Slashdot Mirror
Is Sexual Harassment Part of Hacker Culture?
owenferguson writes "Valerie Aurora, Linux kernel file systems expert, takes DEFCON to task for poor sexual harassment policing. A nice followup piece to the recent Readercon fiasco."
← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)
I'm an average geek. I have to say that when I find myself surrounded by really hardcore geeks, I feel put off. It's like they are in a feeding frenzy, looking for a chance to be king of the hill. I am not surprised at all that they'd act in totally horrible ways towards women. Clearly, part of the game there was to do so (to get the hole punched).
I think in the general area of business software, the stereotype of the hardcore geek is mostly gone. People who write business applications are generally pretty mainstream by geek standards. Perhaps such a concentration of extremely tech-focused geeks like at the conference in question is the last place we see this kind of stereotype, and possibly, for that reason they are all the more poorly behaved.
(Aside from needing to look up that link about all articles that end with question mark)
.. its a part of immature people who associate with hacker culture .. hmm .. so maybe that should be a yes?
Sexual harassment is just plain old immature behavior. It isn't a part of Hack Culture
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
Or the experience of one of my friends, who prefers to remain anonymous. At a recent DEFCON, while leaning over to get her drink at the bar, someone slid his hand up all the way between her legs and grabbed her crotch.
I cannot believe someone could even remotely think that doing something like this would be a good idea. Someone else's body is not just an object. Jesus Christ people, get a fucking clue - this sort of attitude makes for a very poor environment all around.
in girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
Is this real sexual harassment or just one of the insanely vocal parish that categorise "rape" as "some guy glancing askance at my bubs", who in the process harm actual rape victims by trivialising it?
Grabbing a woman by the crotch in a crowded room and running away definitely counts as "sexual harassment". Except, oh wait. It's ASSAULT. Much better.
One man was apparently out of order, it wasn't a group effort by an entire community. The creep didn't do anything bad enough to get himself arrested and was banned for life for his actions, can't that be an end to it?
Or are we still running with the assumption that all white males are fundamentally evil and everything they do is sexist and/or racist.
Coming from a woman's perspective: agreed, to an extent.
It's not that most of these guys are necessarily bad people, but hackers (in the DEFCON sense) do tend to follow alpha male mentality. Now mix that up with copious amounts of alcohol, the poor social adjustment that many geeks have, and the "anything goes" attitude of Sin City, and yeah you'll have problems.
On that note, the single biggest improvement in that respect would actually be to move DEFCON from Las Vegas. People just behave badly there - for better or worse this isn't just a geek thing or a DEFCON thing.
... and it's not "sexual harassment". It's "sexual assault". I've been seeing considerably more of people being inappropriately aggressive, and not just in hacker cons. It's happening in sci fi cons too, and tech business cons, and plenty of other places. Sales conferences have always been bad, but it's new to see so much of this in geek culture.
I'm pretty sexually liberated (OK, I'm a fucking slut), but that doesn't mean free for all. No matter how much you think they want it, never assume they're interested unless they respond positively to some gentle verbal flirting... And if they don't, they're not interested, so please fuck off.
I know this sounds obvious to many, but I keep seeing rather horrifying examples of geeks completely failing to follow that basic protocol.
I have been going to defcon for many years. In recent years my non tech wife has been coming along. My wife is extremely hot and attracts unwanted attention everywhere we go. Its quite the task to keep creepers at bay most of the time. She has repeatedly made it clear that the attendees at defcon and the parties there have been completely respectful and gentlemanly to her. On the other hand, she has been propositioned for "shopping sprees and condo parties" from creepy Vegas men and attempted to be recruited to be a stripper and prostitute on different occasions at the Rio and Riviera pool by Vegas scum. At one point several random hackers came to her defense as she was trying to get away from Vegas scum at the pool. By the time I got out of my track and to the pool random defconers had "solved" the issue in a ways an angry older brother would. These type of problems are what makes my wife wary of defcon and Vegas in general, Vegas scum, not the defcon attendees.
If this is all about some drunk kid asking someone to show your tits, well those kids are everywhere there is alcohol. If someone assaults you, sexually or otherwise, charges should be pressed.
Your stereotypical geek may be awkward with women and he may even be a misogynist but he's also probably not terribly social and keeps to himself and his group. I don't see anyone who I'd class a proper geek being the sort to grab someone's ass.
However some ruby on rails rockstar douche bag is almost required to be grabbing ass and treating women like shit in between going to the gym and downing red bull. But brogrammers aren't just a pita to women, real programmers hate them too. They're a cancer on our culture.
Coming from a woman's perspective: agreed, to an extent.
