13 ms·

Let's get a little louder

151 points by SeanOC 14y ago

stdbrouw 14y ago
That really sucks, and maybe the conference organizers could have been better at coming up with a way to deal with this, but I don't know what a sexual harrassment policy would solve. Sexual harrassment is immoral and depending on the nature punishable by law. Spelling that out would be like spelling out that you'd prefer people not to defecate in the hallways. We need to find solutions, not add organizational scar tissue (see http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/dont_scar_on_the_first_cut.php http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/dont_scar_on_the_first_cu...).
- SeanOC 14y ago
  While I agree that this problem could have been handled better in absence of a sexual harassment policy, there's a lot to be gained by having such a policy. In this situation I don't agree that conferences having sexual harassment policies are "scar tissue". First and foremost, the scare tissue complaint largely relies on a policy being applied to an extremely rare event. Unfortunately this kind of thing is almost certainly less rare than you think. If you run a large or frequent enough event, sexual harassment will happen. It really sucks, but it's a reality of the world that we live in that we need to deal with. To make things worse, it probably will go un-reported and the person that it happened to will simply feel uncomfortable with the event and the community as a whole. By having an explicit policy that addresses sexual harassment you accomplish a number of things: * You make attendees more mindful of their actions. Often people who commit sexual harassment don't really realized the full extent and consequences for what they are doing. By stating that this type of behavior is unacceptable, upfront, at least some people will be a bit more likely to think before they act. * Should something happen, the path to action is clear. Running a conference is a bit of a crazy job. You're keeping track of a hundred things at once and dealing with a dozen people's problems. This is not the best state to be in when you need to decide how to handle a delicate situation. By stating upfront how this type of behavior will be handled, it takes a load off of the organizers' shoulders on the day off. * A strong signal is communicated to people who are concerned and possibly afraid to attend an event. People go through all kinds of horrible things in life. Often those experiences leave people (understandably) cautious about situations that might lead to similar experiences. By having an explicit policy, people with fears and concerns are given a strong signal that the event in question will be a place where they are safe and welcome. As with anything you need to weigh the costs and benefits of introducing a policy given the context of your situation and as far as I am concerned, having a sexual harassment policy for conferences is an easy win for everybody involved.
  - exit 14y ago
    > and as far as I am concerned, having a sexual harassment policy for conferences is an easy win for everybody involved. frankly i don't entirely trust women with the ability to cry sexual harassment and have men ejected from situations having personally witnessed this twice in bars, and once by way of a female relative coming clean about abusing her privilege note that i am not saying actual sexual harassment should not be called out. just in response to your unconditionally endorsing such policies; there have to be damn good mechanism in place to prevent abuse.
    - neilk 14y ago
      I agree with you that there are a few women who are willing to accuse someone else falsely, and/or exploit harassment policies to advance their own agenda. Pretty much every identifiable group in society has individuals like that. That said, the OP is just calling for there to be some sort of policy in place, so people aren't improvising when a complaint does arise. The policy doesn't have to be 'mandatory kickban on the first complaint'.
- sigwhite 14y ago
  I can sympathize with your argument, but your comparison is a strawman, really. We don't have a defecation problem. We do have a harrassment problem. There'd be no point in creating a code of conduct that explicitly bans defecating in the hallways because it's simply not an everyday problem. How women are treated in tech, however, is. I'm saying this as a guy who is a strong believer in egalitarianism but highly sceptical of feminism, mind you. If we had a defecation problem, yes, we should have a binding code of conduct for that. And as soon as the problem is gone, we should re-evaluate it, too.
- JackC 14y ago
  Spelling that out would be like spelling out that you'd prefer people not to defecate in the hallways. This is a little different because: (1) it's probably a common occurrence (based on the general incidence of sexual harassment & assault -- I don't know about coding conferences in particular); (2) it's something that is often tolerated -- it doesn't actually go without saying that the conference will think it's their problem or do anything about it; and (3) it's an assault by one of your guests on another of your guests, so it reflects on the experience you provide. So to go with your analogy, suppose it was common in the industry that a few people at any given conference would try to poop on other people, and the conference organizers wouldn't know what to do about it. Then yeah, unless you were trying to cater only to a small subset of programmers with unusual tastes, it would be pretty important to come up with some sort of explicit policy and plan to deal with conference-poopers. Or coming back to reality, if you run a conference, you do have to make it clear to your guests that you will actively try to stop sexual harassment/assault. Then second of all, you have to follow through. "Having a policy" just means (1) letting people know that sexual harassment won't be tolerated at your conference; and (2) having a plan you can execute when it happens anyway. It's pretty much steps one and two of "finding solutions."
- pinko 14y ago
  The difference is that defecating in the hallways isn't a routine practice in our industry, but sexual harassment of the sort she describes is. There's a need for more awareness and action within the community -- and a hands-off "let the law take care of it" attitude ignores that a lot of this happens out of the public eye, and can only be stopped when people close to it take a more public stand against it.
  - zalew 14y ago
    I could stick the story she described to any industry, or even any bar in town and no industry at all.
  - jen_h 14y ago
    The point is that sexual harassment shouldn't be routine and we shouldn't tolerate it. I sort of understand where the anti-harassment policy folks are coming from, but I vehemently disagree that it's appropriate to codify common decency and respect, especially in technical circles, where we should all know better. We should strive to treat each other with respect regardless of gender, race, or anything else for that matter and where we fail, we should call each other out and work to fix it.
    - wpietri 14y ago
      I don't think a policy is just about codifying respect. It's also about putting together a mechanism for handling the inevitable failures. Consider the model policy from the Ada Initiative: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/index.php?title=Conference_anti-harassment_policy http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/index.php?title=Conference_ant... A good chunk of that is about how the working-to-fix part works. I think that's really valuable to have thought through in advance. I have banned people before (never for this, thank goodness) and in the moment it's incredibly hard to avoid over- or under-reacting if you have to think everything through from first principles.
      - jen_h 14y ago
        Yeah, I get that--in crisis mode, a playbook is almost required to make sure you make no missteps as someone in charge. This is pivotal in, say, security incident response, or a corporate setting where there are all kinds of legal issues, but at a conference, which is mostly among friends, I don't know. Maybe if you can appropriately genericize the policy, but most of the policies I've seen have almost unilaterally been specifically tailored to protect women (which is great, for me--but maybe not for others who are being singled out). Or they'll talk about "feeling safe." But, you know, when that guy walked up to me when I was talking to my (male) colleagues and specifically singled me out to ask that I allow him to photograph my "tits" as part of a conference "scavenger hunt," I told him off. Then he came back, and I told him off again. I never felt "unsafe," just angry and humiliated. If you're looking at "reporting someone if you feel fear," then it's likely that poor guy had a high possibility of being the one reporting it had he come back a third time. tl;dr: Most of these policies make women and minorities out to be victims vs. ensuring that people just treat each other with common decency and respect. Not a fan of singling any of us out and I don't think it's productive.
jnoller 14y ago
This sucks, period - there's no two ways about it. Things like this are why I am glad PyCon (us.pycon.org) has a code of conduct in place (https://us.pycon.org/2012/codeofconduct/ https://us.pycon.org/2012/codeofconduct/) which is enforced by staff. There is no place for this type of behavior, anywhere. I am sorry this happened to you Julia, it should not have, and the conference organizers should not have blinked before ejecting the responsible party from the conference.
- tatsuke95 14y ago
  >"and the conference organizers should not have blinked before ejecting the responsible party from the conference." So just assume guilt and throw him out, sans investigation? That's completely unreasonable and why these are sticky situations. It isn't black and white. Even with an air-tight sexual harassment policy, you can't automatically assume that the accused is in the wrong.
