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Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment mattersAurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment mattersPosted Aug 15, 2012 17:59 UTC (Wed) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953)In reply to: Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters by cjsh Parent article: Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters
I do not agree. People that can behave as professionals do not create that tension. There is not one drop of "sexual tension" in my office because being professionals we are capable of keeping our personal and work lives separate.
I'm a big believer that people that work together shouldn't even be able to date as it creates a work atmosphere that isn't professional. Although conference attendees aren't necessarily coworkers, they should keep their personal life and professional life segregated and anyone that isn't capable of that shouldn't be attending the conference.
The behavior that's been described at these conferences would get people fired and black balled in my profession.
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Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 15, 2012 18:11 UTC (Wed) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] I'm a big believer that people should not be required or requested to quit their job simply because the only person they have ever experienced a mutual attraction with is one of their colleagues. (Subordinates is another matter.)
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 15, 2012 18:57 UTC (Wed) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link]
Allow me to clarify. The best policy I ever saw was at my former employer (a fortune 500).
1. Coworkers are not allowed to date without a dating contract, dating without informing your line manager is grounds for termination.
2. IF both people desire to date (you have to follow the sex harassment policy here, asking once is fine, more than that and you cross the boundary to harassment), they must go to their line managers and put in motion the following steps:
A. Both parties sign dating contracts with their managers explaining the rules about supervision and such and that if things do not work out what will happen and what the consequences will be if it turns bad.
B. While dating, both parties are bared from being in a supervisory role of each other and preference will be given to working on separate teams (even if that impacts career opportunity). If that interferes with promotions that is the cost of the relationship. If one party is promoted to a role that would require supervising the other party said party will be moved to another department or position.
C. If the dating does not work out there will be a very strict line about harassment. This means is one party has hurt feelings and begins to bring up personal information at work to harass the other person they will be warned and if it continues they will be fired. Any ongoing harassment or unwanted non-work related attention will result in the same consequences.
D. If either party is cannot work with the person they were dating (where there isn't harassment, they just won't work with them) the company will try to make arrangement for a transfer but if there is no opening or equivalent position then it may be grounds for termination.
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Almost everyone thinks dating should be fine, that is until they start thinking about what happens if it works out or what happens if it doesn't work out and one of the parties starts acting like a child. Dating should be absolutely prohibited without a contract explaining the terms if for no other reason than to protect people from the nasty career consequences. Keep in mind when the dating goes bad its quite common for one party to start harassing the other party in way that quickly creates the legal definition of a hostile workplace.
People also tend to forget the impact on other coworkers and how disruptive dating is to the work atmosphere. Two people giving each other googly eye's disrupts the other workers and hurts productivity and when it goes bad it makes the atmosphere so uncomfortable productivity drops and the best people will start looking for other jobs. Any interoffice dating is very disruptive and it should be heavily discouraged.
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 15, 2012 20:23 UTC (Wed) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link]
Do you mean this seriously ?
Having to ask/tell your manager if you want to date somebody ? Isn't this absolutely their own private issue ?
Alex
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 15, 2012 22:10 UTC (Wed) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]
Are you sure that policy was applied world wide? Your summary to me seems like a USA policy, applied only there and maybe Canada.
e.g. in .nl, I consider most of these items to be personal. A company thinking they can dictate what I do privately? Urgh! I think there is an unwritten rule, that is when two people are dating and one is directly or indirectly reporting to the other person.
I have no problems with rules about what happens during work.
Personal note: I think at one point the company I work for had 9 known couples out of 140 people or so. 140 is not the total size of the company.
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 16, 2012 1:46 UTC (Thu) by duffy (guest, #31787) [Link]
I'm sorry, I think that policy is unreasonable. Treat your employees like adults and for the most part they'll act like adults - unless they're completely incapable in which case such a contract will not change matters.
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 16, 2012 13:21 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] The best policy I ever saw was at my former employer That sort of »policy« would very probably be illegal here in Germany, where people's private lives are not their employers' business.
