Harassment: What do we do?

[lydy]

ETA: In the first paragraph of this essay, I said something which can very reasonably be seen as a slam against paganism. I apologize for the phrasing. I was thinking of a particular interaction with a particular person, but in failing to be particular, I was rude to a whole variety of people, including many friends. I apologize for this.

****

So, if you've been following along, you'll have noticed that I've had a pretty full range of experiences with harassment, including having an Harassment Restraining Order taken out against me, experiencing harassment severe enough that the person who did it has been banned from Minicon and Mnstf, and heavily involved in writing the anti-harassment policy for Mnstf and Minicon, and being the Chair of the Code of Conduct Committee for Minicon, which involved handling several actual complaints. I'm glad I'm not a woo-woo pagan, because otherwise I'd have to think that I'd done something to draw all this into my life. Fuck that noise.

The thing that's most recently caught my attention has been Lou Antonelli and Sasquan. For those of you who haven't been making a hobby of the Great Puppygate Train Wreck, the extremely short version is that some guy, in this case Lou Antonelli, sent a letter to the Spokane police alleging that David Gerrold, one of the GoH for Sasquan, was dangerously mentally unbalanced and might incite violence. He then bragged about it on a podcast. There was a round of shock, awe, and horror; an apology to Gerrold from Antonelli; and other things. Sasquan was notified, as is proper. David Gerrold accepted Lou Antonelli's apology. Sasquan issued a statement saying, very roughly, that Antonelli had violated the Code of Conduct, but for Reasons, including a request from Gerrold, they've decided not to ban him.

So, then there's a bunch of Monday morning quarterbacking from just about everybody. Which is fine by me, I like detailed analysis, outrage, and train wrecks. But I'm paying special attention, because on a much smaller scale, this could be me. A lot of people were very upset, and there were two things that caught my eye. The first was a demand for consistent application of the rules, and the second was for transparency. There's a lot of variation on those two themes, but those were the two I am currently noodling on. Consistent application was often equated with zero tolerance.

So, let's start with the actual, root problem. People who feel vulnerable to harassment at science fiction conventions do not trust those conventions to fairly and justly administer the rules. I cannot come close to doing justice to how very reasonable it is for them to feel that way. That distrust? We've built it, brick and mortar, over years. It's not just well deserved, it's hugely massively utterly deserved. Harassment policies have been non-existent, or poorly explained or hugely badly enforced. We have multiple known cases of people being allowed to fuck up because they were well connected, or because the concom didn't want to be arsed, or because concoms just didn't think there was a problem.

The demands for consistency and transparency make a huge amount of sense. This is the way you fix a democratic process that isn't working. Sunshine, lots of sunshine, and clearer rules. And yet, you have only to look at the three strikes laws in various states, or mandatory sentencing, to see how those tools can create new, different, and enhanced problems. If at all possible, I'd like to avoid going down that rathole. We know what those mistakes look like. I'd like to make different mistakes.

In point of fact, I think that the demands for transparency and consistency are actually rooted in a desire that the process not be corrupt. That the rules not be applied only to people we don't like, that the responses to problems be fair and just. And I don't think that transparency and consistency are the way to get there, exactly.

This is, in my opinion, an incredibly hard problem, made harder by the fact that we are starting from a position of having screwed up royally, massively, and utterly.

CONSISTENCY

Let's start with consistent application of the rules, and why I think that we need not to do that.

Example
I have a young woman come to me Friday night of the convention. She's extremely upset. There's a man who has been following her all night. He's followed her into three different room parties, and has repeatedly tried to talk to her. She has consistently told him that she doesn't want to talk to him, and he will not leave her alone. She's afraid to go back to her room because she's afraid he'll follow her there and then know what her room number is.