  - wpietri 14y ago
    Not blinking doesn't mean that one can't investigate. It just means that one shouldn't flinch at it.
    - jnoller 14y ago
      What wpietri said - conference and other event organizers need to not balk at taking action, investigation, etc. This is a problem, and not a world I want my wife or two daughters to be part of, that simple.
      - tatsuke95 14y ago
        Original quote: >"the conference organizers should not have blinked before ejecting the responsible party from the conference." Shoot first, ask questions later? This is a problem, and not a world I want my wife or children to be part of, that simple.
        14y ago
supernooneo 14y ago
Careful that she is making an accusation here, but it is not proven, and prior bad behaviour (that's also an unproven accusation) is not an indicator of present guilt. I don't think we should ban people from conferences based on unproven accusations.
- yock 14y ago
  Not sure why you're being downvoted for this, it's spot-on. Accusations, no matter how credible, do not indicate guilt.
  - davidw 14y ago
    All the more reason to have a well thought-out policy in place for how to deal with a potentially explosive situation.
    - supernooneo 14y ago
      Unless it involves a trial by jury, I don't think it's fair to ban people based on it.
      - wpietri 14y ago
        Trial by jury is a mechanism we use to limit the actions of the state, to make sure its power over individuals is fairly applied. In the US, people are generally free to associate with whomever they want. That includes the right to not associate with people. If a bar owner or a conference organizer wants to throw somebody out, that's perfectly within their rights unless they've contracted otherwise. Equally, patrons are welcome to their business elsewhere if they choose.
    - yock 14y ago
      If a conference wants to have a policy governing the actions of their attendees whilst at the conference, wonderful. If a conference thinks they have any right to govern the actions of people who happen to be attendees whilst not at the conference, then they can go pound sand. It's sad that this woman was apparently treated so poorly, but there's no possible way for a conference to write a legally-binding code of conduct for how people spend their social lives outside of that conference. It's utter nonsense to even consider it.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
- supernooneo 14y ago
  Yeah! Get a pitchfork!
  - antidaily 14y ago
    Yeah, on second thought...
bnegreve 14y ago
Honestly, I don't think the conference should be in charge of this (specially when it doesn't happen where the conference takes place). This is a very general problem and should be handled by state/federal laws rather than arbitrary decisions taken by conference organizer.
- jamesaguilar 14y ago
  Surely it doesn't hurt to have the conference take a stand?
  - supernooneo 14y ago
    Take a stand against what? Unproven claims?
    - wpietri 14y ago
      One can take a stand against the kind of bad behavior without being prejudicial toward the accused. E.g., the organizer could go to the culprit and say, "As you know, Joe, we take sexual harassment very seriously here. Could you tell me what happened last night at the bar?" I could imagine a lot of ways it goes from there, but all of them seem compatible with taking a strong stand against jackassery without giving up a strong stand for fairness.
    - neilk 14y ago
      Pretty much. This isn't a court of law or a public gathering. This is a privately organized event. It's totally okay to exclude disruptive people, and to act on stuff you're reasonably sure is true. Imagine there was some emacs guy who routinely went around harassing people who used vim. To the point where he got so offensive that the vim people felt they weren't being respected as professionals, even humiliated and demeaned. Some were hounded by him at offsite gatherings. The conference organizers had multiple reports of this occurring. Do the vim people need to "prove" something before it's appropriate for conference organizers to take action? Should their claims be more suspect than anyone else's? I suggest that you re-examine why the 'unproven claims' thing is so important to you. If you start with the assumption that women and men, just like emacs and vim users, have equal interests in having a good technical conference, and are equally competent to determine when someone's being disruptive, why wouldn't you trust their reports?
stfu 14y ago
Somehow I see no causation between a conference and the drunken comments by its attendees at a bar. Trying to argue that a conference organizer should hold some moral responsible for the people attending seems to me just ridiculous. He looked at me and sighed, confessing that he never should have allowed this guy to come to the conference. Here the Wait. What? Really? seems to be better placed - is there somebody really demanding the banning people from conferences who potentially may or may not be saying stupid things while being drunk at a bar? Apparently the world is full of idiots, but it makes a difference if something is said/done/etc in a closed work environment or at some random bar among random people who just meet at some random event. Just because they like the same kind of things (music, coding languages, other "stuff") doesn't make them having some supreme ethical and moral standard. Demanding stronger sexual harassment laws is a legitimate request, but trying to paint the tech community as misogynist because of some random bar encounter is in my opinion unacceptable.
- shadowfiend 14y ago
  It is hardly “some random bar encounter”. This is the latest in a string of publicly described issues with sexual harassment in the tech community, both at conferences and elsewhere. The same rule applies here as with bugs reported by users: if one person is talking about this out loud, it means dozens are probably running into it and staying silent. That is unacceptable. And to consider conference organizers responsible for expelling people who are tarnishing the experience of their conference is hardly out of line. Conferences are not something that stops when you leave the conference area, because people travel to them. They are social experiences both on the conference grounds and outside of them. Nobody is saying it should be illegal for a conference organizer to allow people like this. But it's perfectly fair as a developer going to a conference or as a company sending developers to a conference to require that they have a policy of banning such members. Oh, and “he was drunk” is not an excuse. It is never an excuse. It is never an excuse for anything. I cannot stress this enough. Drunkenness is an excuse only because we allow it to be, not because there is any legitimacy to it. If you know you're an ass when you're drunk, well, it turns out, you can work on not being an ass when you're drunk, or, alternatively, you can simply not drink. If you do neither of these things, then you are responsible for every stupid thing you say and do while drunk. To be clear, I am aware you did not explicitly mention drunkenness as a valid excuse; however, your phrasing strongly implied it by correlating the saying of stupid things with being drunk at a bar. As such, I picked at that point because it's an attitude I've seen before, and I think it's a problem. My apologies if you didn't explicitly mean it that way.
xutopia 14y ago
I've gotten into a bar fight to protect a woman I did not know. I almost got into a fight in the subway for the same reason, twice. However I can't stand these kinds of stories. All I hear is one socially awkward guy trying really hard in the worst possible way. I'm conflicted because on the other hand the guy seemed like an asshole but I have only one side of the story and feel like it would be jumping to conclusions to judge this guy just from this.
- FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
  It seems to me that it might have been worthwhile talking to a bouncer or other member of staff to warn the guy to stay away from her, or risk being thrown out. Whether or not that's reasonable, I don't know; but if the guy was a real problem for her (and from her side it sounds like he was), then "telling people" at that point in time, rather than afterwards, would have been more prudent. There's absolutely no reason for anyone to put up with this kind of shit from someone else. But further to that, this can't and shouldn't be painted as another story about sexism in tech. This is a story (from one side) about a guy having a few drinks and trying it on in his own cringeworthy way, and lacking the forethought to quit with some dignity intact. His choice of career has fuck all to do with that, and neither does the conference. (I'm all for policies and legislation that prohibit this sort of thing, by the by, but they're not going to stop some guy who thinks he's god's gift from making pervy remarks on a night out. Neither is walking away and hoping you get left alone.)
  - theorique 14y ago
    His choice of career has fuck all to do with that, and neither does the conference. It kind of does, though. According to Julia's account, this was not simply an isolated incident. When she talked to the organizer, he admitted that this individual who behaved in a harassing way had shown a previous pattern of behavior of this type. Since the organizer knew of this, this behavior presumably took place at other events related to this professional community. It makes sense for this community to expel people who behave this way.
    - 14y ago
aardvark179 14y ago
