This has been cloned for documentation purposes. Please share and support dhobikikutti on their post over here.

ETA 26 July 2023: Further discussion and context on dhobikikutti supposedly outing a volunteer has been added. synecdochic's commentary on dhobikikutti's post has also been added.

ETA 29 July 2023: Emyn, the first candidate who dropped out this election season, made a post on 28 July criticizing dhobikikutti and supporting her CCAP letter.

Letter from the OTW chairs to dhobikikutti

On 19 July 2023, dhobikikutti received a letter from the OTW chairs for CCAP (Constructive Corrective Action Procedures):

Hi Dhobi ki Kutti,

I'm writing to you today on behalf of Tag Wrangling Chairs due to a few serious issues which have been brought to our attention. A number of volunteers have approached us, either privately or through Volcom, to convey concerns regarding your recent behaviour over the course of the last month or so. We have also noticed an issue of concern we would like to address with you so further violations of policy can be avoided.

We, as well as many of the volunteers who have approached us, believe you have valid criticisms of the OTW. We also support the desire for greater transparency and accountability, both internally and externally. However, the approach you've taken has had a negative impact on some volunteers who then approached us with their concerns. I'm going to go over these concerns to give you a better picture of the impact your behaviour is having, and the code of conduct/policies it has violated.

Concerns:

The most serious of these concerns is that there was a volunteer whose real and fannish identities were linked as a result of several of your posts, which is a violation of the OTW Code of Conduct duty of Confidentiality. ([Link to Code_of_Conduct#Confidentiality Redacted]).

"OTW personnel need to avoid connecting any fannish persona, name used within the OTW, and/or legal name without that person’s explicit permission. Outing another fan may result in immediate dismissal from the OTW; see the TOS for more information about 'outing'." (emphasis added)

Connecting a volunteer’s real and fannish identities without their permission is a violation of this policy even when it happens internally within the org. While we certainly hope you did not intend for this outcome, your actions have resulted in this volunteer's personal accounts being linked together, even after they made a point of removing the only visual indicators that tied the accounts together. When this happens it can make your fellow volunteers feel unsafe. We hope you appreciate how serious of a problem this is.

Several volunteers have also reached out to us with concerns that you have shared the contents of internal communications publicly in violation of the Wrangling Communication Policy.

As you agreed when joining the Tag Wrangling team, [Link to How_to_talk_about_wrangling_in_public redacted] specifically prohibits the posting of internal communications externally which have not been made available to the public.

"Broad topic discussion is acceptable, but giving specific details or copy/pasting quotes from mailing list e-mails or Slack rooms to public spaces is not. Doing so may be subject to CCAP or immediate dismissal.”

This includes quoting internal conversations or emails directly. It seems that you've been in violation of this policy a number of times over the last month or so in posts where you have made a point of referencing and posting internal communications or quoting conversations externally. The specific incident cited to us in several reports is in regards to the comment you made on this post: https://www.transformativeworks.org/the-otws-commitment-to-safety-responding-to-recent-concerns-about-ao3/

The concerns that have been relayed to us include the way that particular violation of policy has impacted the volunteers' well-being. Your willingness to share internal details publicly has made them feel disconcerted and unsafe. Some have also said that they feel their privacy has been invaded.

Additionally, while this is not a policy violation, a number of volunteers have informed us they feel that the way you have repeatedly brought up tense discussions in public rooms has made the work environment unpleasant. While we agree that the issues you’ve highlighted are important, many are things that can’t be addressed quickly, and will require a lot of time and effort from the org. We don’t want you to feel that conversations about change are unwelcome, but we would ask that you be more understanding of the fact that not everyone wants to participate in them. We also want you to understand that the changes you’re asking for require an immense amount of work from volunteers who already have an existing workload.

All in all, these aspects of your behavior of late have generally made other volunteers feel unsafe, stressed, and uncomfortable. It has also made Slack a considerably less pleasant environment for those who have reached out to us, making it more difficult for your fellow volunteers to communicate on the platform, and impacting both their mental well-being and their desire to actively volunteer with the OTW while it continues.

Our job as chairs of the Tag Wrangling Committee is specifically to look after the well-being of our current volunteers as best we can, in addition to making sure the work we're charged with doing is getting done. While we do believe that your actions over the last month have been well-intentioned and in the service of pushing for forward action and change across the OTW, it is important that you are aware that the relentless approach you've chosen to take is impacting your fellow volunteers in a negative manner.

