Women and TLUG - a personal rant

[Colin McGregor]

On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 11:10 AM, Renata Rocha <natzilla-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:

> I've never had any problems with your behaviour, Colin, but I'm glad
> you can do a self-assessment and apologize in public for mistakes you
> might have done in the past. That's the right thing to do.
>

Thanks...


> I dislike the idea of pointing at people and telling that they've done
> this or that, as this accomplishes nothing - people need to realize
> their own mistakes and how some attitudes affect negatively others. I
> strongly believe in educating over punishing.
>

The problem we have is at least one so-and-so who always seems happiest
when everyone around them (male or female) is ... at least somewhat ...
uncomfortable. In other words, education is NOT the issue here, we are
dealing with a different / larger issue here. In fact, telling some people
they are causing issues may make things worse as the person then knows they
are getting under the skin of their "target".

I'm a strong believer in consent and touching someone or making jokes
> of crude nature without consent should not be tolerated at all. It's
> *not funny* and when you ignore these attitudes two things are
> happening:
> - you're giving the person permission to keep doing it, as it were an
> acceptable thing to do
> - you're giving the rest of the group permission to do the same,
> because nobody said anything against it
>
> Then it escalates.
>
> So when a female joins the group and sees another being a victim of
> this, she expects to be treated the same way by the group, as it's
> only logical.
>
> And you all also know if a woman wanted to find a romantic partner,
> TLUG would be the last place to go for it - there are plenty of online
> services offering matchmaking these days.
>
> I believe TLUG should be treated as a workplace, and if you wouldn't
> say/do something to a woman at your workplace because of the
> harassment/sexual harassment rules, then think twice before doing it
> at TLUG.
>

I think the GTALug board needs to do two things, first a clear code of
conduct so there are no secrets regarding what will / will not be
tolerated. Second will be to have some sort of penalty (or penalties)
severe enough to make the violators of the code of conduct think twice or
in the most extreme cases cause them to go away for violations (the later
could be a challenge... :-( ).

Colin.


> Keyword: CONSENT.
> Renata Rocha
> http://renata.org
>
>
> On Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 8:16 AM, Colin McGregor <colin.mc151-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>
> wrote:
> > On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 12:19 PM, Renata Rocha <natzilla-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> I like TLUG a lot, and used to attend the meetings. But you haven't
> >> seen me at the meetings in a while, and probably won't see me anytime
> >> soon.
> >>
> >> Some men who attend TLUG and we know who they are have a
> >> predatory/harassing behaviour when in presence of women. If you attend
> >> TLUG, have seen this happen and have ignored this behaviour of your
> >> colleague, you are enabling violence against women to keep happening
> >> at the TLUG environment, and keeping women away from the group.
> >>
> >> I have myself promised not to come back to the meetings while I see
> >> this kind of harassment in public being ignored, and the people who do
> >> it not held accountable for their actions.
> >>
> >> What you can do: talk to these members and make them at least
> >> apologize for their actions and make women feel safe and comfortable
> >> again at the TLUG meetings. I'd love to learn and hang out with you,
> >> but your environment is not welcoming for me and for other women in IT
> >> I know. We're in this for the same reason as everyone else - learning
> >> and sharing.
> >>
> >> (Yes yes I realize there's more than man/woman in the world, but for
> >> this case specifically I wanted to keep the universe limited. )
> >>
> >> Renata Rocha
> >> http://renata.org
> >
> >
> >
> > First let me note that I know my behavior has not been perfect, and for
> any
> > distress I may have caused let me apologize.
> >
> > Beyond this there is at least one person who I know to be much, much
> worse
> > than myself, who I don't know how to deal with. The temptation is to say
> > "well that is so-and-so being so-and-so...", further knowing that short
> of
> > the use of a baseball bat, so-and-so is not likely to change (so-and-so
> > seems to enjoy playing the jerk too much...).
> >
> > I'm not sure what the way forward is (issuing baseball bats to the women
> who
> > do show up at the meetings isn't a solution...), but I would like to see
> > more women at GTALug meetings.
> >
> >
> > Colin McGregor
> >
> --
> The Toronto Linux Users Group.      Meetings: http://gtalug.org/
> TLUG requests: Linux topics, No HTML, wrap text below 80 columns
> How to UNSUBSCRIBE: http://gtalug.org/wiki/Mailing_lists
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://gtalug.org/pipermail/legacy/attachments/20131210/ace87439/attachment.html>