The Ada Initiative was a nonprofit that worked to increase women's participation in open technology and culture, writing on conference harassment policies and codes of conduct.
HN links it as a source on conference codes of conduct and anti-harassment policy; some commenters object to its approach, while others endorse its advice.
> Sure. And that problem is bullying. It has absolutely nothing to do with women in technology. Saying "imaginary problem X is totally real because real problem Y is real" is not logical.
The problem is not bullying alone, though that is part of the problem. Something can be both bullying and sexism at the same time. Bullies will frequently reach for the strongest ammunition they can get, whether it's racist, sexist, homophobic, or any of a number of other ways to hurt their victims.
Just because it's bullying doesn't mean that it's automatically not sexism as well.
> http://www.dailymotion.com/playlists/user/BrainwashingInNorway/1
Really? A video series called "BranwashingInNorway" about how there are a few people in Norway who are too politically correct to admit that there are some sex-linked behavioral differences?
Did you have any particular evidence for your actual claim that that once it's no longer taboo women don't want to cross traditional gender lines any more that you wanted me to look at, or am I supposed to trawl through the whole four and a half hours?
How about an actual reliable citation in an academic paper, rather than someone who's just trying to demonstrate that there are a few Norwegian academics who are a little too PC for their own good.
> Why don't you need evidence to back up the claim that women are avoiding certain professions because of sexism?
I do. There is plenty of evidence. For instance, the original post that this whole thread is…
From the Ada Initiative response[1]:
"Simply put, even the world’s most pro-woman, sex-positive, pro-consent talk about sex is likely to have negative effects on women at a technical conference."
This seems like an incredibly accurate, well-reasoned, and thoroughly consequentialist view of the situation. It's supported by an overwhelming majority of objective evidence[2][3][4][5][6].
It is already being attacked as "against hacker culture," because apparently "hacker culture" is synonymous with "propagate any and all information regardless of the social consequences." Sharing information openly and freely is generally a good thing, because it generally leads to good results. But that's no reason to continue to senselessly spread information that will almost certainly lead to bad things.
To head off the inevitable argument about "censorship" and "freedom of speech," I'll note that nobody here was censored, nor denied freedom of speech. One group used their freedom of speech to convince another group hosting a conference to exercise its freedom of speech and not endorse a talk they were apparently convinced was harmful. Freedom of speech doesn't permit you the use of any platform as your own. My freedom of speech doesn't entitle me to writing the Washington Post's front page headline (or getting any space in the paper at all).
It looks like the organizers were right not to allow this talk to be given at their conference, and I for one applaud them for that, even though…
Val Aurora (and Matthew Garrett) are also involved in some kind of Shun Project against Ted T'so, as best as I can tell it's because of the savage crime on his part of saying that it's possible that some forms of sexual assault and rape are worse than others (e.g. being touched while drunk vs. being violently gang-raped in a bus). One of Ted's actual examples was that of two extremely drunk individuals, where he asked that if a drunk female does not have the mental ability to knowingly consent, does the drunk male have the mental ability to knowingly rape the female? And how do we know who raped who? [1]. He goes further into territory I don't personally agree with (talking about shifting some responsibility onto a party that has been drinking) but even there that's at least consistent with the treatment of other situations involving consumption of alcohol.
While it's probably insensitive to talk about like that, I'm even more scared of those who try to turn policy and ethics debates like that into "my way or the highway" topics by turning every opposing viewpoint into thoughtcrime.
Certainly sexual assault of any type should not be tolerated, but should a conference organizer report all types of sexual assault that occur at a conference only as a flat "rape", or is it OK to split into further categories? And how can you sanely debate policy at all when you will simply be silenced if your opinion does not conform?
More…
Humility is great, but when people call something a "syndrome" (a word usually associated with disorders/diseases), they usually mean that the thing is interfering with your life - humility taken too far, to a degree that is making you feel worse and causing problems for you.
Impostor syndrome can mean that you have difficulty taking pride in your work (since all you can see are the problems with it), which makes it difficult to share your knowledge - which isn't good for other people who might want to know about it and learn from it, and isn't good for your reputation and career growth.
Impostor syndrome can also mean that it's hard for you to ask questions (and admit that you don't know something!), since you're worried that you don't know as much as you should, which makes your work harder.
Not taking pride in your work and not asking questions also means that you're not really being the best role model for people looking up to you - your coworkers, people who work for you, volunteers who help with your project, etc.
(This is based on what I learned from the impostor syndrome presentation described at http://adainitiative.org/2013/06/kicking-impostor-syndrome-in-the-head-lessons-from-adacamp-dc-and-sf/ .)
Women suffer from imposter syndrome[0] more than men and seem somewhat less confident about their abilities in a variety of metrics (e.g. they contribute to wikipedia articles related to their area of expertise less than equally qualified men. They feel less confident speaking at conferences. The ADA initiative has a good piece on this [1] )
---note: this is not anything to do with actual capabilities!---
Regardless of what causes this difference (cultural, social, biological, monkey-based evo psych, whatever) I would bet it is a factor here. So I posit that men may cover up their lack of knowledge, but it may also be a confidence issue - perhaps the men actually feel like they know already, and the women are less sure of their own knowledge.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_syndrome
[1] http://adainitiative.org/2013/08/is-impostor-syndrome-keeping-women-out-of-open-technology-and-culture/
I'd agree with all of this, with the caveat that at lot of what your saying is both called out in the article and in a lot of advice around writing a code of conduct (example: https://adainitiative.org/2014/02/18/howto-design-a-code-of-conduct-for-your-community/), so it's not even clear to me that this is a problem with the majority of the CoC organizations/enforcement.
Even here where part of the problem in the vague requirement ("be kind"), the biggest problem is they didn't follow their own processes of having an actual dialog. It's a bit like if you walked into a US court and the Judge immediately says "I talked to the victim and your clearly guilty", it's not the process that's the problem, it's that the process wasn't followed. Maybe like the court system there should be an appeals process (not sure what that might look like).