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

From: Jason White <jason>
Date: Tue, 1 Feb 2011 12:42:39 +1100

Ryan Stuart <ryan at stuart.id.au> wrote:
 
> I sincerely hope the Geek Feminism policy was not the reason. I'm all for
> encouraging more female participants on the FOSS community but policies like
> this one is NOT the way to do it.

It is evidently the considered opinion of the authors of the policy (who have
had the most experience of actual discrimination and of the means that can be
employed to mittigate it) that such policies do help to create an environment
in which people are not excluded, marginalized, objectified, negatively
stereotyped, etc. I don't think anyone regards this as a complete solution,
but rather as a policy that can curb some of the worst behaviour which has
been encountered in the past - sexual imagery in presentations, assault and
other forms of harassment. These are very serious issues; I would rather a
policy that errs on the side of being too strict than one which proves to be
ineffective.

I don't accept the censorship argument. I can think of few situations in which
sexual imagery of any kind is relevant to the content of a technical
presentation, or in which excluding it would constrain the freedom of a
speaker to express ideas on any topic relevant to LCA.

As a qualification to the above, suppose that someone were to create an image
recognition algorithm for identifying sexual imagery of a certain kind,
perhaps to be used as part of a filtering scheme. I'm sure it would be
possible to give a presentation on the subject without displaying any of the
images, but it's the kind of case in which, arguably, an exception to such a
policy might be sought and granted. Notice, however, that we're discussing
fringe cases here, not the paradigm case which the policy is supposed to
exclude.

>
> If attitudes towards women is a problem in the community (and talk up until
> now suggest that it might be with at least a subset) then there is a way to
> deal with it which is used repeatedly by sporting organisations and
> companies both in Australia and around the world. Instead of
> writing policies like the Geek Feminism policy, effort should be put into
> educating people on the issues and how to resolve them. In this case, I
> think it would be a far better use of time if the people involved with Geek
> Feminism came up with an education program to highlight the issues with
> women participating in the FOSS community and how to make women feel more
> welcome. It should also deal specifically with sexual harassment if it is an
> issue with examples of what sexual harassment is and it should refer to the
> sexual harassment policies employed by the conference which has, so it
> seems, historically refereed to the law on the matter, These materials
> should be distributed to everyone that registers for the conference and a
> talk should be given on registration day for those who wish to attend
> (subject to the content being approved by the conference organisers).

There was the Haecksen workshop on Monday, which I attended.

The difficulty, though, is that those who have the greatest problems in this
respect may be the least likely voluntarily to attend any educational
programme. In the case of sport, it's possible to make attendance a team
event; likewise in relation to companies, but I don't think that's achievable
in this community.

Of course, assisting those who are already aware of the issues and who wish to
help is also important, and this was the purpose of the Haecksen workshop
session, as I understood it.
Received on Tue Feb 01 2011 - 12:42:39 GMT