On Nov 26, 2012, at 5:16 PM, Bess Sadler wrote:
>> Why have an official anti-harassment policy for your conference? First, it
>> is necessary (unfortunately). Harassment at conferences is incredibly common
>> - for example, see this timeline
>> (http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/index.php?title=Timeline_of_incidents) of
>> sexist incidents in geek communities. Second, it sets expectations for
>> behavior at the conference. Simply having an anti-harassment policy can
>> prevent harassment all by itself. Third, it encourages people to attend who
>> have had bad experiences at other conferences. Finally, it gives conference
>> staff instructions on how to handle harassment quickly, with the minimum
>> amount of disruption or bad press for your conference.
>
> If the conference already has something like this in place, and I'm just
> uninformed, please educate me and let's do a better job publicizing it.
>
> Thanks for considering this suggestion. If the answer is the usual code4lib
> answer (some variation on "Great idea! How are you going to make that
> happen?") then I hereby nominate myself as a member of the Anti-Harrassment
> Policy Adoption committee for the code4lib conference. Would anyone else like
> to join me?
We had no Anti-Harassment Policy for the DC-Baltimore Perl Workshop as it was
all covered under our general Code of Conduct:
Don't be an asshole.
I think there was a second line of it, about how we had the right to remove
people who refused to follow that advice and no refunds would be given.
I might be wrong on the exact language. The e-mail I found referenced 'Don't
be a dick', in an attempt to paraphrase the legalese of the Code of Conduct for
our venue ... but the reference to gender-specific anatomy would be kinda
sexist in itself.
-Joe