It's not that most of these guys are necessarily bad people, but hackers (in the DEFCON sense) do tend to follow alpha male mentality. Now mix that up with copious amounts of alcohol, the poor social adjustment that many geeks have, and the "anything goes" attitude of Sin City, and yeah you'll have problems.
On that note, the single biggest improvement in that respect would actually be to move DEFCON from Las Vegas. People just behave badly there - for better or worse this isn't just a geek thing or a DEFCON thing.
No, they don't.
They follow what a wimpy, pasty-white basement dweller THINKS is an "alpha male mentality".
Real alpha males stop acting that way about 11 or 12.
The major problem with Valerie's article is that she creates a strawman argument ("all you men say that if women don't feel comfortable, they shouldn't go") which she then leaps off of to claim that women are not made welcome and thus are being denied employment opportunities available at said conference. In prior discussions here on Slashdot, I have not seen a single commenter say anything similar to that. It is at best an extremist viewpoint. Most of the voices in this and prior discussions have been one of collective disapproval and support for women feeling comfortable at conferences.
The other problem is that Valerie and her cohorts think female-on-male violence is funny:
"The cards are a hilarious way to raise awareness of the problem of brutal sexual harassment at DEFCON and similar conferences."
http://singlevoice.net/redyellow-card-project/
Text from the red card: "You should be happy you got this card and not a punch in the face."
This is a perfect example of how culturally it has become completely acceptable for women to beat men in public or media; people stare, freak out, and intervene when a guy gets aggressive with a woman....but she can use his hair to thrash his head around, punch him repeatedly, etc - and nobody says a word or gives it a second glance. In movies, a woman getting hit is the ultimate bad-guy act...but a man getting hit? That's comedy! Funny! Let's not forget that the man is always portrayed in media as being a lecherous slimebag, and thus "deserves" this treatment.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlFAd4YdQks
Please help metamoderate.
First, I must preface I am not saying these things do not happen and I will not take away from anyone's experience as these situations are inexcusable and horrific, but I do want to chime in and say they do not happen to ALL women.
I have been attending tech conferences for going on 6 years now. This year was my 2nd BlackHat, 3rd Defcon, I also speak at average 4-5 conferences in an associated industry each year. While I won't say I have never experienced an idiot or two (but wouldn't you in any situation) OVERALL the men have been supportive, giving, generous and career boosting. They are also very protective over me and if anyone treated me this way I know the person would find himself in a very bad way very quickly. That being said.
I worry when I see posts like this because though I am 1000% positive there are a few bad apples in a conference the size of Defcon (18k) I don't believe wholesale that there are a plethora of bad aggressive idiot men attending.
Most of the men I meet are respectful and helpful and by othering the men you separate women further and create and atmosphere where men are afraid to speak or befriend as they might offend.
So again, I do not wish to in any way detract or minimize the horrendous behavior that was mentioned here. I just caution that generalization can cause issues that do not exist, create a negative atmosphere where women are further separated from the goals they seek to achieve. We work in a predominantly male industry.
Men are not the enemy and I would not be where I am without the ones I know help and guidance. So just remember in a barrel of apples there are always some worm infested ones among the many bright and shiny.
You're not a hacker, you're a dick.
Calling yourself a hacker takes away all your credibility. Just saying.
No, your low ID doesn't help either.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
On that note, the single biggest improvement in that respect would actually be to move DEFCON from Las Vegas. People just behave badly there - for better or worse this isn't just a geek thing or a DEFCON thing.
That's a terrible idea. What about all the women that have to live in Las Vegas?
Sexual harassment, assault, and battery must not be tolerated anywhere in society. Las Vegas does not deserve a special exemption as being a spot where men can go, and stop comporting themselves like gentlemen. That does not mean you can't get a little crazy either. I've been completely fucking plastered and flirting with women and I can tell you I still behaved like a gentleman. In Las Vegas too. I didn't grope them and make lewd comments about how I wanted them to service me sexually.
I don't know if a lifetime ban is appropriate in this specific case because there is no article on what actually happened. It seems that the women writing the article talks about having her crotch groped. That is sexual battery and a felony.
We have laws for this stuff. While I don't support multi-year sentences for just groping a woman, I would absolutely throw the bastard in jail for 6-12 months. People don't have a real grasp on just how long that is in a prison environment. Think about something like your two week vacation, that just seems a lot longer, and then multiply it.
Where the laws don't cover it, that's where organizations can step in and remove the person for whatever time period they deem appropriate. If it was for something as serious as sexual battery then, yes, it may well be appropriate to remove that person for life.
Simply removing a conference from an environment that may enable bad behavior is a half-assed response (respectfully), and does not really address the problem in the way it deserves.
