Peter Youngmeister py@wikimedia.org wrote:
So, I am pro this policy. It's clean, neat, and easy to understand. However, in some ways, I feel that while a policy like this is a(n) (unfortunately) necessary tool to prevent discrimination and harassment at tech events, I do not think that it is sufficient. Let me explain.
In my mind, policies such as this are useful when you either a) want to kick someone who's actions are unacceptable out of your event or b) something bad happened and the organizer wants to be able to point to the policy and say "that was against our policy." These are both good things. Having conditions for ejection from an event is useful. However, in my mind, it does not address underlying issues, the variety of -isms, that contributed to harassment and discrimination. It has also been my experience in being around various folk at tech conferences (such as um... myself) that geeks like me often do not have 100% developed social skills and may already deal with feelings of isolation. Thus, what I would love to see would be, in addition to a policy such as this, activities specifically designed to foster closer community, connection, and to bring home that everyone at such an event is valuable, as well as establishing basic social expectations which can be very useful in social situations where participants come from a wide range of cultures and countries.
I am, at this moment, not sure what form this thing that I am advocating would take, but I would definitely be interested in working with others to come up with such activities/models/etc. It would probably happen at the beginning of an event, and it would need to be enjoyable, so that people would actually want to come. This is as far as I've managed to get in my brainstorming.
Thoughts? Ideas? Comments? [...]
I think you're missing the objective of the policy. It aims at taking away the fear from potential participants to be harassed. Encouraging people with insufficient social skills to come is not going to help that cause especially if pressure is put on the other participants to engage with their harassers or even see them as "valuable".
In all high-profile cases that surfaced in the past years, harassment almost never took place in a presentation or pan- el discussion, but during "social events" which ostensibly were meant to foster community building like you propose. So to mitigate the risk, social interaction should be mini- mized.
Tim