Agreements and Values

Agreements

We follow the Swiss law and do not permit any illegal activity in our space. Our minimum age is 18 years old.
Please refrain from consuming any alcoholic beverages or any other mind altering substances at our events. Alcohol consumption in moderation is tolerated in social settings such as meet and greets, play parties and presentations with no exercises. More info on the topic here.
Explicit decrimination as well as verbal or physical boundary violations will not be tolerated at our events and may lead to an immediate exclusion.
If you become a victim of or witness to a boundary violation, please discuss this with an organiser, even if you are unsure, whether the situation is “bad enough “. Please take your negative feelings seriously and discuss them with us!
Our safeword at all events and all times is Mayday. If you hear Mayday, please stop whatever is happening immediately. Usually Mayday means, that the person is having a medical emergency or that their consent is being violated. This can happen during a Play Session, in a regular interaction with a person or a workshop. Everybody in the room is asked to help the person calling Mayday to get out of the situation and into safety.
Our support word is “Pan-Pan”.
Pan-Pan can be used to communicate discomfort or a bad feeling about a statement, an exercise, an interaction, group dynamic or person. Even without a clear consent violation, sometimes it is important to be heard and press the pause button. When we hear Pan-Pan, this means that you need support.The group or your partner is invited to lissen, let you speak and find out what kind of help you require. As facilitators and assistants we request you come to us to discuss these types of feelings. We will always treat your sharing confidentially.

Our requests
Wir haben die Intention, ein konsensueller Raum zu sein. Wir wollen alle aktiv danach bestrebt sein, einander zu ermächtigen, Zugang zu Wissen zu ermöglichen und wohltuende Interaktionen zu erleben. Damit uns dies gelingt, brauchen wir Menschen mit Feingefühl, Mitgefühl und einem Grundverständnis darüber, wer sie sind und welche Machtstrukturen sie beeinflussen.
We are not seeking perfect people, we love diversity and acknowledge that this will sometimes lead to tension and discomfort. A certain amount of self-awareness and education is required to make this space safer. We request that you strive towards the following:

Generosity

Be generous towards yourself by honoring your boundaries and taking care of yourself.
Please enter interactions with the assumption that everyone is trying their best.
Please be willing to communicate authentically, apologize if your actions have hurt somebody and please be willing to move forward in conflict situations, getting help if needed.
Please try to tolerate differences and that not everybody may share the same views as you or live in the same bubble. Please respect that all people are where they are at.

Community-awareness

Please enter our space with a mindset of curiosity and empathy. Creating a safe atmosphere and including everybody is a high priority.
Please use the names and pronouns given by the participants.
Confidentiality: Please do not share other people’s identities, names or experience outside the workshop without their explicit consent.
Please clean up after yourself in order to keep the spaces clean and enjoyable for everybody.
Sometimes it is easier to stand up for others than it is for yourself. Keep your eyes, ears and hearts open and ask questions if you feel like somebody is not doing well.
Please inform yourself about your privileges (see glossary)

Self-awareness & Self-responsibility

Please get an idea of how other people react to you, by talking to your friends and what your abilities and limitations are and can communicate these in interactions and in group settings. Our oversharing circle at the beginning of events gives you the opportunity to share your concerns, needs and things that may be helpful for others to know about you.
Strive to to feel your impulses and boundaries and communicate them.
Please be aware that your experiences, perceptions, thoughts, story, body, time and boundaries belong to you and that the same goes for other people; their experiences, perceptions, thoughts, stories, body, time and boundaries belong to them.
Please look into how you can regulate your nervous system when you get into a stressful situation and are able to look after yourself to make sure all of your needs for physical and psychological comfort are met and take action if they are not.
In conflict situations please strive to understand what your role is, what your triggers are and how to stay engaged and empathetic towards yourself and others.

