoming and affirming place where anti-oppressive practices are accepted, valued, and celebrated. Due to the scarcity of such spaces, it’s important that we preserve those essential characteristics of the Centre.

What we welcome: We encourage people who are unfamiliar with anti-oppressive and liberating practices to acknowledge their lack of familiarity and to ask humble, respectful questions. For example, you might say, “I’m struggling to understand why it’s important to share my political stance as a practitioner. Can anyone here share your experiences with why this matters and how naming your politics helps therapy participants from an anti-oppressive perspective?”

What we don’t want: We don’t want people who have conflicting beliefs to co-opt our spaces, challenge the legitimacy of anti-oppressive and liberating practices, or start debates about anti-oppressive principles and practices. For example, we don’t want people to violate the boundaries community, such as by making comments like “I don’t think your practices are ethical” or “you should do it my way” or “why don’t you do it this other way instead?” We are committed to our anti-oppressive and liberating practices, so if you’re not, then you can go to many other spaces that are a better fit for you. Please respect our spaces and values.

Anti-oppressive practice is about what people do, not just what they claim to support. The Centre takes cultural appropriation seriously and works to raise awareness about how to genuinely practice cultural appreciation. We are committed to anti-racist practices that recognise the systemic anti-Bla(c)k violence and hairstyle discrimination for which many people of African and/or Caribbean descent and Bla(c)k and Aboriginal communities have been and continue to be targeted. For this reason, we do not welcome people who culturally appropriate hairstyles such as cornrows or locks (sometimes referred to as “dreadlocks”). Similarly, our community is concerned with prevention and critique of common forms of cultural appropriation, including but not limited to culturally appropriative use of yoga / yogic spiritual traditions, Buddhism, and/or Aboriginal / Indigenous / First Nations traditions.

Where to learn more: Anti-Oppressive Practice approaches are based on an understanding of societal privilege, power dynamics, and systemic oppression. To learn more, you can read these QGuides on Privilege, Power, and Oppression (part 1) and Anti-Oppressive Practice (part 2). These two resources can help you to decide whether an Anti-Oppressive Practice space like ours might be a good fit for you.

Explanation: This means that we seek to elevate the narratives and insights of people whose communities and lived experiences have been marginalised and historically excluded. Instead of making claims about marginalised people’s needs, we expect our community members to seek out lived experience wisdom, to use language created by or preferred among people with lived experience, and to redirect outsider attempts to talk “about people without people” back toward lived experience sources. This helps us to make sure that people who are typically excluded from decision-making about their own lives are given a platform to advocate for their own needs using their own culturally safe methods and protocols.

What we welcome: When talking about any people from any marginalised or historically excluded community or lived experience that isn’t your own, consider cultural safety and cultural humility by checking that you are describing that person or group using language they consider respectful and affirming. We do not assume that third parties who have described people automatically know how that person wants to be described, including but not limited to their pronouns. Take responsibility to avoid perpetuating oppression by checking how that person describes themself whenever possible. We welcome conscientious efforts to avoid stereotypes, pathologising language, and negative biases. For example, instead of accepting any sighted person’s authority to make claims about Blind and DeafBlind people on their behalf, we would expect a sighted person to share primary sources created by Blind and DeafBlind people or refer the other sighted person to organisations led by Blind and DeafBlind people.

What we don’t want: We don’t want people in our community to use normative language that is disrespectful, pathologising, or promotes negative biases. Even if this offensive language is considered “official” medical terminology or widely used in mass media, we expect our members to actively challenge oppression rather than perpetuating it. We also don’t want self-titled “experts” or people without lived experience claiming to be “spokespeople” or representatives for communities to which they do not belong.

You are not, and never will be, an “expert” in another person’s lived experience or community. As part of Anti-Oppressive Practice, please exercise cultural humility and do not claim authority over someone else’s community, characteristics, or way of being. For example, we don’t want a sighted person to treat another sighted person as the “expert” on how to work sensitively with Blind and DeafBlind people. Blind and DeafBlind people are the best authorities on their needs.

Explanation: As an Anti-Oppressive community of care, all our community and group contexts aim to share space in a way that prioritises people who aren’t given as much space in the dominant culture and its normative institutions. This means we do not work according to a simple “get in line” approach to who talks and types in our meetings. This is because some people in society are taught that their words matter and that they deserve to get in that line, while many others are not.

