At the end of this comment, DJ Grothe said the following about the “rumors” of harassment at skeptical conferences:
So much of that feels to me more like rumor and distasteful locker room banter, often pretty mean-spirited, especially when it is from just one or a few women recounting sexual exploits they’ve had with speakers who are eventually deemed as “skeezy,” and whom they feel should be not allowed to speak at such conferences going forward.
Emphasis mine.
I know everyone else has taken him to task over this quote already. I just want to present a hypothetical in case DJ reads this. It’s entirely fictional, and as far as I know has never actually happened to anyone at any conference.
Let’s say, DJ, that someone — a stranger with whom you’ve had no previous interactions, but perhaps someone you know from the community in a vague and distant sort of way, perhaps because they were a speaker at some other convention or a member of a forum you frequent or are ostensibly responsible for — approached you at a convention. So you have a pretty good idea they have some idea who YOU are, even if you’re not really familiar with them.
Let’s say that this person suggested, entirely jokingly, that you were just tasty enough to eat and that they should taze you, stuff you in the back of a van, drive you to their home and lock you in their basement so they can rape you whenever they wanted. Let’s further say that this person appears to have the physical means to do it, and makes a point of being near enough to you the rest of the evening and tries to catch your eye and smile a toothy, evil grin every now and again.
I hope you’d agree that that scenario would constitute harassment and should be registered as an incident with the folks looking to collect data on harassment incidents. And yet you’re not actually physically harmed and are perfectly intact come the end of the evening, without further incident.
My question to you is: whose “sexual exploits” are those?
I’m glad you pulled up this quote. There’s an inconsistency in that someone’s right to proposition everyone s/he sees at a skeptical event is defended by many, yet to speak about attempted or completed sexual activity is unseemly or even “sinful”.
DJ’s remark reminds me so much of the idea that women make up rape accusations when they regret having had consensual sex.
Is there really anybody who would say that the above scenario is acceptable? Ok, that’s a dumb question, I’m sure that some people might say that, but generally speaking, most non-psychopaths would say that such a statement is beyond the pale.
I think that A. Noyd’s analysis is much clearer. DJ seems to be bringing up the stigma of “regret rape”, which is a hell of a dogwhistle.
Still, at the end of the day I think this is an argument that we’re going to lose. Horribly.
karmakin: how do you figure we’ll lose this argument?
I don’t intend to lose *anything* without a fight. We know harassment is happening, we know people are claiming that they’ve been harassed and we know the infrastructure for reporting and handling claims is insufficient. Taking these charges seriously might have gotten DJ
Yeah.. I had similar thoughts Noyd.
BTW: I do think A. Noyd is right, and thought so even before I posted this. What I’d really like is to get clarification that that is NOT what DJ meant. Because if it is…
Um. If it is, I don’t know what then.
Jason, it’s not a matter of not having the correct facts, it’s a matter of best presenting the argument, something that I think that by most fronts is being done very clumsily right now. It’s very unclear what the actual goals of this argument are.
The goal SHOULD be to increase the number of currently marginalized people who feel that because of the general atmosphere of these conferences that they wouldn’t be safe. How can that best be done? By making it “easier” to report potential harassment? To be honest, to expect the person to take time out of a busy conference schedule might be unrealistic and might be a form of victim blaming. Should we set guidelines and then enforce them? We don’t really want to do that, because we don’t want to interfere with positive interactions either.
It’s a VERY tricky widget, and as I’ve said, gender privilege isn’t the only privilege in this race. There’s also social privilege, something which by and large is being worse than ignored. (If you ask me it’s being outright claimed)
That said, I think that you’re doing a good job on this, as well as a lot of commentators. Phyrexx in particular deserves a medal for this stuff. But a lot of the bloggers/blog posts themselves? Ugh. Confirming the MRA’s worst fears (which are by and large groundless) isn’t the way to do things.
Agreed — we don’t need to give antifeminists and MRA goons ammo, when they’re so good at fabricating it themselves.
Here’s the thing though — Stephanie’s doing something, and so am I. There are paths forward, there are actual goals.
The actual fight with DJ owes largely to his own poor messaging and his apparent paranoia about feminists in the movement, and it is largely a distraction in context of getting conventions to take harassment seriously and actually make inroads on creating a safe space for yes, not just women, but everyone. Where we know harassment won’t be tolerated the way it is online.
