Ally Skills NZ Code of Conduct

Introduction

This code of conduct was inspired by codes from the Geek Feminism Wiki and WWGSD. Thanks to everyone who’s put time, love, and hard work into developing robust, inclusive codes of conduct. Any references to “Ally Skills NZ” refer to Cactus & Fern Limited, trading as Ally Skills NZ.

Code of Conduct

Ally Skills NZ is dedicated to providing a safe, inclusive, and harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, age, race, or religion. We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form.

This code of conduct applies to all Ally Skills NZ spaces, including our workshops, events, and blog, both online and off. Anyone who violates this code of conduct may be sanctioned or expelled from these spaces at the discretion of the Ally Skills NZ team.

Some Ally Skills NZ-sponsored 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.

Definitions

Harassment includes, but is not limited to:

  • Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, age, race, migrant status, 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.

Ally Skills NZ prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. The Ally Skills NZ team 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 behavior or assumptions

Reporting

If someone makes you or anyone else feel unsafe or unwelcome, please report it as soon as possible. Harassment and other code of conduct violations reduce the value of our work for everyone. We want you to feel valued and respected when interacting with Ally Skills NZ. You can make a report in person or anonymously.

If you are being harassed by a member of the Ally Skills NZ community, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, you can report in one of two ways:

We will respond as promptly as we can. For anonymous reports, we can’t follow up with you directly, but we will fully investigate it and take whatever action is necessary to prevent a recurrence. If the person who is harassing you is on the response team, they will recuse themselves from handling your incident.

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

In order to protect our team 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 Ally Skills NZ members or the general public. We will not name harassment victims without their affirmative consent.

Consequences

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

If a participant engages in harassing behavior, the Ally Skills NZ team may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from all Ally Skills NZ spaces and identification of the participant as a harasser to other Ally Skills NZ members or the general public.

New Zealand Resources

Call these numbers for support in New Zealand:

  • Police / Emergency services: Call 111

  • Healthline: 0800 611 116 (support from registered nurses)

  • Rape Crisis: 0800 88 33 00 (support after rape or sexual assault)

  • Mental health helpline: 1737 (support from trained mental health professionals)

All of these numbers are free to call from a New Zealand phone.