Marginalised people often learn very early in life that we don’t deserve to take up as much space as other people. We may find ourselves tone-policed and accused of taking up too much space in a group, when we need to raise concerns about exclusion more frequently and often than people with dominant societal privileges. Similarly, in a “debate”, having the educational privilege to use convincing words does not make an argument ethical or accurate. “Debate” style interactions that seek to champion one person’s view at the expense of another’s do not promote anti-oppressive relational practices such as cultural humility and shared understanding.

Our team is deeply aware that marginalised people often come to our spaces after having felt silenced or problematised for how we communicate in groups that do not apply an awareness of power dynamics, societal privilege, and systemic oppression. We know that people who have been repeatedly shut down or attacked for trying to address equity and inclusion concerns in other groups typically need encouragement and support to speak up. For this reason, we unapologetically and explicitly reject a “privilege-neutral” approach to group facilitation, and instead make active efforts to ensure that people with less societal privilege and power are actively encouraged and supported to take up space through talking and other forms of communication.

What we welcome: We welcome people to explore and learn about new ways to share space beyond oppressive and structurally violent modes of interaction like “debating” marginalised people’s wisdom about the practices and needs of our communities and lived experiences. We welcome cultural humility, sharing openly about your own vulnerabilities and limitations, and deep listening to people who have not been given the same societal privileges. We encourage people who have felt silenced, tone-policed, attacked, or excluded in other spaces to take up space and share your legitimate feelings such as rage, sadness, fear, joy, and any other emotional offerings you wish to bring as part of your whole being.

What we don’t want: We don’t want people without lived experience to take a “debate” approach to lived experience wisdom about strategies, insights, or practices among people and communities with marginalised or historically excluded lived experiences. Even when you share a marginalised experience, we avoid promoting a “One True Way” approach and hold space for variation within the overarching framework of anti-oppressive practice. We don’t want people trying to invalidate each other’s ways of being in their lived experience communities.

More about why we don’t want ‘debate’:
Outside of our community, people without lived experience often engage in “debate” about marginalised people. These debates rarely demonstrate any understanding or insight about our lived experiences and needs. They often result in public policies that fail to address our needs and create additional access barriers. Attempts to “debate” our lives without considering lived experience community wisdom are harmful and widespread throughout government, media, and service provider contexts. Even when people with lived experience are consulted, there is a tendency in the Overculture to make the most privileged people within a marginalised group the “spokespeople” who are expected to make claims on behalf of far more disadvantaged people within that marginalised group.

In contrast, our community strives to be a place where non-binary people and people with other marginalised lived experiences do not constantly have to do the inequitable emotional labour of justifying their existence or their right to autonomy over their own bodies, healthcare, etc.. We value the emotional labour of marginalised people in raising concerns about this kind of discussion thread. We also recognise the need for accountability about the harms caused by treating some people’s access and rights as up for so-called “debate” by outsiders.

Example: A cis adult woman posts a discussion thread about whether young trans girls and non-binary people should be allowed to access gender-affirming healthcare options and whether their genders are valid or “just a phase”. This post would violate our community agreements and would either be deleted or flagged as problematic by the moderators. The cis woman who created this thread, and any other cis people who posted in a way that violated our community agreements, would be invited into an accountability process.

What do you mean by “accountability process”?
You can read more about accountability processes in Agreement #15 below.

Explanation: We are committed to increasing equity, justice, compassion, care, and conscientiousness in the world. We practice these values by using methods and processes aligned with the end result we wish to achieve. We use non-violent means whenever possible to achieve the outcome of a kinder and more ethical world. We do not believe that violence offers more than temporary victories that inevitably lead to further cycles of violence and harm.

Part of our non-violence means committing to compassion and understanding for people and communities who have struggled to find any means but violence to challenge the violent oppression they experience. Our non-violence is not about condemning marginalised people who use violent means of self-defence to survive violent oppression. Instead, we focus on demonstrating the power of non-violent resistance for all who have capacity to explore this possibility and facilitate healing circles to help people and communities to restore connections and repair harms.

Our non-violence is also not about tone-policing people with equity-deserving lived experiences who express anger about having been mistreated or excluded. In our community, we encourage marginalised people to express their anger without name-calling or character assassination, including when their ‘tone’ is emotionally expressive.

