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BEQOMING™ Community Code of Conduct 

 

The BEQOMING™ team is committed to fostering a safe, welcoming, open, and conscious community. We require all those who participate in our community - including course participants, teachers, staff, consultants, employees, and anyone else that interacts with our community (community members) - to agree and adhere to this Code of Conduct in order to help us create a safe and positive community experience for all people.

 

Our community only exists as a compassionate, safe, and honest container for expansion and thriving if all community members make conscious choices to keep it that way.

 

We’d like to say that, in general, our community is full of empowering, loving, heart-centered individuals who deeply care about one another. We also recognize that we’ve grown up in a traumatized and traumatizing world with bias, racism, homophobia, and all other varieties of harmful systems of oppression and beliefs. Even as kind, heart-centered individuals, we can still inherit and unconsciously carry these systems within us. Therefore, part of creating a safe community is to collectively recognize the imprinting of those systems on us and our behavior, and to actively work to identify and remove them in self responsible ways. 

 

We also recognize that part of creating a safe community is to take full responsibility for our impact on others regardless of our intent. This is part of the evolving question we are leaning into: how do we create safety for everyone in our community, especially any traditionally marginalized groups in society, while also holding a compassionate, open space for the transformation and integration of socialized conditioning that unconsciously causes harm and perpetuates injustice and oppression? This is a big question we are asking ourselves. So, please don’t feel like you need to always have the answer. These are our guidelines for community safety, and we’ll actively work with you to increase your safety throughout the program should you need it. 

 

Should you harm or violate someone else’s safety, we’ll work with you to address it and integrate the underlying cause of the harm. In this way, we can all grow into a reality that is increasingly free of our harmful and traumatizing history on this planet. 

 

These guidelines aim to support a community where all people feel safe to participate, regardless of: 

 

  • Sex 
  • Sexual Orientation 
  • Race/Ethnicity 
  • National Origin/Ancestry 
  • Color 
  • Age 
  • Gender Identity or Expression 
  • Personal Appearance 
  • Different Abilities in Body or Nervous System 
  • Height/Weight 
  • Marital Status 
  • Religion/Faith 
  • Veteran Status 
  • Level of Education 
  • Background 
  • Socio-Economic Status 
  • Vocation 
  • Geographic Location 
  • Any Other Dimension of Diversity Where This Code Applies 

 

These guidelines outline our behavior expectations for the members of our community in any of our activities, both offline and online, including but not limited to: 

 

  • On BEQOMING™ property 
  • In BEQOMING™ or BEQOMING™ sponsored or recognized programs or activities 
  • Working with other members of the BEQOMING™ community virtually 
  • Representing BEQOMING™ at public events 
  • Representing BEQOMING™ on social media (official accounts, staff accounts, personal accounts, Facebook pages) 
  • Participating in BEQOMING™ retreats, off-sites, and training 
  • Participating in BEQOMING™ mailing lists, websites, chat channels, online groups, social media, group or person-to-person meetings, and BEQOMING™ related correspondence 



While this code of conduct is specifically aimed at BEQOMING™ community members, we recognize that it is possible for actions taken outside of BEQOMING™ online or in-person spaces to have a deep impact on community health. For example, an online post outside of BEQOMING™ online groups aimed at harassing a BEQOMING™ community member would still be something that we would address. 

 

Our Standards of Expected Behavior: 

 

  • Show up authentically 
  • Use welcoming and inclusive language 
  • Exercise consideration and respect in your speech and actions 
  • Value others’ ideas, styles, viewpoints, and experiences - we may not always agree, but disagreement is no excuse for poor manners 
  • Be open to different possibilities and to being wrong 
  • Be aware of your impact and how intense interactions may be affecting people 
  • Take responsibility for your impact and your mistakes – if someone says they have been harmed through your words or actions, listen carefully, apologize sincerely, and correct the behavior going forward • Show empathy towards other community members 
  • Take responsibility for your words and actions 
  • Focus on what is best for the community 
  • Gracefully accept constructive criticism 

 

Problematic Behavior: 

 

  • Repeated unwelcome sexual attention or advances 
  • Public or private harassment 
  • Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, pregnancy status, veteran status, political affiliation, marital status, body size, age, race, national origin, ethnic origin, nationality, immigration status, language, religion or lack thereof, or other identity marker, including anti-Indigenous/Nativeness and antiBlackness 
  • Trolling, insulting/derogatory comments, and personal or political attacks 
  • Insults, slurs, epithets, negative stereotyping, or other similar conduct 
  • Publishing others’ private information, such as a physical or electronic address, images/photos and/or private conversations, without explicit permission 
  • Verbal or nonverbal threats of violence 
  • Any form of physical violence 
  • Deliberate intimidation or bullying 
  • Deliberate "outing" of any aspect of a person's identity without their consent except as necessary to protect vulnerable people from intentional abuse 
  • Questioning or challenging someone’s stated self-identity or chosen labels, even if they conflict with your own views 
  • Refusing to use a person’s stated pronouns 
  • Other conduct which could reasonably be considered inappropriate in a professional setting 



Building Awareness Bias 

 

Many of us grew up with socialized messaging around these topics. That messaging created unconscious/implicit as well as conscious/explicit bias. For example, consider your first thought/feeling/sensation in response to the following: 

 

  • A loud, outrageous person 
  • An uninhibited, sexually expressive woman 
  • Someone who consciously chooses to be a sex worker
  • Someone who is gender fluid 

 

The thought/emotion/sensation that arises is socialized: we weren’t born thinking these things. These beliefs were important in feeling loved, accepted, and safe in our original community. By bringing curiosity and noticing the thought/feeling/sensation that arises, you begin to bring socialized beliefs that were unconscious into consciousness, which gives you new information to make empowered choices and create greater safety and inclusivity for everyone. From unconscious beliefs, we can unknowingly express microaggressions: everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults - regardless of intention - that communicate discriminatory messages that target people based on marginalized groupings (like sexuality, religious beliefs, and race). 

 

Bias isn’t all bad or something to be ashamed of. In fact, it makes our brain incredibly efficient, filtering out information we don’t need to attend to. Our brain receives about 11 million bits of information every moment but can only process 40 bits. Our unconscious bias helps to sort through all that, judging what needs attention and what doesn’t. Community members are expected to work with existing beliefs and patterns of behavior to consider what biases they hold and use when communicating with others. 



Enforcement Reporting 

 

If you are being harassed by a community member, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns, please contact: 

 

 

If your complaint is in relation to any of our team members, they will recuse themselves from handling your complaint. We will respond as promptly as we can. We will respect confidential requests for the purpose of protecting complainants. 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 community members or the general public. We will not name harassment complainants without their affirmative consent. 

 

Consequences of Problematic Behavior 

 

Team BEQOMING™ may take any action deemed appropriate in response to any instances of problematic behavior, including: 

 

  • Give feedback to community members on their behavior, including what’s required to stay in this community and any repair that may be needed with other community members 
  • Remove, edit, or reject any written material (including posts on social media) that are not aligned with this Code of Conduct 

 

Anyone asked to stop problematic behavior is expected to comply immediately. Appeals If you feel you have been falsely or unfairly accused of violating this Code of Conduct, you should notify the BEQOMING™ Community Steward, Maxwell: [email protected]  with a concise description of your grievance. Your grievance will be handled in accordance with our existing governing policies. 




Attribution 

 

This code has been adapted with modifications from VITA™ Community Code of Conduct, Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines, and the LGBTQ in Technology Code of Conduct. 

 

Copyright 2022, BEQOMING, LLC - All Rights Reserved.