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Debugging conference anti-harassment policiesDebugging conference anti-harassment policiesPosted Feb 1, 2011 17:16 UTC (Tue) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501)In reply to: Debugging conference anti-harassment policies by dneary Parent article: Debugging conference anti-harassment policies
Thanks for your detailed reply.
Note, however that the parent message I was replying to specifically referred to non-gender issues (the example given was ethnic minorities).
But you mention that "sex is different from a lot of other potentially offending things in our society". So I guess you have no issue with ethnic jokes.
I'm just trying to understand where you draw the line.
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Debugging conference anti-harassment policies Posted Feb 1, 2011 18:12 UTC (Tue) by dneary (subscriber, #55185) [Link]
> Thanks for your detailed reply.
You're welcome!
> Note, however that the parent message I was replying to specifically
The message I was replying to referred to making jokes about Canonical developers. Are Canonical developers considered an ethnic minority now? I know, being Irish I have trouble understanding the nuance.
> But you mention that "sex is different from a lot of other potentially
What I'm OK with is not the point. (PS. I'm almost always OK with self-deprecation). Racial discrimination would fall under "illegal" where I come from, and incitement to racial hatred would come under hate speech laws. That said, ethnic jokes aren't necessarily incitements to hatred or discriminatory. Honestly, I guess it would depend on the joke. To some extent, it would depend on how persecuted the minority has been, and how serious the person telling the joke was.
An example: Someone telling a Paddy Irishman joke wouldn't bother me in the slightest. Someone telling a Jewish joke does bother me, and I ask people not to tell them. Similarly, Corsican/Belgian/Swiss jokes don't bother me in France, Arab jokes do.
These things are funny (odd)... context changes everything. When a joke is the expression of someone's prejudice, it bothers me. But if it's a caricature of a culture, it doesn't. And there's a grey area between the two.
> I'm just trying to understand where you draw the line.
Personally, I draw the line at "what behaviour would be OK in the workplace?" I don't mind people telling jokes in the workplace, I do mind racism. I don't mind lads chatting about a cute girl working in the local bakery, but I do mind someone hanging a centerfold from a lad mag.
I know these things aren't the same thing... like I said, there are some grey areas, always.
Dave.
Debugging conference anti-harassment policies Posted Feb 1, 2011 18:48 UTC (Tue) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
note that 'acceptable in the workplace' would also eliminate all alcohol from the premises or any related activity.
I don't drink, but I think this would be a MAJOR change to any conference (opensource or not, tech related or not)
Debugging conference anti-harassment policies Posted Feb 1, 2011 19:22 UTC (Tue) by donwaugaman (subscriber, #4214) [Link]
I'm not a heavy drinker either, but I've worked at several jobs where offsite social events have included alcohol, though usually with a cash bar.
I'd think the analogous setting at a conference, not part of the technical presentation but rather at a time and place designated for socializing either at the conference venue or elsewhere, would be more than acceptable.
Debugging conference anti-harassment policies Posted Feb 1, 2011 22:40 UTC (Tue) by dtlin (✭ supporter ✭, #36537) [Link] On one hand, alcohol seems acceptable in at least some workplaces in the US. Here at Google, there are weekly on-site social events with free alcohol (beer and wine and sometimes more exotic drinks), and individual teams often have their own (whiskey seems popular).On the other hand, my prior workplace was once similar, but banned all alcoholic beverages after an incident with one violent employee. So even in the US, what's acceptable can vary.
Debugging conference anti-harassment policies Posted Feb 4, 2011 23:06 UTC (Fri) by Tet (subscriber, #5433) [Link] 'acceptable in the workplace' would also eliminate all alcohol from the premisesFrom your workplace, perhaps. Not from mine. Note that many countries outside the US have a much more relaxed attitude to drinking at work. It's reasonably common here to drink at lunchtime. Less so while actually in the office, but not unheard of even then. All of which just points to the difficulty of drafting an acceptable behaviour policy when standards of "acceptable" differ so much among attendees.
Debugging conference anti-harassment policies Posted Feb 5, 2011 1:18 UTC (Sat) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
Even my US workplace has reasonable regular in-office events with alcohol. Google's Mountain View (at least) campus has one every week. One of the things I noticed when I moved to the US was that there was a very different dynamic in drinking at work when compared to the UK, but it's not as inherently as puritanical as some people imply.
Debugging conference anti-harassment policies Posted Feb 5, 2011 5:55 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
the point is that if you say 'same rules as the workplace' for a conference, for many (but not all) workplaces, this includes no drinking.
yes, it very much depends on the company, but if you are saying that you must meet 'workplace standards' to avoid offending people, don't you have to err towards the stricter workplace standards?
If you don't, then I'm sure you can find workplaces where the types of images that were being complained about here are accepted.
for that matter, what do you think the 'workplace standards' of a porn company are?
