Re: [LCA2011-Chat] Some Anti-Harassment Policies considered harmful

From: Valerie Aurora <valerie.aurora_at_gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2011 19:57:14 -0800

On Tue, Feb 1, 2011 at 1:26 AM, Russell Stuart
<russell-humbug_at_stuart.id.au> wrote:
> On Mon, 2011-01-31 at 18:53 +1000, Sarah Smith wrote:
>> What would you like to recommend to LCA 2012 that they do?
>>
>> Perhaps you have some concrete suggestions?
>
> Sarah, I don't feel I know enough about the topic to supply good
> answers.  But I do owe you an answer, so I'll sally forth and hope what
> I say makes some sense.
>
> In my previous post I said I thought the Geek Feminism policy is
> harmful.  It actually worse than that.  I actually don't think policies
> do much good.  I am fairly sure almost nobody reads them (this year
> being perhaps the one spectacular counter example).  How on earth is a
> checkbox that links to a page no one reads going to fix the problem?
>
> I also said the awareness created by Geek Feminism when they released
> their policy was a positive thing.  That was actually an understatement.
> I think that spike in awareness has done more than any other single
> effort to counter the problem, probably by orders of magnitude.  In
> other words, I think awareness that the community recognises the problem
> and willing deal with it is the key.
>
> Which sparks an idea.  Perhaps the answer to this problem lies in the
> numerous reports of genuine harassment I saw during the Geek Feminism
> promotion of its policy.  I was genuinely taken aback by the shear
> number of them by them, and I noticed many others said they felt the
> same surprise and dismay I did.  That this was going on unnoticed by
> most of us is a failure in our community, but it is also an opportunity.
> It doesn't seem like it would be difficult to use these incidents to
> create awareness and to educate people at the same time.  The Norin's
> blog post showed us the effect publishing them can have.
>
> Perhaps our current failure is we don't do that.  So while I am proud
> that LCA has had a strong anti-harassment policy and I know it has been
> enforced in the past, I only became aware of the details of those
> transgressions once I was admitted into the "LCA circle".  Our
> conferences apparently deal with the embarrassment of having someone
> doing socially unacceptable things by revealing as little of it as
> possible.  ApacheCon followed that pattern because it was Norin who
> published the incident, not ApacheCon.
>
> At one level this is decidedly odd behaviour from a community that
> usually deals with its problems by discussing them robustly, on open
> forums, just as is happening here.  But having sat with you and help
> organise a conference I think I know why.  When the inevitable subject
> about how should we handle an actual harassment case came up we all just
> stared at each other blankly for a while.  None of us have done this
> sort of thing before, and so none of us had a clue where to start.  We
> concocted something of course, something that passes muster on most
> fronts.  But one ingredient was noticeably absent: we didn't even
> discuss how we would publicise it.
>
> So if Geek Feminism wants to make a real difference on the harassment
> front, I suggest they help us conferences organisers by giving them a
> sample procedure for handling harassment and thus ensuring each incident
> contributes to lessening the problem.
>
> Here are some suggestions on how this might be done:
>
> 1.  Make it plain to all attendees that not only does the conference
>    accept harassment reports, they are welcomed.
>
> 2.  If an harassment report is received, announce it at the next morning
>    muster.  There is no need to mention names, but do mention what
>    happened, why it was wrong, and how it was dealt with.  And after
>    mentioning verbally, publish it.
>
> 3.  To make all this easy, set the harassment bar high.  I know this is
>    going is sounding decidedly odd given my previous comments, but I
>    think the Geek Feminism policy got it wrong at both ends.  It was
>    both too restrictive (by labelling things harassment that may not
>    be), and yet at the same time too liberal.  How could it possibly be
>    too liberal?  I think the bar should be set by the one LCA keynote
>    that has remained burned into my brain since I heard it: Kathy
>    Sierra's "Creating Passionate Users".  Kathy's key point was "Be
>    Nice".  In other words Kathy's standard isn't "don't molest each
>    other".  It is: we expect everyone to be nice to each other, to take
>    into account the other person's thoughts and feelings, to respect
>    their boundaries.

Hi Russell,

Does this fit the bill?

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-harassment_policy_resources

Feel free to take what you want and discard the rest.

> To be honest I don't know if this will work or not, but it looks to have
> a much higher chance of success than a policy no one will read in a
> years time.

Yes, I'd agree that getting people to read it is a problem. :)

-VAL

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Received on Tue Feb 01 2011 - 19:57:14 GMT

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