It does not matter where it is. Nobody should be able to get away with behavior like this regardless of gender, sexual orientation, etc.
Reminds me of special capitalism zones in China where it is okay to temporarily not act Communist.
The biggest problem I have - not solely isolated to geek culture - is the refusal to believe that a problem even exists. When faced with some situation, such as "do I keep going when this girl who was making out with me before says, 'this is going too fast for me, I want to stop'?", a large percent of men will say "of course I stop" while a large minority will say "of course I keep going", but both groups by and large refuse to admit that there are so many people who take the opposite view.
Think of all the women you know. One in four will be raped at least once in her lifetime. We're not even talking about sexual harrassment, things like unwanted grabbing of breasts and crotches, etc. One in four is just, simply, "rape". There is not some tiny, miniscule percentage of guys doing this; there's actually a rather large minority who seems to think that it's okay to do to women things that they don't want done to them. But just as much of a problem as these guys are, it's nearly as big of a problem that a large portion of the majority of guys who aren't like that seem to have trouble believing that so many men *are* like that. That they probably have several friends who wouldn't stop if the girl they're with said "no".
I think the Daniel Tosh / rape joke thing is a great example. Some comedians get all "freedom of speech" offended if anyone gets mad at them for telling rape jokes. "They're just harmless jokes!" The difference between a "harmless joke" and "offensive" when you say something over the top is whether you and/or your audience actually believe it. And whether you want to accept the fact or not, a sizeable percentage of your audience actually *does* believe what you're joking about. And a sizeable percentage of your audience are victims of what you're making fun of. So you can talk all you want about how you can stand up and tell genocide jokes without people getting offended, but unless you're prepared to go to the Kigali Chuckle Hut and do the same sketch to a bunch of Tutsis who had their families hacked down, you have no ground to stand on.
We're practicing our labials.
You are a part of this society. You damn well better care what we think, because if we judge you to be a threat to the rights of others, we can and will lock you away in some dark little concrete room where you can never hurt anyone again.
You are not a god. You are not an island. You are a sack of mostly water. No one cares about your little Slashdot manifesto. Learn to function in this society, or be removed from it.
This isn't about hurt feelings. Read the article. This is about women -- human beings with all the same thoughts and feelings as men -- getting groped and molested by men who are so broken in the head that they think such behavior is merely "politically incorrect". Such people are a danger, because they either do not or cannot recognize the humanity of other people.
Some of them retreat from society, never hurt anyone, and live in their caves as hermits until they die. It's sad, and it would be good if we could help them, but in those cases we have no justification in forcing help on them.
But for those that actually assault women, yes, we have not only the right but the responsibility to remove them from society.
The very concept that women need to be treated a particular way is a large part of our society's gender issues..
Women need to be treated with respect for their boundaries. The same as men. There's not gender discrimination here; men can and have been sexually harassed, but in a place that is 90% male it's less likely. You seem to be confusing what's prevalent with what's possible.
Terrorist, bomb, al Qaeda, nuclear, yellowcake, kill, assassinate. Carnivore is dead... long live Echelon.
Many of these people claim to be experts, and in some cases even "rockstars" and "coding ninjas".
I have yet to meet anyone who actually writes code for a living who refers to themselves in these terms. Usually, I hear it from body shop recruiters or dotcom promoters (e.g "we're looking for a rockstar"). The strange thing is that they generally want a "rockstar" to do trivial work on a half-assed development platform to implement something that nobody needs.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I apologize. No one should be allowed to grope or physically molest anyone. I'm a little tired and misunderstood what had occurred. Again I do apologize for the language and tone of my response.
Exactly. The stupid sociopaths wind up in prison usually, because they'll do illegal things but they're too dumb to avoid getting caught. The really smart sociopaths become tycoons and run corporations like Apple and Microsoft, while the ones either not quite as intelligent (but still smart) or more motivated by power than money become President or go into other high-up political positions.
Fuck you. This isn't about hurt feelings, it's about sexual assault; reaching up a woman's skirt and grabbing her crotch is a criminal offense, and deserves prison time.
The very concept that women need to be treated a particular way is a large part of our society's gender issues..
Women need to be treated with respect for their boundaries. The same as men. There's not gender discrimination here; men can and have been sexually harassed, but in a place that is 90% male it's less likely. You seem to be confusing what's prevalent with what's possible.
People need to be treated with respect, in general.
what the fuck is this political correctness? All the women are asking for is to be treated the same as you'd treat the men.
Do you walk up to men and ask for sex?
Do you touch other men all over and give them massages?
Or do you just shut up and code? If the latter, why do you give a flying fuck about this?
