Hello, At the risk of re-opening a thread that may have come to a natural conclusion (apologies if so), I feel I want to clarify a few more points from my perspective — especially in light of potentially record-breaking attendance.
Apologies in advance for the length, but I feel this is an important topic. John Darrington writes: > On Tue, Aug 12, 2014 at 05:45:33AM -0400, Alfred M. Szmidt wrote: > > Be Nice, if you are not nice Bobcats will come for you. > > That alone says more than the current wording. > > You have a point. I suggest the wording be discussed on Sunday morning. I like the simplicity and elegance of Alfred's proposed wording — but feel that retaining the more specific current wording might be preferable: 1) A recurring pattern in the conversation has been to reduce the anti-harassment policy to an "anti-offense" policy. This is peculiar because the name itself already implies that it is about more than this. In a way, through no one's fault, the issue is trivialised a little in this fashion. Specific policies such as these help to combat: - sexual harassment (anything from unwanted physical contact, to unwanted attention or name-calling, shaming etc.) are pretty common, even endemic, in wider society, especially for women. I don't think tech conferences are somehow exempt from this trend (http://www.everydaysexism.com/ for anecdotal everyday stories by women affected; http://adainitiative.org/what-we-do/conference-policies/ may be particularly relevant to the geek sphere…) - shame: by and large being put on the spot, or singled out is humiliating and a pretty terrifying experience. If this is done by means of sexuality or racial stereotypes it is even worse. Survivors of sexual assaults often remain silent about their experiences because of this feeling of shame and powerlessness. Furthermore survivors can re-experience part of their trauma as a result of "triggers" such as imagery or language. Specifically mentioning forms of unacceptable behaviour experienced by, thus far, minority groups in specific contexts helps those minority groups to have a more powerful footing to combat that behaviour from. It also signals to them that they do not stand alone, and signals that we too believe that public spaces should be 'safe spaces': they should be accessible and enjoyable by all. 2) The simpler wording is nice because it is universal. But that is also its weakness. It assumes a form of Rawlsian Veil of Ignorance: as detached architects of society we would probably all agree that we should behave nicely to each-other, because none of us can know for sure whether in a given situation we would belong to a marginalised or dominant group. But our daily behaviour does not derive from a detached perspective: we are embedded in a society that has historically generated 'in' and 'out' groups. Simply put, our behaviour is informed by the social relations that surround us, which leads many men, for instance, to believe that when a woman signals "not interested" they actually mean "please continue to try to chat me up", simply because, in our society, the definition of "being nice to other people" does not include "respecting a woman's right to be left alone". Using language in our anti-harassment policy that specifically lists examples relating to marginalised or out-groups in our context helps to re-define what it means to "Be Nice". 3) Finally, the language we use is not a formally defined, neutral set of signs. It carries within it a whole host of social context and meaning. This is particularly salient when it comes to humor and stereotypes: both only work precisely because of the social context that we assume the other party is aware of. Because of this it does not make sense to say that "offense is purely in the eye of the beholder". Yes, people have different sensitivities, but these don't float freely in a vacuum. They are tethered to our everyday experience and thus to things such as social hierarchies, group definitions, current affairs, etc. >From the above perspective, when a joke has, for instance members of an ethnic minority, or women as their objects, the joke carries with it the role assigned to women and ethnic minorities in our society. The joke can subvert these established roles, or it can use them. In the former case the joke can liberate. In the latter it serves to keep people in their place. (incidentally, I would argue that if the joke has an elite, rather than an outgroup as its object, then it will almost always tend to "flatten" social difference, which is why I don't really regard making fun of 'posh people' as problematic). Sorry for the length — I tried to keep it brief, and may have hurried some points as a result. I reckon it'll probably still be tl;dr for a lot of people though… I think a conversation on Sunday would cerntainly be valuable. Best wishes, Alex -- Sent with my mu4e
