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O'Reilly: Sexual Harassment at Technical Conferences: A Big No-No
Responding to a considerable amount of pressure to adopt an anti-harassment
policy for OSCON, Tim O'Reilly has posted a
statement on inappropriate behavior at O'Reilly events. "While
we're still trying to understand exactly what might have happened at Oscon
or other O'Reilly conferences in the past, it's become clear that this is a
real, long-standing issue in the technical community. And we do know this:
we don't condone harassment or offensive behavior, at our conferences or
anywhere. It's counter to our company values. More importantly, it's
counter to our values as human beings."
(Log in to post comments)
O'Reilly: Sexual Harassment at Technical Conferences: A Big No-No Posted Jul 25, 2011 21:29 UTC (Mon) by kragilkragil2 (guest, #76172) [Link]
Only at Technical Conferences is it a Big No-No, everywhere else it is perfectly fine and welcome. They want it.
Just like farting, which is cool when you are with your bros, but not when you are with your parents in law. And yeah, I didn't RTFA. Just hated the headline.
O'Reilly: Sexual Harassment at Technical Conferences: A Big No-No Posted Jul 25, 2011 22:21 UTC (Mon) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]
...and of course non-sexual harassment is perfectly OK.
O'Reilly: Sexual Harassment at Technical Conferences: A Big No-No Posted Jul 26, 2011 10:26 UTC (Tue) by fb (subscriber, #53265) [Link] Perhaps they are spelling it out because this specific form of harassment "is a real, long-standing issue in the technical community"?
O'Reilly: Sexual Harassment at Technical Conferences: A Big No-No Posted Jul 25, 2011 22:34 UTC (Mon) by flewellyn (subscriber, #5047) [Link]
I'm not certain I understand the specifics of your objection. Do you object because they feel the need to spell out this policy?
O'Reilly: Sexual Harassment at Technical Conferences: A Big No-No Posted Jul 26, 2011 16:57 UTC (Tue) by kragilkragil2 (guest, #76172) [Link]
No, just the "at Technical Conferences" just sounds (to me) like it would be OK at other venues.
O'Reilly: Sexual Harassment at Technical Conferences: A Big No-No Posted Jul 30, 2011 17:33 UTC (Sat) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]
Oh,kragilkragil2, my friend. Sexually predatory geeks have always been the scourge of our otherwise enlightened society.
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.
O'Reilly: Sexual Harassment at Technical Conferences: A Big No-No Posted Aug 3, 2011 15:10 UTC (Wed) by jtc (subscriber, #6246) [Link]
'No, just the "at Technical Conferences" just sounds (to me) like it would be OK at other venues.'
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?
O'Reilly: Sexual Harassment at Technical Conferences: A Big No-No Posted Jul 25, 2011 22:47 UTC (Mon) by antifuchs (guest, #34569) [Link]
Agreed. Could the editors have chosen an even more diminutive headline than "A Big No-No"?
Way to ruin good news, LWN. )-:
O'Reilly: Sexual Harassment at Technical Conferences: A Big No-No Posted Jul 25, 2011 22:57 UTC (Mon) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] Um, excuse me? We almost always preserve the original headline when pointing to outside items like this. The headline was O'Reilly's, not ours. I don't believe we "ruined" anything...?
O'Reilly: Sexual Harassment at Technical Conferences: A Big No-No Posted Jul 25, 2011 23:28 UTC (Mon) by antifuchs (guest, #34569) [Link]
Wow, sorry. I only now consciously read the headline at O'Reilly's site. That above sentence should read "Way to ruin good news, O'Reilly".
O'Reilly: Sexual Harassment at Technical Conferences: A Big No-No Posted Jul 26, 2011 9:21 UTC (Tue) by endecotp (guest, #36428) [Link]
> We almost always preserve the original headline when
> pointing to outside items like this.
And people frequently don't realise that. Consider adding quotation marks.
