Sexual Harassment at DefCon (and Other Hacker Cons) • Hacker News Board

Re: Sexual Harassment at DefCon (and Other Hacker Cons)

#211

Post by sophacles » Wed, Aug 15, 2012, 10:02 PM UTC

babblefrog wrote: post #156

edghf wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'what's over the line in one circumstance could be interpreted as harmless flirting in another.' Yes. You're allowed to greet your friends by hugging them if that's the kind of relationship you have with them. You are not allowed to greet a bank teller that way, or a canvasser, or most of the other people you encounter. The fact that what's appropriate in one situation is inappropriate in another situation is tangent…

> humans are excellent at reading cues from body language, facial expressions, etc. to understand how other humans feel. For most people, yes. For some of the geekiest among us, I'm not sure that always holds.

Fortunately this skill can be learned by most of us for whom this is unintuitive. I have had to actively learn about body language cues for all sorts of situations. I can now do it reasonably well, but I have to pay attention a bit and do it consciously. Some people can't learn this, but they are pretty rare, and it is pretty obvious that they have problems with it, and as such, a wider leeway is given by most people out of compassion.

Re: Sexual Harassment at DefCon (and Other Hacker Cons)

#212

Post by ahelwer » Wed, Aug 15, 2012, 10:03 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #205

ahelwer wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Holy moly. I think you need to take a good look at this blog post, and all the blog posts it links: http://captainawkward.com/2012/08/11/the-c-word/ Hopefully this read will clear some stuff up. You need to lose the victim complex.

Hopefully this read will clear some stuff up. You need to lose the victim complex. LOL... based on that alone, I don't think I'm going to waste any of my time on the link you posted. Pointing out that both sexes have their own set of challenges, and refusing to toe the "women are good, men are bad" line is hardly having a "victim complex."

Oh sure, all sexes have their challenges. However, the particular case you bring up has been thoroughly debunked time and time again. It is annoyingly pervasive.

Re: Sexual Harassment at DefCon (and Other Hacker Cons)

#213

Post by djahng » Wed, Aug 15, 2012, 10:06 PM UTC

protolif wrote: post #172

djahng wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying is this is how men behave and women should either put up with it and stop complaining, or stay home?

No, what I am saying is this is how drunk people act, and if one finds it too offensive, then the logical conclusion is to remove one's self from the equation, rather than demanding that the world change. You can't boil the ocean.

Asking the world to change/ boiling the ocean... Plenty of people get drunk without sticking their hands up women's skirts. The "logical conclusion" is not to remove the women from the equation.

Re: Sexual Harassment at DefCon (and Other Hacker Cons)

#214

Post by cbs » Wed, Aug 15, 2012, 10:12 PM UTC

ahelwer wrote: post #197

cbs wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rape-culture and patriarchy are definitely major society-wide issues but they undeniably find a special welcoming home within geek culture. Please cite your statistics. edit: Statistics that the geek culture provides a "more welcoming home" than society at large. I'm not disagreeing with the fact there are society-wide issues, I'd just like you to back up that particular assertion about geek culture. >A culture whi…

Do you really exist in such a vacuum that you haven't seen the problems geek culture has with women? Nobody here's going to do your reading for you. Head over to Google, type in "the problem with geek culture", and get reading. There's also a great bunch of geek feminist blogs, which work to educate on problems in the community. Two particularly fantastic ones are Captain Awkward ( http://captainawkward.com/ ) and Pe…

Do you really exist in such a vacuum that you haven't seen the problems geek culture has with women?

No, I can see it. Off the top of my head I can paint with broad strokes that many are stuck in their shell and terrified of them, or have no social tact and act wildly inappropriate in conversation. They can't stop staring at ladies' chests either.

But "rape-culture and patriarchy [...] find a special welcoming home within geek culture"? OK, I'll read your links, but I'm expecting to see comparative analysis between society-at-large and geek culture.

The first one does not inspire confidence, "the problem with geek culture" just got me to an opinion piece full of image macros that got passed around. So far all I've discovered is that you can cherry-pick images of ladies to make misleading insinuation about the way they are portrayed in geek-pop-culture in either direction. I hope your other links have something more to say than point out that the purposefully-off-color id of 4chan is off-color, and don't make the casual amalgamation between 4chan macros and "geek culture" at large, if that is even a thing.

Re: Sexual Harassment at DefCon (and Other Hacker Cons)

#215

Post by hackinthebochs » Wed, Aug 15, 2012, 10:21 PM UTC

djahng wrote: post #209

hackinthebochs wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we're talking about being hit on, then yes: at a bar, no one has the right to not be hit on. If one cannot handle having to fend off unwanted advances in environments where it is appropriate to make your attraction known, then you should stay out of that environment. However, one does have a right to not be harassed. If someone doesn't take no for an answer then they should be handled appropriately.

It's pretty clear that the issue at hand is harassment, not merely being hit on.

I thought the context was established to be hitting on, as one might do in a bar. The problem with framing it as being about "harassment" is that the term is prone to equivocation in these types of discussions. Some would argue that any attention of a sexual nature would be harassment. This is probably true in professional settings, but the grandparent established the context of discussion as a bar setting. This is what I was replying to.