Also, yeah. Pteryxx is grand. 🙂
Probably so…trust me, I’m not defending DJ here, not one bit. I just think the path forward and the actual goals should be the main focus, and not everything else. It feels like all that is getting lost in all the noise.
If people were reassured that they’re not going to be kicked out of a convention for standing too close to someone some time, I think it would..not necessarily defuse the situation…I think the divide is basically gone tribal at this point…but I think there’s a much better possibility of switching people from neutral to supporters.
Note that I do think that people in general, and that includes a lot of people on the “good” side of things in general tend to be unaware of the effects of their actions on people around them, and it’s why in the end I don’t expect the actual results of this effort, even if we got everything that we wanted, to be mostly symbolic. And to be honest, symbolic might very well be good enough. But I think if the problem is the general atmosphere, getting rid of the the worst of the “bad apples”, it’s going to change little.
Err..I mean I expect the results to be mostly symbolic.
er. Hit submit early.
…might have gotten DJ a lot of good will with the self-same women skeptics that are discussing the problem presently, especially in the face of all the harassment they DEFINITELY are receiving from self-proclaimed skeptics online. But he didn’t choose that route. He chose instead to say something that sounds a lot like “you women are just upset that you once had sex with someone that you now don’t like.”
We know harassment is grossly underreported. So why all the surprise that the numbers don’t match what these women are suggesting? And why the demand for “evidence” for these claims (what, like video evidence? DNA analysis of the handprint on your ass?) when the claims are neither extraordinary, nor the response — solid anti-harassment policies that are taken seriously and practically shoved down everyone’s throats — is perfectly in proportion?
Oh no. I’m not losing this argument unless these “skeptics” prefer to start throwing down logical fallacies like argumentum ad populum or duelling anecdotes. If we were suggesting slash-and-burn where an speaker caught staring at cleavage becomes persona non grata, sure. We’d be on the wrong side of that. Likewise if we demanded strict dress codes of burkas and beards. But this is HYPERBOLE, from the trollitariat who will not sock-puppet their way to victory. Not as long as I am able to throw down.
Being a good skeptic doesn’t involve denying everything in the world, especially if there’s good evidence for it. Denying harassment happens is like denying climate change is happening. Hyperskepticism will get us nowhere.
Fixed your link, sparky_ca. The point of the scenario was not actually about the harassment, but to present something that (hopefully) he’d rightfully deem harassing behaviour, so that I could hit him with the rhetorical punch asking exactly whose “sexual exploits” I’d just described. Because it really does sound a hell of a lot like he’s dismissing just about everyone who’s ever been harassed at conventions as making “regret rape” accusations.
Funny, also, that nobody’s asking him for evidence for where exactly he got THAT idea! Is that a big problem at these cons, speakers being accused of rape and claiming they’d had consensual sex and they’re just trying to pin them down? Because that’s a step above spermjacking on the wacked-out things-that-rarely-ever-happen scale. I realize it’s a viable defense in he-said-she-saids (e.g. an actual rapist could probably get away with it — again, leading to the problem of underreporting), and I realize it actually does happen sometime that the person is just making things up, but still. If it’s such a huge problem, maybe DJ’s pattern recognition should kick in at some point.
One of the problems is how we look at all of this. I agree that there’s a mixed message coming from JREF, just like you mentioned, but I don’t think most of the messaging is clear from either side…not one bit.
One of the problems is that we’re talking about “skeevy” people and not skeevy behavior. So it becomes very unclear what we’re talking about, and people either assume either the best or the worst. Laying out what are more or less objective standards of behavior is what I think should be done, but depending on where the line is drawn, either we might be doing too much and stifling community and inter-personal connections or doing too little and maintaining a hostile environment to some degree. (I err on the side of the latter, personally, that as women (to genderify this for simplicities sake) are generally the acted upon party here, they get the lean here).
The JREF do need to make a decision on what side they lean on..neutrality really isn’t an option here. That said, I don’t think it’s strictly an either-or thing, I think that the above, by making it crystal clear what behaviors are acceptable and what behaviors are not will go a long way to both increase female turnout AND make all participants more comfortable with the various boundaries. But, as long as DJ and Co. want to engage in the tribal warfare, unfortunately it’s a one side or the other type thing.
