[diversity-talk] anti-harassment policy at SotM

[Steven Johnson]

Well put and very perceptive summary. Thank you, Jon. 

--SEJ

Sent from my electronic tether. 

On Jun 24, 2013, at 15:53, Jon <jon at serf.org> wrote:

> On 24/06/2013 18:13, Alan McConchie wrote:
>> Someone at the SotMUS birds of a feather session was involved in organizing SotM 2013, and mentioned something about resistance to having an anti-harassment policy. Unfortunately, I don't remember who said this, or what were the details of this situation.
>> 
>> Perhaps someone who was at the BoF session remembers more specifics?
> 
> Hello, that was me. The discussion at the meeting didn't go into specifics, so here's the background.
> 
> SotM has never had an anti-harassment policy before. As an organiser of a couple of conferences in the past, I've seen some harassment problems, and this was especially brought to the front of my mind by the full-blown community meltdown following this year's PyCon in March. For background on this, see for example:
> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/how-dongle-jokes-got-two-people-fired-and-led-to-ddos-attacks/ 
> and
> http://plasticbag.org/archives/2013/03/on-being-grown-ups-about-childish-behaviour 
> 
> I proposed a wording to the SotM team which I put together by looking at the anti harassment policies of a lot of con websites. It gave some examples of what harassment might look like, and made it clear that if someone tells you that you are harassing them (with examples) you must stop.
> 
> I was surprised to find that almost everyone who engaged in the discussion opposed this. The opposition included such arguments as:
> - it's too negative, it will put people off coming (I'm not sure who)
> - there's never been a problem before (that we know of) so there probably never will be
> - discrimination is illegal so we don't need to do anything (just rely on calling the police, presumably)
> - free speech is protected so we can't legally do anything further
> - we have no power to enforce anything outside the conference venue so we shouldn't try inside
> - if we give examples of harassment people will take that as a definitive list and feel free to do anything not included on it
> - there is no need for a policy because we can always rely on the community "to enforce norms"
> 
> My view is that if we can prevent even one person from being harassed, by making it clear to the potential harasser that specific things would be uncacceptable, then having the policy would be worth it, but ultimately I wasn't supported by anyone else on the team. In the end we came up with the compromise wording which you can see on the website, which I think is better than nothing, but too vague since it contains no examples. In fact, it didn't even include the word "harassment" until the very final draft, only "discrimination". In the final form it says that harassment is unacceptable, but gives no clues as to what we think harassment actually is. Still, I think this is good progress, and maybe it will be improved on in future years.
> 
> I'm not at all accusing my co-organisers as being in favour of allowing harassment or being sexist (etc) themselves. We had long since, and with little or no input from me, identified that SotM is white-male dominated and committed ourselves to acting to redress this. I think that they're just, being mostly white straight able-bodied males themselves, not aware of or interested in the privilege they enjoy or the impact harassment can have on the victim.
> 
> I believe that, while OSM is currently straight-white-ablebodied-male dominated, most of them are very open to hearing from the less privileged - there just hasn't been a channel for that before. My hope is that this group will provide one.
> 
> Jon.
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>> On Jun 23, 2013, at 4:23 PM, Richard Weait wrote:
>> 
>>> On Friday, 14 June 2013, Alan said:
>>> 
>>> "For example, the international State of the Map conference (in
>>> Birmingham, UK, from Sept 6-8) is in its final planning stages, and
>>> there has been some push-back against instituting a formal
>>> anti-harrasment policy at the conference. The diversity-talk mailing
>>> list will be an important site to organize in support of initiatives
>>> like these." [1]
>>> 
>>> Alan, it seems that there is an anti-harassment statement on the State
>>> of the Map web site. [2]  What was the nature of the push-back you
>>> mention?
>>> 
>>> [1] in http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/diversity-talk/2013-June/000007.html
>>> [2] http://2013.stateofthemap.org/info/booking/
>>> 
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> diversity-talk mailing list
>>> diversity-talk at openstreetmap.org
>>> http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/diversity-talk
> 
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