accountable spaces

Deciding what kind of accountability you will take over the safety of individuals is up to you. We have worked hard on trying to create a safe space in our homes, only to realise that. despite our best efforts, we cannot promise safety. We can promise to hold all individuals accountable for their behaviour however. Our attempt to do this is via a) clear communication of our norms, and what processes are in place should those norms be violated, b) a clear process for how to deal with such violations. We encourage you to think through thiese things in advance, so that you are prepared for how to deal with it when it happens.

This is our pledge to all inhabitants of our homes :

Embassy Network Accountable Space Policy As an intentional network of communities, we are dedicated to building a supportive and self-reflective culture around our values of openness, consensual engagement, and learning. We have created this policy not only to communicate our culture and values but also in public recognition that we as a network actively seek to create a culture of consent and explicitly reject oppression in all forms. Our network has adopted Affirmative Consent as a policy. This means ‘yes, means yes’ as opposed to the old model of ‘no means no’. In practice, this means that if you want to touch someone, you need to get an explicit “yes” from them. A ‘maybe’ or silence, or even a yes under persuasion does not count as consent and will be treated as a consent violation in our community. Consent can be withdrawn at any time. Additionally, accountable space also involved sex positive space. What does this mean? Sex positivity allows for and celebrates sexual diversity, different desires and relationship structures and individual choices, based on consent. This does not mean that anything goes, but rather involves an attitude that respects whatever choices an individual makes about their sexual and romantic behavior, which may include asexuality or abstinence. Sex positivity is not about having as much sex as you can, it is about open-mindedness, compassion, and respect. This aspect of the policy also amplifies the necessity of consent. Sometimes, people get hurt in communities and violations do take place. We are committed to maintaining the safety of people in our spaces while living out our values and while seeking to provide support for growth, healing, and transformation for those that harm our communities where it is so desired. What this means is that anyone accused of violating the Accountable Space Policy may be asked to leave the space. We also hold this policy within a framework of alternative justice processes as a way to amplify options for actors and victims/targets/survivors. By entering into our community we request that you heed this policy, recognize it as a living document, and engage with us in our experiments around culture and commons.

*This is the basic Embassy Network Accountable Space Policy upon which each community may iterate and amend, but which provides the basic tenants of accountable spaces across the network that our communities seek to uphold alongside other Embassy Network values.