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 16, 2012 21:26 UTC (Thu) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link]
Is this for real? Please tell me it's not for real.
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 16, 2012 22:46 UTC (Thu) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...
USofAns are really funny!
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 17, 2012 16:30 UTC (Fri) by efraim (subscriber, #65977) [Link]
Hardly see anything funny here. Sounds like sensible, if strict, policy.
Nobody forces you to expose your private live - there are just requirements to make sure you can do your job properly. Probably part of your employment contract.
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 24, 2012 17:34 UTC (Fri) by JanC_ (guest, #34940) [Link] As some other people already indicated, that policy would be likely considered harassment by your employer here, that's how "sensible" it is... Who you date is part of your private life, and as such it's legally forbidden (in many/most jurisdictions here in Europe) for your employer to force you to disclose this. Except in special situations, but a labour judge would only accept that for proportionally serious reasons. Proportional means that the more your privacy gets violated, the stronger the reason for it has to be. In this policy there is a very invasive violation of your privacy which is mostly unnecessary and ineffective. There is too much "collateral damage". Of course a company can make rules about the requirement to report a conflict of interest when it happens, but that's something entirely different (not every relationship causes one, and they can occur because of other reasons too). Same goes about harassment: of course a company can make a policy about that, but it should target harassment, and not innocent bystanders.
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 27, 2012 19:11 UTC (Mon) by hummassa (subscriber, #307) [Link]
> Nobody forces you to expose your private live
?! What about "Coworkers are not allowed to date without a dating contract, dating without informing your line manager is grounds for termination." ???
This seems like *forcing* (under penalty of termination) someone to *expose* (informing your line manager) your *private life* (dating).
> there are just requirements to make sure you can do your job properly.
Adults can do their job properly even if they work with their dates/spouses.
> Probably part of your employment contract.
Probably not, in any part of the planet that isn't the USofA, and this is the reason I think this is IMMENSELY funny. In many countries this clauses are just illegal, null and void; in others, the attempt to enforce rules like those can be construed as harassment, with criminal penalties.
Dating coworkers Posted Aug 28, 2012 1:53 UTC (Tue) by man_ls (subscriber, #15091) [Link] Note that, while dating is a private matter, marriage is a public affair. Companies in e.g. Spain can regulate the roles for married couples: both spouses sometimes cannot work in the same area, or one reporting to the other, and so on. But I have never heard of a company where they tried to regulate private dating. (I worked in one place where dating coworkers was frowned upon, but of course not grounds for termination.)
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 15, 2012 19:58 UTC (Wed) by perlwolf (guest, #46060) [Link] Many decades ago, I worked for a large company which no longer exists. They had a policy that spouses could not both be employees of the company.When two particular people (one of whom I knew) were about to get married, their managers gave congratulations. Then the manager of the woman, a keypunch operator (I said it was decades ago), told her that she would have to leave the company. Her fiancee, the lead developer of the company's only commercial software product, went to his manager and explained that he could find another job more easily than she could, so he was going to give notice. The policy quickly changed and both of them stayed with the company. (I don't think they had any bad feelings in the end, but simply realized that a good-intentioned policy had fatal flaws, and they had done their part in getting the flaws recognized.) The automatic assumption that it was the woman who would have to leave the company was definitely a part of the mindset in those days, and it it still around in many forms.
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 15, 2012 18:46 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
> I do not agree. People that can behave as professionals do not create that tension.
This is entirely and 100% unrealistic. You put men and women together you WILL get sexual tension. There is absolutely no way to avoid it. It's part of what makes humans humans.
> There is not one drop of "sexual tension" in my office because being professionals we are capable of keeping our personal and work lives separate.
If you think that it is only because you are not paying enough attention. Adult human interaction is very subtle.
Either that or you are making yourself oblivious on purpose. This is a common approach that people use to try to avoid stress.