So, if the response from the conference director was that they should never have allowed the guy to come then it sounds like he was a known quantity in this regard. When I've run conventions there has always been a note that the committee reserved the right to reject anybody's membership and did not have to give a reason. We've never had to use this but we've always had it as the nuclear option and had one person who we were ready to use it on. If the person is already at the conference then you may need an acceptable behaviour policy that allows you to act, and you need it to be worded such that it applies to all conference attendees for the duration of the conference regardless of whether they are in conference facilities at the time. It's also best if it is short and broad, it's very easy to spot acceptable behaviour policies that have grown in response to specific events, and they are deeply discouraging when viewed by newcomers and outsiders.
sparknlaunch 14y ago
Unfortunate story and only recommend that others walk away sooner and try not to provoke the situation. Alcohol is a dangerous drug and can seriously impair people's decision making. It is always best to walk away. I always wonder what would happen if a man was subjected to the same treatment. Sadly I doubt anyone would take them seriously. But we should...
dpeck 14y ago
Maybe I'm missing something but why not handle it with the safeguards at the venue? The conference is not in the business of protecting its attendees from unwanted advances, especially outside of the conference areas/sponsored events. Why not speak to the manager of the bar and have him escorted out? If it happens at the hotel, do the same with the hotel manager. People in the service/hospitality industry know how to deal with these situations and do so all the time. If it happens again call the law. There are much better mechanisms for dealing with harassment than a conference organizer.
- Hytosys 14y ago
  Agreed. Why is the development community (this conference in specific) being held responsible for the acts of an individual who happens to reside within? This is clearly something that should be taken care like an adult of outside of a private community. The story is a bummer, but the author's response to the situation is quite childish and this blog post seems somewhat irrelevant.
  - mtrimpe 14y ago
    And the response from the organizer should have been very simple and straight-forward: Ask the person to leave the conference and ideally, if it still had to take place, canceling their talk as well. I doubt anything but praise would have resulted from that, even though the best outcome would be that it was kept private and became a little piece of background gossip floating around the Django-community.
    - sneak 14y ago
      Sorry to go all patriarchy here, but the little Schneier on my shoulder just explained to me how to get anyone's talk cancelled at a conference that institutes this sort of policy. I'm not sure that's a workable fix, either. This is sort of a hard problem.
      - mtrimpe 14y ago
        Judging from the organizer's response there was little doubt concerning the validity of her claims in this case though. In other cases, pulling said person into a room, asking him if the claims are true and if so asking them to leave is already a big step forward.
stefantalpalaru 14y ago
If the lady says she was harassed we should totally ban the criminal from any future conferences, jobs and parties. Forget the due process, she was disgusted by everyone associated with the rapist. Disgusted! Zero-tolerance means we don't even need Obama to look over the kill-list. The pedophile must pay. P.S.: at last year's EuroPython conference in Italy we were greeted by a menacing organizer threatening to call the cops if we make inappropriate jokes. I blamed it on the fascist ideology still present in this country, but it seems to run deeper. Let's see how it will escalate this year: https://ep2012.europython.eu/code-of-conduct https://ep2012.europython.eu/code-of-conduct
- roopeshv 14y ago
  from the CoC is fuck a sexual language?
  - stefantalpalaru 14y ago
    fuck yeah
Tichy 14y ago
Would a harassment policy spell out the appropriate ways to approach a woman? Or would flirting become some kind of Russian Roulette?
- petercooper 14y ago
  In most of these stories, someone does something stupid, and the target doesn't immediately blow up.. they instead ask the other person to stop or leave them alone first. So "flirt" by all means but as soon as someone tells you to leave them alone, that's the absolute end of it. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be happening in most of these stories.
  - Tichy 14y ago
    That's true - in a story like this it seems obvious. I just worry that it might not always be so obvious in effect. In fact looking to the US across the pond, some of the rules around dating and sexual harassment already seem quite scary. Basically it seems really easy to ruin somebody's life with twisted interpretations of their behavior. Another example of such laws gone wrong is maybe the sexting teenagers who are now on file as pedophiles.
petercooper 14y ago
it is clear to me that there is a definite lack of policies and procedures in place for sexual harassment at conferences and events. FWIW, O'Reilly has had a policy - http://conferences.oreillynet.com/code-of-conduct.csp http://conferences.oreillynet.com/code-of-conduct.csp - for a while now. RailsConf also has one and I saw discussion about another Ruby event's policy recently on HN too (where people were saying 'is this really needed!?'.. answer is yes).
tomjen3 14y ago
That is a bit redundant, as it would fall under the general don't be an asshole policy. Also this happened at a bar. So it would seem the problem is that the bar didn't handle it, not that the conference didn't.
Daniel_Newby 14y ago
Pics or it didn't happen. Seriously. YouTube is worth a thousand zero tolerance policies.
- Daniel_Newby 14y ago
  Why the downvote hate? A few videos demonstrating the problem would eliminate the controversy, as well as let the offenders punish themselves in their own words.
  - LeafStorm 14y ago
    Because if I was being sexually harassed, I wouldn't stay around the harasser long enough to pull out a camera phone and record the (horribly vulgar) advances - especially considering the risk of the harasser becoming violent when recorded. I would get the heck away.
    - Daniel_Newby 14y ago
      But she did not flee. She engaged and escalated. He attempted a 5 second caveman courtship, and she responded to it, teasing him about his wife to check if his testosterone really was turned up to 11. Soo-prise, it was! Maybe even 12. So then she teased him about his daughter, to see if he would virtually castrate himself to impress her. Soo-prise, it turns out Mr. Caveman does not live to sexually impress his daughter. What she should have done was to record his overtures for public amusement, then turned her back on him.
      - sojourner 14y ago
        Sigh. She mentioned his daughter and wife not to engage and escalate, but to remind him he was a human being. Fail. Personally, this guy deserves filming and posting, but a lot of women like being nice. Even with people being utter and complete sociopaths. She gave him some consideration, like a lot of women would. He was drunk, and she kept nicely attempting to redirect his attention away from her. Even now, she is not outing him. She has kept the details vague enough so that few probably could guess who this was. Not everyone enjoys being obnoxious. Even with determined assholes, even with dangerous sociopaths (not saying he was one, just saying in general). That wasn't a tease or a challenge she was throwing out to him. That was a "I said no. And by the way, you're married, so even if I was attracted to assholes, it would still be a no. And by the way, you're married with children, so even if I was attracted to assholes, it would still be a no. Oh, and by the way, have I mentioned, no? No? Then, let me say it again no." I think it's interesting that you see her actions as engaging and escalating. I'm sure there are a significant number of males who would agree with you on that. I'm curious, because I've encountered a fair number of guys who don't seem to hear the word "no" or follow-up phrases that indicate "no": say I'm having a great time in a bar after the conference, and here comes the father with a slut for a daughter looking for some action. Are my only options to get the bartender to throw the guy out, or to leave the bar in order to have this guy -- if not to hear and respond to my "no" -- act as if he did? Or is there something magical phrase that a woman can tell a guy where he will hear "no" and actually respond as if he respected that?
johngalt 14y ago
Maybe the reason that there is no policy at the conference is that harassment doesn't happen as often as its portrayed? Going to a bar and then being hit on is hardly the end of the world. Its one thing to respect office/professional decorum, its another to start setting rules where men can only speak when spoken to.
- theorique 14y ago
  Did you read the blog post? The guy was rebuffed multiple times and turned up his verbal offensiveness each time, finishing off by describing his daughter as a slut. Discouraging men from speaking this way - in a professional community - to women who are their peers, is hardly equivalent to "setting rules where men can only speak when spoken to". Hitting on woman = fine. Turning up the verbal heat when she's already turned you down = obnoxious.
jeremyarussell 14y ago
