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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure why you're being downvoted for this, it's spot-on. Accusations, no matter how credible, do not indicate guilt.
All the more reason to have a well thought-out policy in place for how to deal with a potentially explosive situation.
Somehow I see no causation between a conference and the drunken comments by its attendees at a bar. Trying to argue that a conference organizer should hold some moral responsible for the people attending seems to me just ridiculous. He looked at me and sighed, confessing that he never should have allowed this guy to come to the conference. Here the Wait. What? Really? seems to be better placed - is there somebody rea…
That is unacceptable. And to consider conference organizers responsible for expelling people who are tarnishing the experience of their conference is hardly out of line. Conferences are not something that stops when you leave the conference area, because people travel to them. They are social experiences both on the conference grounds and outside of them.
Nobody is saying it should be illegal for a conference organizer to allow people like this. But it's perfectly fair as a developer going to a conference or as a company sending developers to a conference to require that they have a policy of banning such members.
Oh, and “he was drunk” is not an excuse. It is never an excuse. It is never an excuse for anything. I cannot stress this enough. Drunkenness is an excuse only because we allow it to be, not because there is any legitimacy to it.
If you know you're an ass when you're drunk, well, it turns out, you can work on not being an ass when you're drunk, or, alternatively, you can simply not drink. If you do neither of these things, then you are responsible for every stupid thing you say and do while drunk.
To be clear, I am aware you did not explicitly mention drunkenness as a valid excuse; however, your phrasing strongly implied it by correlating the saying of stupid things with being drunk at a bar. As such, I picked at that point because it's an attitude I've seen before, and I think it's a problem. My apologies if you didn't explicitly mean it that way.
When I've run conventions there has always been a note that the committee reserved the right to reject anybody's membership and did not have to give a reason. We've never had to use this but we've always had it as the nuclear option and had one person who we were ready to use it on.
If the person is already at the conference then you may need an acceptable behaviour policy that allows you to act, and you need it to be worded such that it applies to all conference attendees for the duration of the conference regardless of whether they are in conference facilities at the time. It's also best if it is short and broad, it's very easy to spot acceptable behaviour policies that have grown in response to specific events, and they are deeply discouraging when viewed by newcomers and outsiders.
Somehow I see no causation between a conference and the drunken comments by its attendees at a bar. Trying to argue that a conference organizer should hold some moral responsible for the people attending seems to me just ridiculous. He looked at me and sighed, confessing that he never should have allowed this guy to come to the conference. Here the Wait. What? Really? seems to be better placed - is there somebody rea…
morally responsible perhaps not but certainly there's a question of the reputation of the conference where it would be in the organisers own interest to set a tone and a policy on decent behaviour.
> trying to paint the tech community as misogynist
I didnt read that out of the post or have even the impression that was the goal. What made you draw that conclusion ?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Surely it doesn't hurt to have the conference take a stand?
Take a stand against what? Unproven claims?
Imagine there was some emacs guy who routinely went around harassing people who used vim. To the point where he got so offensive that the vim people felt they weren't being respected as professionals, even humiliated and demeaned. Some were hounded by him at offsite gatherings. The conference organizers had multiple reports of this occurring. Do the vim people need to "prove" something before it's appropriate for conference organizers to take action? Should their claims be more suspect than anyone else's?
I suggest that you re-examine why the 'unproven claims' thing is so important to you. If you start with the assumption that women and men, just like emacs and vim users, have equal interests in having a good technical conference, and are equally competent to determine when someone's being disruptive, why wouldn't you trust their reports?
I always wonder what would happen if a man was subjected to the same treatment. Sadly I doubt anyone would take them seriously. But we should...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not sure why you're being downvoted for this, it's spot-on. Accusations, no matter how credible, do not indicate guilt.
All the more reason to have a well thought-out policy in place for how to deal with a potentially explosive situation.
It's sad that this woman was apparently treated so poorly, but there's no possible way for a conference to write a legally-binding code of conduct for how people spend their social lives outside of that conference. It's utter nonsense to even consider it.
Why not speak to the manager of the bar and have him escorted out? If it happens at the hotel, do the same with the hotel manager. People in the service/hospitality industry know how to deal with these situations and do so all the time. If it happens again call the law.
There are much better mechanisms for dealing with harassment than a conference organizer.
Somehow I see no causation between a conference and the drunken comments by its attendees at a bar. Trying to argue that a conference organizer should hold some moral responsible for the people attending seems to me just ridiculous. He looked at me and sighed, confessing that he never should have allowed this guy to come to the conference. Here the Wait. What? Really? seems to be better placed - is there somebody rea…
It is hardly “some random bar encounter”. This is the latest in a string of publicly described issues with sexual harassment in the tech community, both at conferences and elsewhere. The same rule applies here as with bugs reported by users: if one person is talking about this out loud, it means dozens are probably running into it and staying silent. That is unacceptable. And to consider conference organizers respons…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I agree that this problem could have been handled better in absence of a sexual harassment policy, there's a lot to be gained by having such a policy. In this situation I don't agree that conferences having sexual harassment policies are "scar tissue". First and foremost, the scare tissue complaint largely relies on a policy being applied to an extremely rare event. Unfortunately this kind of thing is almost ce…
> and as far as I am concerned, having a sexual harassment policy for conferences is an easy win for everybody involved. frankly i don't entirely trust women with the ability to cry sexual harassment and have men ejected from situations having personally witnessed this twice in bars, and once by way of a female relative coming clean about abusing her privilege note that i am not saying actual sexual harassment should…
That said, the OP is just calling for there to be some sort of policy in place, so people aren't improvising when a complaint does arise. The policy doesn't have to be 'mandatory kickban on the first complaint'.