How many readers are familiar with the practice of community agreements? This was a widely extant practice in my experience with queer student groups and queer conferences in the US in the 2010s. At the beginning of almost every discussion, the moderator would establish some ground rules, usually using catch phrases as titles, written on a black board.
For example, “One mic one diva” cautions against interruption, while “step up step back” cautions against dominating the conversation. “Oops, ouch, educate” outlines appropriate steps when someone makes a mistake. “Don’t yuck my yum” cautions against derogating what others love. “Use ‘I’ statements” asks people to avoid generalizing their personal experiences. And there’s often a “confidentiality” agreement, which doesn’t have a catch phrase but is still obviously important. The particular choice of agreements may vary, and sometimes the same agreements go under different names.
These community agreements are wholly earnest and unironic, to an extent that admittedly grates on my cynical critic brain. Sometimes the agreements are of dubious efficacy. When have they ever prevented a person from dominating the conversation? Does it really help that it uses a clever catch phrase that is unlikely to be understood by newbies? And sometimes the agreements become unnecessarily burdensome, like when every conference workshop wastes the first ten minutes going over the same set of rules.
But the general idea of explicitly setting ground rules for a discussion is quite reasonable. I have high praise for “‘I’ statements” in particular. And whatever you may think about the community agreements, they demonstrate a laudable deliberateness in how we construct spaces to accommodate our needs.
So, I have a basic question: When and where does the practice of community agreements come from? How widely extant is it?
To clarify my question, I would like to distinguish the general concept of explicit community agreements from the specific cultural practices in question. We could say that community agreements in queer discussion groups are similar in purpose to the comment policy on a blog—they both seek to establish ground rules for productive conversation. But they are certainly not part of the same cultural tradition. Comment policies generally use plain language, rather than a bunch of catch phrases on a black board. So my question is specifically about the community agreements as they are practiced in queer student groups.
While I refer to my personal experience in queer spaces, I’m certain that these practices extend well beyond queer groups. But what kinds of spaces practice the tradition? Are they practiced in non-American or non-English contexts? I also have no idea if these community agreements originated in queer spaces, or if they were imported from elsewhere. And are they a recent practice from the last 30 years or so, or do they go even further back?
This is motivated by pure curiosity, and I don’t expect a definitive answer. But perhaps some readers have some relevant personal experiences.
never seen any of that except the one, just used as a pithy reminder of one’s personal boundaries. i admit, i’ve avoided meatspace groups. only been to one, in a desperate moment, about 12 years ago.
The only experience I can recall of something similar was Queer Nation meetings circa 1989 in Silicon Valley. I didn’t attend many meetings (maybe just one), and it strikes me now as a possible nascent community agreement without the structure you describe. The meeting I recall had a carefully laid out explanation of procedures, particularly on votes, as to how community decisions were considered and actions agreed upon.
I don’t think I’ve experienced queer meetup groups explicitly going over discussion rules like this. Or maybe they did but I can’t remember.
The first time I went to a queer group was when I was in college and I was evangelical and trying to “show them God’s love so they’ll see the error of their ways” or something like that. But I don’t remember that group having discussions, mostly we just played trivia games about Pride Month, or Cards Against Humanity. (Also, I was totally unaware of the fact that people there assumed I was a lesbian. I just had no idea at all that people would think that. lolllllllll)
In Shanghai there used to be a really great queer discussion group, and at the beginning of each meeting there was some talk about what the discussion should look like- but mostly it was about how if you speak English then you should translate to Chinese/ we have a volunteer who will translate to Chinese, and vice versa, that group was about half Chinese people and half international people. Also occasionally someone would try to take a photo, and then people would tell them it wasn’t allowed because a lot of us weren’t “out” (but this wasn’t discussed as part of the “community rules” or anything).
There was also a group, in Shanghai, where we did some acting games for fun, kind of like improv games, and all of us were queer, and at the beginning we would all introduce ourselves and say what kind of queer we are, and also if we had any boundaries, like if we didn’t want to participate in skits related to certain topics, or didn’t want to be touched in certain ways on stage. I was kinda skeptical about the “do you have any boundaries” part of it… Okay, if someone says they don’t want to do something, and we all respect that, then that’s great and it’s working well, but also I don’t want to just bring up whatever trauma I have out of the blue, in order to tell people not to do skits about that, that just feels really embarrassing.
And there was a queer conference I went to in the US, but I can’t remember if they had any “community agreements” like this, mostly it was “don’t take a picture of someone if they’re wearing a red lanyard, that’s the sign that they aren’t okay with being photographed here.” Ah maybe because the events at the conference were mostly about hearing speakers talk, rather than everyone participating in a group discussion.
On a completely different note, one time I was at a church group (this was at an international church in China) and at the beginning of the discussion, somebody said “this is a safe space” and I was shocked by that because I knew this church to be VERY MUCH NOT A SAFE SPACE for queer people. So I asked what they meant by “safe space” and it turns out they meant you can share your opinions and people aren’t allowed to openly judge you for it, even if those opinions are something terrible like “I don’t think this church should have women pastors” or “trans people are rebelling against God’s plan.”