Since this does happen, (even if we don't know that this guy did anything to this girl.) then I think a bigger question to ask is pretty simple and will surely do better in the long run. When someone around you acts like a pig, girl or guy (I've seen some girls act downright crazy when alcohol gets into the mix, it's the thing to do when you want to act out your deepest desires, liquid courage I call it.) call them out at it. If you see someone groping someone else when they don't want, let them know it's not cool and you won't stand here while they do it. Same thing for any sexual advance that is unwelcome. You can usually tell when it's unwelcome when the receiving party looks nervous and tries to politely get out of the situation. The below kinda-quote (it's disputed if it was Burke, or if it was said exactly thus.) comes to mind and rings pretty loud. "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" - Edmund Burke As an exiting thought, the pressure to be civil needs to come from peers. Meaning, guys don't let guy friends harass, and girls don't let girl friends harass.
booty 14y ago
I've been in this conference organizer's shoes before. On one hand, running a conference/convention is difficult enough without being asked to referee personal conflicts. It almost inevitably devolves into a he-said/she-said kind of argument. But on the other hand, if we take that kind of an attitude, that's essentially a signal for predatory men to go ahead and harass women (or worse). That's pretty much what predatory men have been doing since the beginning of history - acting with impunity since claims of rape or harassment are almost impossible to prove if there are no additional witnesses or physical evidence. What we've done is to stress proper conduct before the event, and if there are repeat complaints about somebody they're removed from the community permanently. It's not a perfect process and we've given some "second chances" to people that we've later regretted.
- blubbar 14y ago
  No, that's just the signal "That's beyond my scope", a sign of professionalism. If you try to be hobby cop and judge you will fail. That's a job for the pros.
Loic 14y ago
Excuse me but I am surprised. I read a lot on HN and on several planets (feed aggregation) about harassment, but in my field (engineering) I have never seen/experienced/heard about such cases even if the ratio female/male is pretty low is some of these conferences. Is it something specific to the coder community? Or maybe chemical/process engineers are just an exception? Or is it specific to the US in this field (I have been to a couple of coder oriented conferences in Europe without experiencing such cases but only engineering confs in the US)?
- jakobe 14y ago
  Sexual harassment does happen, but very few people talk about it in public. In fact, most people don't even talk about it in private. It's very much possible that it is common, but noone ever told you about it (except for bloggers who are not ashamed of speaking up).
sneak 14y ago
> Let's stop talking about apologies too. "After the fact" doesn't really do any good. Sexual harassment should not happen in the first place. There should be a clearly-defined set of standards in place to prevent it. I'm not sure how standards in place at a conference can prevent individuals from deciding to break the law. Sure, you might deter the weak-willed or fearful, but these sorts of asshole moves aren't generally perpetrated by those kinds of people. Unfortunately, for a lot of this kind of stuff, after-the-fact is all we have. I would love a better solution but the items listed don't actually _prevent_ this.
lambda 14y ago
I am really quite disturbed by all of the people who are responding something along the lines of "this isn't the conference organizer's problem, it's happening outside of the conference." I've seen several such replies, so rather than responding to one, I'm responding to the whole sentiment here. At a conference, there is a lot that goes on during unofficial off-hours, that is really an integral part of the conference. We shouldn't consider it acceptable for women to feel unsafe going to such off-hours events. If there is someone who is a guest at that conference, and showing up to off-hours events associate with the conference, that is still the conference's problem, as it significantly negatively affects an important part of the conference, and could be avoided by making that person unwelcome at the conference. And this is not a court of law. We regularly ban people from online communities with a much lower bar of proof than would be required in a court of law, because those people are harmful to the community. Yes, any particular process could, in theory, be abused. But that isn't, as far as I know, a problem here. I have never heard of someone being banned from a conference unjustly. And we have a lower bar in these cases because the consequences are not as severe as criminal sanctions. We are not trying to lock someone up. We are not trying to get them arrested. We are just saying "this behavior is unacceptable, and you are not welcome in our community if you are going to behave this way." All the original post is asking is that conferences have a clearly defined policy on what is unacceptable, and what will happen if someone crosses that line. It doesn't sound like there's any dispute about what happened. It sounds like the person in question had a history of problems, as the organizer said he shouldn't have allowed this person to come to the conference. There isn't a problem here of people being unjustly accused and cut off from conferences because of it. There is a problem of women being harassed, seriously creeped out, feeling unwelcome and unable to do anything about it because of the actions of a few, and the lack of any clear policy or action on the part of conference organizers. And heck, a clear policy can help. Perhaps it can specify that the first time, someone will be warned, and only banned if they have already been warned. Perhaps it can specify a dispute resolution procedure. A clear policy will help everyone. We need to do better, because this keeps coming up and it is a serious problem.
- JohnBooty 14y ago
  > It sounds like the person in question had a history of > problems, as the organizer said he shouldn't have allowed > this person to come to the conference. Even then, it may be far from clear-cut. We don't know what those problems are. Have there been reports of harassment regarding this guy? If so, that's fairly clear-cut. But maybe this is just kind of a jerk, but hasn't done anything over the line before. While conference organizers certainly shouldn't put their heads in the sand, realistically they're a small part of the potential solution. The community at large really has the most power here - it has many more eyes and ears than the (usually overworked) conference organizers. I'm wondering where the rest of the community was when this harassment was going on at the bar. The victim says they were there in a group. So a whole group of conference attendees was just standing around, letting this victim be harassed? Unlike the conference organizers, they were there. At the bar. In close proximity.
MindEraser100 14y ago
Has anyone else realized Julia is Sexist???? What about the guys that are getting sexually harass by other guys??? I was at the conference and my gaydar was off the charts
breadbox 14y ago
If someone started a fistfight in the conference's bar after hours, would you be surprised if the conference chose to not invite that person back again, ever? Would you come to his defense by saying "It's not the conference organizers' responsiblity what happens in the bar afterwards!" Some of the commenters have this idea that if you behave like a jerk to someone, ONLY that person has the right to distrust you. WTF?
roopeshv 14y ago
i am only here to look for a reference to "lighten up"
nosse 14y ago
I'd like to note that "groping" is not mentioned in the article. No other touching either. Just that some creep started to make "inappropriate sexual advances" towards the writer. So it seems to be one time unpleasant conversation. I'd hardly call that harassment. If one time unpleasant conversation with persistent person is harassment, then I was once police-harassed. This officer wanted me to go to police academy. I said no but he didn't stop. He was quite drunk. And last weekend I was oil-change-harassed, my dad kept insisting that I'd do an oil change to my car this summer. He was drunk too. But I have to admit that this kind of behavior towards women should stop. What is causing it? Let's go after the source, not just try to heal the symptoms.
- natrius 14y ago
  FYI, if, within the realm of reason, you ask someone to stop doing something that bothers you and they continue to do so, that's usually harassment.
  - nosse 14y ago
    "within the realm of reason" Thats the point I was making. "Although the law doesn’t prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not very serious, harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_harassment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_harassment So in my view, if the author would go to another conference, and the same creep would try again, that would be harassment. There should be a pattern of some kind. If you count single incidents as harassment, your going to have serious problems with freedom of speech. FYI, using "FYI" feels arrogant to me. Please stop, you would not want to FYI-harass me?
    - natrius 14y ago
      You refer to it as a single incident; she does not. "My colleague started making inappropriate sexual advances towards me. He singled me out and would not leave me alone, even when asked. I tried to shake it off, change the conversation and even moved away. He would not stop." I'm not suggesting laws were broken, but there is no question in my mind that harassment is the proper term to use here. "FYI" was an unproductive way to begin my comment. My apologies.
fezzl 14y ago
He must have been ugly.
- ToesByNoon 14y ago
  Common ground.
ToesByNoon 14y ago
Everyone deals with / runs into assholes in their lives, this guy was just another one. If you politely told him to fuck off several times and he did not, why not call the cops rather than crying about it on the internet? Oh yeah, free publicity for your blog and business.
s_baby 14y ago
Since when are "zero tolerance" policies a good idea. They always end up marginalizing someone.

