< CODE OF CONDUCT >

female:pressure is built on trust and therefore dedicated to providing an experience of mutual respect for everyone. We can neither tolerate harassment of participants in any form nor attitudes of prerogative, privilege and discrimination.

For many years, we did not have an explicit code of conduct because we thought that based on the personal contacts within our network cordial interaction was self-evident. However, having a code of conduct is often an indicator that a project has a sizeable quantity of contributors. Not only did our number of members increase by over 1500 percent in 20 years, we now also comprise people from 86 countries with many different cultural backgrounds. And yes, we want to grow further. Communication and collaboration within such a diverse multitude of people requires empathy, attention, listening, sometimes diplomacy, or tenderness, and always a clear and fair-spoken mode of expression.

This Code of Conduct applies to all female:pressure spaces both online and offline, including our mailing list, Facebook groups and Discord server. We, as female:pressure are dedicated to mediating conflicts within our network. Anyone who violates this Code of Conduct may be sanctioned or expelled from these spaces at the discretion of the Awareness Team [please see more in consequences below].

If you have questions about the conduct in female:pressure spaces, if you feel unsafe, or in case you think something is wrong with how things are handled within the network or its spaces, please don't hesitate to contact us at concierge@femalepressure.net.

Some female:pressure 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.

Harassment includes:

• Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, age, social status, class, caste, disability, mental illness, neuroatypicality, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, nationality or religion
• Unsolicited comments regarding a person's lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, employment, and sex work
• Deliberate misgendering or use of rejected names, deliberate deadnaming or disrespect of preferred personal pronouns when this has been made clear
• Deliberate mislabelling of geographic entities [e.g. the use of 'America' or 'Americans' for the USA or US citizens respectively and thus ignoring the majority of South, Central and North America]
• Hate speech or deliberate intimidation
• Sustained disruption of discussion or trolling
• Continued one-on-one communication after requests to cease
• Stalking or following
• Pattern of inappropriate social contact, such as requesting/assuming inappropriate levels of intimacy with others
• 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
• Unwelcome sexual attention
• Threats of violence
• Incitement of violence towards any individual, including encouraging a person to commit suicide or to engage in self-harm
• Harassing photography or recording, including logging online activity for harassment purposes
• Deliberate 'outing' of any aspect of a person's identity without their consent
• Publication of non-harassing private communication

female:pressure prioritizes marginalized people's safety over privileged people's comfort. Therefore, our Awareness Team reserves the right not to act on:

• Complaints regarding 'reverse'-isms, including 'reverse racism', 'reverse sexism' and 'cisphobia';
• Complaints regarding reasonable communication of boundaries, such as "leave me alone", "go away" or "I'm not discussing this with you";
• Complaints regarding communicating in a 'tone' you don't find congenial;
• Complaints regarding criticism of racist, sexist, trans-hostile, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions.

The abuse of trust within the network is extremely damaging for its development. Misappropriation of intellectual property amongst female:pressure members is a worst case scenario in this regard, in particular if the wronged party is a member of a marginalized group. Such behaviour will not be tolerated. For example, the use of Aboriginal/Indigenous music, storytelling and wordplay must be 100% supported by the Aboriginal/Indigenous person, stakeholder or owner of original property or it cannot be reproduced in any analog or digital format.

< 4 LEVEL NOTIFICATION SYSTEM >

As of April 2024, we have introduced a new check in and warning system for members of our network and subscribers of our mailing list. The four-level notification system serves primarily to assist the volunteer Awareness Team in handling cases of differing severity, to foster safe modes of communication, and to dismantle systemic racism and imbalanced power structures within the network.

Notifications from the Awareness Team are sent as a result of harmful messages to the mailing list and behaviors or messages off the list that the Awareness Team witnesses or is notified about and that happen, for example, in our Discord server, social media channels, or offline. We also check in on the wellbeing of the recipients of harmful messages.

Level 1 Notification

A level 1 notification is due for content that might not be immediately offensive but is or contains either inconsiderate expression of strong personal opinions, personal and derogatory call out from previous emails, is poorly and unclearly phrased and potentially polarizing, or for messages that have a deceptive subject line.

Outcomes: Members will receive an email notification with 'Thank you for considering'. No further action is made. No follow up.

Level 2 Notification

A level 2 notification is due when members police other members behind the scenes or openly on the list or in our social media spaces. Such a behavior is particularly problematic when the policing person is a senior member of the network. Level 2 Warnings are also due for misinformation, unfounded claims, and potential disinformation, for polarizing content, self-righteousness, and/or pejorative judgment, or emotionally manipulative silencing of dissenting members.

