On Feb 2, 2011, at 10:29 AM, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
> There are things in this discussion that have disturbed me. My experience
> as an American causes my blood to freeze whenever somebody says "zero
> tolerance," for example; I've seen where that leads. I also don't like
> others seemingly telling me what I must be thinking. To me this means
> it's important to be part of the process which is trying to make things
> better.
>
> There is a balance to be struck here. We need to become more welcoming
> and safe for women in particular - and others, I'm sure. We need to find
> a way to do that which does not make our community unwelcoming and unsafe
> for others. I believe that the balance is currently off, which is why we
> are trying to improve things. That's why I think this discussion has been
> important and good - we cannot improve things without talking about them.
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.
Which is why I really think the best way to go with this is to think about it in terms
of SHOULD's and MUST's. If we want to make the conference welcoming to
women, even saying G-rated might not be enough. There are plenty of images
which are G-rated, in the sense that they are allowed on television and on
the sides of bus stops as huge posterboard advertisements, that are "G-rated"
but which nevertheless objectify women. Saying that speakers SHOULD avoid
such images and SHOULD strive to make other ways to make their point
is something that I don't think would be controversial.
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, 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.
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.
Why? For me, conferences are work. My employer has paid for me to go the
event, or at the very least has allowed me the time, and I don't believe in mixing
working and alcohol. Also, getting stupidly drunk, and watching other people
get stupidly drunk, simply holds no appeal for me.
People have complimented the Linux Foundation conference events as being
much more professional and much more welcoming of women. I suspect at least
part of it is because most of the people there don't go out on drunken bar crawls
afterwards, and that's at least as important, if not more important than having an
explicit anti-harassment policy. (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.)
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. :-)
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).
-- Ted
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Received on Wed Feb 02 2011 - 11:07:46 GMT