We would like you to consider this letter as a first warning step in a CCAP ([Link to Constructive_Corrective_Action_Procedure Redacted]). As a result, we require that you make the following adjustments in your behavior going forward to improve the shared working environment.

Actions:

- Due to an abundance of caution, cease linking to social media posts which may, however unintentionally, link the fannish and real identities of volunteers within the OTW together.

- Do not quote or cut and paste sections of documents, email communications, or internal conversations into external conversations or public forums.

- Do not summarize internal communications for external spaces. Internal communications are not, and should not be, considered material that can be shared elsewhere (even in summary form) if they have not been released publicly by the OTW. The fact that this is something you have been doing consistently over the past month or so is a large part of what is contributing to some of your fellow volunteers feeling unsafe.

- If you wish to ask a question about a particular social media post or comment on a post, and feel it is necessary to link the post or comment for reference, email committee chairs rather than posting in the Slack public rooms.

- Be more cautious about how you link things, and consider whether links to other posts are really necessary when asking your questions.

If you want to talk about the OTW, Tag Wrangling, or other aspects of your volunteer work, that's totally fine. If you want to discuss what's happening outside the OTW with your fellow volunteers, that's fine too. However, you need to do so within the bounds of the policies and agreements that you were asked to abide by when you originally joined the tag wrangling committee. (See [Link to How_to_talk_about_wrangling_in_public redacted])

You will not be welcome to continue to volunteer with the tag wrangling committee if you cannot be considerate and respectful of the needs of your fellow volunteers.

We hope you will take the concerns of your fellow volunteers seriously and adjust your approach going forward to take those concerns and their well-being into account. We also hope you will strive to be respectful of your fellow volunteers’ time and boundaries.

If you have any questions about anything above, please do reach out and let us know and we will be happy to address them.

Please understand that should we continue to receive additional complaints or note that you have continued to violate Communication policies, OTW or Tag Wrangling Committee policies/agreements, or the terms of this CCAP, we will reach out again to discuss next steps.

Warm Regards,
[Name redacted]
On Behalf of TW Chairs

The Possible Incidents in Question

The comment that dhobikikutti left on the Transformative Works news post (linked previously here):

Kutti commented: Hi Legal, I am a current volunteer with the OTW and I am posting this here because I have been waiting more than 3 weeks for Board to answer my questions regarding the May 2022 situation and its aftermath, and have received no response. My questions (asked on 28th May 2023) were: 1) Who is in charge (board or legal or volcom) of creating the documentation for defining what an emergency is and what is authorised in it 2) What timeframe can we expect for this documentation to be drafted I would also like to let you know that I received only 2 all-org emails after the May CSEM attacks, and the advice in them was limited to: "If someone outside the U.S. received CSEM, they may also want to also report to NCMEC, since what they received came via U.S. servers. They should use their own judgment about reporting it to their own local, national, or regional authorities. Anyone who receives CSEM should delete it from their e-mail and hard drive. If you think you may have been a target of this malicious activity, do NOT open any unknown e-mail to investigate or find out what it contains." (dated 5 May 2022) "We strongly recommend not opening any messages from unknown senders claiming to be from the OTW, particularly if they contain attachments. Delete them immediately. [...] We encourage you to choose a password that you haven't used before and cannot be easily guessed, and we strongly recommend that you enable 2-factor authentication. [...] "there is a possibility that any personal information you included in your Slack profile may have been compromised. We recommend that you take steps to protect yourself in the event this does occur. You may want to make changes such as: reviewing and removing information on your Slack profile, such as social media accounts; if your Slack profile has links to social media, removing location information and other identifying data from those accounts; changing your login data from those social media accounts, changing their protection level, or deleting them entirely." You did not share any information about what to do if we were SWATTED, what to do if we were doxxed, or how to deal with the trauma if we were exposed to CSEM material. You did not offer any psychological assistance, and over a year later, according to the latest information, there are still no resources available for volunteers should we be attacked again. You did not even, as rahaeli's thread did, provide us the peer-reviewed citation to play Tetris.

Outing a volunteer "as a result of several of dhobikikutti's posts" may be referring to cathexys, who has been discussed publicly being a Comms chair on Dreamwidth posts from gloss (previously public, now locked; documented here; screencaps) and muccamukk (thread here; archive link). Discussion on FFA here.

