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"It may not be PC to say this, but it's important to distinguish unpleasant, but fundamentally innocuos flirting from awkward people, from bona fide sexual hara

by idm 16y ago

"It may not be PC to say this, but it's important to distinguish unpleasant, but fundamentally innocuos flirting from awkward people, from bona fide sexual harassment like groping or inappropriate touching." Sexual harassment includes the comments like the "how much for a sexual favor?" example. That constitutes bona fide harassment. Here's my example from the last 2 years. I'm blanking on the conference now, but there was a live IRC session running on the overhead, and each time a question was asked by a woman, IRC would be filled with lude and aggressively sexual remarks. It was totally uncomfortable! I think this situation qualifies as bona fide sexual harassment. Touching or groping someone in a sexual manner is assault (at least it can be in the US.) It's so far beyond mere harassment that it's not the point of the article... EDIT: for clarity...

callahad 16y ago
Are you perhaps thinking of Ian Bicking's "Topics of Interest" talk [0] from PyCon 2009? It definitely veered into the uncomfortable, but there was some reasonable handling of the situation during the talk, IIRC, and was definitely a catalyst in the PSF adopting a formal diversity statement [1] and trying to be encourage inclusivity in the community. [0]: http://us.pycon.org/2009/conference/schedule/event/76/ http://us.pycon.org/2009/conference/schedule/event/76/ [1]: http://www.python.org/community/diversity/ http://www.python.org/community/diversity/
- idm 16y ago
  Yeah, that's the talk I was thinking about. UPDATE - after watching it again, they handled it pretty well.
acangiano 16y ago
> Sexual harassment includes the comments like the "how much for a sexual favor?" example. That constitutes bona fide harassment. I wasn't implying otherwise. Sexual remarks like the ones you describe are certainly uncalled for and a form of sexual harassment. What I meant is that it's important to draw the line between "awkward flirting" and harassment/assault of a sexual nature, so that severe and proper corrective actions can be taken when actual episodes of harassment or assault happen, and so that they cannot be easily dismissed. (I wasn't going for the distinction between harassment and assault in my comment, and I used the word harassment as an all-inclusive term for any form of sexual, inappropriate behavior).
jacquesm 16y ago
The same even happened in the chat during the start-up school webcasts. Very disturbing.
deleted 16y ago
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by idm 16y ago

callahad 16y ago

Are you perhaps thinking of Ian Bicking's "Topics of Interest" talk [0] from PyCon 2009? It definitely veered into the uncomfortable, but there was some reasonable handling of the situation during the talk, IIRC, and was definitely a catalyst in the PSF adopting a formal diversity statement [1] and trying to be encourage inclusivity in the community. [0]: http://us.pycon.org/2009/conference/schedule/event/76/ http://us.pycon.org/2009/conference/schedule/event/76/ [1]: http://www.python.org/community/diversity/ http://www.python.org/community/diversity/

idm 16y ago
Yeah, that's the talk I was thinking about. UPDATE - after watching it again, they handled it pretty well.

acangiano 16y ago

> Sexual harassment includes the comments like the "how much for a sexual favor?" example. That constitutes bona fide harassment. I wasn't implying otherwise. Sexual remarks like the ones you describe are certainly uncalled for and a form of sexual harassment. What I meant is that it's important to draw the line between "awkward flirting" and harassment/assault of a sexual nature, so that severe and proper corrective actions can be taken when actual episodes of harassment or assault happen, and so that they cannot be easily dismissed. (I wasn't going for the distinction between harassment and assault in my comment, and I used the word harassment as an all-inclusive term for any form of sexual, inappropriate behavior).

jacquesm 16y ago

The same even happened in the chat during the start-up school webcasts. Very disturbing.

deleted 16y ago

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