151 points by SeanOC 14y ago

That really sucks, and maybe the conference organizers could have been better at coming up with a way to deal with this, but I don't know what a sexual harrassment policy would solve. Sexual harrassment is immoral and depending on the nature punishable by law. Spelling that out would be like spelling out that you'd prefer people not to defecate in the hallways. We need to find solutions, not add organizational scar tissue (see http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/dont_scar_on_the_first_cut.php http://37signals.com/svn/archives2/dont_scar_on_the_first_cu...).

SeanOC 14y ago
While I agree that this problem could have been handled better in absence of a sexual harassment policy, there's a lot to be gained by having such a policy. In this situation I don't agree that conferences having sexual harassment policies are "scar tissue". First and foremost, the scare tissue complaint largely relies on a policy being applied to an extremely rare event. Unfortunately this kind of thing is almost certainly less rare than you think. If you run a large or frequent enough event, sexual harassment will happen. It really sucks, but it's a reality of the world that we live in that we need to deal with. To make things worse, it probably will go un-reported and the person that it happened to will simply feel uncomfortable with the event and the community as a whole. By having an explicit policy that addresses sexual harassment you accomplish a number of things: * You make attendees more mindful of their actions. Often people who commit sexual harassment don't really realized the full extent and consequences for what they are doing. By stating that this type of behavior is unacceptable, upfront, at least some people will be a bit more likely to think before they act. * Should something happen, the path to action is clear. Running a conference is a bit of a crazy job. You're keeping track of a hundred things at once and dealing with a dozen people's problems. This is not the best state to be in when you need to decide how to handle a delicate situation. By stating upfront how this type of behavior will be handled, it takes a load off of the organizers' shoulders on the day off. * A strong signal is communicated to people who are concerned and possibly afraid to attend an event. People go through all kinds of horrible things in life. Often those experiences leave people (understandably) cautious about situations that might lead to similar experiences. By having an explicit policy, people with fears and concerns are given a strong signal that the event in question will be a place where they are safe and welcome. As with anything you need to weigh the costs and benefits of introducing a policy given the context of your situation and as far as I am concerned, having a sexual harassment policy for conferences is an easy win for everybody involved.
- exit 14y ago
  > and as far as I am concerned, having a sexual harassment policy for conferences is an easy win for everybody involved. frankly i don't entirely trust women with the ability to cry sexual harassment and have men ejected from situations having personally witnessed this twice in bars, and once by way of a female relative coming clean about abusing her privilege note that i am not saying actual sexual harassment should not be called out. just in response to your unconditionally endorsing such policies; there have to be damn good mechanism in place to prevent abuse.
  - neilk 14y ago
    I agree with you that there are a few women who are willing to accuse someone else falsely, and/or exploit harassment policies to advance their own agenda. Pretty much every identifiable group in society has individuals like that. That said, the OP is just calling for there to be some sort of policy in place, so people aren't improvising when a complaint does arise. The policy doesn't have to be 'mandatory kickban on the first complaint'.
sigwhite 14y ago
I can sympathize with your argument, but your comparison is a strawman, really. We don't have a defecation problem. We do have a harrassment problem. There'd be no point in creating a code of conduct that explicitly bans defecating in the hallways because it's simply not an everyday problem. How women are treated in tech, however, is. I'm saying this as a guy who is a strong believer in egalitarianism but highly sceptical of feminism, mind you. If we had a defecation problem, yes, we should have a binding code of conduct for that. And as soon as the problem is gone, we should re-evaluate it, too.
JackC 14y ago
Spelling that out would be like spelling out that you'd prefer people not to defecate in the hallways. This is a little different because: (1) it's probably a common occurrence (based on the general incidence of sexual harassment & assault -- I don't know about coding conferences in particular); (2) it's something that is often tolerated -- it doesn't actually go without saying that the conference will think it's their problem or do anything about it; and (3) it's an assault by one of your guests on another of your guests, so it reflects on the experience you provide. So to go with your analogy, suppose it was common in the industry that a few people at any given conference would try to poop on other people, and the conference organizers wouldn't know what to do about it. Then yeah, unless you were trying to cater only to a small subset of programmers with unusual tastes, it would be pretty important to come up with some sort of explicit policy and plan to deal with conference-poopers. Or coming back to reality, if you run a conference, you do have to make it clear to your guests that you will actively try to stop sexual harassment/assault. Then second of all, you have to follow through. "Having a policy" just means (1) letting people know that sexual harassment won't be tolerated at your conference; and (2) having a plan you can execute when it happens anyway. It's pretty much steps one and two of "finding solutions."
pinko 14y ago
The difference is that defecating in the hallways isn't a routine practice in our industry, but sexual harassment of the sort she describes is. There's a need for more awareness and action within the community -- and a hands-off "let the law take care of it" attitude ignores that a lot of this happens out of the public eye, and can only be stopped when people close to it take a more public stand against it.
- zalew 14y ago
  I could stick the story she described to any industry, or even any bar in town and no industry at all.
- jen_h 14y ago
  The point is that sexual harassment shouldn't be routine and we shouldn't tolerate it. I sort of understand where the anti-harassment policy folks are coming from, but I vehemently disagree that it's appropriate to codify common decency and respect, especially in technical circles, where we should all know better. We should strive to treat each other with respect regardless of gender, race, or anything else for that matter and where we fail, we should call each other out and work to fix it.
  - wpietri 14y ago
    I don't think a policy is just about codifying respect. It's also about putting together a mechanism for handling the inevitable failures. Consider the model policy from the Ada Initiative: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/index.php?title=Conference_anti-harassment_policy http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/index.php?title=Conference_ant... A good chunk of that is about how the working-to-fix part works. I think that's really valuable to have thought through in advance. I have banned people before (never for this, thank goodness) and in the moment it's incredibly hard to avoid over- or under-reacting if you have to think everything through from first principles.
    - jen_h 14y ago
      Yeah, I get that--in crisis mode, a playbook is almost required to make sure you make no missteps as someone in charge. This is pivotal in, say, security incident response, or a corporate setting where there are all kinds of legal issues, but at a conference, which is mostly among friends, I don't know. Maybe if you can appropriately genericize the policy, but most of the policies I've seen have almost unilaterally been specifically tailored to protect women (which is great, for me--but maybe not for others who are being singled out). Or they'll talk about "feeling safe." But, you know, when that guy walked up to me when I was talking to my (male) colleagues and specifically singled me out to ask that I allow him to photograph my "tits" as part of a conference "scavenger hunt," I told him off. Then he came back, and I told him off again. I never felt "unsafe," just angry and humiliated. If you're looking at "reporting someone if you feel fear," then it's likely that poor guy had a high possibility of being the one reporting it had he come back a third time. tl;dr: Most of these policies make women and minorities out to be victims vs. ensuring that people just treat each other with common decency and respect. Not a fan of singling any of us out and I don't think it's productive.

jnoller 14y ago

This sucks, period - there's no two ways about it. Things like this are why I am glad PyCon (us.pycon.org) has a code of conduct in place (https://us.pycon.org/2012/codeofconduct/ https://us.pycon.org/2012/codeofconduct/) which is enforced by staff. There is no place for this type of behavior, anywhere. I am sorry this happened to you Julia, it should not have, and the conference organizers should not have blinked before ejecting the responsible party from the conference.

