New Code of Conduct for MakeICT

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“I can understand people worrying that their views may get them into some sort of trouble but it doesn’t seem that the Code of Conduct is being written to intentionally cause any problems for anyone at all.”

IF you are in the approved group and not considered privileged. I’d like to know how I have been privileged, I was 9 when my health was taken from me. I have had more surgeries than I can count, I am lucky when I get out of bed that I can actually stand and make it to a chair to take my meds. But I am certain my skin color and genitals have me on the privileged list. WE CANNOT HAVE A PROTECTED CLASS AND A PRIVILEGED CLASS TO SHIT ON. Either we are equal or this isn’t a place for everyone.

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Wow. A lot to unpack here. As a new member, I will pipe up to make the one point that was glaringly and uncomfortably obvious and ironic: this anti-discrimination policy is DISCRIMINATORY.
As the kids say: Period. Full stop.

This whole thing needs to be done over, it smells like Lord of the Flies up in here.

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More questions:

  1. Was the original plan to just approve it tonight and disseminate it later?
  2. Has this been run by any sort of legal professional to make sure we’re not opening ourselves to any sort of legal exposure?
    2a. I am concerned with basically the entire section starting with “MakeICT prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort…”. It’s great we want to protect marginalized people but this seems like it could be weaponized by someone with poor intent. i.e., they could manufacture a marginalized group to be a part of…
  3. If the volume of issues is so high we need this now, and it can’t wait a single month longer, would that not signal we have a really really sick culture?
    3a. Is trying to change the culture by policy really the first step in the route to change the culture?
  4. Also, was this point addressed, and if so, who/what/where?
  • Determine appropriate outside resources to support the organization in handling complaints
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I haven’t been able to respond earlier because I was in emergency surgery.

  1. That is how policies have been handled traditionally in the organization.
  2. This code of conduct is in widespread use in other makerspaces and elsewhere.
  3. The people who need this are the silent ones, who just leave the organization and let others know to avoid us. There have been 2.5 months of advertised meetings, multiple opportunities to contact the committee, the committee has completely open membership, and not a single complaining party bothered to do anything until tonight. I can name more people with problems this would address than the number complaining here, off the top of my head. There are some excellent examples in this thread of why people don’t speak up. It’s like an explosion of fragile egos. We are defining the policy because some people don’t understand what “Be Excellent” means. A code of conduct has been previously brought up and died at some point in the past - we can’t let that happen again. 2.5 months is not rushed.
  4. We currently have some resources and will be requesting proposals for additional. Most of these are expected to be handled with simple chats.

Regarding pronouns - we are looking into adding those to badges, and we encourage everyone to simply ask someone’s preferred pronouns. Purposeful misgendering is not the same as simply not knowing. Refusing to learn or repeatedly acting like you don’t know when you’ve been told a dozen times is where purposeful misgendering might come into play. Or, someone being told they must use a dead name on their badge when in fact they don’t have to (a recent real life example).

No one has any interest in knowing your genitals.

Please refer to @DanS 's excellent comments. This really isn’t hard, nor is it groundbreaking.

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Okay, I see that now after plopping a couple random points into Google. Didn’t earlier when I went to the cited site and there’s a whopping three listed in their collection of peeps using it including them.

For those doubting this policy, it appears at least 100+ orgs and businesses are using pretty much this exact text. Mobile Google sucks so it’s hard to verify exactly. If we’re setting out to accomplish the four points at the top of the wiki, I doubt a completely home grown version would reach the same bar without taking months more of work.

Honestly 90% of me suggesting a delay is because I knew there’s some that would freak out and I think there’s always space for discussion even if it’s easy to dismiss their personhood. But I also haven’t seen anyone suggest a better alternative. And that was the other 10% - I wanted to explore is this the best we could have for a code of conduct in 2022? A solid probably.

And if someone still thinks it’s fatally flawed, they’re more than welcome to form a group, write up a policy and submit it to the board?

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29

Everything suggested is boilerplate policy to cover the orgization as a whole and guide members on what is to be expected. There is nothing in this that isn’t in a corperations or local/state governments own policy.