So, upon further investigation, it is clear that the reporter is telling the truth, there are multiple witnesses, and it is revealed that the subject of the report is:

1) an eighteen year old at his first convention who is very, very drunk

2) the man the reporter broke up with a week ago, and he's following her from party to party, trying to get her to just tell him why she left him

3) George, someone well known to the concom, who's been coming to the convention for 20 years, volunteers sometimes, and has never done anything like this before

4) Mike, who has been coming to the convention for a while. There's no formal report or anything, but literally every woman you ask says, "Euww, him? Let me tell you about the time that..." Stories go back easily twenty years, and some of them involve assault.

5) Nightmare scenario: the subject is your Guest of Honor. He's a big deal name, you've had a significant membership bump this year probably because of him, and he's heavily scheduled on Saturday, including a panel on Harassment at Conventions and another on Why Diversity is Important in Science Fiction. There are a significant number of people at this convention because he's here.

I submit that you absolutely do not want to handle these situations the same. The offense is absolutely identical. Harassment, stalking, making an attendee afraid. Completely unacceptable. And I think that, if I were running the zoo, I would handle them differently.

My drunk eighteen year old, I tell to go home and get sober. I impress upon him that his behavior is utterly unacceptable, and if he behaves that way again, I will bounce him from the convention. Likewise, if I find him illegally drinking again, I will bounce him from the convention. I document so that I remember this next year, if necessary.

The ex-boyfriend, I bounce from the convention. I totally get that love makes you do the wacky, and that he may very well only have a problem with this one person, but it is clearly too soon for him to be around his ex socially, and he violated the Code of Conduct. Go home, do better next year. I document so that I remember this next year, if necessary.

George, long time attendee. I have a conversation with George that starts out with, "George, what the fuck?" While it is very unlikely that there's anything in particular I can do to help George, I'd really like to know. He's actually probably a friend of mine. But I also give him a stern warning, and will bounce him from the con if there's a repetition. I document so that I remember this next year, if necessary.

Mike I bounce. Right now. I also instigate a more thorough investigation after the convention to consider a permanent ban. But that doesn't need to be done right now. Right now, he needs to be gone.

Nightmare Pro: Oh lords. I need to talk to the con chair(s), right fucking now. Then, I find the liaison and regretfully explain that his con got a whole lot more complicated. Mr. Pro now needs 24/7 babysitting. The liaison and I will need to strategize on how that is going to work, and if we need to get someone else to help out, what with the liaison probably having a life. We need to go over the programming schedule. Absolutely, he can't be on the harassment panel. And now I need head of programming, and we need to figure out if the panel needs to suddenly have a scheduling conflict which requires it to be cancelled, or if we just need to keep Mr. Pro away. We need to look at the moderator for the diversity panel, and make a decision about that, too. We also need to go over the program again, carefully, and decide if there's anything else that needs to be adjusted. We really hope not. Then, we need to meet with Mr. Pro, explain the complaint, explain that it's a violation of the Code of Conduct, and explain that he will be babysat from now on. We explain the changes to his programming schedule. This will not be a fun conversation, but there's no way around it. After that is over, I need to have another in depth conversation with the chair(s) about contingency plans. Total nightmare. And, by the way, no way out of this that doesn't involve the internet deciding that pros get special treatment and that my convention is just as corrupt and evil as [insert favorite despot].

But I submit that treating an eighteen year old drunk the same as a known serial harasser, even if I don't have impeccable documentation, is inappropriate. And treating a known quantity with no history of bad behavior the same as a drunk eighteen year old is also inappropriate. At very minimum, they are very different conversations. And those conversations, they're important. They're the way we build towards the future.

And in all of this, I create careful documentation which is available for future iterations of this convention. If ex-boyfriend has a similar meltdown with a different ex in a year or two, then huh, that's kind of a different problem. If George, with a 20 year impeccable history, fucks up again next year, huh, that's a different problem. Mr. Pro we need to not invite back, and absolutely need to keep track of if he decided to exercise his "free membership for former GoH" status.

