Attendee Guide

Code of Conduct

This is a living policy, subject to continual refinement and expansion. Last updated May 26, 2024.

Everyone participating in the XOXO community, including the XOXO Festival and XOXO Slack channel, is required to agree to the following Code of Conduct. This includes all attendees, speakers, performers, patrons (sponsors), volunteers, and staff.

Anyone who violates our Code of Conduct may be removed from these spaces at the discretion of the XOXO organizers.

If you have questions about this policy, or suggestions for ways it might be improved, please contact us at [email protected].

XOXO is committed to providing a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neurotype, physical appearance, body, age, race, ethnicity, nationality, language, or religion. We do not tolerate harassment of participants in any form.

Definitions

Our definition of “harassment” includes:

  • Offensive comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neurotype, physical appearance, body, age, race, ethnicity, nationality, language, 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 (eg, 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
  • 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 other XOXO community members or other vulnerable people from intentional abuse
  • Publication of non-harassing private communication without consent by the involved parties

XOXO prioritizes marginalized people’s safety over privileged people’s comfort. XOXO reserves the right not to 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, transphobic, or otherwise oppressive behavior or assumptions

Consequences

Participants asked to stop any harassing behavior are expected to comply immediately.

If a participant engages in harassing behavior, XOXO may take any action we deem appropriate, up to and including expulsion from all XOXO spaces and identification of the participant as a harasser to other XOXO community members or the general public.

Reporting and Enforcement

If you are being harassed by a member of the XOXO community, notice that someone else is being harassed, or have any other concerns related to this Code of Conduct, please contact us at [email protected].

Festival

Please contact any member of our production, volunteer or security team. Our team can be identified by their “Staff” t-shirts, and will be trained in how to address and report any incidents that attendees bring to their attention.

Slack

For issues in the XOXO Slack, use the "/mods" command to send a private message to the moderation team. Moderators are designated with a red diamond emoji “♦️” in their status.

If the person who is harassing you is a volunteer or member of staff, they will recuse themselves from handling your incident. All reports will be handled in the strictest confidence. We will respond as promptly as we can.

License

This policy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license, and is available on GitHub. We encourage other events to adopt (and enforce) similar policies by using and remixing ours.

This policy was based on resources provided by Geek Feminism, and borrows heavily from similar open source policies authored by JSConf AU and Django. Thank you also to Ashe Dryden and Karolina Szczur for their advice and support.