As an emotion-focused community of people from around the world, we are aware of how cultures create and shape emotions. We value the diverse range of emotions between people and know that there is no universally ‘good’ or ‘bad’ emotion. For example, although shame is typically considered to be a universally destructive and harmful emotion in Anglocentric and Eurocentric contexts, cross-cultural research findings have documented societies in which shame is experienced as a beneficial emotion that promotes societal inclusion and strengthens relational connections. Similarly, we recognise that although some societies treat anger as synonymous with aggression and violence, cross-cultural research shows that some societies and cultures experience sharing and expressing anger as an affirming, nourishing way to bring people closer together.

As a trauma-and-violence-informed community, we understand that people are not violent because they are angry; people choose to express their anger in violent and abusive ways because they believe they are entitled to do so. We do not.

We are aware that some people choose to harm other people, enjoy harming other people, blame other people for their own harmful behaviour, and/or believe they are entitled to do whatever they want to other people. People with this sense of entitlement and lack of accountability need to do more personal work to change these attitudes, before we consider inviting them into our community. However, we also know that many people cause unintentional harm to other people. As a community, we are committed to processes that support people who have caused unintended harm to translate their feelings of regret into accountable actions aimed at genuine and meaningful repair of the harm they have caused.

In our community, we strive to address harm in a way that transforms and improves our entire community. We seek to avoid getting drawn into cycles of retaliation and revenge. We affirm the right of people targeted for violence to defend themselves, but we do not support any bullying or retaliatory violence against people who have caused harm to other people. Instead, if our efforts to seek justice through non-violent and non-coercive resistance do not result in meaningful change, then we may remove and ban someone from our community. We are a carefully curated intentional community. No one is entitled to access to our community, our attention, our emotional labour, or our group spaces without all our community members’ affirmative and ongoing consent.

Explanation: In a world with many options for violence and cruelty, we actively choose to centre kindness in all our work. Kindness is distinct from what white supremacy culture considers “nice”; it does not mean politely sweeping injustice under the rug or passively tolerating oppression because it would be “rude” to disrupt it. Kindness means courage and caring enough to say something, do something, to notice and take action for beneficial change. We ask all people attending our events to practice kindness toward each other. By responding with compassion and empathy, you can help someone whose troubles would otherwise have been invisible. You can use the strength of kindness to make the world a better place.

Example: A person in our community seems irritable or keeps forgetting things you tell them. They seem less emotionally present than usual, or they are quiet after you have shared something important with them. Although you wanted a response, you realise that something difficult might be happening in their life. Instead of lashing out at them in anger or criticising them, you express your concerns that they seem less engaged than usual and more stressed. You offer to be a supportive listener in case they are struggling. Your offer of support prompts them to explain that they have recently been fired from work due to speaking out against their abusive boss. They’re worried about how to pay their rent this month and keep spacing out during conversations because they’re constantly worried about how to feed their polycule and children.

Explanation: The concept of ‘privilege’ refers to unearned benefits for which people have not had to work personally. It can be difficult and uncomfortable for people to acknowledge their own privilege, and having privilege means that it can be invisible or difficult to notice ways in which marginalised people are disadvantaged– especially when that isn’t a disadvantage you personally experience. Being explicitly aware of our privilege helps to remind us about these hard-to-spot aspects of oppression, and also creates greater safety for marginalised people.

Example: An allistic (non-Autistic) person is discussing therapy practices and workplace adjustments being provided in their workplace. The allistic person acknowledges how their allistic privilege might make it harder for them to notice ways that their supposedly accommodating workplace might still not be meeting Autistic people’s access needs. Instead of assuming that everyone else has the same privileges, the allistic person seeks information by Autistic people themselves about the extent to which this workplace meets their needs.

By acknowledging that Autistic people are likely to be subjected to access barriers that allistic people might not notice and actively seeking to listen to Autistic people’s lived experiences, an allistic person can contribute to making our community a safer place for Autistic people. This awareness creates space for Autistic people’s experiences of marginalisation and exclusion that might otherwise go unnoticed and unaddressed.

Explanation: In our community, we believe that having good intentions does not give us a free pass to discount other people’s feelings. Being genuinely well-intentioned means that we want to know when we have unintentionally harmed another person, so that we have a chance to repair that harm. If we are the person being harmed, this does not give us a free pass to vilify or discount the other person’s feelings, either. In those situations that involve mutual good intentions, we can recognise each other’s humanity by taking accountability for unintended harm, working to repair ruptures, and working together toward mutual understanding.

