Formal and Informal Harassment
Sep. 1st, 2015 06:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydyI've just now read through Meg Frank's document dump on what led her to quit the Sasquan Concom. She disagreed with the decision to allow Lou Antonelli to attend, and disagreed so strongly that she felt she had to resign.
My first thought, after reading them lightly, is that we need to get rid of the distinction between formal and informal reports of harassment. It does real damage, and has, as far as I can tell, no real benefits.
Let's start with the reporter. What you, as the person enforcing the code of conduct, have in front of you is a person who has decided to make a report to you of harassment. This is a person who has gone through the very difficult decision-making process of appealing to the authority of the convention. They may or may not be very upset about the incident that they are reporting. Likely they are. They have also gone through a difficult cost-benefit analysis on making a report. Reporting is not a no-cost exercise. It risks social capital. It takes time and energy. It requires discussing things that the person may very well prefer to ignore.
So, the first question you ask is, "Is this a formal or an informal report?" This is a hugely terrible question. First of all, you are asking someone who may very well be swamped to make yet another choice. The choice coming forward was difficult. Now they have to figure out what kind of report they want to make? It suggests that there are levels of offense, and that it is up to the reporter to choose that level. Probably you will need to describe the exact difference between a formal and informal report. Depending on your organization, it will be different things. Different levels of documentation and investigation. Different levels of response. And this will be complicated to explain. And you will be asking someone who has no expertise in the area to make that choice, moreover someone who may very well feel overwhelmed in the first place. And, to be honest, someone who has only minimal reasons to trust you in the first place.
The question is also an invitation to minimizing. "I don't want to cause too much trouble," is very frequently the first impulse of someone making a report. And a formal report is clearly more trouble than an informal report. Not only does it open the door to minimization, but it also has an implied invitation. There's a subtle suggestion that there's an easier, softer way, and that the reporter should take it. They might be really angry, or really centered and grounded, but if they're frightened, tentative, or don't really feel like they can trust the convention, they're extremely likely to minimize. And this minimization will be entirely independent of the event they are reporting.
The usual distinction between formal and informal is documentation. An informal report keeps minimal or no documentation. A formal report keeps lots. I think this is actually a very bad idea. Quick example: young person comes to me and says that they need to talk about something. I ask if it's a formal or informal report. I describe the difference, and the difference is that we don't keep records across conventions and we don't make any intervention, we just take note of it for that convention only so that if there's a recurrence, we can deal with it. The young person then describes an assault. You have just made a commitment to not do anything about this. You have basically promised an extremely minimal response to a situation where a minor has been assaulted. Now you have to decide if you are going to break your commitment to the person brave enough to report, or if you are going to let the predator continue to prowl, hoping to get a second instance. And if there is a second instance, and that young person also wants an "informal" report? This is a hugely untenable situation to be in.
We need to keep records. We really do. Human memory is fallible, staff changes. If someone comes to the concom three separate times with a problem, and we aren't keeping records because they're making an "informal" report, and they speak to three different staffers, they are going to get a very different response than if they speak to staffers who are aware of the previous instances. And even if the reporter is intellectually aware that no records were kept, emotionally they are going to have a hard time processing the fact that each instance is treated as a new and unique occurrence.
Keeping records is in close tension with confidentiality. And one of the questions you really do want to ask the reporter is, "What level of confidentiality do you need?"
When someone comes to you to make a report, start by saying that you need to take notes so that you don't forget anything important. Ask about their need for confidentiality. They're there to make a report. If you treat documentation as normal procedure, so will they. If they have a serious problem with it, they will tell you. If they do, listen to them and figure out what works best for both of you. But in the end, the decision about what to do with the report has to be the conventions, and the best way to make good decisions is to have good documentation.
And now I need to rewrite my procedures for Minicon. Because the current procedures do have a fairly muddled distinction between formal and informal, and it is a broken procedure, both practically and semiotically.
ETA: The other thing about the idea of a "formal" report is that it can be used to fail to deal with a problem you know about. I think that if the convention is aware that there is harassment going on, it should not have to wait upon a formal complainant to take action. That is legalistic thinking. Anti-harassment policies are not supposed to deal with illegal behavior. That, we turn over to the police. Anti-harassment policies are to deal with the stuff that harshes our squee. The stuff that makes the party less good, the stuff that gives us a bad rap amongst our friends.
