Consent-Based kicking people out... How does it work for y'all?

Communities of Practice Advocates for sociocracy in Intentional Community
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Hey everybody!

It seems one of the more challenging facets of community is when you need to kick somebody out of a community.

Obviously if a community is trying to kick somebody out via consent, it is one of the rare cases where they don’t really need to consent to being kicked out.

Of course it’s really great if you have a code of conduct and it makes it quite simple If they are just violating the code of conduct and then you point that out and use that as grounds to remove them. Hopefully the community has at least that much structure in place, otherwise the grounds for kicking somebody out begin to be more tenuous and it’s all a lot more potentially unhealthy.

However, there’s another interesting angle on specifically consent that I’m curious about thoughts on:

There are two possible ways of going about it in terms of proposals:

  1. Do you consent to kicking this person out?
  2. Do you consent to continuing to live with this person?

Which of these two questions should be asked to the group?
Or should it be both?

In our first round with an individual, we actually did ask both and there were objections to kicking the person out and objections to continuing to live with the person but we managed to navigate objections and found a way in which everybody agreed to continue living with the person.

It’s possible that this is the best way to go about it:
Step one: ask if we’re okay to kick people out and then
Step two: Ask if we’re okay to keep living with them and do our best to navigate objections.

But it leaves the possibility of a grey zone where there isn’t consent to kick someone out, but there also isn’t consent to keep living with them… Obviously there are many strategies to integrate objections to living with someone (stipulations on changes in their behavior, mediation sessions, etc).

In which case some subset of people would essentially be being asked to move out or live in a non-consensual situation.
In some scenarios this might be appropriate, perhaps it indicates a lack of alignment with them and the community - but in other cases it may be unfair.

There is of course also a fallback method, such as supermajority or sending the decision to a parent circle as well…

What processes have you used to removing a community member and how did they work or not?

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We talked about aspects of this a bit today at our Advocates group.
Some sharings: Very helpful to have clear lists of unacceptable behaviors, yes, a code of conduct, and agreed consequences for violations. Have conversations on the group’s capacity to provide attention for deeply traumatized individuals. Many groups have seen competent people leave communities rendered ineffective due to disruptive behaviors, which may be inept cries for help.

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Traditionally, this unfairness has been called discrimination.

The question:

  1. Do you consent to kicking this person out?

Could be preceded with yet another one, with an unobscured assumption:

  1. Do you consent to discriminate this person, and take away from them their right to object?

If in the group there is a believe that one person’s right to stay where they are is more important then other person’s right to stay where they already are - as well, I believe the group has an issue with discrimination. For a group that considers kicking someone out, maybe they could ask themselves why do they accept using violence against the other person but not against the first one?

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objections to continuing to live with the person
consent to keep living with them

Why do you look for a solution outside of yourself and not just allow the person to be where they are? Who entitled you to take that much of the space - including that of the other person?

The process of exclusion and becoming a nobody - for me that was a formative experience as a women - not being pregnant nor having a baby nor any other experience in my life in a feminine body. Until that I believed it doesn’t really matter, I identified as a non-binary and I was happy to do everything. Now I shake about leaving my home.

A women by community of experiences with past generations of people from this group who had no voice.

And when I come to the FSFE Women chapter meetings, as the only non-transgender women in the group, and nobody in the room seems to be able to relate to the story of discrimination, I feel like even that space has been misappropriated and taken away from people like me.

(FSFE - Free Software Foundation Europe)

This is how it works for us here, on the other side of being kicked-out.

And then we try to continue with our mission, now as a nobody, and nobody is there to help out.