I encourage everyone to take a deep breath and approach this objectively. Take a moment to look up Kansas’ harassment and discrimination policies, then the CoWs, then pick a fortune 500 companies.

There is no one being targeted, everyone is being asked to just stop and think about actions and words. Golden Rule stuff. Treat others how you’d want others to treat you, or your kid, or your loved ones.

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Jeff, I’m sorry you’ve had so much to deal with in your life.
I’m not sure I understand why you think that anyone else thinks you’re “privilaged”, or anyone who is more or less than anyone else. If someone who is covered in this Code is harassing you or causing special problems for you, this policy does seem to address those issues in a way to protect you from that harassment. It also covers race, which we are all, every one of us, a member of a race or multiple races. If you feel you’re being harassed because of your race, you have a way to call out that harassment based on your race under this Code.
If you feel you’re being harassed because of your gender, again, you’re covered under the Code.
This Code seems to me to be AGAINST any protected class or privileged class and is meant to protect everyone, not just some chosen few. It clearly states that again and again.
The whole premise of the Code is to create a place of equality, and it does that pretty well.

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April, how do you see this policy as being discriminatory? It clearly states " We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form." in two places. That means exactly the opposite of discrimination. It means no harassment, in any form, towards ANYONE, for any reason.

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@shack, I agree that there’s always room for improvement. I worked at a major corporation for over 40 years and this seems to be even better than that corporation has for their Code of Conduct. It really looks very much like I remember the policies there, and I would assume their policy has become even more inclusive over the last few years since I’ve been gone from there. @Sherry Would I be wrong to suggest that this policy is NOT set in stone. I would think that as time goes on, this, and all policies, would be open for discussion and change if that is deemed necessary or appropriate. The way I would think it works is to establish and publish the policy and then start using it. Then see what works and what doesn’t. With something like this you just can’t get everything perfect the first time around. It may need to be tweeked over time and the organization should be open to that.

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Just so you know, we were ignored and I hear it passed with 100% support.

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“MakeICT prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort”

This is my main problem. Who gets to decide who is marginalized and who isn’t? What qualifies a person as privileged? Who gets to decide?
Where is the equality in this loaded statement?

I just heard the word “privileged” was removed.
Still think this is a slippery slope, but I am new and will watch as things unfold.

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I think they mean something like … just because most people can do x, we choose to accommodate people who can’t, so they can participate too.

Like someone in a wheelchair, we choose to make a ramp for them, even though most people can just step the step up.

These are living documents.

When we wrote the original stuff we didn’t know what to put. So we put something general and broad so that if need be it can be refined. You can’t polish a stone in one pass.

Discussion and discourse is vital to the process, and the committee that volunteered and worked to put this together, are members like you. The committee has not disbanded. But this kind of refinement doesn’t work unless we we can communicate calmly. You can only polish to the grit of the tool.

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April, I do see your point with the statement you highlighted. Maybe it needs to be clarified exactly what that statement means. However, I still see that “We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form.” as covering everyone who feels harassed for any real and reasonable reason.
I see marginalized people as those who have historically and openly been harassed and discriminated against, up to and including death threats or actually being killed because they are deemed to be different than the mainstream. Should those people not be protected by policy even if a policy has to go so far as spelling out those differences? Sure we have Federal laws that are meant to protect against certain things like murder and other things, but some people still seem to think it’s ok to commit those crimes against marginalized people but not against those who are not marginalized and who are seen as privileged.
Still, I understand what you are saying, and unless there’s a good explanation for it, it seems that the part of that sentence that says " over privileged people’s comfort" could possibly be removed or reworded in such a way that it can’t be construed as being discriminatory. I’m not sure what that wording would be, but maybe there’s something.

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Excellent points James. The example of the wheelchair ramp works very well as an example of being inclusive, even though most people don’t need that thing included in their lives.
Communicating calmly, as you say, is the only way to make an organization work.

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Much needed and overdue. Thanks for your hard work on this @Sherry, @Noahjwc, the rest of the committee, and the board.

There are some unfortunate but not uncommon takes on privilege in this thread. Any individual can and does have multiple privileges that others do not enjoy, while simultaneously lacking privileges that others have. Nobody is WHOLLY privileged or not.

