Code of Contact

Last updated: 12 December 2025

We use the phrase ‘code of contact’ rather than ‘code of conduct’ (the more common term, indicating a set of norms, rules, and responsibilities or ‘proper’ practices and behaviours of individuals within an organisation), because what we wish to emphasise is our collective responsibilities for generating the productive, anti-oppressive, empowering conditions for contact rather than the individual responsibility for following particular rules or norms.

Th.eros aspires to be a space welcoming to those who feel systematically unwelcome elsewhere because of homophobia, transphobia, misogyny, racism, ableism, or ageism. This code of contact outlines key values, poor behaviours, and restorative processes, with the intention of guaranteeing that Th.eros is a safe(r) space for such people.

We are aware that LGBTQI communities can become quite abusive to their members, as we have internalised relations of power and habits of hostility, and carry on our bodies a multitude of violences and traumas. Experiences of violence and systemic oppression often lead to unhealed anger, causing responses which only serve to retraumatise our communities. We must do better than to take out unhealed internalised oppression and violence on each other. We cherish our interdependencies and, in the face of systemic oppression, we recognise that each of us deeply needs the other in community to heal and transform together, to become reflexive, self-critical and accountable to ourselves and to others.

This code of contact is a commitment to self-responsibility and self-accountability, a commitment one makes to oneself in order to be able to hold and nurture it with others in collectivity. It serves to remind us of the values, needs, and desires that bring us together in collective action. It is a living, working document, embodying our ongoing learning processes and cumulative experiences, and is often revised to reflect our collective learnings.

Members and collaborators of Th.eros commit to abiding by this code of contact, holding themselves and being held accountable, as well as holding others accountable with a restorative mindset and through transformative approaches to justice and accountability.

Core values and principles

  • Th.eros strives to empower those who are systemically disempowered and works actively to dismantle structures that (re)produce privilege
  • We follow horizontal and collective processes, based on equality, collaboration, inclusivity, and mutual understanding, where everyone is valued
  • We are open and honest about our activities and processes
  • Our conduct is based on softness, tenderness and radical compassion to each other
  • We practice interdependence, collective care, and solidarity
  • We listen in a collective manner with attentiveness and openness
  • Everyone can ask for and receive help and care
  • Difference is allowed and celebrated
  • We ask for consent and we respect personal boundaries
  • We hold ourselves and others accountable with a restorative mindset
  • Everyone is precious and we respect each other’s views (on the condition that they are equally inclusive and don’t break our core values)
  • We unlearn understanding our contribution in terms of neoliberal notions of success and failure
  • When our core values are conflicting because of the intricacies of life, our conduct is guided by compassion 
  • We learn from our mistakes

Practices to avoid

  • Silencing and remaining silent about violence in all its forms
  • Reproducing norms and stereotypes about people (including but not limited to appearance, ability, authority, experience)
  • Ignoring mental disability and distress
  • Using language that naturalises or reproduces oppression
  • Punitive practices such as call-outs and exclusion
  • Reproducing hierarchies, including unspoken or implicit ones
  • Reproducing unconscious dynamics of power/privilege
  • Engaging in passive aggression/microaggression
  • Unintentionally misgendering people (doing it intentionally is crossing a red line)
  • Assuming people’s experience or speaking for others
  • Objectifying people

Red lines

  • Racism and xenophobia in all their forms and variations, ethnocentrism, homophobia, sexism, misogyny, transphobia, lesbophobia, ableism, ageism, fat phobia, and elitism
  • Violence, both physical and verbal
  • Sexual harassment and sexualised assault
  • Aggressive language or behaviour
  • Bullying and intimidation
  • Identity policing, including but not limited to intentional misgendering or any other ascription of identity that does not respect self-determination
  • Being systematically inconsiderate of others and not respecting personal boundaries
  • Cancelling people of our communities and people who face multiple systemic discrimination and have nowhere else to turn to
  • Animal cruelty
  • Systematic repetition of practices to avoid

The above hold true even when done against a party who have crossed red lines themselves. Crossing red lines is never justifiable in our communities, the only exception being self-defence against an immediate and severe threat (e.g. defending yourself against physical assault).

Restorative process

We are committed to move through conflict through a collective process that is intentional, boundaried, mindful of our respective capacities, and that is grounded in a restorative mindset and approach to conflict that centres our belonging to each other, our interdependencies and relationalities. To be able to listen and hear the feedback that is not being heard, we are committed to feedback practices that centre our abolitionist intimacies.

We can refer to this code of contact to gently and tenderly “call in” people or groups enacting behaviours that we want to avoid and to open up a conversation as a way to de-escalate a situation and occasion reflection with a view to engaging in an intentional restorative process with others. Acknowledging that love is accountability, we all have a responsibility to de-escalate and reflect with people or groups who are crossing “red lines” and to support those who may request and consent to being accompanied in this process in a way that centres their autonomy, agency, and experience.

We commit to addressing incidents and patterns of such behaviours in a manner that centres restorative approaches to conflict, with tenderness and care to all parties involved, and through a mutually agreed upon process.