Code of Conduct

 
 

The Pam Fergusson Charitable Trust (PFCT) is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone. We do not tolerate harassment of any of our community in any form.

This code of conduct applies to all Voluntarily Spaces, including offline at any events and online in any of our chat programmes (Slack, Gitter etc). Anyone who violates this code of conduct may be sanctioned or expelled from these spaces at the discretion of PFCT staff and admins.

Harassment Includes

  • Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, relationship preferences, disability, physical and mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, age, ethnicity, language, country of origin, or religion.

  • Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, relationships, 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. 

  • A 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.

We would hope that this would be a comprehensive list but we know that people find new and different behaviours that can disturb and upset. 

This is a living document, and additions can be proposed by DMing the PFCT admins or emailing [email protected]

PFCT prioritises marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. PFCT Admins reserves the right not to 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 behaviour or assumptions.

Reporting

If you are being harassed by a fellow member of the community, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact the PFCT Admins by sending one of them a DM. If the person who is harassing you is on the admin team, they will recuse themselves from handling your incident. We will respond as promptly as we can.

This code of conduct applies to PFCT spaces, but if you are being harassed by a member of our platform outside our spaces, we still want to know about it. We will take all good-faith reports of harassment by Voluntarily members, especially PFCT Admins, 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 Voluntarily based on their past behaviour, including behaviour outside PFCT spaces and behaviour towards people who are not in our community.

In order to protect our admin 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 our community members or the general public. We will not name harassment victims without their affirmative consent. 

Consequences

Participants asked to stop any harassing behaviour are expected to comply immediately.

If a participant engages in harassing behaviour, PFCT Admins may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from all PFCT spaces and identification of the participant as a harasser to other community members or the general public.