…d’aww, I was coming to spam you Jason and now I’m just embarrassed. Thanks, y’all. Research is just how I deal.
Jason: I made a big research post about harassment reporting at Ophelia’s and also PZ’s, here you go:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2012/06/words-actions-or-attitudes/#comment-182066
Off topic a bit here, but you totally made me think of Bob Berdealla with your hypothetical there, Jason.
That reference might hit a little closer to home with DJ.
Or not. I grew up in KC so he did affect the gay community there to the point that he was still brought up in conversation when I was finally old enough to out to the bars.
karmakin:
Actually, this practical aspect is addressed in some of the material about how to deal with harassment complaints in the workplace, such as the NOLO link I keep tossing around:
http://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/guidelines-handling-discrimination-harassment-complaints-29490.html
From an event security standpoint (where my personal experience lies), “reporting” doesn’t mean the person making the complaint necessarily goes somewhere to sit down and fill out paperwork. As a security volunteer, most of the time that’d be MY job. Example: Someone comes to me and points to a person that’s been bothering them or others, and I as security make note of the person complaining, usually by badge number, and go on from there. I might go talk to the complainee, call in hotel security, ask for a supervisor to back me up or whatever the situation requires. For minor incidents, *I* would file the report: time, place, badge # complaining, badge # who was behaving badly, what the complaint was, my observations, and what my response was.
For a serious infraction, or where the complainer’s testimony is very important, I or a supervisor might ask the person to write or verbally report a statement, and ask if we can contact them later for follow-up. Still, the bulk of the reporting actually falls on event staff.
@karmakin #10
The problem is one of goals, I agree, but so far as I can deduce, the JREF is sending out mixed messages about its goals, which is causing all its problems. I’m quoting your second paragraph.
Is the goal to reassure men who attend conferences that they don’t have to worry about being labeled skeevy?
Is the goal, pulled from DJ’s laments about the reduction in women attendees for this year’s TAM, to get more women to attend?
JREF needs to make up its mind and announce what it actually wants the most, and then it will be perfectly clear to everyone what course of action they should take. People might debate what they consider appropriate goals for the JREF, but value judgments and priorities are already so personal that I don’t think it would be this morass of unmet expectations and surprises.
Pteryxx@16: you’re not spamming at all. I’m working on a post for tomorrow about the requests for evidence about people’s individual experiences we’re seeing, basically about the hyperskepticism angle. Would you mind if I included that post verbatim in it? Because it ties together the problem of underreporting with a neat little bow. It would be credited appropriately, natch.
Jason, go right ahead and use my whole post if you want, with thanks. (Technically I AM spamming my post, even if it’s acceptable spamming.) !;>
Jason: when you quote me, would you fix this mistake I made please?
The two get conflated and overlap plenty without me making a screw-up like that. Thank you.
Dog bless you, Jason and Pteryxx (and others), for tackling this. I’m honestly shocked that DJ or any other ‘leaders’ in our various interconnected communities think placating misogynists is a higher priority than addressing the legitimate concerns of women skeptics. Seriously, did DJ learn nothing from this kerfuffle? It wasn’t that long ago…
I guess I’m just confused, then. One message to the potential TAM audience is: Misguided women bloggers need to stop spreading misinformation about what goes on at TAM because we need more women at TAM.
(“Misguided” and “misinformation” being hotly contested terms, of course.)
What’s the other message? And to whom? What’s the other side in the first place? There’s the TAM Organizers and…?
A group of angry people upset by some contentious message from the TAM organizers isn’t a “side.” It’s a reaction from a crowd, with no particular message directed at anyone, except they are also speaking up about their reaction to the TAM Organizers’ message. It’s all reactive, and not proactive at all, whereas the TAM Organizers have been proactive with getting their very specific message out to potential attendees.
John, are you sure DJ didn’t learn anything from that? What if he learned that
misguidedfeminist, atheist bloggers can get in the way of him doing whatever he wants? What would it look like if he decided he needed to do something about them?Yeah, him equating assault and rape claims with locker-room bragging made me ill. Does he think we enjoy being violated? He’s actively perpetuating the myth that women and girls are stupid, spiteful bitches who lie about our experiences to get attention/revenge, then laugh about it in our lairs.