TRANSPARENCY

Um, yikes? Really, yikes. There are so many good reasons for it, I'm not sure it's the right way forward. And I'm really interested in what people have to say.

Let's start with Sasquan, who I think screwed the pooch in a very important way. When they said that they decided not to ban Lou Antonelli, they said it was in part because of a request by David Gerrold. This is probably true. They should never, ever have said that. The problem is that the convention must own its own behavior. It must be responsible for maintaining and enforcing its Code of Conduct. And they must never put that off on the victim. That's never ok.

As a person who has actually recently been harassed, I can state affirmatively that it was months before I was distant enough from it to have anything like a reasoned response to it. And in the first days after it had passed, I veered wildly from "I want him to die in a fire" to "I think that maybe it wasn't that big a deal" and back again. Ctein, who was a party to the same instance of violation, had similar responses. It is really, really hard to sort it all out. And it puts an additional burden on someone who is already under a strain and is having All The Feels. Moreover, the convention has multiple responsibilities, and they need to remember that there are other people involved. A person who is harassing someone is quite likely to do so to someone else. So even if your reporter is saying, "Well, it's no big deal," that doesn't mean it won't be a big deal to someone else. We also tend to underestimate the amount of damage this stuff does to bystanders. In my theoretical example, not only did the young woman experience grief because of the persistent stalking behavior, but all of her friends and casual bystanders were subjected to acrimonious confrontations. This changes the mood and energy of the party, and can do real damage to some people. We can't stop every unpleasant encounter, nor do we want to. But we do want to foster a better environment than this, surely.

Conventions cannot implement a judicial model for dealing with harassment. We have none of the infrastructure that goes with the legal system. We don't have investigators, prosecutors, defenders, juries, judges, enforcement arms, checks, balances, etc. What we are is a social organization, and as such, what we are making are social judgments. Who do we want to hang out with? Does this enhance our overall environment, or is it detrimental? We can't aspire to certainty, either. In practice, that means that a lot of the information that we use to make these judgments is going to be either confidential or subjective, probably both.

So, when I had a problem with Ken Konkol, I pointed out to the powers that be that Ken has been a known problem for 40 years. All well and good. But when the powers that be looked at that statement, they were also aware of a bunch of contextual stuff. I've only been around Mnstf for about 20 years. I am good friends with people who have been around Mnstf for much longer. They know the types of behaviors I have and haven't tolerated in public. They know how likely I am to confabulate. They have a good sense of how often I get upset in public. The fact that I completely lost my cool, to the point of shouting at the top of my lungs for some little time, is partly understood in the context of a person who almost never does that. And so on. Lots of contextual information. Also lots of reputational information. My reputation and Ken's were well known, and weighed against each other. Much of this you wouldn't really want in a court of law. But I think this is appropriate when looking at a social situation.

Many times, the person who reports harassment is going to have at least some confidentiality issues. Possibly he doesn't want his name used, possibly she wants to have some of the details kept private, possibly they don't want anyone to know they said anything. Possibly you will have witnesses that have confidentiality issues.

Transparency in this case is a huge problem. "Yep, we have a credible report from someone whose name we can't use, backed up by another person we can't identify, about some details we can't reveal." How is saying this better than not saying anything? I fail to see being vague is more likely to cause people to trust us than not saying anything.

TRUST

And, we're back to trust. We've built this lack of trust, and now we're suffering for it. And I'm not sure what they best way forward is. I really feel for Sasquan. I think they handled their public statement badly, but I have no way of knowing if they actually handled the situation badly. Back into theory land: I have a guest of honor, someone invited because he is generally loved and revered. One of my goals, as concom, is to honor him. And he comes to me with this problem, and then tells me, "It would so totally ruin my convention if you banned this guy. I really feel that my harasser and I have come to a good place, and I really need you to let him attend. It's important to me. I know it's not how you would prefer to handle this, but it really matters to me."