One privilege I have is that certain people don’t immediately dismiss my ideas or myself based on my gender. They may dismiss my ideas for other reasons, but those reasons are generally unrelated to my genitals or how I present. Another privilege that I have is having no known allergies. That means I can eat anything I want without worry, and allows me to remove entire categories of food from my diet and still have an incredible variety of foods to choose from. Another: nobody has ever even scoffed at an expression of my sexual orientation. I’ve experienced kidney stones and severe tooth aches, but I’m fortunate to not have any chronic illnesses. I wear glasses, but have full color vision. My hearing, sense of smell, and other sensory abilities are fully intact. People have certainly made negative assumptions about me based on my ethnicity, but people have also made positive (though unwanted) assumptions about me on the same basis.

If anyone reading this thinks they aren’t privileged in some kind of way, they’re wrong.

The harsh reality of our society is that racism happens. Sexism happens. Ableism happens. Ageism happens. Et cetera. When any of these things aren’t happening to you, it’s a privilege even if you have no way of knowing about it not happening to you.

I think people who misunderstand privilege in these discussions often just don’t have it framed correctly. “Privilege” doesn’t always mean being unjustly lifted up. In many of these conversations, privilege means not being unjustly held down.

With that in mind, I invite you to take a moment to think about what majority classes you belong to. If there was ever an occasion in your life where some butthole may have had an opportunity to exercise prejudice against a minority class you don’t belong to… congratulations - your privilege was to not be unjustly held down. Going deeper, being blissfully unaware of such occasions is itself a privilege.

While we’re reflecting, maybe take a moment to consider why some people might think about privilege strictly in terms of being unjustly lifted up while others can see privilege as also not being unjustly held down.

The “curb cut effect” is sorta the standard example of this idea, if you ever want to seed minds with reading material in the domain of inclusive design.

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While I loved the simplicity of “Be excellent to each other” I am pleased to see that MakeICT has both thoughtfully and carefully moved towards a code of conduct that will continue to grow with the needs of the group. MakeICT is an amazing place because of the amazing people. Being in another time zone, I miss that connection. I hope that everyone that walks those halls can appreciate how special our space is and will continue to be! You’ve got this!

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@dom Thank you very much for your take on the subject of privilege. That is an excellent way to think about it, one that I really didn’t put into the right words in my replies to this thread. I agree, everyone needs to think about the privileges they do have in their personal lives, in MakeICT, in this country, and in the world. Even if we have certain hardships in our lives, and many of us do in one way or another, we are also some of the most privileged people to ever exist whether we choose to believe that or not. On the other hand, we also all need to keep in mind the lack of certain privileges that we and others have in our lives and strive for acceptance of everyone and to help where we can.

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Besides obvious disabilities, how do we know a certain person is priveledged or marginalized? by their sex? Their race? Or both? What about the other aspects of their lives as Dom and Jeff touched on? How do you know the details of people’s lives just by looking at them?
How about we judge people by the content of their character not their physical form?

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You don’t.

If your bashing people with freckles, someone may ask you to stop. Maybe their mom had freckles. You don’t know.

I have the challenge of rheumatoid arthritis (actually psoriatic arthritis) but I try not to complain about it. But if your like ‘hey git on the other end of this giant rock’ I’ll be like nah I can’t. I’m not being a wuss, but really I have a challenge you don’t. I also have the challenge of toxic masculinity. So I should shut up and nut up, and dig in and help anyway.

What this is saying is that hey James, don’t worry about lifting that big stone. No one is going to make fun of you for it. You have other ways to help that are less painful for you.

This isn’t agianst anyone I think. It’s to help us understand types of people that have a hard time speaking about their challenges.

···

On Fri, Nov 18, 2022, 11:29 Jesse Schlenker via MakeICT Forum <noreply@talk.makeict.org> wrote:

| Jesse
November 18 |

  • | - |

So how do we know a certain person is priveledged or marginalized? by their sex? Their race? Or both? What about the other aspects of their lives as Dom and Jeff touched on? How do you know the details of people’s lives by looking at them?
How about we judge people by the content of their character not their physical form?

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Glad you said that, that’s what this policy was written to enshrine and protect.

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