Example: A well-intentioned monogamous person responds to a polyamorous person’s request for support by offering suggestions about how to make their message more palatable to monogamous people. Despite their beneficial intentions, this communication has the impact of making the polyamorous person feel they are being asked to “tone down” their concerns and centre the feelings of monogamous people over their own– something that polyamorous people are disproportionately and inequitable expected to do. The polyamorous person asks their accountability pod to contact the monogamous person’s accountability pod in order to express the polyamorous person’s concerns about the comments that the monogamous person made.

Explanation: People and communities with marginalised or historically excluded lived experiences are frequently targets of harmful behaviour. When attempting to address this harmful behaviour, we are often told that we need to “move on” and forget about it, because the harmful behaviour was “unintentional”, “just a joke”, or motivated by good intentions. However, none of these reasons exempts someone from accountability for the consequences of their actions. It is because of our good intentions that we want to know about and repair the unintended harm. When someone tells us that they felt harmed, we can be interested in finding out more about what caused the harm. This can help us to act in better alignment with our good intentions in the future.

What we welcome: We welcome accountable behaviour that goes beyond just claiming to be anti-oppressive. Anyone can cause harm. We are particularly focused on identifying and responding anti-oppressively to the specific kinds of harm caused by unexamined privilege, non-consensual power dynamics, structural violence, and systemic oppression. For example, if you misgender another person, even if you have a trans lived experience, we welcome you to take accountability by treating what happened as serious, accepting the misgendered person’s feelings without tone-policing or problematising their reactions, and taking specific actions beyond just an apology to repair the harm caused to the misgendered person and everyone who was exposed to your misgendering behaviour.

What we don’t want: We don’t want people to exempt themselves from accountability, for any reason. For example, a binary trans woman misgenders a non-binary person in one of our group chats. This makes the non-binary person feel less safe and less included in our community. When raising their concern, the binary trans woman dismisses the non-binary person’s concern, saying “I didn’t mean anything bad, and it doesn’t bother me when people misgender me as a trans woman, so it shouldn’t bother you.” Telling the non-binary person how they “should” react does not demonstrate genuine good intentions or accountable behaviour. We also do not want people in our community to tone-police or problematise other people’s reactions to their oppressive behaviour.

Explanation: There are numerous different ways that people can show up and engage deeply. Although ableist and Anglocentric societal norms privilege mouth-words over AAC, and cameras on over text-based communications, our community strives to value and prioritise people whose communications are often discounted or devalued in other contexts. In our community, we discourage people with speaking and ableist privileges from discounting and devaluing a non-speaking person’s communication needs. We encourage people to use the communication methods that work best for them. Sometimes, this means that people’s access needs might clash, such as when one person uses a screen reader to read text-based content aloud, while another person might need auditory silence to process content between verbal comments from people with speaking privilege. By caring about and considering these needs, we can learn how to better include everyone in our community.

What we welcome: A non-speaking person uses an Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC) app to communicate during one of our workshops or events. They have their camera off, due to needing to shift positions frequently to manage pain associated with a long-term health concern.

What we don’t want: Another participant with speaking privilege and ableist privilege comments that some people “don’t seem to be engaging as much” and asks why people aren’t participating “properly” by talking (i.e., using mouth-words) and having their cameras on.

Explanation: Be willing to “be in the messiness of it”, to not always “get it right”. Practise compassion for other people’s imperfections and challenges, and strive toward self-compassion about your own imperfections and challenges.

What we welcome: In our community, we encourage you to acknowledge your own struggles, such as “I am having a hard time learning how to…” or “I am unfamiliar with…” You can follow a statement expressing your vulnerability with a request for information, such as “I would like to know more about how you handle that.” By listening to and reflecting on the insights people share that might be very different from your own experiences outside of our community, you can learn more about other people and, hopefully, about yourself.

What we don’t want: We do not believe that any one person has all the answers for all people everywhere. You can have the most beneficial experience in our community by recognising that we are not looking for “experts”, and that you aren’t and will never be the “expert” about another person’s lived experience and community. We don’t want or need you to be “perfect”. Being humble and genuinely interested in listening can bring you deeper into anti-oppressive practices than claiming to have the answers or arguing with other people that your belief is the right way for them.

Explanation: It can often feel uncomfortable for people to recognised the unearned benefits they have received due to their societally dominant positions. In our community, instead of seeking to avoid this kind of discomfort, we accept that this discomfort can be necessary as part of the “growing pains” of becoming aware of our own privileges. We also distinguish between these kinds of “growing pains” and actual safety. We prioritise safety of people with marginalised lived experiences, including where doing so feels uncomfortable for people with societally dominant positions in that domain of lived experience.

