Community values
Grounded in trauma-informed community practice and queer theory.
Community values
We receive every man as a man. Identity is respected without question or condition by everyone in attendance.
We create and contribute to a confidential space where vulnerability is always a choice.
We ask everyone to treat personal stories, identities and experiences as private. What is shared in sessions, groups and conversation should stay within the community.
There may be rare occasions when information cannot remain private because someone is at serious risk of harm. If that happens, it will be handled with as much care and openness as possible.
We come with openness and curiosity towards each other.
This is a space of genuine diversity in age, background, presentation, stage of transition and lived experience. That diversity is understood as a resource.
We hold each other's experiences with care, particularly those that differ from our own.
Racism, ableism, ageism and other forms of exclusion are challenged rather than ignored. We make room for the experiences of men who are often pushed to the margins, including Black trans men and other trans men of colour, disabled trans men and older trans men.
We do not expect men who are marginalised within trans communities to carry the work of educating everyone else.
We challenge ourselves, celebrate freedom, growth and transformation, and encourage that in each other.
We tend to our minds, bodies and spirits across the residential.
We take personal responsibility for ourselves and collective responsibility for the environment we create together.
We respect the site, the venue and the people who work there.
How our values are grounded
These commitments shape facilitation, access planning, workshop design, group agreements and how concerns are handled.
These values are grounded in trauma-informed community practice.
That means clear information before activities, genuine choice, no pressure to disclose, consent around touch, permission to pause or leave, predictable ways to ask for support, and attention to access, culture and power.
The values are also informed by queer theory, which helps us question narrow ideas about who men are supposed to be.
We do not treat one kind of masculinity as the standard. Men can examine what masculinity means to them, question what they have inherited, and build their relationship to maleness on their own terms, in community with one another.