> they should keep their personal life and professional life segregated and anyone that isn't capable of that shouldn't be attending the conference.
They can't. The definition of professional is that your profession is a major part of your life. It's like trying to make your left arm is separate entity from your body through shear force of will.
> The behavior that's been described at these conferences would get people fired and black balled in my profession.
Don't be so high and mighty.
What people CAN do and SHOULD do is control their behavior, be aware of what is happening around them, and treat females with the respect that they are _ENTITLED_ to. This is a requirement for proper male behavior.
It's disgraceful to act in a disrespectful manner towards females. Mistakes and lapses in judgement are normal and they are going to happen so it's important to be willing to cut people a lot of slack. But a male that can't behave is liable for some small amount of justified physical violence.. including bodily ejection from a conference.
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 15, 2012 19:31 UTC (Wed) by rahvin (subscriber, #16953) [Link] This is entirely and 100% unrealistic. You put men and women together you WILL get sexual tension. There is absolutely no way to avoid it. It's part of what makes humans humans.If you truly believe that I feel sorry for you. We might not be able to control what we feel, but we can certainly control how we react to that. Most people are perfectly capable of putting those feelings on the back burner and dealing with them outside of work. If you think that it is only because you are not paying enough attention. Adult human interaction is very subtle. Either that or you are making yourself oblivious on purpose. This is a common approach that people use to try to avoid stress.Or I could live in a state where such interaction is not only discouraged but considered highly offensive. Or it could be that being that I work in a career that has direct public interaction (as a government agent) and that such behavior would result in the loss of contract work and would highly damage your career. Speculation is dangerous. They can't. The definition of professional is that your profession is a major part of your life. It's like trying to make your left arm is separate entity from your body through shear force of will.You have a very different definition of professional than I do. In fact I think it's a highly fringe definition. My profession is what I do for a living. Being professional means being able to separate emotion and business and focus on what you are paid to do not what is underneath your coworkers clothes or other non work related items. Everyone I know is perfectly capable of segmenting and segregating their personal and professional lives. Don't be so high and mighty.I was doing neither, I was stating a fact about my profession. You would be mistaken to believe my profession and your profession have anything to do with each other. Sexism and even things that qualify as harassment do exist in some areas of my profession (primarily the areas where they interface directly with contractors and blue collar workers) because it's highly male dominated profession but I stated a fact when I said it doesn't exist in my office. Part of that is the local culture, part is because all but one or two people are married and the rest is because you won't be long in this career if you can't put your emotions aside and behave like a responsible adult. My profession went through this BS in the 90's when the house was cleaned and those incapable of controlling themselves found new careers.
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 15, 2012 20:08 UTC (Wed) by mpr22 (subscriber, #60784) [Link] If you truly believe that I feel sorry for you. We might not be able to control what we feel, but we can certainly control how we react to that. Most people are perfectly capable of putting those feelings on the back burner and dealing with them outside of work. My expectation would be that people who are sexually attracted to each other are going to experience less sexual tension if they are in an active sexual relationship with each other than if they aren't.
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 15, 2012 19:41 UTC (Wed) by apoelstra (subscriber, #75205) [Link]
>It's like trying to make your left arm is separate entity from your body through shear force of will.
I think you mean "sheer force of will". Separating your left arm by shear force is certainly possible. ;)
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 16, 2012 14:56 UTC (Thu) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link]
> This is entirely and 100% unrealistic. You put men and women together you WILL get sexual tension. There is absolutely no way to avoid it. It's part of what makes humans humans.
It's part of what we inherited from our animal ancestors. The whole point of being human is being something *more* than an animal.
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 15, 2012 19:18 UTC (Wed) by cjsh (guest, #83360) [Link]
I agree that people can act in a professional manner, just that some can't. As far as no dating at work goes, sorry but I put being human at the top of the list above being professional, and try to maintain a balance between my needs and my employers needs. As they say the key to life is balance.