Outcomes: Members will receive an email notification with 'Thank you for taking this seriously'. No further action is made.

Level 3 Notification

A level 3 notification is due for deliberately offensive, vindictive, and/or openly harmful messages either on the list or off the list, for highly polarizing, provocative, and/or inflammatory content in words or links.

Outcomes: Members receive an email notification. Their subscription is set to "hold for moderation" beyond the general list moderation settings. They are asked to suggest their own ways to make reparations to the people most affected by their behavior.

Level 4 Notification

A level 4 notification is due when multiple warnings have been sent within a month, or when a member clearly and comprehensively breaches the Code of Conduct.

Outcomes: Recognition and reparations are necessary. Suspension from the mailing list until recognition and reparations are made.

< REPORTING >

If you are being harassed by a member of female:pressure, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact the Awareness Team at concierge@femalepressure.net. If the person who is harassing you is on the team, they will recuse themselves and we will assign an external facilitator to handle your incident. We will respond as promptly as we can.

This Vode of Vonduct applies to female:pressure spaces, but if you are being harassed by a member of female:pressure outside our spaces, we still want to know about it. We will take all reports of harassment by female:pressure members seriously. This includes harassment outside our spaces and harassment that takes place at any point in time.

In order to protect volunteers 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 female:pressure members or the general public. We will not name harassment victims without their affirmative consent.

< CONSEQUENCES >

It is the role of the awareness team to mediate in case of conflicts within the community. Participants are reminded by email to stop any harassing behavior and are expected to comply immediately. The consequences of warnings that the Awareness Team may issue are detailed above in the four-level warning section. Mediation efforts may include gathering relevant information such as statements from the harassed person, harasser, any witnesses, and/or relevant documents so that the Awareness Team may comment and take action with a full understanding of the offence.

If a participant engages in harassing behavior, the Awareness Team may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from all female:pressure spaces and identification of the participant as a harasser to other female:pressure members or the general public.

< MAILING LIST NETIQUETTE >

In addition to the above general Code of Conduct, we ask you to respect the following rules and recommendations for posting to our mailing list:

• We ask you to use greetings that don't alienate our non-binary and transgender members.
  If you decide to use a salutation that is not gender neutral [e.g. "hey ladies"], then please add a more inclusive salutation to also greets those who don't identify as whom you addressed initially.


• We ask members to speak from a position of owning their own vulnerability as 'I feel', 'I value' and 'I need' rather than using communication which creates pointed assumptions and judgements. In this network we value creative, collaborative, and integrating conversations.


• Please do not try to post images, PDFs or any other attachments to the list!
  Image files are almost always too big for a 40 KB message size. The list is configured in a way that it automatically strips images from the message but such messages are still held for approval. This means more work for the administrator.


• Please be aware of accumulated message footers in longer threads.
  The mailing list is configured for a maximum message size of 40 KB. If your message is bigger than that, it is held for approval. This means more work for the administrator. Often, the maximum message size is exceeded just because of a long thread with a lot of footers accumulated at the bottom of your message. Simply delete all the "female:pressure mailing list" infos and your message will become a lot smaller.


• Please do not use the reply-to-all function for single word messages unless you think it's absolutely necessary.
  Our mailing list is extremely lively and produces a lot of traffic. We have approx. 1300 subscribers. If you just hit "reply" instead of "reply to all", your message will go to the original sender only.


• We ask you to refrain from all caps messages, message parts or subject lines as it is the written equivalent of yelling.


• Please use subject lines that relate to the content of your message.


• Do refrain from misinformation, please double-check the facts you want to share and cite your sources.


• Please do refrain from polarizations, assumptions, rhetorical questions, sarcasm and calling each other out.


• Deliberate posting of disinformation, polarizing content, personal attacks and name-calling are considered a breach of our Code of Conduct.
• Generally, the tone on the list should be friendly and to the point.

female:pressure and its admins accept no responsibility for the opinions and information posted on its mailing list by other people.

female:pressure does not generally monitor its mailing list for inappropriate postings, and does not undertake editorial control of postings. We do, however, reserve the right to prevent posting to our mailing list in the event of failure to comply with the Code of Conduct or the mailing list netiquette.

To unsubscribe or change your subscription mode, please visit our mailman settings page.
More information how a Mailman 3 discussion list like ours works can be found in the Mailman 3 user guide.

April 2024

The anti-harassment policy is based on the example policy from the Geek Feminism wiki, created by the Geek Feminism community.

If you are a female:pressure member and think something is missing in this Code of Conduct, or should be changed, or you just want to give general feedback, please email the Awareness Team at concierge@femalepressure.net.