O'Reilly: Sexual Harassment at Technical Conferences: A Big No-No Posted Jul 26, 2011 9:49 UTC (Tue) by roblucid (subscriber, #48964) [Link]
Good suggestion!
LWN is unusual in not spinning news overly, most news sources are prone to distortion, so highlighting quotes is good idea.
O'Reilly: Sexual Harassment at Technical Conferences: A Big No-No Posted Jul 27, 2011 16:57 UTC (Wed) by landley (guest, #6789) [Link]
You mean LWN is unusual in still actually performing journalism?
(Well, yellow journalism is alive and well in the US. Under attack in the UK.)
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 26, 2011 2:38 UTC (Tue) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link] I hope they will forbid terrorism at technical conferences too. Terrorists should stick with non-technical events.
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 26, 2011 2:45 UTC (Tue) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] I suspect that most events would consider terrorist acts to be contrary to their codes of conduct already; probably no special action is required.Are you worried about terrorists at events? Unlike the sort of behavior addressed by the action in the parent article, acts of terrorism at conferences haven't been much of a problem. Certain vendor keynotes come close, I must admit, but I think they fall short of the bar.
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 26, 2011 5:30 UTC (Tue) by karthik_s1 (subscriber, #60525) [Link]
"Certain vendor keynotes come close, I must admit"
+1. ROTFL.
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 26, 2011 9:37 UTC (Tue) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
I think the point is: why put rules into codes of conduct of some conferences, when these rules are already coded into the law? Secual harassment is already forbidden. Codes of conduct will neither change nor enforce that.
It's the same as back then when I couldn't understand why we would put up rules against bringing forbidden drugs to our LAN parties. Why forbid something that's already forbidden? Just makes no sense to me.
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 26, 2011 10:07 UTC (Tue) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link]
It sometimes makes sense to explicitly forbid things that are already forbidden. The point is to make a clear statement and thus influence behaviour, and also, sometimes, to clarify that the organizers themselves are unwilling to accept certain behaviour, *additionally* to the law not accepting same.
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.
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 26, 2011 10:11 UTC (Tue) by fb (subscriber, #53265) [Link]
In many settings, reminding people of their obligations and of your expectation of behavior can lead to less incidents.
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.
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 26, 2011 18:03 UTC (Tue) by vaurora (guest, #38407) [Link]
Great explanation! Any chance I can quote you elsewhere?
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 27, 2011 12:42 UTC (Wed) by fb (subscriber, #53265) [Link]
> Any chance I can quote you elsewhere?
Sure!
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 26, 2011 18:08 UTC (Tue) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
Thanks, I think I now understand the reasoning.
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 26, 2011 11:37 UTC (Tue) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
Not all sexual harassment is criminal, and not all criminal acts result in prosecution. Reminding people that there are certain classes of behaviour that may get them removed from the conference even if the police aren't involved is a deterrent to engaging in that behaviour.
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 27, 2011 17:18 UTC (Wed) by landley (guest, #6789) [Link]
> I think the point is: why put rules into codes of conduct of some
> conferences, when these rules are already coded into the law?
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
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 29, 2011 5:14 UTC (Fri) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link]
Can anyone provide an actual example of "sexual harassment" that occurred at a "Linux Conference"? No, I'm not looking for names of the people involved, just the facts of what happened. All I've heard is "it happens all the time"-type comments which have way too little detail to judge the severity of the problem.
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 29, 2011 5:56 UTC (Fri) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
Absolutely! Try http://tinyurl.com/3bd28ww .
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 29, 2011 6:35 UTC (Fri) by dark (subscriber, #8483) [Link] How desperately unhelpful.
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 29, 2011 15:25 UTC (Fri) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
No, what's unhelpful is saying things like 'Can anyone provide an actual example of "sexual harassment" that occurred at a "Linux Conference"?' when even cursory research would demonstrate that such examples abound.
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 29, 2011 15:46 UTC (Fri) by dark (subscriber, #8483) [Link] Simply replying "even cursory research would demonstrate that such examples abound" would have been ordinary unhelpfulness. You definitely went above and beyond by adding deceit and mockery and wasting the audience's time.