It’s why I said this: freethoughtblogs.com/butterfliesandwheels/2012/05/shooting-the-messenger/#comment-180602
Also, as a gay woman, I can honestly say that he’s not helping dispel the “gay men are wildly misogynist ” trope. I’ve experienced so much of that in real life. I feel physically safe around them, but not mentally. Hearing over 9000 “eurgh fish!*” comments on every night out is bad enough, but some stuff spouted is just
so vile that I only really socialise with other women now.
*in the drag world “fish ” means “woman”. Someone who looks “fishy” is someone indistinguishablm from a woman.
KarenX – by “other side” they mean “evil, hysterical. humourless feminazis who want to ban sex cos they’re not getting any, and get jealous when we chat up total babes”
Don’t forget that. the evil ones also want to ban eye-contact, standing next to women, and talking to them. Talibanesque.
Not sure how many other places I’ve said something along these lines (at least 2, probably more), but: I don’t think women are being scared off by women talking about harrassment. Why? Because women know that harrassment happens everywhere.
I’ve been sexually harrassed at every school I’ve ever gone to (yes, even elementary schools), at every workplace I’ve ever worked at, walking to or from work/school, at extra-curriculars, at social events, at conferences, at parties, at book stores, at game stores, shopping for clothes, at bars (every. single. time I’ve ever gone to a bar, I’ve been groped by people who I hadn’t even talked to at that point. Which is why I don’t go to bars anymore: I’m not going to pay a cover for a sexual assault), at get-togethers with my friends to which friends-of-friends had been invited. Even my home isn’t always safe because the times I’ve lived in apartment buildings or university residences, I’ve been harrassed there, too.
If it can happen at a private get-together where everyone’s been vouched for with an attendance of less that 20, it sure as hell happens at a public conferance with thousands of attendees. If it happens when I walk to school in broad daylight, it sure as hell happens in secluded nooks and corners of a conference bar after dark.
Information pages, studies, and articles like these invariably say that the vast majority of women have been sexually harrassed. Of the forms of harrassment, street harrassment – harrassment by strangers in a public area – is the most common, 87% of women experiencing it at least once by age 18. According to a study by MacMillan, Nierobesz and Welsh (Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency. 37(3) 2000. 318.) that studied over 20,000 women found that 80% of women in Canada experience street harrassment to the point that it has a “large and detrimental impact on their perceived safety in public.” A much smaller study in the bay area of California (Nielsen, License to Harass: Law, Hierarcy, and Offensive Public Speech) found that 100% of women interviewed had experienced street harrassment, of which almost 20% reported daily harrassment. Similar results were found for Indianapolis (Gardner Passing By: Gender and Public Harassment . This means that in North America, harrassment of women in public places like conferences and on the street is commonplace. My experiences are not an outlier.
So, no, I don’t believe TAM does not have a harrassment problem. Sorry, DJ, but “We don’t have a harrassment problem!” is an extraordinary claim, and the evidence you’ve used to back it up is far from extraordinary. If TAM is serious about making the con a safe space, they have to stop pretending the problem doesn’t exist.
^ To correct the above: The Canadian study surveyed over 10,000 women, not 20,000. I must’ve hit one key too far to the right.
ischemgeek: Thanks for the cites. I’ve added them to my hoard.
*cackle*
@Pteryxx My experience at a large event with making a report (for a lost wallet) was a big deal..had to wait for the supervisor to get there, had to lay out the contents of the lost wallet, etc. It took a substantial amount of time. Now, if the focus is on streamlining these reports, that’s a good thing, but I think really does rely, yet again, on creating clear consistent guides for behavior. To where basically a security person taking a report can check off a few boxes to explain exactly what the person was doing.
It’s also why having security in place who can recognize problematic behavior and intervene automatically is necessary.
I’d like to make a philosophical statement about this “blaming the victim” meme.
Being a real and true victim of harassment does not make you immune to criticism about your response to that harassment.
And criticizing a victim for their response to real and true harassment does not mean that the criticizer thinks that the harassment in not a real and true problem that needs to be dealt with.