I dunno. I have no idea if that happened or not. But if it were me, and my GoH said that, I might let the fucker attend, you know? On strict watch and stuff, but I might. I would have to consider, carefully, how likely the problem person was to be a problem in person, but in the end, I might allow the GoH to influence my final decision. I wouldn't say that in public, though, because I think that's a disaster on wheels. It implies that I'm not accepting responsibility for my decision, and that's a beautiful way to build more distrust. I have no idea why Sasquan did what they did. And I don't think I should. But I wish they'd handled their public face a little better.

Comments

[supergee.livejournal.com]

Blogging this; thanx

It's complicated

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

User supergee referenced to your post from It's complicated (http://supergee.livejournal.com/3648469.html) saying: [...] Clear thoughts [...]

[tisiphone.livejournal.com]

Here via supergee. The problem I see with this is: Antonelli didn't just threaten Gerrold. He threatened everyone at the convention with a potentially disproportionate armed response. Whether or not this would actually happen or not is irrelevant. What matter is that he invited police attention to a public event, using words such as "deranged", in retaliation for someone being Wrong on the Internet. Context matters, and responses of individuals matter, but they're not the only thing that matters here.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I don't disagree with you. Context matters a lot.

Based on what I know, I would have refunded Antonelli's membership fee, and not allowed him to attend, but I do not know what Sasquan knows. I know only a little bit of what is out there on the net. I am declining to second-guess Sasquan because I literally do not know what they know. I am told they have a very good relationship with the local police. That is also a fact which matters a lot in how serious the threat is. And I would say that this is not, in fact, irrelevant. I'm actually vastly uninterested in punishment as a goal. That Antonelli did something horrid is not in dispute. What I am interested in is policing the social space. Whether or not his actions damage the social space is the important bit, to me. I can create arguments about how people would be uncomfortable in a social space that includes someone who would do such a thing. But I'm interested in real harm, not whether or not Antonelli is an asshole.

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

Hello! Your entry got to top-25 of the most popular entries in LiveJournal!
Learn more about LiveJournal Ratings in FAQ (https://www.dreamwidth.org/support/faqbrowse?faqid=303).

[evilrooster.livejournal.com]

I think the one thing that's missing from this -- and I know it's not part of harassment policies per se -- is what you do with the accuser. How do you liaise with her, what messages do you send her? Is there anyone whose job it is to listen to her and find out what healing/damage limitation can be done even apart from punishing the miscreant?

Should there be?

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I'd like to start out with not doing stupid shit. We need to not treat the reporter as if s/he is the problem. And we need to make it clear that we consider the problem that has been reported our problem, and not their problem. Their problem, hopefully, is now over. A thing happened. I doubt that there's any useful role the convention can play in the healing path deliberately but boy are there things we can do to make it more difficult.

I am coming to think that really good boundaries are important. Keeping track of your appropriate priorities. When I had the thing with Ken Konkol, at one point someone tried to appoint themselves my advocate, and that did not help things. It made me rather angry. I wanted to be heard, in my own voice. I didn't need someone to speak for me. The fact that this person also had a governance role made it even worse. I really needed to rely on her to look out after the needs of the convention and the club, so that I could let that piece of it go, and just worry about me. At the same time, I didn't feel like I could trust her to properly advocate for me, because of her role in governance.

When I first started writing policies for Minicon, I firmly believed that one of the really smart things to do would be to ask the victim what they wanted done. It took multiple, difficult conversations with someone with a good background in the subject to detach me from that idea. It seems so reasonable. But it puts pressure on the reporter in extremely non-useful ways. And it makes them feel responsible for the outcome, even if you don't do what they want. It muddles an already confusing and muddled situation, and forces them to try to maximize different priorities simultaneously. It shifts the focus from the target to the subject in the mind of the target, and that's not where they need to be spending their energy, just now.

I do think it's a good idea to make sure that the target has easy access to someone at the con if they experience sequelae. Someone to call and talk to. And I think that under no circumstances should the convention ever suggest what the target should and shouldn't talk about. It was their experience, we should never attempt to interfere with their ownership of the situation. They probably need to talk to their friends. I know that the support of my friendship network made a huge difference for me.