Explanation: In our global virtual community, people have a wide variety of contrasting needs, feelings, and lived experiences. Some people have sighted, speaking, hearing, walking, white, cis, het, allistic, and educational privileges. We have different primary languages, time zones, religious/faith/belief/spirituality traditions and customs, and many of us are from racialised cultures and communities. Before making any statements about what “we” do or what “all of us” know or need, consider carefully whether you will be excluding or obscuring someone else’s lived experience.

What we welcome: We encourage people to speak from your own societal position, without attempting to make grand generalisations or universalising claims. When you are describing a collective “we”, always clarify who you do and don’t mean. This helps more people to feel included and avoids overwriting another person’s experience with your own. By avoiding these kinds of sweeping assumptions, we– the members of the Centre community– can also be more attentive to access barriers that other people might encounter. This makes it possible for us– the Centre community– to reduce access barriers and ensure our community can support and nourish people from many difference places and experiences.

What we don’t want: We don’t want people in our community to stereotype or make generalisations about All People Everywhere based solely on their own experience. We do not all have television or even consistent access to electricity and indoor plumbing. We do not all live in English-speaking societies, and even those of us who do might not consider English to be one of our primary languages.

Explanation: All oppressions can harm people, and many people are subjected to multiple forms of oppression as a result of their intersecting marginalised lived experiences and communities. Being marginalised in one dimension of living does not give people license to oppress another people. In our community, instead of competing over whose oppression is “worst” or whose marginalisation matters more, we validate the harm that all forms of oppression can cause.

Learn more: You can learn more about this topic in this article on coalition building among people of colour by Angela Y. Davis and Elizabeth Martínez here.

Explanation: In our community, even when we have advanced knowledge and experience in our recognised specialty areas, we reject “expert” narratives as part of the colonialist, ethnocentric legacy of white supremacy. The Centre does not offer “lectures” or a “sage on the stage” approach to our programming and events. Instead, we value lived experience wisdom and cultural humility about the limited scope of any one person’s knowledge.

Our community members are passionate about deep listening and dialogue. We learn and grow together, respecting our distinct needs and ways of life. We know that no one person has “the answers” for everyone else. Instead, we support each other to learn what’s right for each of us and our communities, and to critically reflect on the supposedly universal truths that people often take for granted in the Overculture.

Explanation: 

The Centre is committed to being an accountable community. Accountable community practices are varied and can be complex and sophisticated. In our community, two of the key accountable community practices we use are disruption practices and accountability processes to respond to oppressive patterns of behaviour, incidents, and harms that occur.

Disruption practices:

Disruption practices mean we intervene to stop what’s happening in the moment, as soon as possible after someone has said or done something oppressive– whether or not this was intentional. For example, if someone misgenders another person, uses a bigoted slur without being aware this word is problematic, or acts in oppressive ways that go against our agreements, we take action in the context where this occurred, so that we are establishing and maintaining anti-oppressive group practices. Our disruption is intended to support everyone in the group and to put our community values into action. Disrupting oppressive comments and actions live in the moment means we care about your journey. It’s not punitive or a rejection of you as a person, even though it can feel hard. We’ll also check in with you afterward to support you in working through what happened.

People from more conflict avoidant cultures and familial backgrounds might find anti-oppressive disruption practices jarring at first. New members have found it helpful to prepare in advance for this unfamiliar emotional experience. We want to assure you that most people make mistakes and that we won’t give up on you or demonise you for “getting it wrong”. See agreement #10 on our commitment anti-perfectionism and the importance we place on being authentic and humble rather than striving for an unattainable goal of perfection. You can learn more about some examples of disruption practices here.

Accountability processes:

For situations that extend beyond a single instance of unintended harm or that cannot be adequately or safely addressed live in the moment when they occur, particularly in situations of oppressive relational cycles or recurring patterns of harmful behaviour, we use accountability processes to achieve repair and transformative justice where possible.

One example of a common accountability process would at minimum involve the following stages:
★ a person who caused harm being supported in a respectful way to learn what was harmful about their behaviour, such as through listening to people who were affected

★ the person who caused the harm acknowledging  the harmful consequences of their behaviour to the entire community, such as through a detailed and specific apology

★ the person who caused the harm agreeing to take specific actions to repair the harm and prevent similar harm from happening again in the future

If the people whose actions caused harm were unwilling to engage in all stages of the accountability process, or if repair attempts did not result in meaningful change, then the people who caused the harm might be removed and banned from our community for a period of time ranging from one year to a lifetime.