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 15, 2012 20:48 UTC (Wed) by louie (subscriber, #3285) [Link] I agree that people can act in a professional manner, just that some can't. Yes, and those people should be removed from that profession. That's why we call it "unprofessional." (I'm also guessing that if that were the norm, lots of those people who "can't" do this would probably suddenly find that they can.)
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 16, 2012 8:40 UTC (Thu) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link]
Most of the ones who "can't" turn out to manage it afterall, if the social setting and power-dynamics is such that it's clear they won't get away with it.
They somehow manage to hold back the urge to lick the neck of the HR-woman interviewing them for a new job. They somehow manage to keep their hands *off* the ass of the police-woman stopping them in traffic. By some miracolous application of will, they tend to refrain from referring to unknown women as "baby" if a sufficiently large male stands by their side.
This tells me 99% of them *can* behave, they just don't think it's needed.
It's our job to tell them that they *must*.
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 16, 2012 13:08 UTC (Thu) by fb (subscriber, #53265) [Link]
> I agree that people can act in a professional manner, just that some can't.
People that can not act in a professional manner should either change jobs by themselves or just get fired. Really.
Harassment due to sexism, racism or just any other form of power play does not belong to the workplace of a civilized country.
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 15, 2012 21:43 UTC (Wed) by rvfh (subscriber, #31018) [Link]
> People that can behave as professionals do not create that tension.
I understand what you mean, but let me just point out that it is not related to the job to me. One has to respect others at all times, that's the basis of democracy. If anyone starts harassing someone else, then they're breaking the 'equality' part of the Human Rights.
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 16, 2012 8:24 UTC (Thu) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link]
Oh, I *do* agree that when you shake people together, there's no way to prevent attraction from existing.
But the problem isn't with attraction. The problem is with *behaviour*. Essentially all people are able to be attracted to someone, and nevertheless treat the same people with respect.
The atmosphere should *demand* this, when it does, essentially everyone conforms. There's a *reason* it's fairly rare that a male will grab the ass of his female boss, but fairly common that he'll grab the ass of some random female in a bar. The reason is that he thinks he'll get away with it, because the social setting considers it "acceptible", or if not, then atleast close enough that nothing is likely to happen to him.
The problem isn't that he's unable to control himself. The problem is that he doesn't think he *needs* to in a given situation.
Technical conferences should have an atmosphere where people are aware that they need to behave.
That simple, and that difficult.
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 16, 2012 11:44 UTC (Thu) by niner (subscriber, #26151) [Link]
"I'm a big believer that people that work together shouldn't even be able to date as it creates a work atmosphere that isn't professional."
Considering that about a quarter to a third of marriages are somehow related to the workplace, I think your demand is completely unrealistic. Apart from that I'd rather work with real people than with professional robots.
"Although conference attendees aren't necessarily coworkers, they should keep their personal life and professional life segregated and anyone that isn't capable of that shouldn't be attending the conference."
So I'm not allowed anymore to socialize with people at conferences, have some (maybe even too many) drinks in the evening and have fun that may even be unrelated to the conference's topic? Why have conferences at all? We can have a perfectly impresonal and professional atmosphere online after all. No need to meet.
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 16, 2012 14:52 UTC (Thu) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link]
> People that can behave as professionals do not create that tension.
It's not a matter of being professional. It's a matter of being a civilized person and not a caveman.
Aurora: DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters Posted Aug 17, 2012 8:09 UTC (Fri) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link]
> I'm a big believer that people that work together shouldn't even be able to date as it creates a work atmosphere that isn't professional. Although conference attendees aren't necessarily coworkers, they should keep their personal life and professional life segregated and anyone that isn't capable of that shouldn't be attending the conference.
My employer, a company of about 300 employees, not only does not discourage dating fellow coworkers or recommending spouses or other relatives for employment, but it actually *encourages* it. Because they realized that happy employees are good employees. Sure, disrespectful behaviour and harassment should never be tolerated, but other than that putting restrictions on private life does not make people happy.
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