We can all think of incidents where real victims have responded to their victimization in complete outrageous and self-destructive ways.
So let’s stop clutching our pearls at the fact that these complainers about the atmosphere at free-thought events (as real and true as those complaints may be) are being challenged a bit about their hyperbole and their exaggerations and their blindness to the simple fact that some feel that their response is way out of proportion to the offenses (perceived and real) and is actually a contributing factor as to why some females may be less inclined to attend such events.
One thing the people who are criticizing DJ should do is focus on what should be done in the future and quit rehashing over and over again incidents and comments from the past and making unhelpful personal attacks at allies in the big picture. I have found in my review of this issue that the complainers are short on solutions and are obsessed with those who express any form of disagreement as opposed to working to find answers to this real and true problem.
Ex: PZ saying let’s have something more than just a Do’s and Don’ts list. OK PZ what is your solution? Also PZ’s post makes this out to be DJ’s problem to solve, while ignoring the fact the the complainers including him could be more helpful in finding a solution as opposed to continually flaming the debate because others simply do not see this issue as something as high a priority as they do — with the understanding that in saying that I am not dismissing the issue, I believe the issue is real and true problem that does need to be addressed.
I’ll now await all of the flamers who insist that I just said this is not a problem and that I am a misogynistic woman hating rape apologist.
karmakin:
I think, *in the case of sexual harassment specifically*, that’s a bad idea because it might interfere with being supportive of the complainant. Harassment complaints often can be vague or subjective, and labeled boxes might give the complainant an impression of being interrogated. There might be a way to do it reasonably on the database side alone, to quantify “followed to one’s room”, “cornered alone”, “inappropriate touching” and the like.
xtog: still searching all over FTB for a bullshit-supportive environment, I see.
xtog: see the two links I posted at 9 for just how “short on solutions” we really are.
Wrong blog to be complaining on about a lack of solutions.
Vague and subjective, I think at least to me screams potentially time-consuming and a big hassle. Especially if the person thinks that it’s a borderline case (which is probably much of what we’re talking about). Maybe a checklist could seem like an interrogation, but at the same time I think taking a few steps away from making it vague and subjective and making it more clear and objective will help the situation. This is all running off the idea that in the short-term more reports are a good thing because it means the system is working better to catch them. (In the long-term you want the number of reports to trend down)
That said there might be better ways to do it, but I think minimizing the time and bother impact for the harassed party is essential.
Pteryxx at least I don’t spend my time flaming boards for no apparent reason,…maybe this is just your form of masturbation or something.
And yeah, I’d like to find a board in which I can have a debate as opposed to a board that doubles as an elementary school playground, is there something wrong with that?
Jason,…I didn’t say ‘no solutions are being suggested by anyone’ — I merely made the obvious and true comment that many of the biggest blowhards firing away at DJ offer him no solutions.
I realized though after I posted that my comments really are not on the topic of the initial post about the skeezy comment though and I apologize to the lousy canuck for diverting the board.
karmakin: Again, I think this is a rather unique reporting situation compared to less emotionally loaded security reports.
Not necessarily. As far as I can tell, actual harassment incident reporting doesn’t have to be time-consuming regardless of its being vague and subjective. Mostly it’s “note what the complainant’s concerned about” even if that’s just “This person made me feel really uncomfortable”. Granted, that would be hard to *follow up on* but it’s not hard to report; and it’s still valuable information if there are a half dozen more vague complaints about the same person.
xtog: I think you’re confusing me with someone else, perhaps that belligerent parakeet in your mirror.
karmakin I am new to posting on bulletin boards and this is the first I am posting here at all — provoked by your post #8 that implies that blaming the victims is always wrong. It is refreshing to see some possible solutions to the problem, hopefully DJ will pick up on them.
At least on this board I have yet to be sworn at or verbally abused as I was on PZ’s board and the Diamond board, and I appreciate that.
Funny how the same people so concerned on those boards with making conventions more friendly and less threatening to female newbies, have no problem verbally harassing new posters on these boards, writing comments that if they were said to a person’s face would put them in the hospital or certainly get them an harassment report.
