Minky’s Guiding Values
The leadership of Minky believes, holds membership accountable to, and facilitates spaces with following principles:
- Sexual expression is an important form of self expression
- Kink can exist both as recreation and resistance
- All bodies are good bodies and all deserve respect and pleasure
- Trans rights are human rights
- HRT is healthcare
- Trans women are women
- Trans men are men
- Non-binary identities are valid identities
- Black lives matter
- White supremacy is violence
- Queer love, sex, and family are real, needed, and important
- Sex work is real work
- No human is illegal
- It is both our responsibility and a boon to our safety to believe survivors
- Vaccinations, testing, and safer sex are key to public health
- Community safety and harm reduction are guiding principles for our actions and decisions
Our values are our guiding principles for our organizational decisions; we believe that serving our values is how to best protect and maintain our group and community. Complex groups are often faced with decisions that may challenge commitment to their values, and so we pledge to prioritize our values, harm reduction, and community safety over claimed best interests of the group itself. This is not out of neglect for the sustained longevity of the group, but because we believe that the best interests of the group itself can only served by adhering to and prioritizing our values.
Minky shall make its membership, leadership, and policy decisions, host community gatherings, and organize play parties that are accountable to these values. Additionally, leadership commits to developing and hosting educational opportunities for our membership, raising funds and organizing volunteer opportunities for like-minded groups, modeling consent-forward and social justice-informed administration, and engaging in community outreach and service.
Safer Space Commitment
Minky is committed to the formation and protection of safer spaces for all of us to explore our identities and sexualities together. We are a queer, trauma-informed, and diverse membership and our group values reflect that. We do not tolerate expressions of transphobia, racism, sexism, homophobia, ableism, body shaming, or disparagement of consent culture. We understand that many of us play at the edges of these dark social forces, using taboo to reclaim social hurts, but we assert that non-negotiated expressions of this nature will be handled as violations of our Code of Conduct. If another member’s communication or actions at or outside of a Minky event have made you feel unsafe, please feel free to approach a Moderator in person, on Discord, or via email to review how we might address your concern.
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Initiative
Our Commitment
- Minky values and strives toward a welcoming community. We want a community where all members and leadership feel safe, valued, and respected within all of their identities, including gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, national origin, education, or disability.
- We respect and value diverse life experiences and heritages and strive to hear all member and potential member voices.
- The moderator team is committed to reflecting the diversity we see in our community and strives for a representational membership and leadership.
Our Actions
To provide informed, authentic leadership for cultural equity, Minky moderators shall:
- See our values as critical to our mission to ensure the well-being of our membership and communities.
- Invite our membership and moderators to help us acknowledge and dismantle any inequities or unquestioned assumptions within our policies and programs.
- Support thinking and public communication about how systemic inequities in our larger communities impact our organization’s work, and think about how best to address that.
- Help to challenge assumptions about what it takes to be a strong leader in our organization, and who is well-positioned to provide leadership.
- Practice and encourage transparent communication in all possible interactions.
- Commit time and resources as possible to learn from diversity within and beyond our community.
- Design governance documents with the safeties of marginalized membership especially in mind.
- Advocate for public and private-sector policy that promotes our values.