Hi Ted,
Personally I am extremely disappointed in your most recent two posts because
not only have you tried to discredit valid issues but you have managed to
put all women in the 'you're just being hysterical' camp as well as be
alarmist about repercussions for the community.
I'll work through your points in a moment, but I think it needs to be said
that the references to freedom on this thread have been at times disturbing.
I do not personally believe that freedom means the freedom to do or say
whatever you want. In society we follow many rules all the time that inhibit
our choices (such as driving on the correct side of the road, not killing
people, paying for something you purchase) however it is through as a
collective agreeing to adhere to such rules that everyone feels more
comfortable and safe, that everyone has the freedom to live without fear, to
prosper, to make a life for themselves.
So all the people saying that people should be able to say and do whatever
they like because we all love freedom are basically enormous hypocrites. We
all practise restraint and follow rules *all* the time, and if we as a
community do identify a need for a type of restraint that makes our
community better, why wouldn't we embrace it?
OK, onto Ted's points.
On Thu, Feb 3, 2011 at 2:21 AM, Theodore Tso <tytso_at_mit.edu> wrote:
>
> On Feb 1, 2011, at 5:17 PM, Pia Waugh wrote:
>
> > Perhaps the harassment policy could be served through the t&c, but I
> still think a publicised code of conduct would be useful to set the tone of
> the conf and encourage friendly and inclusive behaviours at lca (and beyond)
> :)
>
> Perhaps a good tl;dr summary might be:
>
> Things might be easier if we used RFC-style SHOULD's and MUST's. The
> T&C's should have the MUST's. The code of conduct would be a mix of
> SHOULD's and MUST's.
>
Should, must, it doesn't matter so long as the conference organisers and LA
have the discretion to deal with it however they choose, which might involve
expelling someone, or stopping a talk, or apologising publicly. I can see
how "must" may jar for a few people, however you need to provide both
guidance and ramifications so speakers understand their responsibilities
properly.
On 3 Feb 2011 03:10, "Theodore Tso" <tytso_at_mit.edu> wrote:
>
> Well said. I think there is a huge amount we can do to make our conference
> more welcoming to women.
>
> But at the same time, there is a huge amount of Feminism, and
unfortunately
> it looks like Geek Feminism can follow Feminism way over the cliff edge of
> reasonableness, with assumptions that huge percentages of men have raped
> women, or would be willing to rape women, etc., that go way overboard ---
> and I get annoyed when it's not possible to call out extremists on one
side
> of the political spectrum without being called a troglodyte, or worse.
OK, wow. So "we are welcoming to women but not this whole feminism thing". I
hate to tell you but Jacinta's statistics are no less valid, not because as
you pointed out that the statistics numbers and chances of men at lca being
rapists are low (that was *a* line in her fairly lengthy in email), but
because a pretty high proportion of women (and given the proportion of men
at lca a decent number of men at lca) have been sexually abused, and I can
tell you that an even higher number of women have been sexually harassed. I
don't have hard statistics but I know anecdotally from discussions I've had
with thousands of women over the years that the vast majority of women in
ICT (in countries like Australia and the US where we are in the minority)
experience bias specifically due to their gender, whether that be sexual
harassment, exclusion, verbal abuse ("you're just a woman, you have no idea
about this", I've had this personally) or one of many other issues.
Basically most women, particularly when in the minority, live with a latent
(albeit usually low) level of fear and anxiety due to the personal and
collective experiences. If you can't accept that premise, if you question
the statistics and the likelihood and tell us that there is no problem, then
it is likely impossible that you will ever acknowledge issues that may
create problems for women at conferences that may not create a problem for
you.
I love our community, I am passionate about FOSS and the tech, ideals and
philosophies therein and I used to be very skeptical about why other women
weren't getting involved in our community, butt over the years I see this
constant ignoring of real issues that are not unique to our community, but
are in some ways protected by people invoking the principles of freedom. It
makes me feel ill.
Obviously this thread has gone way above and beyond Mark's talk.
It has been identified that certain behaviours make a conference very
uncomfortable for many women and for some men, so why wouldn't we embrace
how we can deal with it, rather than this ridiculous nitpicking as to
whether there is a problem at all.