I don't think that we have the training or manpower to do much in the way of counseling and healing.

[kaffy_r]

I don't go to cons much these days, although I did attend a couple of Wicons within the past couple of years (including Yes, That One, during which I was completely unaware of the problem.) But reading about the issue of con safety, and con transparency, how they connect and synch, how they don't, is very important to me.

What you've written here is good stuff, well thought out, with passion that's well-interbraided with logical thoroughness. Thank you for writing it.

ETA: If I can get to it, and not be swamped by work stuff, I'd like to point people to this post. Is that OK?

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Please do. I'm interested in some discussion.

[naomikritzer]

I like your examples. The thing I would note about "George" vs. "Mike" is that sometimes the person handling things thinks they've got a George, when they've actually got a Mike -- because this Mike is savvy enough to keep his misbehavior out of the sight of the people powerful enough to do anything about it. Treating the Mikes as Georges is one of the mistakes fandom has made over and over. And it's hard, because there are also genuine Georges out there. There's no easy answer.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Very, very true. And one of the ways we start to do better is by keeping records. One of the reasons you get Mikes is because concom membership changes, and our institutional memory is crap. And one of the reasons I think we need to use things like reputation and rumor to deal with the problem is that it will help you distinguish between the two, if you ask around enough. And we will still make mistakes. A lot.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

A real "Mike" is fairly easy to spot -- as Lydy indicated, about any woman you ask in the social group will have a story. (This does assume that the "you" doing the asking has enough credibility to get an honest answer when you ask, which isn't always the case. If you don't have anybody with any credibility on this subject on your committee there's another problem....)

But a "George" is relatively hard to be sure of, yeah. Getting easier though -- it's getting more normalized to complain about such problems.

[wild-irises.livejournal.com]

This. Is. Brilliant.

Have been on various sides of this, have fucked up publicly, have done things that I still think are "right" but which fucked up publicly, and have not ever seen as cogent an analysis of either consistency or transparency as this one.

Thank you.

Links I found interesting for 21-08-2015

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

User nwhyte referenced to your post from Links I found interesting for 21-08-2015 (http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/2511912.html) saying: [...] ) Harassment: What do we do? [...]

Dept. of Catching Up

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

User kaffyr referenced to your post from Dept. of Catching Up (http://kaffyr.livejournal.com/374471.html) saying: [...] spaces safe for fans, and the concepts involved therein, I commend to you this thoughtful post [...]

[the-leewit.livejournal.com]

Is it wrong of me to kind of hope that the local law enforcement takes the same dim view of diverting the time and resources of taxpayer-funded law enforcement and first responders for personal vendett-ish purposes that I do, whatever his relationship with or against the Puppies? I would definitely encourage him to make a large donation, of time and podcast calls if he does not have money, to an organization dedicated to their support. They're law enforcement officials, not tantrum abetters, if I'm reading the badge correctly.

Which is relevant to the topic in that--- if Mr. Antonelli, or any harasser, is facing legal action as a result of his illegal actions, perhaps the con com and Mr. Gerrold felt he had sufficient consequences without creating a martyr for either "side" of the debate. I'm not certain whether or not it's a good thing.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

I think that there is only a very little utility in speculating about the inner workings of the Antonelli decision. I'm more interested in its trajectory, and what it tells us about building trust and community.

[apostle-of-eris.livejournal.com]

Rules, lists, procedures, etc., are invaluable aids to judgement, but not a replacement for it, or using it.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

The thing about rules, lists, and procedures, is that once they are properly in place, the free you up to use good judgment. It's like solving the bits of an equation you do understand first, so that you can tackle the hard parts. And sometimes, when you get the parts you do understand done, it simplifies the hard parts. I love good procedure. I love good policy. But they cannot ever be used as an excuse for fucking up. If you do that, you are doing it wrong. Also, you should review your policies and procedures.

