Community Safety Development Project
9/17/2025
Hello Temple Community,
We are sending this out to be as transparent as possible about the work we are doing with our partners in developing a new and hopefully much more effective system of reporting and accountability. Temple is currently working closely with and financially contributing to this development project and is here to invite your feedback in building community consensus on what that is and how it can operate. There is a "Survey" link embedded in the text below that is active through this week. This email represents a door into the discussion that is ongoing between us.
Note: These partners are already handling the reports that are submitted to our Incident Reports Form in a fully autonomous email and drive.
(Original Message from Pink with the supportive eyes of Emma and Bearnfifi)
"Dear Community Members,
I hope you’re finding some ease in your day.
I write to you today out of concern for our kink and play community. This is going to be long, and I hope you will read it in full. I hope that this communication functions as a call to action for our community that leads to a community-wide level-up of how we approach creating and maintaining safer spaces and supporting our community members. Our direct asks are noted at the bottom of this email.
Recently, another consent violation crisis of which many of you are likely aware has prompted community leaders to work on overdrive in order to do and say the “right thing” to support and repair the community. I’ve noticed, throughout my various roles within this community over the past 16+ years, a clear pattern in which consent crises are met with reactivity that leads to micro-improvements in the policies and practices of organizations. We have a cycle: crisis, alarm, discussion, action … and crisis again. I also see an off ramp for this cycle
I believe that lack of sustained change is due to the fact that:
the upgrades to policies and practices generally occur on an organizational rather than a community-wide level.
the exile approach (banning people) that most organizations take (understandably so) ends up pushing harm-doers from space to space instead of holding them accountable for behavior change.
Additionally, as a mental health professional, I can attest to the validity of a well-researched statement about trauma: “Hurt people hurt people.” Thus, healing practices in our community have the potential to be both responsive and preventative.
Given these observations, I feel deeply that we need a community-wide approach to safer space and consent efforts that includes:
education
centralized consent violation reporting
support for community members who have been harmed as well as those who have harmed
trainings for those doing guardian work
financial resources for individual healing, and
financial compensation for individuals with expertise related to safer space work and consent work in order to make this community-wide effort sustainable.
We need to put our “money where our mouth is” and invest in the mechanisms that make this hard work feasible long-term.
So, here I am to real talk:
We can continue to do the same thing we have been doing for the last decade plus, or we can take this moment to choose to do things differently. We can continue to react to crises by strengthening best practices of individual organizations, and, I do not believe that this will create the community-wide change or adequate support for individuals and producers in crisis that we all desire to see.
I have included in this email a message sent to me and Emma by William of Temple New York (with her permission and encouragement). I include this message so that others can understand and/or relate to the challenges our community organizers face in response to consent-oriented community crises.
Myself, Bear (of Bear n Fifi), and Emma are coming together with a plan, informed by what I have shared above and their equally extensive experience and expertise, to propose a solution.
The below survey assesses community need for our proposed program and gathers community feedback to inform the design of the program. The survey includes an outline of the program as well.
WE ASK:
That you complete the survey.
That you disseminate this survey to every corner of the community you can reach using the resources you have (email lists, personal messages, etc. We have also included a printable poster that you can hang in relevant spaces.)
That you 'reply all' to this email with your thoughts and feelings after reading the outline of the program and the body of this email so that we can begin a community-wide discussion.
Thank you for all that you do to grow and nourish this community. It is not lost on me the amount of work that people in your positions put in to make this community what it is. I am hopeful that we will be able to collaborate to continue to feed and build community in a way that is as safe as it can be.
In solidarity,
Pink (with the supportive eyes of Emma and Bear)"
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Safer Spaces Survey
Email from William