A clarification from OTW internal communications, posted publicly on FFA here:

To clarify: They are not being reprimanded for bringing up policy issues in optional, policy discussion channels (though I understand that's how many folks seem to be reading it and I'm sorry it is not more clear). They are being asked not to bring up policy issues in non-policy discussion public work channels.

We were referring to public rooms as in the public staff rooms used for cross-committee communication not "all rooms that are public". Folks can leave chat rooms. They can't necessarily leave work rooms.

Thus bringing the conversation into the work rooms means that folks who might not want to be involved and might have specifically stepped out of other rooms for the sake of their own mental well-being then are unable to remove themselves from the room.

ETA 26/07/2023: Further discussion on FFA about the cathexys situation, who more than likely is the volunteer that dhobikikutti "outed", and more specifically in the internal chat program but not in public, can be found here.

Select FFA comments:

(link)

Cathexys volunteers under their wallet name, most notably as a committee chair (not Comms) and Comms chair assistant. Until about a month ago, they were open about linking their fan and wallet names in OTW spaces, up to and including using the same icon.

A month ago was when this happened: https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/603757.html?thread=3702513773#cmt370
cathexys removed her icon in OTW spaces soon after making those comments on the (then unlocked) DW post. The post was still unlocked when several OTW volunteers (not Kutti) found it and asked in the policy channel why someone (meaning cathexys) was claiming sole credit on DW for putting a halt to the racist harassment that they (meaning cathexys) had admitted in the OTW policy channel to being partially responsible for instigating in the first place.

What Kutti did some time later was bring the DW post linked here to the attention of the Comms chair: https://fail-fandomanon.dreamwidth.org/601279.html?thread=3686120127#cmt3686120127

The Comms chair told Kutti that doing so was inappropriate, and didn't answer Kutti's actual question (Who on Comms was responsible for the closing of the OTW DW, since the Comms chair assistant was going around on DW saying they had no idea about it?)

(link)

Cathexys brought it up herself! I feel like I'm taking crazy pills! Cathexys apologized in Chat Program, under her OTW name, for her behavior as Cathexys!

I want to apologize for the way I behaved in Gloss's recent DW post. Most importantly, I want to apologize to the others chairs and especially PAC for stating or insinuating that they did not care about the comments and that I basically singlehandedly solved the problem. That was clearly not the case, though it did feel a bit to me in the moment I was DMing anyone I could find on Slack who might have the ability to screen comments, which I do not have.

That's Cathexys, in volunteer chat, under her wallet name that she uses in the OTW. Kutti asking ABOUT THAT VERY APOLOGY is what gets cited in the CCAP! Was Kutti alone supposed to maintain kayfabe that no one knows who Cathexys is, after Cathexys herself said "I am Cathexys"??????

The Comms chair told Kutti off for linking to cathexys commenting on muccamukk's post (about the closing of Dreamwidth), not the earlier post by gloss (about newspost comment moderation). Look it up in Chat Program if you don't believe me.

All that said, I agree with the rest of your comment and I'm only setting the record straight about which topic was being discussed.

Because when you look it up, you'll see that while Kutti directly links to and quotes "a public comment made by the current Chair Assistant (who identified the account making the comment as hers in previous conversation with current volunteers)", it's the current Comms chair who replies with "Hi Kutti. This comment is inappropriate. [cathexys' wallet name] used to have an icon that identified her fannish identity, she is not currently using it here, and we should respect that."

(link)

Is it even clear that Kutti (or anyone else) would have been aware of the desire to unlink, though? It's not like there's a newsletter you can publish this stuff in.

Yeah, how was anyone to know? Just because Cathexys removed their icon from one identity? It seems like they had linked both identities themselves in OTW channels in the past, so how on earth would people know that suddenly, that's off-topic in OTW channels again?

Plus, it seems Cathexys only removed their icon after things they were saying under one identity was contradictory to their role under the second identity, which I would take as an attempt to avoid further wank. People aren't going to suddenly gain amnesia about the two identities being the same person or know that they're not supposed to bring up the two identities linked by Cathexys themselves.

(link)

As I understand it cathexys linked her IDs in otw-slack and kutti referenced the comments she made there in otw chat. Are these meaningfully different audiences?

I don't think so! If you say "I, Inigo Montoya, am the Dread Pirate Roberts" in the slack and I say "Oh yeah, Inigo, who is also the Dread Pirate Roberts" in...another internal channel, I don't see how I could have known I shouldn't be talking about it in the other internal channel.