US : Весь НЕ кириллический сегмент : Лучшие посты за вчер

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

User ljrobot referenced to your post from US : Весь НЕ кириллический сегмент : Лучшие посты за вчера (http://ljrobot.livejournal.com/716313.html) saying: [...] Harassment: What do we do? [...]

[ctein3.livejournal.com]

Dear Lydy,

Coming late to the party because, WorldCon.

Trying to read between the lines and having no inside information whatsoever in this matter, my ignorant take on this is that while Sasquan had a written code of conduct and may (or not, I don't know) have had written procedures for handling complaints, they did not have people who trained to do this. Or if they did, they ignored them. A convention needs all three of these to make it work. It's not enough to have the content and the process specified, without people who know how to do it properly it is bound to fuck up. Reading the openly-published material by the concom and with other more-or-less involved parties, there's a clear single-point failure when they decided to give primacy to the wishes of the reporter, instead of following their initial judgment. Such a massive fail!

After that, the charges and counter-charges, inside and outside of the concom are just such a massive process fuckup on every level. The concoms members who were trying to handle this, for whatever aspect of “handle” you like, did such a massively bad job that I can't believe any of them had any training or experience. At the very least, they lacked the competency to deal with this sort of problem.

The elevator incident at the convention (folks can look it up) is another great example of why you don't let the reporter call the shots (aside from the primary reason, which is it makes it their problem instead of the institution's problem). They really can't know their mind. I've been friends with David for approaching half-century; I think there are few people in our community who are better equipped, psychologically, to deal with assholes. It's still not anywhere near good enough. In coping with this, David moved from a public announcement to the effect of “ I'd be glad to talk about it over a beer in the bar” to “I don't want to have anything to do with Lou.” I don't know if David communicated that to the Concom; I don't know if the Concom communicated it to Lou. Given the other fuckups, I wouldn't wouldn't make any bets that there was a clear chain of communication, and even if there was, it shouldn't have existed in the first place. And it wouldn't have, if the concom had stuck to their original decision and not let David take on the burden of deciding how the matter was to be handled.


pax \ Ctein
[ Please excuse any word-salad. MacSpeech in training! ]
======================================
-- Ctein's Online Gallery http://ctein.com
-- Digital Restorations http://photo-repair.com
======================================

[(Anonymous)]

Gerrold's request might have been part of the decision, but I thought the general plan was to have Antonelli there where they could watch him, rather that somewhere else where he could stew in disgruntlement, call in bomb threats and otherwise cause mayhem for the con.

[(Anonymous)]

"he extremely short version is that some guy, in this case Lou Antonelli, sent a letter to the Spokane police alleging that David Gerrold"

This is a bald faced lie.

Lou was not concerned about Gerrold's behavior but the behavior of unhinged loonies being set off by Gerrods ranting on facebook.

Given that bomb threats have been called in against GamerGate events combined with the long history of unhinged leftists engaging in violence this was hardly an unreasonable concern. Please get your facts straight.

[lydy.livejournal.com]

In Lou's own words: " I really didn’t know much about [Gerrold] before the Hugo nominations came out. Following his discourse and his level of discourse as a result, I personally wrote a letter addressed to the police chief in Spokane and said I thought the man was insane and a public danger and needs to be watched when the convention’s going on, and I mean it. I attached my business card. I said this guy’s inciting to violence. Somebody—a weak-minded might attack somebody because of his relentless strength of abuse. I think, honestly, I think he belongs in a secure psychiatric facility" Emphasis added.

