Code of Conduct
STL Tech is dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone. We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form.
This code of conduct applies to all STL Tech spaces, including the STL Tech Slack and Github Repositories, both online and off. Anyone who violates this code of conduct may be sanctioned or expelled from these spaces at the discretion of the the incident response team.
Please note that STL Tech spaces are not public spaces and that interpretation of this Code of Conduct in matters of sanctioning or expelling participants in violation of same is at the sole discretion of the incident response team.
Some STL Tech 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, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, age, race, or religion. Note that “offensive” includes questioning the person’s right to equal treatment.
- Unwelcome comments regarding a person’s lifestyle choices and practices, including those related to food, health, parenting, drugs, and employment.
- Concern trolling.
- Deliberate misgendering or use of ‘dead’ or rejected names.
- Gratuitous or off-topic sexual images or behavior in spaces where they’re not appropriate.
- Gratuitous or off-topic discussions of violence or violent behavior in this space.
- Physical contact and simulated physical contact (eg, textual descriptions like
*hug*
or*backrub*
) without consent or after a request to stop. - Threats of violence towards any individual, group, or society at large.
- 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.
- Complaining of ‘reverse‘ -isms (‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’, ‘cisphobia’, etc), or otherwise attempting to legitimize the same as discrimination or oppression, will not be tolerated under any circumstances
STL Tech prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. the incident response team 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
Reporting
If you are being harassed by a member of STL Tech, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact the the incident response team (contact information below). If the person who is harassing you is on the team, they will recuse themselves from handling your incident. We will respond as promptly as we can.
This code of conduct applies to STL Tech spaces, but if you are being harassed by a member of STL Tech outside our spaces, we still want to know about it. We will take all good-faith reports of harassment by STL Tech 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 STL Tech based on their past behavior, including behavior outside STL Tech spaces and behavior towards people who are not in STL Tech.
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 STL Tech 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 incident response team may take any action they deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from all STL Tech spaces and identification of the participant as a harasser to other STL Tech members or the general public.
Source
This anti-harassment policy is based on the example policy from the Geek Feminism wiki, created by the Geek Feminism community.