My first thought, after reading them lightly, is that we need to get rid of the distinction between formal and informal reports of harassment. It does real damage, and has, as far as I can tell, no real benefits.
Let's start with the reporter. What you, as the person enforcing the code of conduct, have in front of you is a person who has decided to make a report to you of harassment. This is a person who has gone through the very difficult decision-making process of appealing to the authority of the convention. They may or may not be very upset about the incident that they are reporting. Likely they are. They have also gone through a difficult cost-benefit analysis on making a report. Reporting is not a no-cost exercise. It risks social capital. It takes time and energy. It requires discussing things that the person may very well prefer to ignore.
So, the first question you ask is, "Is this a formal or an informal report?" This is a hugely terrible question. First of all, you are asking someone who may very well be swamped to make yet another choice. The choice coming forward was difficult. Now they have to figure out what kind of report they want to make? It suggests that there are levels of offense, and that it is up to the reporter to choose that level. Probably you will need to describe the exact difference between a formal and informal report. Depending on your organization, it will be different things. Different levels of documentation and investigation. Different levels of response. And this will be complicated to explain. And you will be asking someone who has no expertise in the area to make that choice, moreover someone who may very well feel overwhelmed in the first place. And, to be honest, someone who has only minimal reasons to trust you in the first place.
The question is also an invitation to minimizing. "I don't want to cause too much trouble," is very frequently the first impulse of someone making a report. And a formal report is clearly more trouble than an informal report. Not only does it open the door to minimization, but it also has an implied invitation. There's a subtle suggestion that there's an easier, softer way, and that the reporter should take it. They might be really angry, or really centered and grounded, but if they're frightened, tentative, or don't really feel like they can trust the convention, they're extremely likely to minimize. And this minimization will be entirely independent of the event they are reporting.
The usual distinction between formal and informal is documentation. An informal report keeps minimal or no documentation. A formal report keeps lots. I think this is actually a very bad idea. Quick example: young person comes to me and says that they need to talk about something. I ask if it's a formal or informal report. I describe the difference, and the difference is that we don't keep records across conventions and we don't make any intervention, we just take note of it for that convention only so that if there's a recurrence, we can deal with it. The young person then describes an assault. You have just made a commitment to not do anything about this. You have basically promised an extremely minimal response to a situation where a minor has been assaulted. Now you have to decide if you are going to break your commitment to the person brave enough to report, or if you are going to let the predator continue to prowl, hoping to get a second instance. And if there is a second instance, and that young person also wants an "informal" report? This is a hugely untenable situation to be in.
We need to keep records. We really do. Human memory is fallible, staff changes. If someone comes to the concom three separate times with a problem, and we aren't keeping records because they're making an "informal" report, and they speak to three different staffers, they are going to get a very different response than if they speak to staffers who are aware of the previous instances. And even if the reporter is intellectually aware that no records were kept, emotionally they are going to have a hard time processing the fact that each instance is treated as a new and unique occurrence.
Keeping records is in close tension with confidentiality. And one of the questions you really do want to ask the reporter is, "What level of confidentiality do you need?"
When someone comes to you to make a report, start by saying that you need to take notes so that you don't forget anything important. Ask about their need for confidentiality. They're there to make a report. If you treat documentation as normal procedure, so will they. If they have a serious problem with it, they will tell you. If they do, listen to them and figure out what works best for both of you. But in the end, the decision about what to do with the report has to be the conventions, and the best way to make good decisions is to have good documentation.
And now I need to rewrite my procedures for Minicon. Because the current procedures do have a fairly muddled distinction between formal and informal, and it is a broken procedure, both practically and semiotically.
ETA: The other thing about the idea of a "formal" report is that it can be used to fail to deal with a problem you know about. I think that if the convention is aware that there is harassment going on, it should not have to wait upon a formal complainant to take action. That is legalistic thinking. Anti-harassment policies are not supposed to deal with illegal behavior. That, we turn over to the police. Anti-harassment policies are to deal with the stuff that harshes our squee. The stuff that makes the party less good, the stuff that gives us a bad rap amongst our friends.
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no subject
Date: 2015-09-03 04:49 pm (UTC)We can debate this in private when I next see you. I am not willing to publicly dissect information that shouldn't be public. I'll leave this with two points. First, I am not viewing Meg as more the disgruntled staffer than the reporter. Second, David is constrained in what he will say "on the record" in ways I will not go into, on the record.
We can pick this up in October.
pax / Ctein