I am disinterested in letting people behave rudely in my space, but I leave this here as an example of why we can't have nice things. One of the things we must understand about harassment is that harassment, or the threat of harassment, silences voices. And it silences not just the shy young person not quite up to the rough and tumble of the consuite. It silences long-time organizers who are conflict averse, patient administrators who are the backbone of our community who never come to view except when something goes wrong, writers and artists and musicians who feel that they have a better use for their creative energy than fending off egregious nonsense and hostile interrogations. There is a real desire to shut down this conversation, silence the voices that want to talk about harassment as a problem that can be solved. They want to silence me. At this point, I decline.

[malkaesther.livejournal.com]

I don't know if this is the right place to put this. Feel free to delete if it's not.

Shortly after Wiscon & Elise Matthesen screw up there was a long discussion on Scalzi's blog. Towards the end I summarized the discussion of what people felt was needed by cons and why those things are hard to do. I've included the links to the discussion here as well as my summary of points.

To summarize what I’ve gotten from this conversation so far (265+ comments). http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/07/28/what-happened-after-i-reported-elise-matthesen-wiscon-and-harassment/
http:/

We agree we need to find a better way to make cons safer for people – harassment is bad. /whatever.scalzi.com/2014/07/28/what-happened-after-i-reported-elise-matthesen-wiscon-and-harassment/#comment-737579

Things I felt people mostly agreed on:
1. Cons need to keep in mind the reason for Code of Conduct and SOP is to minimize harassment/maximize safety at con (this seems to be missing as a step in many SOP and decisions causing outrage)
2. Cons need a well stated code of conduct
3. Cons need a good SOP before a crisis
4. Training of staff is desperately needed (possibly before drawing up CoC & SOP) – in-person, online/role playing (local rape crisis center, RAINN, ADA initiative, crowdfund a group for cons – combination?)
5. Cons need to uphold their CoC – don’t have one if you aren't going to enforce it (or conversely state that harassers are welcome)
6. Everyone from the reporter/harassed to the people charged with enforcing the CoC are likely to have sqick/icky factor when a crisis arises – be aware – think in advance how you are going to handle this (SOP & training/role playing)
7. Try to have as few conflicts of interest as possible with the group making a final decision on how to handle a particular situation (co-workers/BFFs/etc. probably shouldn't be deciding unless no one else is available)

The following are comments people made that I felt should be included but did not happen until after I created the above list - can be found mostly in comments after mine

In addition to having the code of conduct on the website, make reading/agreeing to the code a requirement to purchase membership/pick up your badge. Now, we all know that most of the time people just click “agree” when they see the little boxes, without reading the TOS or Terms and Conditions, but it would be a start.

If there is a local rape crisis center, in addition to considering asking them for help with training, ask if they can supply volunteers to the event, either on-site or on-call, to deal with reports. This would potentially eliminate some of the squick factor for organizers and volunteers.

When making a statement to the public about your decision run it past a few people who know nothing about the decision to make sure it's easy to understand and says what you want it to say

Having a specific safe space that people know exists and can find easily.

Keeping track of what is reported both during a con and from year to year, so that repeat offenders can be identified.

Having some form of visible safety team (t-shirts or hats or whatever) and/or an easily found, prominently displayed (or on the badges), phone number to reach security/safety people - - be careful who gets these as abuse can happen

Talking about what harassment is–in panels, in discussion groups, wherever.

Encouraging people to step in and stop it, to respond negatively when they see it happening in front of them (even if the offender is a friend). To document (cell phone camera) if possible.

Don’t have single or small group points of failure. The ConCom as a whole needs to stay alert that those entrusted with a task are on course.

Do weigh safety and comfort of attendees over redemption. This doesn’t mean zero tolerance, but it is a shift in mindset.

Don’t consider only the reported incident. The question is not whether a particular incident was serious, but whether this is a person you want to allow back. That means you have to look at their history of behaviors.

If something makes your heart sink, speak up.

Have contact info for harassment / security on back of badge as well as CoC

Tasha from File770

[lydy.livejournal.com]

This is great. Thank you very much. I agree with a lot of this.

