The dark side of open source conferences

I'm a gay man on the fringes of open source in the US. I've been to way too many linuxy/open sourcey conferences (worked for SuSE etc) and I've pretty much never noticed the harassment of attendees. The only unusal topical thing that happened is I actually got picked up -- in a very careful and deferential and polite manner. We went on a pleasant date though it didn't really go anywhere.

Back on topic: I don't see these things happening. Yes, I would see the tasteless sexualized environment thigns from time to time, and I would frown on them, complain about them to co-attendees, and sometimes tell the purveyeors of them that they reflect poorly on the company. But I did not notice any directed harassment, intimidation, or gender demeaning going on.

However, when I talk to women about the topic I find out that they absolutely *are* happening. I get all kinds of stories from subtly awful where women are looked past for opinions from their male colleagues to the overtly bizaree like the conversation about "You're not an engineer. There are no women engineers." Harassment of this sort has a tendency to happen when other parties aren't around or involved. It's easy to miss if people don't speak up about it.