Health & Hygiene

Please practice good hygiene. This looks different to different people, however our standards are clean and filed nails, clean hands and feet, brushed teeth, and regular showers. Wir gehen davon aus, dass die Körperteile, die du berühren lässt, sauber sind. Bitte verzichte geruchssensiblen Menschen zuliebe auf stark riechende Parfüme.
If you currently have a transmittable infection, please do not come to the event if it could be transferred by being in the same room as you.
If you have a transmittable infection that can be transferred via skin, please do not engage in touch exercises without letting the other know.
Please negotiate all sexual play in advance (see below).

Consent

Consent is an agreement about what may or may not happen and can contain the framework of a society, an event, or a personal interaction. Consent is established verbally and non-verbally, through laws, social norms and much more.

Please read and understand the terms in our Zwischenwelten Glossary so that we can enter between the worlds interact with each other on a shared basis of understanding. The glossary is not complete but is a communal work in process. Please contact us if something that is important to you is missing and if you have any questions or disagreements about it.
Opt-In / law of two feet: Every exercise and interaction is opt-in only. If you are in a situation you do not want to be in, physically moving away is enough. You are always free to move around and do not have to justify doing so. “No” is always welcome in our space.
If you decide to leave a workshop or event early, please do let the facilitators know.
Explicit verbal consent is required for play and exercises. Try to give the person asked space and time to decide to help enable an authentic response.
Nonverbal consent is needed for casual interactions such as conversations and sitting near each other. Please be aware of people’s personal space and body language when you interact with them socially if you are not sure whether your presence is welcome, ask.
If something or a person makes you uncomfortable and you are unwilling to interact with them or the situation for any reason, please inform a facilitator or assistant (Simply by approaching us or by using the Supportword Pan-Pan). Also, if you feel like somebody is avoiding you, come talk to us. This does not need to mean that anybody has done anything wrong. It is important to us to know about your discomfort, nonetheless

We understand that we live in a world where many people do not follow all the rules given to you. Spaces where we choose to experiment with human interactions like ours is different: We are very serious about all of these words and want you to honor them.

Negotiation Play
For any type of play or sexual encounters, we require that you make a verbal agreement . The following questions need to be answered:

How long will the play be?
Who will be doing, who will be done to?
Who is this for? (Person A, Person B, or both?)
What tools, types of touch and interactions will happen? What body parts will be touched, which will not be touched?
What is your intention of the play? Is it a favor, is it an experiment with the type of play or is it because you want to do this with me?
Which body parts will you be touching?
Is sexual engagement welcome?
Are we aware of the risks of this interaction?
Do I have any relationship agreements I need to disclose?
Do you have any physical or psychological limitations that I need to disclose?
Do I have any infections I need to disclose?
Do you know how you react in this type of play?
How empowered do you feel to stop the play? What kind of safewords, if any, do we want to use?

Consent is also an ongoing agreement . This means that an explicit yes is needed to initiate play and sexual touch, however impulses, desires and boundaries can change in any moment.

Do not upgrade! During play: if you verbally agreed on not touching certain body parts and not engaging in certain types of play, even if one or both parties change their mind, please finish or pause the play for an elaborate recalibration.
It is totally normal to think you want something and then change your mind. Stop the play if you no longer feel like you are profiting from the experience. If you are unsure, this is probably a sign that you should stop.
Use the safeword Mayday or the support word Pan-Pan at any point.

Zwischenwelten Glossary

Safeword
A safeword is a word within a play or community that allows the people involved to know that play must stop immediately. Our safeword is Mayday.

Supportword
A support word is a word within a play or community that allows us to name discomfort in our play, irregardless of the reason behind it. Our support word is Pan-Pan. Support words recognise that many consent and communication issues take place in a grey area. It can be difficult to find a language for having the need to pause an interaction without stopping it. Our support word is connected to the word Mayday and was developed by us. It is Pan-Pan.

Pan-Pan / Mayday
We are borrowing terms from intercom communication for marine and air transportation.
Pan-Pan is a distress signal which is used when a vehicle and it’s passenger are not (yet) acutely in danger and support or preventative measures are needed. The next step is Mayday, which is signaled when a human life or the vehicle is in grave danger.

