Inclusivity Policy



The Pirate Party is a movement that embraces polyculture. More variations, more varieties, increasing complexity!

We are composed from people from different ideologies working together by our very nature. This document is provided to help maximize effective collaboration from everyone.

Diversity is included as a core value in Falkvinge's Pirate Wheel for good reason.

"An ideological and institutional monoculture always leads to stagnation. For society to flourish, it must take advantage of the empowerment given to its citizens and let the best ideas and cultures win in an enabling, open environment. People have been wrong many times before, and it is likely that many of the ideas we have today will be seen as ridicule tomorrow. To enable this development, there must be a polyculture and diversity of ideas and processes."

We believe that the We are a do-ocracy. We thrive on participation. We want everyone feel empowered to participate, advocate for themselves, and change the world with us.

Cisgender Males
are all notoriously male-dominated environments.
 * Technology Sector
 * Internet Communities
 * Politics

The Pirate Party exists at an intersection between these environments and as a result, most of our active members are cisgender males.

As a result of this, many of the Pirate Party's officers and candidates are cisgender males.

To have any gender (including male) is not a bad thing. However, we know that this means the onus is on us to have a widely welcoming environment.

To start, we can:
 * Make sure that there are practices in place for dealing with sexism/racism in Pirate environments.
 * Make it clear that misogynistic humor or attitudes have no place in pirate environments
 * Provide information to help keep potential pirate candidates up to modern social standards on gender issues

Gender Diversity
We have pirates of all genders. Gender is not only male and female. It is a spectrum of self-identification.

LGBT

 * The internet is a place where we explore our identity.
 * Names or genders assigned at birth have no particular legal value and should not be rigorously defended
 * We value polyculture and a person's right to self-identify

Workplace harassment and whistle-blowing

 * Women who expose wrongdoing in the workplace including sexism or harassment are whistleblowers. The Pirate Party supports Whistleblowers.
 * Harassment is something that disproprotionately affects women/

Polyamory

 * We are in favor of expressive and creative cultures. Polyamory is an open-source movement.

Chelsea Manning

 * Chelsea Manning (formerly known as 'Bradley Manning') is the WikiLeaks leaker who leaked the war logs and the 'collateral murder' video. When we talk about leaks, whistleblowers, etc. We should centre Chelsea ahead of other figures.

Age diversity

 * We are fairly successful recruiting young people: allowing people as young as fourteen years of age to join the party.
 * To target older people, we may want to be mindful of the media they typically consume.
 * It has been suggested that weekends are "prime family time" an should possibly be avoided for meeting scheduling.
 * There is no technical reason we can not have representation from older people. The internet did not come out of nowhere. Many older people (including seniors) do know how to use computers. They probably had to buy the same record album over and over again over the years. They have probably been prevented from doing something due to the Patent system (some may even hold patents).

First Nations People in Canada

 * Stephen Harper has been very bad on this issue. We should be very good.
 * Wikileaks documents showed that First Nations activists were targeted for warrantless surveillance.

Ideological Diversity
We support democratic participation from many diverse ideologies!

Social Democrat-Pirate Synergy

 * Democracy is good. We want to bring even more democracy than centre-left parties!

Libertarian-Pirate Synergy

 * Pirates are free and so are libertarians.
 * We believe all laws should be necessary and proportionate.

Communist-Pirate Synergy

 * "My brothers in the revolution are seeding to me against capitalism."
 * Freedom of scientific information has historically also been called 'communism.'
 * Communists are an ideology that has been cracked down on in the US with surveillance and suppression and therefore should be stood up for

Anarchist-Pirate Synergy

 * We hate illegitimate hiarchies.
 * We are a do-ocracy with open source and arguably anarchistic modes of organizing

Environmental-Pirate Synergy

 * We reduce our carbon footprint by transferring the files digitally instead of shipping it on a disk.

Economics-Pirate Synergy

 * The evidence shows that pirates spend more, that high piracy is correlated with high profits, and that one download does not mean one lost sale.
 * We are against monopolies, oligopolies, and predatory organizations.

Activist-Pirate Synergy

 * By sharing the files, we break through international barriers for global justice, and we take away classist paywalls that exclude marginalized people.
 * Surveillance targets activists first.

Scientist-Pirate Synergy

 * Filesharing is the purpose of the internet. It is literally designed to share files.
 * We believe in experimentalism. Trying out different things until something works.
 * We believe in evidence and we believe there is such a thing as material reality.

Religious-Pirate Synergy

 * Our viewpoints are generally parsemonious with all world religions and non-religions in one way or another.

Feminism
VIDEO: "BIG THINK: Defending Feminism" http://bigthink.com/videos/defending-feminism

VIDEO: "The Confusing Terminology of Feminism" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bf0ZlLYlW7g

THE GUARDIAN: "Sluts and sweethearts" http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2010/sep/03/sexist-language-bidisha

GEEK FEMINISM WIKI: "New to feminism?" http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/New_to_feminism%3F

WIKI: Androcentrism, Generic Male Language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androcentrism#Generic_male_language

SEP: Analytic Feminism http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/femapproach-analytic/

SEP: Feminist Philosophy of Language http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-language/

GEEK FEMINISM WIKI: Timeline of Incidents in Geek Culture http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents

MEDIUM: Don’t Ask Me Unless You’re Ready To Call Somebody a Whistleblower https://medium.com/@katylevinson/sexism-in-tech-don-t-ask-me-unless-you-re-ready-to-call-somebody-a-whistleblower-e5d545e547b0

NEW REPUBLIC: Why Aren't Women Advancing At Work? Ask a Transgender Person. http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119239/transgender-people-can-explain-why-women-dont-advance-work