This is the Values Agreement of the Mentorship Program. Everyone in the program has read and agreed to the Participant Values Agreement below. Everyone in a leadership or workstream-lead role additionally agrees to the Operating Committee Values Agreement that follows it.

Participant Values Agreement

Every participant agrees that

We reject exclusion in all its forms

We refuse racism, colorism, xenophobia, transphobia, biphobia, homophobia, misogyny, femmephobia, ableism, and patterned microaggressions. Expressions of these qualities are unacceptable within the program and will be investigated thoroughly. The subtle patterns count as much as the obvious ones and we hold ourselves to noticing and addressing all behaviors that make a space hostile.

Consent is foundational

We practice consent-informed kink. Everyone retains the right to withdraw or modify consent at any point, for any reason. Where one person holds more experience or seniority, they carry more responsibility for protecting consent boundaries, even when the other person is the one testing it.

We show up with curiosity

The Program affirms and promotes that we are all life long learners. The journey of growth, learning, and unlearning never ends. We approach each other's differences and disagreements with genuine willingness to listen. We give candid feedback with respect and we receive it as a gift, not an attack.

We are committed to equity and belonging

We hold ourselves to embedding diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging into every part of this program. This Mentoring Program is for and by men, inclusive of trans men, nonbinary, intersex, and gender-expansive people who identify with and participate in spaces historically labeled masculine within this community. We celebrate the full range of racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds our participants and leadership bring, and we hold that same regard for every path someone has walked to get here. Intolerance violates the social contract of our values and has no place in the Program.

Mistakes don't define a person

We believe past mistakes do not automatically disqualify anyone from belonging here. We hold context, individual review, and conversation as more honest than a blanket rule, and we recognize that criminal-legal systems have disproportionately harmed QTPOC.

Repair matters more than punishment

We hold restorative repair as a valued path when the harmed party wants it and the person who caused harm shows real accountability and a willingness to grow. We'd rather talk, rebuild, and grow together than default to punishment. Whether or not repair is an option, we will always protect the person who was harmed.

Mental wellbeing is something we protect together

We commit to learning about mental health sensitivities and implicit bias before a crisis forces the conversation. Noticing our own burnout, saturation, or withdrawal is part of caring for the people around us. Hiding it doesn't protect anyone.

Nobody does this alone

We believe asking for help is a strength. We treat leadership, fellow participants, and program resources as things to reach for early and often.

Confidentiality is a form of care

We hold what's shared with us as something to protect. We treat discretion as an act of respect for the person who trusted us.

We are here because sex is worth celebrating

We are here because sex, kink, and pleasure are worth doing well. We hold these values seriously because they're what make this hot, joyful, and safe enough to actually explore in.

Operating Committee Values Agreement

Every leader holds every value above, and additionally agrees that

We refuse to let one person carry unchecked authority

We hold distributed responsibility as core to how this program thrives. We remember how a single administrator with no oversight and no safe path to raise a concern fueled a crisis necessitating this moment of inflection. Creating resiliency, honesty, and growth is not a problem that is solved once, but something to which we owe vigilance.

We steward sensitive information. We do not own it.

We hold access to participant data, incident reports, and background-check results as a responsibility entrusted to us for a role, not a personal privilege. We carry that responsibility forward even after we leave the role.

We name our conflicts instead of working around them

We hold transparency about our own entanglements as a baseline expectation of leadership: personal relationships, competing interests, prior history with someone in the program. We surface problems instead of sweeping them under the rug.

Silence is not consent

On anything touching participant safety, equity, or our relationship to the Board, we require an explicit yes. Quiet in a room doesn't count as agreement.

We build these values into the program itself

We commit to embedding these values in application language, screening, orientation, evaluation, and every touchpoint a participant experiences. We hold ourselves responsible for flagging when a structure we're building undermines a value we claim to hold.

We lead by example

We recognize that participants learn this community's culture partly by watching how we behave, not just what we say. We hold our own conduct, including how we handle disagreement, how we treat someone who challenges us, and how we handle our own mistakes, as a form of teaching, whether we intend it to be or not.

We hold a vision beyond this cohort

The LDG Mentoring Program is bigger than us. We believe this program's commitment to safety, equity, and repair has value to the broader leather and kink community, not just the people currently in it. We hold ourselves open to being a model others can learn from, and to learning from others doing similar work.