Thank you to Raymond Smith for this response and Tom Eastman, Sven Dowidelt and
Jason White for their responses to this and earlier threads. There have been
many other awesome responses, but these authors in particular have really been
excellent allies.
I explicitly and directly object to the the repeated comparisons to witch hunts
and calling this the New Salem. These remarks appear to be both ignorant of
history, and a vast misrepresentation of the issues. None of the Anti-Harassment
policy, the Geek Feminism wiki, the organisers, nor the feminists who attended
LCA are suggesting executing or imprisoning people for making other conference
attendees feel unsafe or unwelcome. None are suggesting forcing you to dob in
your mates for a more gentle sentence. No one asked Mark to leave the
conference, and evicting people from the conference is generally considered a
last resort. We are not facing issues caused by isolationism, religious
extremism, false accusations, lapses in due process nor local government
intrusion on individual liberties; against which the Salem Witch Trials are
often used as a cautionary tale. As such I find the repeated references to the
New Salem belittling, dismissive and a distraction from the discussion at hand.
As far as I know, all of the 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 speakers, and all but one of
the 2011 speakers managed to adhere to professional standards in their talks and
not use images that did or would have caused the ruckus we've just seen. At
about 90 (official) speakers per conference and maybe another 90 mini-conf
speakers per conference that's about 899 talks which all managed this feat, and
quite a few of those talks were challenging, hard hitting, world shattering and
all the things that Mark's talk was too.
The anti-harassment policy isn't setting the impossibly high bar some people on
these threads are complaining about.
Raymond Smith wrote:
> Now that I have been drawn to participate in this thread let me add
> one comment. It is important to remember why we felt the need to have
> a policy in the first place, namely the problem of sexual assault
> against women in our community and at our conferences in particular.
>
> A talk which relentlessly employed the language and imagery of sexual
> assault as a metaphor for the loss of personal freedoms was
> inappropriate. Mark's theme was timely and valuable. How much better
> it would be if it had been delivered with respect for those members of
> our community who have actually been assaulted. It is easy to do --
> everyone else at the conference managed it.
I agree 100%. Let's do some numbers, shall we? Geeks like hard figures.
Statistics say that 1 in 4 women will be sexually assaulted, and specifically 1
in 6 women will be raped in their lifetimes; while 1 in 33 men will be sexually
assaulted in their lifetimes. 60% of sexual assaults are not reported to the
police; and many of those that are reported are judged to be impossible to
follow up (only 6% of rapists will ever spend a day in jail). The rate of false
accusations is extraordinarily low. Obviously any person can be sexually
assaulted more than once.
Since most sexual assaults occur during the ages of 16 and 26, I'm going to
assume that the figures for "in their lifetime" above, means it's already
happened for our population. I know this assumption is incorrect, but it
doesn't really change my argument significantly.
Let's assume there were 700 attendees at LCA, and 10% of those were women.
That's 70 women, 25% of whom have been sexually assaulted, or 17 women. Of the
remaining 630 men, 3% have been sexually assaulted. So statistically that's
another 19 assault victims. So _at_LCA_alone_ 36 sexual assault survivors were
part of the audience of that talk which used imagery of sexual assault as a
metaphor for the loss of personal freedoms. Just think about that for a moment.
36 sexual assault survivors were part of the audience of that talk. A talk
which uses imagery of sexual assault as a metaphor for the loss of personal
freedoms.
Not 1 or 2, but 36. In fact, more men than women.
Now realise that increasing the number of women attending LCA increases the
number of sexual assault survivors attending the conference. Those who don't
want to be considered jerks, are going to have to realise that rape jokes aren't
cool. Homoerotic jokes aren't cool. Bondage is not only not to everyone's
taste, but is downright threatening to some people. Having a PG-13 warning
slide is not enough.
I have been sexually assaulted. I didn't find the specific images in Mark's
talk triggering _but_ I still felt unease. Why? Because suddenly - in a
technical talk where I should feel just as much one of the crowd as anyone else
- at least some of the overwhelmingly male audience around me were thinking
about sex. Suddenly I felt uncomfortable because although it is unimaginable
that anyone would take this as a queue to reach over and assault me right then
and there, or even afterwards during morning tea; I was reminded that I could
still be a target (again).
That's the problem with sexualised presentations. Not only do I suddenly feel
like an other, but I feel like an other in a crowd of men - some of whom may
consider me merely as a sexual object, some of whom may have committed sexual
assaults themselves in the past.
The conference doesn't only seem more dangerous but it has actually *become*
more dangerous because - to some men (and neither you nor I can tell by looking
at them which ones they are) - laughing about rape is a signal that sexual
assault (and even rape) is okay and that they won't get ostracised for "being
too pushy".
Perhaps you're thinking: "Not at LCA!". Why not? Studies show that about 6% of
men are willing to self-report to rape so long as the word "rape" isn't used.
Potentially 37 attendees at LCA are sexual predators who don't view themselves
as such. That's more than survivors! (Further study information here, massive
and many trigger warnings:
http://yesmeansyesblog.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/meet-the-predators/ )
If LCA wants to be more welcoming to women and other minorities in open source,
then an anti-harassment policy that gets enforced is a great start, and the
correct thing for the organisers. However the attendees have to be on board
too. It was _awesome_ to see that the majority of people applauded the apology
and that we then moved on from there. It was much less awesome to see a very
small number of people complain so bitterly about that on twitter and on this
mailing list, but high awesomeness for the wonderful responses so many others
have contributed. There will always be some resistance to challenging the
status quo, but I'm glad to be a part of such a great conference that is making
an effort to make me and members of other minorities feel safe and welcome as an
attendee (and speaker).
All the best,
Jacinta
--
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Received on Tue Feb 01 2011 - 13:43:32 GMT