Explanation: Accountability pods are the social structures make accountable communities and accountability processes possible. As a new member of our community and any of our groups, our welcome process will connect you with at least one person who can serve as part of your accountability pod. As you take time to get to know other members of our community, we ask that sometime within the first six months, you pick at least one additional member as part of your accountability pod. This will ensure that our accountability pod system is sustainable and distributes the emotional labour of accountability processes equitably among our members. To share our community’s emotional resources fairly, we encourage you to have a maximum of five accountability pod members.

Explanation: Conversational consenting means doing your best to give advance notice and ask for consent before sharing potentially traumatising content and/or content requiring another person’s emotional labour, particularly when they have a marginalised societal position regarding the topic or content.

What we welcome: In our community, we strive to use conversational consenting to create optimal spaces for deep listening and to provide people with the best opportunity to respond supportively to each other. We welcome conscientiousness and care for other people, such as providing content notes, sometimes described as “trigger warnings” and abbreviated as “CW” or “TW”, when discussing topics that might be loaded or painful for people with similar lived experience.

Example: A white anglo member of our community comes to one of our group events distressed about a racist incident that was covered in the news. Recognising that this incident is likely to have an even greater negative impact on racialised people with similar demographics to the person or community that was targeted, the white anglo member asks the group whether it is okay to discuss this incident and respects the wishes of racialised people in the group.

If this white anglo member wishes to post about this incident in our community server, this member provides a content notice (e.g., “Content Notice: Anti-Asian and anti-Black hate speech” or “TW: Anti-trans assault” or “CW: Xenophobic bullying and sexual harassment”) and adds a spoiler tag, which is a way of concealing text that appears after a content notice, so that the text is visible only when someone intentionally clicks on that text. In our community server, double lines “||” at the beginning and end of a piece of text will create a spoiler tag. Images posted as part of a post that contains spoiler tags can be concealed or visible, depending on which option the person posting selects.

What we don’t want: We don’t want the concept of conversational consenting to be misused to tone police or silence marginalised people who want to discuss their lived experiences of exclusion, mistreatment, and oppression. Conversational consenting is not about preventing privileged people’s discomfort at the expense of marginalised people’s repression.

Explanation: We recognise that sex work is real work. Emotional, domestic, creative, and intellectual labour and caregiving are also real work, despite some of these forms of labour being inequitably compensated, stigmatised, or devalued in some economic systems.

Emotional labour is real work that requires consent, not a right to which privileged people are entitled. Instead of expecting marginalised people to explain themselves or educate you, commit to doing your own learning from existing resources by marginalised people or fairly compensate marginalised people for their emotional labour.

What we welcome: In our community, we cultivate gratitude when a marginalised person chooses to share that something we said or did was oppressive. We appreciate and value the emotional labour involved in raising concerns and complaints. We also value people whose work is disrespected or demeaned in many industrialised societies, such as people who do uncompensated work of caring for children, keeping a home, and caring for people who are older, disabled by an ableist society, or more societally marginalised.

What we don’t want: We don’t want people in our community to make classist and privileged comments that assume people’s income is proportionate to the quality or value of the work they do. We don’t want people to make comments like, “she isn’t working, she’s a stay-at-home-mum”, which is a contradictory statement! These kinds of sexist, demeaning comments show a lack of appreciation for the relentlessly challenging and highly skilled work that unwaged child caregivers (who in many societies are more likely to be women and have the societal role of “parent”) provide.

Explanation: To respect the confidentiality and privacy needs of our community members, we need you to ask and check for affirmative consent before sharing anything outside.

What we welcome: We encourage our community members to respect each other’s privacy and contribute to making our spaces safe enough for marginalised people to express themselves without fear of retaliation from the Overculture.

What we don’t want: As a trauma-and-violence-informed community, we don’t want the concepts of “confidentiality and privacy” to be weaponised against people with safety concerns.

We don’t practice secrecy about bullying or want people to create a culture of hiding and mystery in which abusive behaviour and coercive control dynamics can thrive. If anyone in our community experiences abuse or mistreatment, we encourage you to do what you need to restore your sense of safety. We also encourage you to share what happened with our team.