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 31, 2011 0:45 UTC (Sun) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link]
Actually, I was looking for actual facts, not a web search of people blogging about how bad the situation is. A pointer to actual first person information please.
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 31, 2011 0:54 UTC (Sun) by dlang (✭ supporter ✭, #313) [Link]
I don't have any links handy, but I have seen some first-person reports.
that said, I attend a couple conferences a year and have never witnessed such behavior. (well, there was one presentation that included things that I found offensive that could have been taken as 'sexual harassment' by people who have that agenda, but I took it as bad taste on the part of the presenter, not targeted at any gender)
so while I have no doubt that it happens to some people somewhere, I don't think it's the major problem that people are making it out to be.
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 31, 2011 4:19 UTC (Sun) by sumanah (guest, #59891) [Link]
Did you read https://lwn.net/Articles/417952/ ? (Late 2010.) Another link: http://blog.valerieaurora.org/2010/11/08/its-not-just-noi... .
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 31, 2011 17:48 UTC (Sun) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
People blogging about how bad the situation is and discussing real events that really occurred to real people? Seriously. Try reading some of them.
First-person reports are rare. That's for a variety of reasons, but the most notable one is that when people *have* made posts about things that actually happened to them they end up with people calling them liars or sluts, told that there's no way that anyone would want to sexually harass someone as ugly as them, told that they should be flattered by the attention, told that since the police didn't get involved there's nothing to complain about and worse. They've already been through something traumatic, so why should they invite further abuse? The internet has spoken. Naming and shaming doesn't work, it just makes things worse.
So yes, most of what you'll find ends up being anonymised or poorly cited. That doesn't make it any less real or less severe.
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 31, 2011 22:20 UTC (Sun) by clugstj (subscriber, #4020) [Link]
"So yes, most of what you'll find ends up being anonymised or poorly cited. That doesn't make it any less real or less severe."
Without actual first-person reports, why would anyone believe it really happened? Good grief, are we really at the point where we believe anything that anyone blogs about? (and by the way, I'm not saying it doesn't happen, it may well be a deplorable situation, but with the low level of integrity in the new media [except LWN, of course], I think a certain degree of skepticism is reasonable.)
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 31, 2011 22:56 UTC (Sun) by mjg59 (subscriber, #23239) [Link]
You're not saying it doesn't happen, you're just saying that you don't believe anyone who says that it happens? It's trivial to determine that most of the people who write about this are respected in the community for entirely unrelated reasons. Why would they start making things up?
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Aug 1, 2011 15:26 UTC (Mon) by duffy (guest, #31787) [Link]
Refusing to recognize that these things happen unless you are provided all of the salacious details is insensitive at best.
Do you really fully understand the severe consequences of coming out with the details of a sexual harassment incident?
Do you not understand how such incidents might be not only frightening to talk about as it may result various forms of 'retribution' for outing the incident, but also that the details of the incident in question might be highly embarrassing and traumatic to disclose in public?
If you weren't involved, I don't think the details of such an incident are any of your business.
OK, now that sexual harassment has been deal with, how about terrorism? Posted Jul 30, 2011 18:04 UTC (Sat) by sbergman27 (guest, #10767) [Link]
I heard that Bin Laden had something planned for the kernel summit following the Linux 2.6.911 release. But fortunately, Linus and the US military headed that one off at the pass.
O'Reilly: Sexual Harassment at Technical Conferences: A Big No-No Posted Jul 29, 2011 11:53 UTC (Fri) by tialaramex (subscriber, #21167) [Link]
The LWN text says that there's a "considerable amount of pressure". Would someone like to quantify that? It also says the pressure is to "adopt an anti-harassment policy" but in English this sentence is ambiguous as to whether a specific unnamed policy is urged, or just the general idea that OSCON should have some policy in this matter. That would be worth clearing up too.
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