Debugging conference anti-harassment policies Posted Feb 5, 2011 5:57 UTC (Sat) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
continuing on 'workplace standards', think about the mandatory dress codes for women in Muslim dominated areas, if you tried to enforce those 'standards' on a conference you would get people even more up in arms
Debugging conference anti-harassment policies Posted Feb 5, 2011 6:19 UTC (Sat) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
You're looking at this in the wrong direction. It's not "Are there companies where this kind of behaviour is unacceptable" - it's "Is an arbitrary company likely to consider this kind of behaviour acceptable". In the majority of the western world you're unlikely to win a lawsuit for constructive dismissal on the basis of being exposed to coworkers being allowed to drink alcohol in specific social situations. Unless you've explicitly chosen to join a company where exposure to sexual imagery is acceptable, an analogous situation would probably result in significant damages.
Debugging conference anti-harassment policies Posted Feb 2, 2011 7:16 UTC (Wed) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]
Paddy Irishman jokes annoy me. If such jokes were told with Ahmad, or Krishnan or Ishmael as the object, they'd never be acceptable. And the cultural group who most enjoy telling Paddy Irishmen jokes *do* have a history of pretty overt discrimination against Irish. Recent enough that my mother remembers "No Blacks, Asians or Irish" text in ads *in the papers* for rooms to let in London and that I've experienced lesser degrees of it myself in more recent times.
So no, Paddy Irishman jokes should not be acceptable, no more than jokes about the stupidity of any other group of people.
Also rather disgusting is the modern resurgence in rather cruel and nasty jokes about having ginger hair.
Debugging conference anti-harassment policies Posted Feb 3, 2011 2:44 UTC (Thu) by ofeeley (guest, #36105) [Link]
I read Dave Neary's comment as saying that it all depends on the context _and_ that it's irrelevant what we're all individually happy with or not: If we're aware that the potential exists to irritate someone then it's best to take that into account and avoid potential offense.
I'm not arguing against your own assessment of the annoyance. I have, personally, been both annoyed and also amused by Paddy jokes. It all depends on context: my friends can make them, others can't. I can imagine that it's much worse for someone with a more immediate source of unease.
I personally enjoyed Pesce's talk and wasn't in the least offended by it and was a bit surprised at the furore after I'd read the notes and viewed the slides, so probably it's useful for me that an explicit policy exists to let me be aware that some other people feel very differently.
That said, I do wonder where is the logical endpoint of avoiding offense once it's spelt out as a quasi-legal policy instead of being a set of cultural norms? The subjective nature of determining whether offense has been given (or was intended to be given) makes this very grey territory and the language[1] of the generic anti-harrasment policy enters boldly into this at several points, e.g. "Booth staff (including volunteers) should not use sexualized clothing/uniforms/costumes, or otherwise create a sexualized environment." Who exactly determines what is "sexualized clothing"? Is this according to Western norms? Do we accomodate the viewpoints of members of various Judaeo-Christian religions of a more conservative type?
A glib answer that it's the conference organizers who make the determination does nothing to answer the core question. On the whole this seems like a poor candidate to choose in order to exercise a policy which was initially debated[2] in the context of stopping the problem of women being "stalked, leered at, and physically assaulted at conferences".
1. http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/index.php?title=Conference_...
Debugging conference anti-harassment policies Posted Feb 10, 2011 0:52 UTC (Thu) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] If we're aware that the potential exists to irritate someone then it's best to take that into account and avoid potential offense.I think this is a key point. Different people have different standards of offensiveness, and we need to keep that in mind when deciding what we want to say and do. And, perhaps more important, it is the role of the listener, not the speaker, to decide if speech is offensive. If a substantial group of people* thinks that something is offensive, then it is offensive even if the speaker meant it innocently, though I would hope that innocent intent- and a good apology- would be enough to mollify an offended minority. That said, it's possible to get carried away with trying to avoid offense. It's important to be a welcoming community, but it's also important to have room for open debate and honest differences of opinion. You don't want to become so sensitive that you let people use pretend outrage as an excuse to shut down opinions they don't like. That doesn't seem to be the case in this instance- it doesn't sound as though anyone objects to Mr. Pesce's opinions, just his way of getting them across- but it is something to guard against. *Exactly what "substantial" means is obviously open to debate. I think it depends on the nature of the offensive content, and on the group that's being offended. If the offensive behavior has a target (e.g. sexually suggestive pictures of women or ethnic jokes), a large minority of the target group is substantial even if- maybe even especially if- they're a tiny fraction of the whole population.
Debugging conference anti-harassment policies Posted Feb 10, 2011 10:08 UTC (Thu) by yeti-dn (guest, #46560) [Link]
> If we're aware that the potential exists to irritate someone then
> it's best to take that into account and avoid potential offense.
Well, I find talk like this offensive. This is no joke. Political correctness offends me more than even many direct personal attacks. I would be contradicting myself asking for banning of correctness on the basis that it offends me - but well, perhaps I will start doing so anyway because hypocrites might not be able to comprehend the absurdity.
Debugging conference anti-harassment policies Posted Feb 10, 2011 14:06 UTC (Thu) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
So it offends you whenever somebody gives a presentation and doesn't include nudity?
Debugging conference anti-harassment policies Posted Feb 12, 2011 8:04 UTC (Sat) by shmget (subscriber, #58347) [Link]
"So it offends you whenever somebody gives a presentation and doesn't include nudity?"
Are you really trying to hit all the logical fallacies in the book ?
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