(This is aside from the whole 'there's not even been any clarification about the alleged offence' issue)

Important note, neither internal channel is locked. Any volunteer can freely access both the channel Cathexys identified herself in and the channel Kutti identified Cathexys in.

dhobikikutti's response

On 24 July 2023, dhobikikutti posted a response to the OTW public channel, and shared both messages on their Dreamwidth (linked above):

OTW Board of 2023:
As you are aware, on 19 July 2023, I was emailed a ‘First Warning for Constructive Corrective Action Procedure (CCAP)’ by a Tag Wrangling Chair. Since I have not heard otherwise from any Board member or Volcom Chair (to whom it was also cc-ed), I understand that the opinions voiced in the CCAP to be the official response of this organisation’s Board and Chairs to my ‘behaviour over the course of the last month’.

I am waiving my right to confidentiality and posting the entirety of the CCAP text below this, so that other volunteers can decide for themselves whether your actions are warranted or not. I also give permission for anyone to share this text and my response to it here, along with my org handle, in any public internet location they wish to disseminate it to.

For my part, I had not expected the organisation would provide me such a blatant example of racist retaliation, but clearly, I had not set the bar low enough.

I reject the authority of white people in positions of structural power in this organisation to punish me—a volunteer of colour trying to hold you accountable for your structural racism—by intimidating me and placing restrictions regarding my participation in OTW communication channels.

I reject a cultist confidentiality policy that denies volunteers any opportunity to provide citations to back up claims of abusive organisational practises. The only quotes I have publicly posted are from official statements made by the Board and Chairs to all volunteers, and I shared them in response to a post where the official organisation statement was denying an accusation of insufficiently protecting its volunteer base. As a member of said volunteer base, I have the right to provide proof of my own experience.

You have accused me of violating the confidentiality policy a number of times, without providing any other citations. Because I have been entirely focussed on demanding accountability within the organisation, it is very easy for me to enumerate any public comments I have made (copies of which I have recorded here: https://dhobikikutti.dreamwidth.org/). If you consider me citing my own words, voiced in internal channels, to be violating my own confidentiality then... you have overstepped, because I gave myself permission to ‘violate’ my own privacy.

I reject your framing of my actions as a threat to individual volunteers. Anyone who will look at the history of my comments will understand immediately where the false accusation of me ‘outing’ a volunteer comes from, and can also find the evidence of the volunteer themselves linking the identity in question. I can say much more about the racialised double standards that this accusation is a part of, but it is obvious that you don’t actually think I outed anyone.

Because, as the CCAP makes a point to reiterate, this is cumulative action being taken for everything I have said over the past month. That my comments have made the atmosphere ‘tense’ and ‘unpleasant’. That I have made multiple volunteers feel ‘stressed,’‘disconcerted and unsafe’, to the extent that I have affected their mental well-being. I am not ‘considerate and respectful’ enough to be welcome as a volunteer.

I do not plan to invest the energy in theorising this for you, because abusers who file complaints to silence criticism know fully well what patterns of hierarchy and power they are wielding. And here, I will make it clear that I hold the chairs and Board responsible for this CCAP, not any individual volunteers who chose to complain against me. A healthy organisation would have resources to support volunteers feeling threatened by my challenges of the structural whiteness in this organisation without using their discomfort to browbeat me.

I will make no statement of victim impact regarding what my experience as a hypervisible person of colour speaking out against racism in this organisation has been, because I know that you do not care. For the record, I have filed no complaint against any individual volunteer because my focus has always been calling out the institutional patterns of racialised inequity and hostility.

And I will not slink away in silence or quit in despair so that you can frame my departure as one of individualised ‘burnout’, rather than the systematic hounding out that it is.

I will continue to document this organisation’s racism till you suspend me, and afterwards. I will always be open to hearing from current and former volunteers of colour, and I will continue to maintain the confidences of people who trusted me.

The Organisation for Transformative Works has been weaponising its incompetence since its inception to argue that it is not racist, merely hapless. This CCAP is evidence that despite all the issues that plague the official machinery— when it feels a sense of urgency and desperation to lash out at someone, it is, in fact, right up there with the best of liberal white institutions at performing racism masked in policing.