This past year, at Minicon, Elise Matthesen volunteered to do some role playing with me and my responders. She was very good, and it was incredibly valuable for everyone. My volunteers learned things. I learned things both by doing the role-play and by observing others. Elise knew me and my people well enough that she could give us some really tough ones. It was unbelievably helpful. I do hope to follow up some leads I have for next year with some more official training. But I cannot stress how incredibly useful a simple role-play is.

The conflict of interest thing is true, but actually very hard to manage in a small community like Mnstf. It's a little easier with Minicon, but with Mnstf, we pretty much all know each other. There isn't an official statement on when people should recuse themselves, for instance. In the case where I was the harassed and also on the Board, I recused myself instantly. I hope this provides useful modeling in the future, but there was never any question about whether or not I wanted to be involved. Boy, did I not want to be involved. At this point, I think institutionally, we are aware of the problem, but are currently relying on an ad-hoc handling. At some point, we probably need to institutionalize it.

You said: In addition to having the code of conduct on the website, make reading/agreeing to the code a requirement to purchase membership/pick up your badge. Now, we all know that most of the time people just click “agree” when they see the little boxes, without reading the TOS or Terms and Conditions, but it would be a start.


Respectfully, I disagree. The problem that people don't read their EULAs is certainly part of that, but my real question is, what problem do you think this solves? The convention does not need additional authority to kick someone out; it is inherent in the nature of our organization. We can get rid of anyone for any reason. People who harass other people are extremely unlikely to be deterred by a policy, regardless of whether they pretend they have read it. The two primary groups for whom CoCs are written are 1) the convention itself, to give it standards to live up to, and 2) someone who had had something bad happen to them that wants to know if the convention has their back. CoC are not written for harassers. While there are problematic people out there who will read the CoC to see how they can game it, they aren't particularly encouraged or deterred by a ricky-box EULA, either. So I'm back to, what problem do you think this solves?

I agree with almost all your other points, although some of them require more people-points than Minicon can currently manage. The idea of a highly visible safety team, for instance, I just don't have the staff for.

I would like to challenge the word safety. I think that it creates some problems when we model harassment as a safety issue. Not that there aren't safety issues, there certainly are. And harassment can be the gateway to more serious abuses. However, the problem with framing harassment as a safety issue is that it tends to create an image of a passive victim. It also creates the idea that we can somehow evaluate the severity of the problem based on the damage done to the victim. And I dislike that a lot. It demands, among other things, that the target "victim" correctly in order to get proper notice. You saw this happen with Elise at Wiscon, so many people demanding to know exactly what had been done, and how badly she had been hurt, so that they could then divine whether or not there was a real problem. There was a real problem. And that problem was independent of how much damage the reporter actually suffered. When Ken Konkol harassed me, I was blazingly angry. There are a lot of ways of looking at what happened that pay attention to the fact that no actual harm was done to me, and that other than losing my temper rather spectacularly at a social event, I was fine. This misses all the ways in which it was a genuine problem that needed to be solved.

[malkaesther.livejournal.com]

I keep wondering whether something like "An RPG/training game for con staff/vollunteers to practice dealing with different potential situations. And another one for congoers/interested bystanders for practice on how to step in" would make sense to develop.

I was thinking a game developer group would work with a/several rape crisis center(s) and a number of SMOFs/JOFs who have experience in dealing with high profile failure/fixing problems to create the training "game(s)."

[lydy.livejournal.com]

Interesting idea. Very interesting.

Friday Links (it's not what you think edition)

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

User typographer referenced to your post from Friday Links (it's not what you think edition) (http://typographer.livejournal.com/996725.html) saying: [...] Harassment: What do we do [...]

Rotary Link Salad, Fundraising Post-Mortem Edition

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

User chris_gerrib referenced to your post from Rotary Link Salad, Fundraising Post-Mortem Edition (http://chris-gerrib.livejournal.com/614313.html) saying: [...] else." 3) Lydy Nickerson waxes wise on the problem with zero-tolerance anti-harassment policies [...]