tatsuke95 14y ago
>"and the conference organizers should not have blinked before ejecting the responsible party from the conference." So just assume guilt and throw him out, sans investigation? That's completely unreasonable and why these are sticky situations. It isn't black and white. Even with an air-tight sexual harassment policy, you can't automatically assume that the accused is in the wrong.
- wpietri 14y ago
  Not blinking doesn't mean that one can't investigate. It just means that one shouldn't flinch at it.
  - jnoller 14y ago
    What wpietri said - conference and other event organizers need to not balk at taking action, investigation, etc. This is a problem, and not a world I want my wife or two daughters to be part of, that simple.
    - tatsuke95 14y ago
      Original quote: >"the conference organizers should not have blinked before ejecting the responsible party from the conference." Shoot first, ask questions later? This is a problem, and not a world I want my wife or children to be part of, that simple.
      - 14y ago

supernooneo 14y ago

Careful that she is making an accusation here, but it is not proven, and prior bad behaviour (that's also an unproven accusation) is not an indicator of present guilt. I don't think we should ban people from conferences based on unproven accusations.

yock 14y ago
Not sure why you're being downvoted for this, it's spot-on. Accusations, no matter how credible, do not indicate guilt.
- davidw 14y ago
  All the more reason to have a well thought-out policy in place for how to deal with a potentially explosive situation.
  - supernooneo 14y ago
    Unless it involves a trial by jury, I don't think it's fair to ban people based on it.
    - wpietri 14y ago
      Trial by jury is a mechanism we use to limit the actions of the state, to make sure its power over individuals is fairly applied. In the US, people are generally free to associate with whomever they want. That includes the right to not associate with people. If a bar owner or a conference organizer wants to throw somebody out, that's perfectly within their rights unless they've contracted otherwise. Equally, patrons are welcome to their business elsewhere if they choose.
  - yock 14y ago
    If a conference wants to have a policy governing the actions of their attendees whilst at the conference, wonderful. If a conference thinks they have any right to govern the actions of people who happen to be attendees whilst not at the conference, then they can go pound sand. It's sad that this woman was apparently treated so poorly, but there's no possible way for a conference to write a legally-binding code of conduct for how people spend their social lives outside of that conference. It's utter nonsense to even consider it.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

supernooneo 14y ago
Yeah! Get a pitchfork!
- antidaily 14y ago
  Yeah, on second thought...

bnegreve 14y ago

Honestly, I don't think the conference should be in charge of this (specially when it doesn't happen where the conference takes place). This is a very general problem and should be handled by state/federal laws rather than arbitrary decisions taken by conference organizer.

jamesaguilar 14y ago
Surely it doesn't hurt to have the conference take a stand?
- supernooneo 14y ago
  Take a stand against what? Unproven claims?
  - wpietri 14y ago
    One can take a stand against the kind of bad behavior without being prejudicial toward the accused. E.g., the organizer could go to the culprit and say, "As you know, Joe, we take sexual harassment very seriously here. Could you tell me what happened last night at the bar?" I could imagine a lot of ways it goes from there, but all of them seem compatible with taking a strong stand against jackassery without giving up a strong stand for fairness.
  - neilk 14y ago
    Pretty much. This isn't a court of law or a public gathering. This is a privately organized event. It's totally okay to exclude disruptive people, and to act on stuff you're reasonably sure is true. Imagine there was some emacs guy who routinely went around harassing people who used vim. To the point where he got so offensive that the vim people felt they weren't being respected as professionals, even humiliated and demeaned. Some were hounded by him at offsite gatherings. The conference organizers had multiple reports of this occurring. Do the vim people need to "prove" something before it's appropriate for conference organizers to take action? Should their claims be more suspect than anyone else's? I suggest that you re-examine why the 'unproven claims' thing is so important to you. If you start with the assumption that women and men, just like emacs and vim users, have equal interests in having a good technical conference, and are equally competent to determine when someone's being disruptive, why wouldn't you trust their reports?

stfu 14y ago

Somehow I see no causation between a conference and the drunken comments by its attendees at a bar. Trying to argue that a conference organizer should hold some moral responsible for the people attending seems to me just ridiculous. He looked at me and sighed, confessing that he never should have allowed this guy to come to the conference. Here the Wait. What? Really? seems to be better placed - is there somebody really demanding the banning people from conferences who potentially may or may not be saying stupid things while being drunk at a bar? Apparently the world is full of idiots, but it makes a difference if something is said/done/etc in a closed work environment or at some random bar among random people who just meet at some random event. Just because they like the same kind of things (music, coding languages, other "stuff") doesn't make them having some supreme ethical and moral standard. Demanding stronger sexual harassment laws is a legitimate request, but trying to paint the tech community as misogynist because of some random bar encounter is in my opinion unacceptable.

shadowfiend 14y ago
It is hardly “some random bar encounter”. This is the latest in a string of publicly described issues with sexual harassment in the tech community, both at conferences and elsewhere. The same rule applies here as with bugs reported by users: if one person is talking about this out loud, it means dozens are probably running into it and staying silent. That is unacceptable. And to consider conference organizers responsible for expelling people who are tarnishing the experience of their conference is hardly out of line. Conferences are not something that stops when you leave the conference area, because people travel to them. They are social experiences both on the conference grounds and outside of them. Nobody is saying it should be illegal for a conference organizer to allow people like this. But it's perfectly fair as a developer going to a conference or as a company sending developers to a conference to require that they have a policy of banning such members. Oh, and “he was drunk” is not an excuse. It is never an excuse. It is never an excuse for anything. I cannot stress this enough. Drunkenness is an excuse only because we allow it to be, not because there is any legitimacy to it. If you know you're an ass when you're drunk, well, it turns out, you can work on not being an ass when you're drunk, or, alternatively, you can simply not drink. If you do neither of these things, then you are responsible for every stupid thing you say and do while drunk. To be clear, I am aware you did not explicitly mention drunkenness as a valid excuse; however, your phrasing strongly implied it by correlating the saying of stupid things with being drunk at a bar. As such, I picked at that point because it's an attitude I've seen before, and I think it's a problem. My apologies if you didn't explicitly mean it that way.

xutopia 14y ago

I've gotten into a bar fight to protect a woman I did not know. I almost got into a fight in the subway for the same reason, twice. However I can't stand these kinds of stories. All I hear is one socially awkward guy trying really hard in the worst possible way. I'm conflicted because on the other hand the guy seemed like an asshole but I have only one side of the story and feel like it would be jumping to conclusions to judge this guy just from this.

FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
It seems to me that it might have been worthwhile talking to a bouncer or other member of staff to warn the guy to stay away from her, or risk being thrown out. Whether or not that's reasonable, I don't know; but if the guy was a real problem for her (and from her side it sounds like he was), then "telling people" at that point in time, rather than afterwards, would have been more prudent. There's absolutely no reason for anyone to put up with this kind of shit from someone else. But further to that, this can't and shouldn't be painted as another story about sexism in tech. This is a story (from one side) about a guy having a few drinks and trying it on in his own cringeworthy way, and lacking the forethought to quit with some dignity intact. His choice of career has fuck all to do with that, and neither does the conference. (I'm all for policies and legislation that prohibit this sort of thing, by the by, but they're not going to stop some guy who thinks he's god's gift from making pervy remarks on a night out. Neither is walking away and hoping you get left alone.)
- theorique 14y ago
  His choice of career has fuck all to do with that, and neither does the conference. It kind of does, though. According to Julia's account, this was not simply an isolated incident. When she talked to the organizer, he admitted that this individual who behaved in a harassing way had shown a previous pattern of behavior of this type. Since the organizer knew of this, this behavior presumably took place at other events related to this professional community. It makes sense for this community to expel people who behave this way.
  - 14y ago

aardvark179 14y ago

So, if the response from the conference director was that they should never have allowed the guy to come then it sounds like he was a known quantity in this regard. When I've run conventions there has always been a note that the committee reserved the right to reject anybody's membership and did not have to give a reason. We've never had to use this but we've always had it as the nuclear option and had one person who we were ready to use it on. If the person is already at the conference then you may need an acceptable behaviour policy that allows you to act, and you need it to be worded such that it applies to all conference attendees for the duration of the conference regardless of whether they are in conference facilities at the time. It's also best if it is short and broad, it's very easy to spot acceptable behaviour policies that have grown in response to specific events, and they are deeply discouraging when viewed by newcomers and outsiders.

sparknlaunch 14y ago

Unfortunate story and only recommend that others walk away sooner and try not to provoke the situation. Alcohol is a dangerous drug and can seriously impair people's decision making. It is always best to walk away. I always wonder what would happen if a man was subjected to the same treatment. Sadly I doubt anyone would take them seriously. But we should...

dpeck 14y ago

Maybe I'm missing something but why not handle it with the safeguards at the venue? The conference is not in the business of protecting its attendees from unwanted advances, especially outside of the conference areas/sponsored events. Why not speak to the manager of the bar and have him escorted out? If it happens at the hotel, do the same with the hotel manager. People in the service/hospitality industry know how to deal with these situations and do so all the time. If it happens again call the law. There are much better mechanisms for dealing with harassment than a conference organizer.