Kutti (Tag Wrangler since 2019)

Additional Commentary

azarias: (link)

For the record, I was never given a CCAP (the OTW's corrective action letter that Kutti shared here) despite causing at least as much "discomfort" in the org. This is far from the first time I've seen a volunteer of color get far more blowback than I, a white US American, did for substantially the same opinions and behaviors. More than one volunteer of color quit the Org in 2020 after being browbeaten by high-ranking volunteers for suggesting racism was a problem. It's a pattern.

The OTW will disingenuously claim that it can't be racist, because the Org doesn't ask for demographic information from volunteers. That's bullshit. The Org obviously knows that volunteers of color who talk about experiencing racism in the Org aren't white, and the Org has consistently come down on them harder than on equally outspoken white people.

synecdochic, on Twitter X at rahaeli: (nitter link)

Continuing documentation of the ongoing abject orgagnizational, moral, and ethical failures of the Organization for Transformative Works: A volunteer of color has received an official behavioral reprimand for her ongoing work to hold the org accountable. https://dhobikikutti.dreamwidth.org/134659.html

A plain reading of the four corners of this behavioral reprimand -- the first step in the formal volunteer disciplinary process -- makes it clear to anyone who reads it that Kutti is being disciplined for the white fragility of OTW volunteers who object to Kutti's advocacy.

The reprimand is vague, nonspecific, and seeks to place an unconscionable burden on Kutti to manage the emotions of the volunteers who object to hearing about the multiple ways the OTW repeatedly fails its volunteers and especially its volunteers of color.

For those who don't know the details of the "policy violations" covered in the first half of the reprimand: they are entirely manufactured as an excuse to issue the reprimand and then transition into the vague and unenforcable "stop making people feel bad" demands.

The reprimand itself is an act of racist retaliation against a volunteer seeking to hold the organization accountable. Even worse, however, I have spent today discussing disciplinary process and history with multiple other OTW volunteers.

Their stories are not mine to tell, although if and when they choose to tell them, I will publicize them. The aggregate of all those stories lead me to the singular and inescapable conclusion that the OTW disciplinary process has a pattern and practice of racist disparities.

Volunteers of color are issued reprimands and disciplinary action for behavior that is excused and tolerated when performed by white volunteers, while the reporting process silences and turns aside the concerns of volunteers of color about the behavior of white volunteers.

Enough people have repeatedly identified this pattern, publicly and privately, that the organization knows or should have known that it has engaged in a pattern and practice of racist discrimination in volunteer discipline and adjusted its process accordingly. It has not.

Under no circumstances should Kutti have received this reprimand. It is a disgrace that she did. Anyone who had any hand in issuing it, or knew it was being issued and did not object, should immediately resign from the organization or be removed from it.

Kutti also deserves, at the very least, a public apology, a formal revocation of this reprimand, and an acknowledgement that the organizational disciplinary procedures have engaged in a pattern and practice of racist discrimination.

These stories keep coming out. The organization has a pattern and practice of racist discrimination. The organization has a pattern of chilling indifference to the well-being of all its volunteers, especially its volunteers of color.

The organization has a pattern of defending itself at volunteer expense. It has a pattern of ignoring industry standard best practices in dozens of areas. It promotes and empowers people with no people management experience and provides them no training in managing people.

Individuals and committees inside the organization hoard power and control, burn out and drive away any volunteer with relevant experience and knowledge, and display a chilling indifference to the emotional and practial toll these practices take on the people who encounter them.

This problem is made far worse by the ongoing, pervasive, systemic racism of the organization as a whole, the disparate impact its policies and practices have on volunteers of color, and the active retaliation against volunteers of color advocating for change.

This pattern and practice cannot be reformed with lip service about "greater transparency and accountability". The only option is a top to bottom overhaul of the entire organization. It is well the fuck past time to clean your fucking house before more people get hurt, OTW.

Coda: I am flabbergasted that the organization put out this statement (https://archiveofourown.org/admin_posts/26581) about a white board candidate having the sads that she was accurately identified as a Republican politician who ran for fucking Congress and people had some justifiable concerns.

Contrasting sharply with the org's complete silence about the vile racist harassment of a Chinese Board candidate throughout nearly the entire campaign period last year, this statement was made less than 24 hours after the candidate was identified in the Elections email.

Coming as it does on the heels of a volunteer of color being disciplined for speaking up about the organization's pattern and practice of racist discrimination, the contrast could not be more clear. #CleanYourFuckingHouseOTW