Sex-Positivity
We see you as a whole person in all facets that make you human, which includes your sexual desires. We invite you not to stigmatize these desires and not to shame the lack of desire being present. Depending on the event or course description, you are allowed to opt into nudity, sexual expression, wildness. This should never be expected, not from yourself and not from others.

Feminism
Our idea of a sexpositive feminist space is a space where people of all genders can experiment with sexuality. This includes different patterns of arousal, sensuality, fluidity and changes in impulses, hormonal cycles and a lack of focus on penetration and ejaculation/orgasm. This does not mean that this is not allowed, but we ask for excellent consent practices.

YKINMKATOK
Your kink is not my kink and that is okay – by entering these spaces you may witness activities that are not your cup of tea. Please stay curious, tolerant and do not make negative or judgmental statements about what is happening. If you are uncomfortable, please seek support from somebody outside the play or a facilitator / assistant.

STI
We do not stigmatize sexually transmittable infections and are aware that many diseases are very prevalent. We recommend that you regularly get tested and honestly disclose your STI status and safer sex needs before every sexual interaction. More info: https://zwischenwelten.ch/vortrag-stds-in-zusammenarbeit-mit-dem-checkpoint-zuerich-und-ig-bdsm/.

Relationship status
People have different type of relationships in their life that bring different relationship agreements and boundaries with them. Monogamous and non-monogamous agreements are equally welcome, and we expect honest and transparent communication regarding these and respecting the boundaries, within everybody is playing.

Gender identity
Gender identity is how you identify: female, male, both or neither. In our society, most people are assigned a gender based on their genitals at birth. Sometimes, this assignment suits the person, sometimes it does not. Somebody’s gender identity cannot be seen by others and has nothing to do with what your genitals look like, sexual preferences, how you dress, or anything else. The only way to find out how somebody identifies, is by asking. At Zwischenwelten, we ask that you respect everybody’s gender identity and never argue about it.

Pronoun
At our events, we ask people what their pronoun is. A pronoun is the word (most commonly he, she or they), which people can use to talk about somebody. Pronouns are gendered, this means that when we say “he”, we assume the person we are referring to is a man, and when we say “she” we assume that the person we are referring to is a woman. That is why in our spaces, we ask people, how they identify and respect this by reflecting it in the pronoun. In general, we recommend that you use pronouns as rarely as possible and simply use people’s names (for example: Sidonia showed us that before instead of She showed us that before.)

Cisgender
Cisgender people are people whose gender identity does match the identity given to them at birth.

Transgender
Transgender people are people whose gender identity does not match the identity given to them at birth.

Sexual Orientation
Sexual orientation is the gender or genders that people feel attracted to. Never assume somebody’s sexual orientation, always ask. There are many sexual orientations, common ones are heterosexual/straight), homosexual / gay, bisexual, pansexual, asexual. You do not have to have experience in your preference to know it.

Body-positivity
Body-Positivity means to us that we actively question beauty standards and attraction patterns while respecting our desires and boundaries. People are welcome in our space, no matter what their looks are, and whether they fit a normative average. Body positivity also means that we understand and appreciate the human body in all of its facets and are comfortable and aware of encountering other humans: People have hair growing all over their bodies, People sweat, genitals can excrete different fluids such as lubrication, urine, menstrual blood, People carry around germs and bacteria, they salivate and People have digestive systems. We welcome humans and their bodies in our space, and you are welcome in our space as you are.

Neurodiversity
We celebrate that not all people’s minds and behaviors work the same way. In order to welcome as many people as possible we are tolerant towards varying needs, quirks, language skills, way of expressing oneself and intro- and extraversion.