Hytosys 14y ago
Agreed. Why is the development community (this conference in specific) being held responsible for the acts of an individual who happens to reside within? This is clearly something that should be taken care like an adult of outside of a private community. The story is a bummer, but the author's response to the situation is quite childish and this blog post seems somewhat irrelevant.
- mtrimpe 14y ago
  And the response from the organizer should have been very simple and straight-forward: Ask the person to leave the conference and ideally, if it still had to take place, canceling their talk as well. I doubt anything but praise would have resulted from that, even though the best outcome would be that it was kept private and became a little piece of background gossip floating around the Django-community.
  - sneak 14y ago
    Sorry to go all patriarchy here, but the little Schneier on my shoulder just explained to me how to get anyone's talk cancelled at a conference that institutes this sort of policy. I'm not sure that's a workable fix, either. This is sort of a hard problem.
    - mtrimpe 14y ago
      Judging from the organizer's response there was little doubt concerning the validity of her claims in this case though. In other cases, pulling said person into a room, asking him if the claims are true and if so asking them to leave is already a big step forward.

stefantalpalaru 14y ago

If the lady says she was harassed we should totally ban the criminal from any future conferences, jobs and parties. Forget the due process, she was disgusted by everyone associated with the rapist. Disgusted! Zero-tolerance means we don't even need Obama to look over the kill-list. The pedophile must pay. P.S.: at last year's EuroPython conference in Italy we were greeted by a menacing organizer threatening to call the cops if we make inappropriate jokes. I blamed it on the fascist ideology still present in this country, but it seems to run deeper. Let's see how it will escalate this year: https://ep2012.europython.eu/code-of-conduct https://ep2012.europython.eu/code-of-conduct

roopeshv 14y ago
from the CoC is fuck a sexual language?
- stefantalpalaru 14y ago
  fuck yeah

Tichy 14y ago

Would a harassment policy spell out the appropriate ways to approach a woman? Or would flirting become some kind of Russian Roulette?

petercooper 14y ago
In most of these stories, someone does something stupid, and the target doesn't immediately blow up.. they instead ask the other person to stop or leave them alone first. So "flirt" by all means but as soon as someone tells you to leave them alone, that's the absolute end of it. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be happening in most of these stories.
- Tichy 14y ago
  That's true - in a story like this it seems obvious. I just worry that it might not always be so obvious in effect. In fact looking to the US across the pond, some of the rules around dating and sexual harassment already seem quite scary. Basically it seems really easy to ruin somebody's life with twisted interpretations of their behavior. Another example of such laws gone wrong is maybe the sexting teenagers who are now on file as pedophiles.

petercooper 14y ago

it is clear to me that there is a definite lack of policies and procedures in place for sexual harassment at conferences and events. FWIW, O'Reilly has had a policy - http://conferences.oreillynet.com/code-of-conduct.csp http://conferences.oreillynet.com/code-of-conduct.csp - for a while now. RailsConf also has one and I saw discussion about another Ruby event's policy recently on HN too (where people were saying 'is this really needed!?'.. answer is yes).

tomjen3 14y ago

That is a bit redundant, as it would fall under the general don't be an asshole policy. Also this happened at a bar. So it would seem the problem is that the bar didn't handle it, not that the conference didn't.

Daniel_Newby 14y ago

Pics or it didn't happen. Seriously. YouTube is worth a thousand zero tolerance policies.

Daniel_Newby 14y ago
Why the downvote hate? A few videos demonstrating the problem would eliminate the controversy, as well as let the offenders punish themselves in their own words.
- LeafStorm 14y ago
  Because if I was being sexually harassed, I wouldn't stay around the harasser long enough to pull out a camera phone and record the (horribly vulgar) advances - especially considering the risk of the harasser becoming violent when recorded. I would get the heck away.
  - Daniel_Newby 14y ago
    But she did not flee. She engaged and escalated. He attempted a 5 second caveman courtship, and she responded to it, teasing him about his wife to check if his testosterone really was turned up to 11. Soo-prise, it was! Maybe even 12. So then she teased him about his daughter, to see if he would virtually castrate himself to impress her. Soo-prise, it turns out Mr. Caveman does not live to sexually impress his daughter. What she should have done was to record his overtures for public amusement, then turned her back on him.
    - sojourner 14y ago
      Sigh. She mentioned his daughter and wife not to engage and escalate, but to remind him he was a human being. Fail. Personally, this guy deserves filming and posting, but a lot of women like being nice. Even with people being utter and complete sociopaths. She gave him some consideration, like a lot of women would. He was drunk, and she kept nicely attempting to redirect his attention away from her. Even now, she is not outing him. She has kept the details vague enough so that few probably could guess who this was. Not everyone enjoys being obnoxious. Even with determined assholes, even with dangerous sociopaths (not saying he was one, just saying in general). That wasn't a tease or a challenge she was throwing out to him. That was a "I said no. And by the way, you're married, so even if I was attracted to assholes, it would still be a no. And by the way, you're married with children, so even if I was attracted to assholes, it would still be a no. Oh, and by the way, have I mentioned, no? No? Then, let me say it again no." I think it's interesting that you see her actions as engaging and escalating. I'm sure there are a significant number of males who would agree with you on that. I'm curious, because I've encountered a fair number of guys who don't seem to hear the word "no" or follow-up phrases that indicate "no": say I'm having a great time in a bar after the conference, and here comes the father with a slut for a daughter looking for some action. Are my only options to get the bartender to throw the guy out, or to leave the bar in order to have this guy -- if not to hear and respond to my "no" -- act as if he did? Or is there something magical phrase that a woman can tell a guy where he will hear "no" and actually respond as if he respected that?

johngalt 14y ago

Maybe the reason that there is no policy at the conference is that harassment doesn't happen as often as its portrayed? Going to a bar and then being hit on is hardly the end of the world. Its one thing to respect office/professional decorum, its another to start setting rules where men can only speak when spoken to.

theorique 14y ago
Did you read the blog post? The guy was rebuffed multiple times and turned up his verbal offensiveness each time, finishing off by describing his daughter as a slut. Discouraging men from speaking this way - in a professional community - to women who are their peers, is hardly equivalent to "setting rules where men can only speak when spoken to". Hitting on woman = fine. Turning up the verbal heat when she's already turned you down = obnoxious.

jeremyarussell 14y ago

Since this does happen, (even if we don't know that this guy did anything to this girl.) then I think a bigger question to ask is pretty simple and will surely do better in the long run. When someone around you acts like a pig, girl or guy (I've seen some girls act downright crazy when alcohol gets into the mix, it's the thing to do when you want to act out your deepest desires, liquid courage I call it.) call them out at it. If you see someone groping someone else when they don't want, let them know it's not cool and you won't stand here while they do it. Same thing for any sexual advance that is unwelcome. You can usually tell when it's unwelcome when the receiving party looks nervous and tries to politely get out of the situation. The below kinda-quote (it's disputed if it was Burke, or if it was said exactly thus.) comes to mind and rings pretty loud. "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" - Edmund Burke As an exiting thought, the pressure to be civil needs to come from peers. Meaning, guys don't let guy friends harass, and girls don't let girl friends harass.

