3 ms·
The reason here is to use a rough filter to ensure women, already discouraged from an ongoing media narrative, don't get discouraged again during their first co
by octokatt 7y ago
The reason here is to use a rough filter to ensure women, already discouraged from an ongoing media narrative, don't get discouraged again during their first couple of events by random coder-bros or even "are you here with your boyfriend".
Even the anxiety of knowing someone can decide to show up to use you as target practice for "taking these females down a peg" has been enough that I've watched friends decide to not go to events.
And damn straight, that guy will show up in events if the event runners aren't actively trying to filter bad actors out of the community. From my own experiences running a Meet-up, that guy always shows up, always offers to help the event runners, and immediately uses their status as a blunt object on people they deem unworthy.
It's not perfect, and I look forward to community-standards getting better for organizations so these enclaves are unnecessary. (If anyone has a good way to handle community complaints that have worked under strain, please for the love of the gods PM me. An Ombudsman office is the best I've found, but it tends to have a lot of burnout.)
Right now, we're in the Trump era. The individual health of the members is more important than trying to reach out and make a larger, healthier organization. It's a bad trade off, but there isn't a good, scalable solution yet.
(Adding, am a woman, ran a gaming Meetup.)
- rectang 7y ago+1, totally agree. Our mixed-gender Meetup co-organizer team, after serious deliberation, filtered out such a bad actor once. It became a better Meetup for all.
- amingilani 7y agoI understand your sentiment, but from my perspective, I see you saying that because some awful men show up, we must discourage, or deprioritize the participation of all men. I also understand filtering for "bad actors", but then shouldn't your efforts be directed towards filtering those bad actors instead? As an example of broad gender-based filtering, malls and movie theatres in my country have reserved days that they call "family days". They're essentially days when men, unaccompanied by females, are barred from entry. It's sexist, technically Unconstitutional, and plainly unethical, but on those days, single male parents can't go to the mall alone and male-only friends can't go watch a movie or have to settle for tickets in the male-only section (yes, it's a thing). In their quest to filter out "bad actors", businesses have filtered out almost all men. As I said before: "I find these to be well-meaning but ultimately sexist policies making it okay to treat people differently based on gender"
- suifbwish 7y agoThat wouldn’t stand for very long when a gay couple shows up and brings down national media hellfire of divine social justice on them.