TL;DR: Don’t be a jerk or we’ll space you.
We’re dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone, and we don’t and won’t tolerate harassment of any Spiral listener in any form, either in Slack or in Second Life.
This code of conduct applies to all Spiral spaces, including Slack chats and our Second Life island, appearances, and concerts. Anyone who violates this code of conduct may be sanctioned or expelled from any or all of these spaces at the discretion of the Spiral staff.
Access to Spiral’s shared spaces is a privilege and not a right, and that “freedom of speech” as an argument for unacceptable behavior does not apply.
Some Spiral locations may have additional rules in place, which will be made directly and clearly available to participants. Participants are responsible for knowing and abiding by these rules.
If a Spiral staffer requests you stop doing something, then you should stop doing it without arguing.
Spiral does not authorize rebroadcast of our shows and performances or official podcasts/archives by third parties without express written permission. More simply: don’t record us and rebroadcast us. Don’t republish our podcasts. Doing this without permission is not just unacceptable, but illegal, and will result in a permanent ban.
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.
- 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 behavior in spaces where they’re not appropriate.
- Physical contact and simulated physical contact (e.g., 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.
- Patterns 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.
Other unacceptable behavior:
- Deliberate interference with the enjoyment of Spiral and of the shared chat experience (e.g., “This music sucks and you are all stupid for liking it”).
- “Trolling” or “baiting” other chat participants, whether in public or in private chat.
- Arguing about whether or not behavior is acceptable with StillStream staff.
StillStream prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort.
StillStream staff 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 the Spiral community, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact the Spiral staff. 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 Spiral community spaces, but if you are being harassed by a member of the community outside our spaces, we still want to know about it. We will take all good-faith reports of harassment by all members of the Spiral community, especially the staff, seriously. This includes harassment outside our spaces (e.g., via email, other chat, etc.) and harassment that took place previous to this Code of Conduct.
Spiral reserves the right to exclude people from community spaces, including chat and our Second Life island, based on their past behavior, including behavior outside Spiral spaces and behavior towards people outside of Spiral. (If you’re a jerk elsewhere, we may tell you to take a hike.)
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 or to carry out a personal vendetta will 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 Spiral listeners or the general public. We will not name harassment victims without their affirmative consent.
Consequences
Participants asked to stop any behavior are expected to comply immediately. Whether or not this is done, Spiral staff may at their discretion temporarily expel (“kick” or “ban”) persons from chat at any time.
Such expulsions may be appealed, but the Spiral staff is under no compulsion to review such appeals or to act on them. If reviewed, this will be done at the Spiral staff’s convenience, after which they will determine whether the expulsion is temporary or permanent.
In addition, post such an expulsion, Spiral staff may take any other action they deem appropriate, up to and including identification of the participant as a harasser to the Spiral listeners at large or the general public.
Credits
The policy is based on the Geek Feminism conference anti-harassment policy which is the work of Annalee Flower Horne with assistance from Valerie Aurora, Alex Skud Bayley, Tim Chevalier, and Mary Gardiner.