The S68 group chat is a Telegram channel with about 140 women in it. It has, at this point, four unwritten rules. I am writing them down today because we keep adding people and I'd rather state the thing once than re-state it forty times.
Rule 1 · Be kind.
That's it, mostly. The chat is not a place to be the cleverest person in the room. It is a place to say "anyone want to walk to class together from Hauptbahnhof at eight" and have someone reply "yes I'll be at the kiosk." If you are about to type something sharp — even at someone you don't like, on a topic you care about — close the app and re-open it in an hour. It will not be worth it.
Rule 2 · Send the photo, even if it's blurry.
The 6:42am Sunday lake photos are blurry, often because the person taking them is shivering. Send them anyway. The blurry ones are how we remember it. The composed ones are for Instagram, which is fine, but the chat is for evidence — that we were there, that it was cold, that you could just barely see the heron through the mist.
Rule 3 · Plus-ones welcome twice.
Bring your sister, your friend from work, the woman from your building who just moved here. Twice. Three or more visits and they're not a plus-one anymore — they're one of us, and they should join the chat themselves so they can hear about last-minute cancellations and the Marrakech retreat dates.
Rule 4 · No Pilates discourse.
We do not have Reformer-vs-Mat debates. We do not gatekeep on who is "really" doing Pilates. We do not post articles from glossy magazines about whether Pilates is "having a moment." We come to class. We do the class. We talk about the espresso afterward. There are eighty other group chats for the discourse. This one is for the women.
That's the whole rulebook. It fits on a coaster. The next person who joins, I'll just send her this link.