Racism, Ageism, Sexism, Ableism, homophobia, transphobia
Our society inherently excludes, and disadvantages certain people based on their ethnic or geographical background, religion and language, gender, physical or mental variations. The best way to create an inclusive space for everyone is to actively counteract this by being explicitly inclusive, be curious about people’s needs, and put work into counteracting the system.
If somebody brings an unintentional form of discrimination to your attention, please apologise, ask questions and discuss the incident with the course staff. Please also let us organisers know if we say something insennsitive or discriminateing. Lets help each other grow and make amends for any type of missteps.
Any type of explicit racism, sexism, ableism, transphobia will not be tolerated at our events and will lead to an immediate exclusion.

Anti-racism, anti-ageism, anti-……ism
We acknowledge that we all are part of a society that excludes people and do not pretend that we as individuals or a society are innocent or free of these discriminations. Instead, we try to educate ourselves and learn about these patterns and figure out, how we can help each other.

Privilege
Privilege is a right or advantage that some people have. The thing about privilege is that the more privileged you are, the less easy it is to understand it. For example, heterosexual people do not know the feeling of fearing kissing in public in fear of drawing attention. Privileges are everywhere: Are you conventionally attractive? Are you healthy? Do you have a lot of energy that helps you get through the day? Are you comfortable around a lot of people? Were you easily able to afford the course? Are you white? Do you feel comfortable with the gender you were born with? When was the last time you have received a hug from somebody? Is it easy for you to find sex partners? They are structural and individual. The underlying message for us is: Everybody’s experience is different. We do not aim to victimize or villainize anybody. We want to create awareness, curiosity and healing through community.

Kink/Kinky
Kinkiness is used to describe unconventional sex practices, concepts and fantasies. The term is used because a kink means that it is the opposite of “straight”. Straight or vanilla are terms used to decribe conventional sexual practices.

Queer
Originally used as a derogatory term, meaning strange, queer was reclaimed by the LGTBQ+ community. Queer is a general term for sexual and gender-specific minorities.

BDSM
BDSM stands for ‘bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism’.

Anmeldeverfahren

Your registration to an event is binding.
Unsere Preise basieren auf einer Sliding Scale:
– Menschen mit finanziellem Wohlstand laden wir ein, höhere Preise zu zahlen.
– Menschen ohne finanziellen Wohlstand laden wir ein, tiefere Preise zu zahlen.
Genauere Ausführungen dazu findest du hier.
We ask you to sign up for an event as soon as possible so we can book our venues and presenters.
Lies vor der Anmeldung den gesamten Text durch, wie auch unsere Regeln, unser Glossar, unsere Community-Guidelines oder die spezifischen Workshopbedingungen.
Jeder Workshop hat je nach Setting noch zusätzliche / abweichende Spielregeln Wir bitten dich deshalb alle von uns versendeten Infos sorgfältig zu lesen.
Es steht immer der Kursleitung und Organisatorinnen zu, finale Entscheidungen darüber zu treffen, wer teilnehmen darf und wer nicht. Transparente Kommunikation und Fairness sind uns dabei wichtig.

Abmeldung Community Space

Je nach Aufwand und Umständen behalten wir es uns vor, dich um eine Stornogebühr zu bitten. Dies liegt in der Entscheidunghoheit der Kursleitung.
Bei kommentarlosem nicht-Erscheinen werden wir immer den vollen Teilnahmebetrag verlangen.

Cancellation Workshop

You receive a full refund if you cancel your place one month in advance of the event.
You receive a 50% refund if you cancel your place more than two weeks in advance of the event.
If you cancel at a later point, we will keep 80% of the registration fee.
Last Minute Absagen, Krankheit, Frischverliebtheit oder No-show: wir behalten die volle Kursgebühr ein.
If you can find somebody who can take your place at the course* instead, we only will charge a small processing fee.
Cash payments at the event and delayed payments after the event receive a 10CHF processing fee.
Cancellations from our side result in a full reimbursement of the event fees. No other claims are permissible.

Payment
Payment only in CHF.

*This does not count for the Unconference and other potential future events which include a rigorous application process.