I happen to be homosexual and find that offensive - I can assure you most gay men have no desire to see some geek parade around in speedos or anything else for that matter. The suggested punishment implies that homosexuals lust after any and all males regardless, reinforces a sexual stereotype, and shows your own prejudice. In short, it's a bit hypocritical.
Those with insight will recognise that this post is in itself "politically correct" and infer further meaning.
That's not the case in the US. "Rape" has not become a meaningless term here.
It means rape. We're not talking about Swedish Rape.
No means no and stop means stop. If you confuse the two, it's on you, asshole.
The opposite of Sweden is Italy, where it's hard to get a rape conviction unless the woman is hurt enough to be hospitalized for a week. I love Italy, but women are treated like shit there. The rape laws in the US appear to be pretty reasonable by comparison to those two extremes.
The fact that we're seeing the kind of comments we're seeing to this story saying that "women cry sexual harassment just if you look at them", is pretty much proof that sexual harassment is a problem in "hacker culture". Those stupid comments come from the kind of problematic culture that creates a situation where women are abused. The cases where sexual harassment is found by a court are almost always real sexual harassment. When you hear some guy say, "Yeah, I just looked at her and the next thing you know I'm being charged with sexual harassment", you can pretty much bet that it wasn't about "being looked at" at all.
And no, "She dresses like a slut" is not a valid defense. Nor is, "We were just playing. We always play like that here." People who are exploiting others almost never think they're doing anything wrong. The desire to rationalize - to excuse ourselves - is very strong. It's strong enough a group of slaveowners to get together and write some formal document about the "inalienable rights of man" and how "all men being created equal" and such bullshit, and then pat themselves on the back, when they own people who were brought here in chains. Like I said, people who exploit never think they're doing anything wrong.. We want to think we're good people so badly that we'll tell ourselves any kind of lie in order to excuse our behavior. It's how terms like "Right to Work" and "Free Market" come about. I mean, how can it be exploitation if it's the work of the "Free Market"? You're not against "freedom", are you?
You are welcome on my lawn.
Really? Just because you don't know proper office behavior does not mean that the grownups are similarly defective. How does it feel knowing that you are the exact kind of loser that this entire chain of posts is all about?
Aww, that's cute. Too bad it's also bullshit.
Men don't overhear an off-color joke being told to another man and subject the whole office to PC-training.
Hmm, last place I was at, some idiot boss told an off-color (i.e. racist) joke that another man took offense to. Lawsuit. Settled for around $2M.
The only bullshit is people thinking their own views of what is professional conduct should somehow be the standard of their workplace. You think rape jokes or commenting on peoples' tits are acceptable? Feel free to call up HR and ask that that be added to the employee code of conduct. If they tell you to seek professional help, maybe you should.
>>Guys like you should be dressed in a pair of speedos and forced to parade for an hour in a gay bar.
>>Then we'd hear no more nonsense about "political correctness".
FUck off. What makes you think us gays want to be punished with that asshole too?
Lack of empathy is a big problem when you have control over the lives of many people in the way that high ranking politicians do.
Right.
So someone who doesn't want women to be harrassed and physically intimidated, and makes a public stand against it, actually secretly wants it to be less obvious.
While the people who bring out strawman after strawman, and keep talking about jokes and political correctness, instead of the actual stuff at hand, are the ones who want to deal with it.
And your reasoning is "that it reminds you of this one guy", someone who checks out the territory first, then uses force to take what he likes. You know, that's exactly how politically correct people roll! Everybody knows that. They also poisoned the wells.
Holy fuck guys, TFA is not even about you and how you personally suck -- it's about that other guy, who you seem to be confusing yourself with -- yet you turn the whole discussion into a giant flare calling yourselves out? All the energy put into strawmen.. you know where it ends up pointing, right? I mean, there's misunderstandings, and there's repeated missing of the point and talking about a conveniently prepared narrative, over and over again.
I don't mean just you personally, a bunch of guys in this discussion. Maybe you really have such issues with political correctness that you just use this topic as a vehicle for your.. stuff.. even then, pay some fucking attention to what some women have gone through, and how there isn't even an equivalent for that, no likely way for women to do it to men. Also, don't spam, and don't just mindlessly repeat, ignoring counter-arguments and preaching to the choir.
OR MAYBE this story actually rubs you genuinely the wrong way, with what it is actually about -- in that case I'd say, keep talking fuckers, let the world know. We're cominagetcha, rawr! You had your fun, you left your scars - but I for one am praying there will a day where the only technically correct (TC) way to talk about this is the past tense. Cuz you're all dead and nobody learned your trade. Amen.