Slashdot Mirror
Ada Initiative Organization To End, But Its Work Will Continue
An anonymous reader writes: Today the Ada Initiative announced that the nonprofit will shut down in mid-October. Founded in 2011, the Ada Initiative is a nonprofit feminist organization created to help improve open source culture and build a more inviting, productive, safe environment for women. In this interview with Opensource.com, the co-founders look back at the organization's successes, and the work that still needs to be done.
You think that a comment with no replies means that the organization isn't bothered by it? If you're not a hypocrite, go read Slashdot at -1, and make those same accusations about the crowd here.
Slashdot deliberately exercises very little editorial control, I would certainly expect a professional organisation to police the commentary on its website.
... who was going to give a talk about sex, rape, and the use of drugs to obviate consent, at a computer security conference. And it wasn't the Ada Initiative that "shut it down", but rather, the conference organizer decided to shut it down because 'the talk included "discussion of date rape drugs"'. In fact, contrary to your accusation, the Ada Initiative suggested ways that the speaker could still make the presentation, specifically doing a video of the talk or as an after-con talk. As the organizer states, "I have since reached out to Violet about recording her talk so we can put it up on our video site."
Trying to rewrite history doesn't work very well on the internet, you know.
I arrived at the Security BSides venue half an hour before my talk was set to begin, and I tracked down the main organizer to get connected with the speaker wrangler. I found him next door at DNA Pizza, where he was talking with this person. I apologized for the interruption, the organizer told me where to wait, and the woman he was talking to smiled at me. I smiled back.
The organizer came into the LockSport Lounge around 10 minutes later and asked if he could speak with me. I asked Eric Michaud to join me.
The organizer said, “So, I need to ask you: is there any rape in your talk?”
I said, “Is there any WHAT in my talk?” I was shocked.
“Well, there’s been a complaint about your talk.” He continued, “It’s from someone who is a rape survivor and they said they will be triggered by your talk if there’s any rape in it.”
“No, no, there’s no rape in my talk. I talk about human sexual systems and the effects drugs, including caffeine and alcohol, affect the performance of these systems and the dangers of mixing different things. What’s going on here?”
He replied, “Someone has said they will be triggered by your talk, and they’re a rape survivor.”
“Okay. In the talk I do cover ‘date rape’ drugs, and I explain their actions and how they’re dangerous.”
Then he said, “Do you describe how to use date rape drugs? They said that if you are going to tell people how to use date rape drugs then it’s the same as rape, and there’s going to be a problem.”
I told the organizer, “Wow, this really sucks - I know it’s not your fault. Well, how about if I shift the talk to a different room? We could put it on the smaller stage where the room has doors that close, or I could do it in the LockSport Lounge. Hell, I can even present it at the afterparty, it’s no problem. What is going to be easiest for you? It looks like you’re in a shitty position.”
“No, they’re here and they’re not leaving. They told me they’ll make it into a bigger problem if you do your talk.”
I paused for a minute. I said, “Okay. I guess I won’t give my talk, then. I don’t want this to be a problem for you, you’re in a shit position. It sounds like this person is going to make it into a bigger problem no matter what you do. It’s no big deal, don’t worry about it. Maybe I can do a video of the talk and BSides can have it as an after-con talk.”
The way the organizer looked at me, I knew that wouldn’t happen, either.
I said,