This website is a safe space.
If you act like a decent human being, you are welcome here. I hope we can build a beautiful community together.
Cafe PhD is committed to treating other people with respect regardless of their race, national origin, sexual orientation, gender and gender expression (including transgender, non-binary, and other genders), native language, immigration status (including undocumented), disability status, perceived disability status, veteran status, and other groups we may have forgotten to mention. Cafe PhD policy is intentionally more inclusive than United States law.
To create a safe space for everyone, Cafe PhD encourages readers to be respectful in blog comments, elsewhere on this site, on our social media pages, and anywhere else that readers may interact.
Bullying and hostility are forbidden in blog comments, elsewhere on the site, our social media pages, or any other locations related to Cafe PhD. Comments are carefully moderated to protect the Cafe PhD community from cruel behavior or triggering content.
Accessibility and Disordered Eating
To protect readers with eating disorders, Cafe PhD articles never advocate restrictive diets or calorie-counting. Additionally, if readers would like to participate in the blog comments, they agree not to promote calorie-counting or restrictive diets in their blog comments (including but not limited to carb-free diets, fat-free diets, intermittent fasting, the paleo diet, auto-immune protocol, GAPS diet, etc.).
We understand that this policy may shock or upset some people, but please remember that comments about food limitations can trigger relapse in people with eating disorders, and that eating disorders can be deadly. While we respect your right to make food choices independently, please understand that our primary concern is to keep our readers safe, and there are currently very few safe spaces on the internet for those recovering from eating disorders.
Medically necessary diets (gluten restriction, allergy-avoidance,or similar) are an exception to this policy and readers are therefore allowed to discuss these topics freely in the blog comments if their comments are reasonably relevant. For the purposes of these site policies, “medical necessity” is a diet that is accepted by mainstream medicine. For example, avoiding peanuts because you have a peanut allergy is medically necessary. Readers are also allowed to freely discuss food restrictions related to religion.
Cafe PhD does not allow readers to shame other people’s food choices, weight, body, or body shape explicitly or implicitly in comments, on our social media pages, or elsewhere. Cafe PhD discourages blog comments that are intended to trigger food anxiety in other people.
Psychiatric Accessibility
Cafe PhD is committed to psychiatric accessibility. We place content warnings (also known as trigger warnings) near content that may be triggering for trauma survivors. While we do our best to make sure trigger warnings are appropriately placed, please be aware that psychiatric triggers can be idiosyncratic, and we are not able to predict some types of triggers. Additionally, if we feel that it is important to address a difficult topic, we avoid graphic or gratuitous descriptions of disturbing, violent, or sexual material.
For readers who wish to comment on the blog, Cafe PhD expects that you refrain from posting disturbing, violent, or sexual material out of respect for other readers who live with PTSD or other trauma disorders. Comments are moderated before they are allowed on the website, and comments with disturbing content will be removed. We also forbid medication-shaming (shaming those who take psychiatric medication) on Cafe PhD or on relevant social media.
Cafe PhD also expects readers to avoid using psychiatric terms such as “manic,” “OCD,” “PTSD,” “depression,” “schizophrenic,” etc. in disrespectful and inaccurate ways.
Pronouns
Cafe PhD respects your right to describe your own identity, including pronouns. We believe that it is damaging to blindly assign someone’s pronouns based on their appearance or gender performance.
You are always welcome to get in touch with us at hello@cafephd.com if your pronouns were not correctly handled on this site, or if your pronouns have changed. We will adjust our website copy to respectfully reflect your current pronouns.
We aim to be as trans-inclusive as possible. We welcome feedback on whether we are meeting our inclusivity goals. If you wish to submit feedback, feel free to get in touch at hello@cafephd.com.
Visual Accessibility
Visual accessibility is important to us, and we recognize that our site is not currently as accessible as it should be. For a new site on a shoestring budget, we have found that certain necessary accessibility subscriptions are financially impossible for us at this stage. We are also struggling to implement certain accessibility features from a technological perspective.
We hope you will bear with us as we improve our website over time and as we improve our skills and knowledge. If you have feedback regarding the accessibility of Cafe PhD, we welcome you to get in touch at hello@cafephd.com.
Spam
Posting spam in comments is prohibited. Please do not post comments to gain backlinks for search engine optimization.
What’s Not Okay (Prohibited Behavior)
Cafe PhD is prepared to take any legal steps necessary to keep this site safe.
If you bully or demean people on this website, you may be blocked from using Cafe PhD. Depending on the nature of your behavior, Cafe PhD may also file police reports or legal complaints against you.
Cafe PhD reserves the right to ignore messages or report messages to the police if they are abusive, cruel, racist, anti-semitic, homophobic, transphobic, sexist, narcissistic, manipulative, etc. If your comment is sufficiently abusive, be aware that we may be entitled to take legal action against you under federal law.
White supremacist, KKK, and Nazi propaganda (defined as any comments or messages that support these groups) are strictly banned from this website.
Anti-vaccine sentiment and promotion of medical misinformation are banned from this website.
Disability shaming is unacceptable. Comments that support popular stereotypes, such as the idea that that people with disabilities are incompetent, will be removed. Readers who engage in these types of shaming and stereotyping may be blocked or reported to law enforcement at our discretion, depending on the nature of the offense.
You are banned from posting links to sexual content, pornographic content, or illegal activities in website comments, in messages, or anywhere else on this website.
Mansplaining is not allowed.
We reserve the right to block website users for any type of cruel behavior, even if the specific behavior is not listed in these policies.
Cafe PhD reports scammers to the FTC and any relevant organizations. Cafe PhD also reports spam in questions and comments. In other words, if you have any bad intentions, you are not welcome here.
For our legal policies, please see our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.