booty 14y ago

I've been in this conference organizer's shoes before. On one hand, running a conference/convention is difficult enough without being asked to referee personal conflicts. It almost inevitably devolves into a he-said/she-said kind of argument. But on the other hand, if we take that kind of an attitude, that's essentially a signal for predatory men to go ahead and harass women (or worse). That's pretty much what predatory men have been doing since the beginning of history - acting with impunity since claims of rape or harassment are almost impossible to prove if there are no additional witnesses or physical evidence. What we've done is to stress proper conduct before the event, and if there are repeat complaints about somebody they're removed from the community permanently. It's not a perfect process and we've given some "second chances" to people that we've later regretted.

blubbar 14y ago
No, that's just the signal "That's beyond my scope", a sign of professionalism. If you try to be hobby cop and judge you will fail. That's a job for the pros.

Loic 14y ago

Excuse me but I am surprised. I read a lot on HN and on several planets (feed aggregation) about harassment, but in my field (engineering) I have never seen/experienced/heard about such cases even if the ratio female/male is pretty low is some of these conferences. Is it something specific to the coder community? Or maybe chemical/process engineers are just an exception? Or is it specific to the US in this field (I have been to a couple of coder oriented conferences in Europe without experiencing such cases but only engineering confs in the US)?

jakobe 14y ago
Sexual harassment does happen, but very few people talk about it in public. In fact, most people don't even talk about it in private. It's very much possible that it is common, but noone ever told you about it (except for bloggers who are not ashamed of speaking up).

sneak 14y ago

> Let's stop talking about apologies too. "After the fact" doesn't really do any good. Sexual harassment should not happen in the first place. There should be a clearly-defined set of standards in place to prevent it. I'm not sure how standards in place at a conference can prevent individuals from deciding to break the law. Sure, you might deter the weak-willed or fearful, but these sorts of asshole moves aren't generally perpetrated by those kinds of people. Unfortunately, for a lot of this kind of stuff, after-the-fact is all we have. I would love a better solution but the items listed don't actually _prevent_ this.

lambda 14y ago

I am really quite disturbed by all of the people who are responding something along the lines of "this isn't the conference organizer's problem, it's happening outside of the conference." I've seen several such replies, so rather than responding to one, I'm responding to the whole sentiment here. At a conference, there is a lot that goes on during unofficial off-hours, that is really an integral part of the conference. We shouldn't consider it acceptable for women to feel unsafe going to such off-hours events. If there is someone who is a guest at that conference, and showing up to off-hours events associate with the conference, that is still the conference's problem, as it significantly negatively affects an important part of the conference, and could be avoided by making that person unwelcome at the conference. And this is not a court of law. We regularly ban people from online communities with a much lower bar of proof than would be required in a court of law, because those people are harmful to the community. Yes, any particular process could, in theory, be abused. But that isn't, as far as I know, a problem here. I have never heard of someone being banned from a conference unjustly. And we have a lower bar in these cases because the consequences are not as severe as criminal sanctions. We are not trying to lock someone up. We are not trying to get them arrested. We are just saying "this behavior is unacceptable, and you are not welcome in our community if you are going to behave this way." All the original post is asking is that conferences have a clearly defined policy on what is unacceptable, and what will happen if someone crosses that line. It doesn't sound like there's any dispute about what happened. It sounds like the person in question had a history of problems, as the organizer said he shouldn't have allowed this person to come to the conference. There isn't a problem here of people being unjustly accused and cut off from conferences because of it. There is a problem of women being harassed, seriously creeped out, feeling unwelcome and unable to do anything about it because of the actions of a few, and the lack of any clear policy or action on the part of conference organizers. And heck, a clear policy can help. Perhaps it can specify that the first time, someone will be warned, and only banned if they have already been warned. Perhaps it can specify a dispute resolution procedure. A clear policy will help everyone. We need to do better, because this keeps coming up and it is a serious problem.

JohnBooty 14y ago
> It sounds like the person in question had a history of > problems, as the organizer said he shouldn't have allowed > this person to come to the conference. Even then, it may be far from clear-cut. We don't know what those problems are. Have there been reports of harassment regarding this guy? If so, that's fairly clear-cut. But maybe this is just kind of a jerk, but hasn't done anything over the line before. While conference organizers certainly shouldn't put their heads in the sand, realistically they're a small part of the potential solution. The community at large really has the most power here - it has many more eyes and ears than the (usually overworked) conference organizers. I'm wondering where the rest of the community was when this harassment was going on at the bar. The victim says they were there in a group. So a whole group of conference attendees was just standing around, letting this victim be harassed? Unlike the conference organizers, they were there. At the bar. In close proximity.

MindEraser100 14y ago

Has anyone else realized Julia is Sexist???? What about the guys that are getting sexually harass by other guys??? I was at the conference and my gaydar was off the charts

breadbox 14y ago

If someone started a fistfight in the conference's bar after hours, would you be surprised if the conference chose to not invite that person back again, ever? Would you come to his defense by saying "It's not the conference organizers' responsiblity what happens in the bar afterwards!" Some of the commenters have this idea that if you behave like a jerk to someone, ONLY that person has the right to distrust you. WTF?

roopeshv 14y ago

i am only here to look for a reference to "lighten up"

nosse 14y ago

I'd like to note that "groping" is not mentioned in the article. No other touching either. Just that some creep started to make "inappropriate sexual advances" towards the writer. So it seems to be one time unpleasant conversation. I'd hardly call that harassment. If one time unpleasant conversation with persistent person is harassment, then I was once police-harassed. This officer wanted me to go to police academy. I said no but he didn't stop. He was quite drunk. And last weekend I was oil-change-harassed, my dad kept insisting that I'd do an oil change to my car this summer. He was drunk too. But I have to admit that this kind of behavior towards women should stop. What is causing it? Let's go after the source, not just try to heal the symptoms.

natrius 14y ago
FYI, if, within the realm of reason, you ask someone to stop doing something that bothers you and they continue to do so, that's usually harassment.
- nosse 14y ago
  "within the realm of reason" Thats the point I was making. "Although the law doesn’t prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated incidents that are not very serious, harassment is illegal when it is so frequent or severe that it creates a hostile or offensive work environment or when it results in an adverse employment decision" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_harassment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_harassment So in my view, if the author would go to another conference, and the same creep would try again, that would be harassment. There should be a pattern of some kind. If you count single incidents as harassment, your going to have serious problems with freedom of speech. FYI, using "FYI" feels arrogant to me. Please stop, you would not want to FYI-harass me?
  - natrius 14y ago
    You refer to it as a single incident; she does not. "My colleague started making inappropriate sexual advances towards me. He singled me out and would not leave me alone, even when asked. I tried to shake it off, change the conversation and even moved away. He would not stop." I'm not suggesting laws were broken, but there is no question in my mind that harassment is the proper term to use here. "FYI" was an unproductive way to begin my comment. My apologies.

fezzl 14y ago

He must have been ugly.

ToesByNoon 14y ago
Common ground.

ToesByNoon 14y ago

Everyone deals with / runs into assholes in their lives, this guy was just another one. If you politely told him to fuck off several times and he did not, why not call the cops rather than crying about it on the internet? Oh yeah, free publicity for your blog and business.

s_baby 14y ago

Since when are "zero tolerance" policies a good idea. They always end up marginalizing someone.