O'Reilly: Sexual Harassment at Technical Conferences: A Big No-No

Male/Female, Gay/Nongay, Good Looking/Not, Old/Young...

We should probably have more identifying info printed on our name tags. And be sequestered in separated halls, with only virtual access to members of other groups.

But seriously, we had a really slimy sales guy working for the company I used to work for. We sent him to a sales conference and got a call from a conference attendee who was literally in tears after an encounter with him. Somehow, he managed to keep his job. I always thought somewhat less of our company owner after that. I suppose thought he was doing the right thing. I'll give him credit for that. But talk about bad calls. The guy he decided to spare was a slime-ball. But he was good at sales.

How is what you appear to be claiming compatible with this sentence from the O'Reilly quote: "And we do know this: we don't condone harassment or offensive behavior, at our conferences or anywhere."

How does 'anywhere' not cover other venues?

And people frequently don't realise that. Consider adding quotation marks.

Having pot is illegal most places, it doesn't -nessecarily- follow from that that people will generally toss you out from their property if you're found to be having any. Thus a policy that "anyone caught using illegal drugs will be ejected" can make sense, despite the fact that the drugs would be illegal even without the rule.

Furthermore, many places have rules that are significantly more restrictive than the law is. In this specific case for example, they say that "sexual or racist comments or images in slides (...) is not appropriate", and that you may not be invited back if such is found. This is significantly more restrictive than the law is. There's no law against showing a slide with (say!) some perl-code and a bikini-clad woman.

A little anecdote for you: When I taught university classes during my phd, I found that spelling out what I considered to be plagiarism and making it clear that it would not be tolerated lead to zero "copied" assignments being delivered. If you care to ask, yes, the first time I taught classes I didn't bring plagiarism explicitly, and yes, I did get incidents.

I believe you are analyzing social behavior by using a form of logic that applies to computer science and math (at least that is a mistake I make often). People are not as rational as we often expect them to be. At least not all the time, and certainly not with respect to every aspect of their lives.

You need rules, and you need to make sure people are _aware_ of the rules. For frequently broken rules, you have to bring up the issue often.

Because to enforce the law you have to go to the police. To enforce conference policy you don't have to leave the building.

"Management is not responsible for lost or stolen property" doesn't make theft legal, but "Management takes stolen property personally. has installed hidden cameras, and will nail perpetrators to the ceiling with railroad spikes" sets a different tone about guarding one's belongings. In both cases you can go to the police, but one's a bit more of a deterrent.

If theft was as common at Linux conferences as sexual harassment is, we wouldn't be arguing about the importance of the problem. "Oh, I'm a poor college student who lives locally, has no laptop, eats only ramen, and lives in a bad part of town so instinctively guards all belongings from pickpockets, and nobody's stolen anything from me" doesn't mean there isn't a problem. (Most Linux developers aren't targets for sexual anything, that's why it's called Unix.)

Rob