Our Aims
Kattenkwaad wants to create a harassment-free space and experience for everyone. We hope to create a space where we can trust, respect, and care for each other. We don’t have any rules, but aims we strive to achieve.
Let’s try to reflect on our privileges and recognize that making mistakes is something everyone does. But when mistakes are repeated, this has to result in actions to interfere in conversations and to remove someone from our initiative or the space where an activity takes place. Therefore we encourage everyone to talk about behaviour they find inappropriate or abusive.
We are inclusive
We hope that no one who visits our meetings engages in racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, ageist, classist, sexist or other exclusionary behaviour, including any and all forms of shaming, erasure, and victim blaming.
We are intersectional
We expect you to be willing to examine your privilege, language and other habits while you join actions and meetings organized by Kattenkwaad. We will all be open for a growing understanding of intersectional feminism. We aim to be a place of learning, but we also expect you to do a lot of the grunt work of understanding basic concepts yourself; use the resources made available to you, search the group for any previous discussions, and search the Internet.
This is a safer space
Because we hope to be an initiative where everyone feels respected and safe to share opinions and experiences, we hope to create a safer space in the places where we meet. We prioritise the safety of marginalised people over the comfort of the privileged during discussions or meetings. This means that, when you show problematic behaviour, for example white, straight and/or cis-gendered privileged behaviour, you might be asked to examine and change this. We cannot guarantee to create a safe space though, and we hope that negative experiences will be talked about.
Respect people’s privacy
Not everyone wants to be found on the internet, so we don’t want people to share photo’s, information or conversations online, without consent of everyone who was part of a meeting.
Respect people’s boundaries
No one is obliged to answer questions they are uncomfortable with. Respect people’s boundaries, and remember that no means no. We want everyone to realize that a yes is a yes when it is enthusiastically said and is very clear. Do not pressure people to do anything they are not comfortable with. Part of this is that you do not denigrate other people’s responses and other peoples their choices. Please stay aware that we all suffer from the consequences of patriarchy, even though this suffering is unequally divided too, this does not mean that other people their experiences are invalid.
We will not debate harmful opinions
When you have said something that is considered as harmful or as problematic, or you have acted in such a way, it is most likely that people will bring attention to this. You can ask for clarification, but when you are harmful to other people and they express this to you, it is not up to you to decide whether these people should feel harmed or not. We will not debate sexism, racism, etc. We think this is unacceptable.