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

From: Russell Stuart <russell-humbug>
Date: Tue, 01 Feb 2011 19:26:52 +1000

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.

I'll use Melissa's errant photographer as an example of how this might
work.

Firstly, at the conference opening, the organisers expectations on
behaviour should be spelt out. "We expect you to got out of your way to
be nice to each other."

Secondly, when the incident occurs, Melissa must be confident that her
reporting the incident will not only be welcomed, it actually expected.
Even if Melissa just saw it happen to a third party she should be
confident in reporting it.

Thirdly, the incident should be mentioned in the morning muster. The
mention should include a thank you to the reporter to re-enforce the
idea that such reports are welcome. Although it may seem obvious, the
organisers should explain why the behaviour is wrong. Point out there
is a balance being struck here: there are lots of other subjects around
so the photographer wasn't being terribly inconvenienced. Melissa on
the other hand wasn't being given a choice. Yes, this should be
blindingly obvious. But it should also be blinding obvious that you
don't molest women, nor do you persist photograph someone quietly
minding their own business when they ask you not to.

Fourthly, you publish the incident on the web, for all to see. With
luck it will be picked up the social networks and broadcast to all and
sundry.

There is an obvious step in this I skipped: how to sanction the
photographer. I skipped it because I am no expert, but to this
non-export the procedure spelt out in this years T&C looked good to me.

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.
Received on Tue Feb 01 2011 - 19:26:52 GMT