> But the moment you start putting it in the a policy where someone
(possibly
> a geek feminist) can start imposing sanctions at their sole discretion
A *geek feminist'! <FEAR!> :P
Seriously though, WTF are you talking about? No one person has been trying
to do stuff at their sole discretion. This isn't the 50ft Geek Feminist
trying to stamp on your neck, this is a community discussion where there
have been largely constructive commentary about how we can as a community
make our conference better, and the only sole discretion would ever be with
either the lca committee or the la committee.
> then suddenly there will be a lot more resistance over exactly what terms
might
> possibly (at the sole discretion of people whom we might not know all that
> well) get you thrown out of the conference or put on the secret LCA
blacklist
> forever.
Again, the scare tactics. If an la or lca committee decides at their
discretion to ban someone forever then, it would likely be a pretty serious
issue. This is why I made the distinction between actual harassment and
other behaviours, because in the case of actual harassment, I would think
most people in this community would have no qualms (and people have already
said) in throwing them out of that lca immediately. In the case of
behaviours that unintentionally hurt our community, I think the conversation
that is being had is a good step to identifying what we as a community want
to do. I don't know of many issues where people have been thrown out at the
conf, but I've never heard of someone being blacklisted forever. Dramatic
much?
Basically, as I said before, we walk the high ground when it comes to tech,
why shouldn't we aim to walk to high ground when it comes to people? We are
one of the most diverse and highly functional communities in the world. We
traverse many traditional geopolitical, gender, socioeconomic and class
barriers and this is something I'm very proud of. So let's aim to be a
microcosm example of how society can be better both technically and
socially.
> I'll give another example. There is no question that a huge number of
incidents
> of very regrettable incidents occur when large amounts of alcohol are
> involved. Whether the women involved called it rape (73% or not) or Ms.
Koss
> calls it rape, it was probably situations that in most cases, I'm betting
both the
> women and the man probably regretted it the next morning. I have a very
> simple personal solution for this, which is i don't go out on heavy
drinking
> binges when I am at a conference. Period. I rarely go out to bars
afterwards,
> and generally my limit is at most one or two beers, or a small cup of fine
scotch.
Wow, whether a woman "calls it rape"? Well done for pinning all
possibilities of rape on alcohol and then proposing such a neat solution. I
think you are very naive on this topic and would suggest that you don't make
any more suggestions about how to avoid rapes happening. To my knowledge
there has never been a rape case at lca, however there has been behaviours
which are certainly harassment as well as behaviours that ostracise women.
They have not all included alcohol.
> (To date, the LF events don't have such a thing,
> which proves you can have a good run of conferences without having an
explicit
> policy in place.)
This is a cyclical argument. And besides the LF events are invitation only
professional events, whereas lca is a grassroots event where all the
community is welcome to attend.
> So here's another example of something that would never work as a MUST,
but
> which might work as a SHOULD. Conference attendees SHOULD find ways
> of socializing that don't involve massive amounts of alcohol. Believe it
or
> not, there are plenty of ways of having fun that don't involve drinking
yourself
> blotto. Like preparing to launch high powered rockets, for example. :-)
Sure, I don't think this is a bad idea :)
> At the end of the day, clearly there needs to be some MUST's that live in
the
> t's and c's of any conference. But I think there are plenty of things that
> are better placed as SHOULD's, and which would get far less resistance
> towards the realization of the formally stated goals of the Geek Feminists
> (which I whole-heartedly support, even if I do have some doubts about
their
> tactics, statistics, and beliefs about men).
I don't disagree with your principle point about MUST vs SHOULD. We are a
relatively anti-authority community so hard lines are questioned, and I
welcome the reasonable debate you mention. But what you have done in this
last sentence is to massively discredit the opinions of women in this
community and I don't appreciate it.
How would you feel if I said something like "I appreciate the thoughts of
men in our community (even if I have some doubts about their tactics,
statistics and beliefs about women)".
That's just not a good way to encourage the reasonable debate you apparently
want to have.
I just saw Matthew Garrett's post come in which dealt with the deep
discomfort I felt at your hamfisted approach to undermining Jacinta's point,
so I'll leave it there,
Cheers
Pia
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Received on Thu Feb 03 2011 - 07:23:11 GMT