How to handle actual harassment and assault is obvious: you call the fucking cops. I'm not sure why that warrants a discussion at all.

Re: Sexual Harassment at DefCon (and Other Hacker Cons)

#216

Post by sophacles » Wed, Aug 15, 2012, 10:27 PM UTC

powrtoch wrote: post #12

I wasn't sure what to think of the red/yellow cards when I first heard about them, but the suggestion that it should be bystanders them giving out is awesome . Everything we know about human psychology suggests that a disapproving peer group is a strong behavioral deterrent.

Concern: if the peer group does not have a critical mass of people who do disapprove and are willing to vocalize it, could this backfire. I sadly can see a situation where a group of the worst offenders that buddy around together in an otherwise indifferent environment decide to just all hand red cards to every woman who tells them off, doesn't reciprocate/comply, whatever, essentially using these as a weapon of shame and terror. :(

Re: Sexual Harassment at DefCon (and Other Hacker Cons)

#217

Post by ahelwer » Wed, Aug 15, 2012, 10:34 PM UTC

cbs wrote: post #214

ahelwer wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really exist in such a vacuum that you haven't seen the problems geek culture has with women? Nobody here's going to do your reading for you. Head over to Google, type in "the problem with geek culture", and get reading. There's also a great bunch of geek feminist blogs, which work to educate on problems in the community. Two particularly fantastic ones are Captain Awkward ( http://captainawkward.com/ ) and Pe…

Do you really exist in such a vacuum that you haven't seen the problems geek culture has with women? No, I can see it. Off the top of my head I can paint with broad strokes that many are stuck in their shell and terrified of them, or have no social tact and act wildly inappropriate in conversation. They can't stop staring at ladies' chests either. But "rape-culture and patriarchy [...] find a special welcoming home w…

Hmm, well if you're looking for more comparative analysis type stuff, usually a good starting point is the classic Five Geek Social Fallacies:

http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html

Also, if you follow the rabbit hole of what geeks think about the term "creepy", you start to find all sorts of stuff. The Captain Awkward blog is a good resource for that.

Re: Sexual Harassment at DefCon (and Other Hacker Cons)

#218

Post by ceol » Wed, Aug 15, 2012, 10:42 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #210

ceol wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compared to being a woman, it is not difficult to be a guy. I'm not sure how you can look at this article about how so many women get sexually assaulted or harassed at tech conventions and think, "It's so tough being a guy ." Not all women are looking for a hookup every time they leave their house. If you hit on a girl at a convention, and she thinks you're creepy, it's your fault. You shouldn't be hitting on her. Yo…

Compared to being a woman, it is not difficult to be a guy. I don't know about you, but I'm not trying to make any such comparison. Nor do I find it to be relevant. This isn't about "is it harder to be a guy or a girl," it's about the fact that it's tough to be a guy OR a girl. IOW, women aren't the only ones who have challenges when it comes to dealing with the opposite sex. And I don't believe it makes sense to loo…

If you aren't trying to make such a comparison, why did you state that in the first place? It's meaningless to state everyone has it difficult when talking about how a specific group has it a bit more difficult.

Yes, men have problems too, but we're not talking about them right now. This is about how women are treated in tech.

Re: Sexual Harassment at DefCon (and Other Hacker Cons)

#219

Post by Zarel » Wed, Aug 15, 2012, 10:44 PM UTC

minikites wrote: post #115

danielweber wrote: post #23

Nerds (and I say this as one) have problems dismissing their anti-social members, because nerds have been dismissed from other social circles, and hated it. They don't want to be the bully. And so real asshole behavior is allowed to continue far longer than it ought to. The computer security industry has its own special problems. There is a very significant segment of the population that has "do whatever you can get…

http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html "GSF1 is one of the most common fallacies, and one of the most deeply held. Many geeks have had horrible, humiliating, and formative experiences with ostracism, and the notion of being on the other side of the transaction is repugnant to them."

Re: Sexual Harassment at DefCon (and Other Hacker Cons)

#220

Post by ceol » Wed, Aug 15, 2012, 10:46 PM UTC

hackinthebochs wrote: post #206

ceol wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at a bar, no one has the right to not be hit on. Sometimes, people like to go to bars to hang out with their friends or significant others. Believe it or not, entering a bar does not give you the right to run around groping people. The sexual assault apology in this thread is unbelievable.

I made sure to qualify the context of my comment to make my points as clear as possible. These strawman arguments that inevitably get trotted out get incredibly tired. You're not going to find too many people around here to fall for that argumentation tactic. Hitting on != groping people and you damn well know it.

The original article was talking about a woman who was groped and assaulted.

To quote the parent:

> It sounds like a lot of this stuff happens at bars during events, not at the events themselves.

No one started talking about specifically being hit on until you brought it up, so either you were talking about what the woman went through and mistakingly called it "hitting on", which is what I assumed, or you're talking about something unrelated to this discussion, which is apparently what happened. Don't get upset when someone tries to bring your unrelated argument back on topic.

Either way, people don't always go to bars with the intent to get some. Assuming everyone is there for that reason is ridiculous.