Pteryxx says: Nothing
It does require a combination of professionalism and compassion that can be hard to instill in people. You have to ignore instincts to fix everything or hunt down the culprit while making the person stepping forward feel confident about speaking up. And you have to be professional enough to actually note down what happened regardless of who those implicated are. Sometimes it’ll be people you know. When that happens you can’t grill whoever is in front of you anymore than you can not report what happened. You’ll have to do your job.
julian: Oof. Good points. So basically, being able to properly enact and enforce a harassment policy requires the staff or volunteers involved to be able to calmly listen to women *in the first place*. I can see where this could get tricky in this community. At least it requires some training and screening.
xtog says now:
xtog says then:
For the record, these are blogs, not boards. This is also a community, so don’t expect what you do in one place to be invisible when you’re trying to say shit later.
xtog – the thing about blogging is that it’s free. Using services like Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr etc. does not cost a penny. You’re then free to say what you want!
xtogMRAnus.Tumblr.com
or
whydontwomenlikeme.blogger.com
or
reddit.
Oh wait, that last one is taken. However, it’s right up your street. Men are men, and women are females. You should fit in seamlessly.
Stephanie Zvan says: Nothing
boards/blogs who cares, and as an ex-HS computer teacher, i think i am aware of my audience.
did you actually have anything of substance to say or were you just flame-trolling?
@A nym too
First of all….I’m xtog42, not xtog, and you know that makes me made, kind of like people calling blogs boards,…
and second of all,….well you didn’t really make a point so i’ll wait to respond when you do
Stephanie Zvan actually very ably pointed out how you are a hypocrite, xtog42. And what YOU said in return was all heat, no light.
So, you’ll have no further input in this conversation on this “bulletin board” unless you actually have something constructive to say.
Huh, I thought s/he’d changed his/her name after commenting at my blog and that I was using the old one. Nope. I’m just completely sleep deprived. Oops.
Jason:
Pot, kettle.
You know what the problems here are? I’ve rarely seen so much psychoanalysis and mind reading since the last Psychic convention was held. I am sick of all the hysteria over what amounts to pure speculation.
“‘X’ is really implying this” and “‘Y’ is really a that” opinions that become memes, and that then transform into some kind of gospel truth, are as far away from rational input as Christians fighting over who’s interpretation of the Bible are really God’s true feelings.
Shut the fuck up already with all the bullshit. It’s all starting to sound, to me, like a bad soap opera plot.
How is Grothe saying, “from just one or a few women” different from another person saying, “from one or a few speakers?”
And what in the world, pray tell, does your little overblown fantasy have to do with anything? It is a grievous mis-characterization at best, and an implication of outright lying using a straw man analogy on the face of it.
[meta]
mikmik:
The irony is strong, here.
Alas for you, there was no analysis anywhere in your quotation, but rather a statement of perception.
Not that your demolition of this straw-castle was properly executed, but it is showy enough.
Whining is whining.
The fantasy, eh?
🙂
Because D.J. is saying that he knows that these few women are the extent of the people saying there are problems with speakers. He then uses that unfounded assumption to tell us that we should not be talking about these speakers.
I, on the other hand, have spoken with people who have identified a few speakers as problems based on their personal experience with those speakers or interactions they’ve witnessed. I don’t claim that this tells me anything more than that the problem exists, which is, in turn, sufficient to tell me we need to handle it in a professional manner.
Did you really need that explained?
So let’s stop clutching our pearls at the fact that these complainers about the atmosphere at free-thought events (as real and true as those complaints may be) are being challenged a bit about their hyperbole and their exaggerations and their blindness to the simple fact that some feel that their response is way out of proportion to the offenses.
Well, I see you using the word “incestuous” to describe FTB, so it’s possible that you dabble in hyperbole yourself. (Hard to resist on the internet. It’s better than exclamation points for conveying one’s point vividly.)
My recommendation for better conferences and better message boards is being more specific/precise in one’s criticisms.
It’s hard for me to know quite what you meant in the paragraph I quoted above. My first guess is that you are referencing Elevatorgate (since it’s a popular lightning rod). And that you figure you wouldn’t mind being propositioned in a closed space and that therefore it is unreasonable for a tired woman to mind being propositioned in a closed space. And that since you and she disagree about what an appropriate reaction is, your preferred reaction is right and her reaction is overblown.
If that was not what you wanted