[sudo-discuss] someone at sudo was a creep and it's a problem

Wed Aug 3 20:09:25 PDT 2016

Hey all,
  I hope its okay if I add to the conversation here a little, which seems to be very thoughtful and productive thus far.  I'm especially impressed at the intention to hear from the experiences of women, which is really cool.  Kudos to the men that expressed the importance of our limited experience, and to the women who spoke up.
    I am not a sudo room member and am rarely I'm rarely in that space, but Jake mentioned me at the end of the first email and CC-ed me.  As a member of Noisebridge and someone in the bay hackerspace communities, this is a subject close to my heart that I think it is helpful to think about it, and maybe we can offer some cross-hackerspace solutions to eachother.

Since Jake mentioned this in the first email, here is the Noisebridge Anti-Harassment Policy:
https://www.noisebridge.net/wiki/Anti-Harassment_Policy

Now for my 2 cents:

Note, there is nothing in there that states you cannot ask someone out at NB.  However, I am strongly in favor of definitely limiting that behavior (as I voiced to my friend the other night) because women have complained to me VERY OFTEN about being sick of being hit on at Noisebridge.  Almost all of the women hackers have left the space over the years, and I have friends that are women that used to used to hack there and have told me outright they will not return because of being hit on all the time (even with something as simple as "what are you working on?" and "Do you want a tour of the space?" being asked all the time, when they had been regulars for months, if not years.)

A woman I was having a meeting with recently got interrupted by some pickup artist fool (in the middle of our meeting) and asked to lunch.  Was this harassment?  I'm not sure, but it was damn inappropriate.

Kathy makes a solid point, saying 
"I think one thing that always comes up at sudo/ccl is where to draw the line between bad social skills and unintentionally harmful behavior."

I would like to add that pickup artists and creeps are *very* skilled at *intentionally blurring this line* it is, in fact, what they might be best at.  A lot of us don't have the best social skills, but when you go out of your way to interrupt people and ask someone out I think you are behaving inappropriately (talking about NB here).  

Do we decide to never ask people out at a hackerspace?  One of my close friends who is an awesome hacker woman is an advocate of this, and it makes a lot of sense.  However, If someone is showing prolonged interest in me, over the course of multiple visits to the space, then I would consider asking them out.  What does that look like?  I would say if a woman came over to me to ask about my projects, my personal life, etc. on multiple occasions and made it their business (not mine) to say hello to me all the time, then maybe I would ask her if she wanted to share a burrito.  The problem seems to arise when *men* are initiating the contact over and over again, especially going into a different part of the hackerspace just to engage with women.  

The example Jake mentioned from the other night was a woman came to ask what a group of us were working on, and then later in the night was looking for some scissors for her sewing.  I said she could use mine if she needed, which she seemed to appreciate.  My friend suggested that I asked her out at one point later in the night because he thought she was into me.  I had a) never seen her before in the space and b) had no reason to believe she was initiating contact with me beyond needing tools.  She asked nothing of my personal life and did not join us in our projects or anything.  So I told him I thought it would be inappropriate to ask her out, and advocated letting women have their space to work on their projects.

Hopefully some of this info is helpful to share, I'm really glad you are all addressing this issue so thoughtfully!  I am by no means an expert on any of this and am very open to hearing from others if the shared views are harmful in any way. 
Thanks for reading,

Zach

--------------------------------------------
On Wed, 8/3/16, Mary Ward <maryhbw at gmail.com> wrote:

 Subject: Re: [sudo-discuss] someone at sudo was a creep and it's a problem
 To: "Kathy Buehmann" <kathy.buehmann at gmail.com>
 Cc: "Patrik D'haeseleer" <patrikd at gmail.com>, "Marc Juul" <juul at labitat.dk>, "Jake" <jake at spaz.org>, "Zach T" <organic_unity at yahoo.com>, "sudo-discuss" <sudo-discuss at lists.sudoroom.org>, "cultlabsboard at googlegroups.com" <cultlabsboard at googlegroups.com>, "Tamari Kirtadze" <kirtadzet at gmail.com>
 Date: Wednesday, August 3, 2016, 7:26 PM

 Hi
 All,
 I have interacted with
 Sean on many occasions and I have not found him to be
 threatening in the least. I believe that we are lacking a
 general enculturation program for the Omni.  

 I personally was not aware
 that you cannot ask people on dates at the Omni or Sudoroom
 specifically. I am glad to know this so I don't make a
 similar mistake.
 Kind Regards,
 MarySent from my
 iPhone
 On Aug 3, 2016, at 6:34
 PM, Kathy Buehmann <kathy.buehmann at gmail.com>
 wrote:

 I agree, I think
 we should hear Jake's female friend's account before
 moving forward.

 When he was speaking with me, he seemed
 very enthusiastic and excited to share his idea with those
 of us at the social. I did not mind him dominating the
 conversation as it felt that he was doing so more to convey
 his excitement than to try to quiet anyone else. He promptly
 left once he had finished "venting" (positive
 connotation) and I figured he'd be busy working on his
 projects again.

 I had not thought much about
 yesterday's conversation with him until now. I suppose
 after this interaction I probably would not go out of my way
 to share my own projects with him, but not out of spite or
 malice. More, he just seemed really into his own thing. I
 feel there are tons of people at CCL who would be psyched to
 hear about stuff I'm working on, so I'd simply
 choose to share it with them. His loss, from my point of
 view.

 That being
 said, he was not hitting on me, asking me out, preventing me
 from speaking, or anything that aggressive. If that had been
 the case I probably would have found someone else to talk to
 or worked on my computer until he left the conversation. I
 imagine it would have taken quite a bit for me to directly
 address him about it, whether verbally or with a
 hypothetical yellow card. I cannot think of anything off the
 top of my head that would spurn me to do this, short of him
 flat out insulting me or becoming physical in any way. At
 this point however I imagine many others in the conversation
 would notice and also take action.

 I'm not really sure
 what to do moving forward but wanted to share my perspective
 as I interacted with him last night. I personally have not
 had or witnessed any negative interactions with him and
 appreciate his enthusiasm and energy.

 I think one thing that always comes
 up at sudo/ccl is where to draw the line between bad social
 skills and unintentionally harmful behavior. The tricky
 thing is it depends on the person on the receiving end of it
 all. I know there have been a few peeps at ccl I don't
 feel super comfortable around, but if no one else seems to
 take offense then I'll attribute it to personal bias on
 my part and try to minimize contact. That being said I am
 rarely in the space alone with said people so maybe that
 would change my opinion.

 Wish I could attend the meeting
 tonight. Thanks for addressing this everyone and keep us in
 the loop.

 On Wed, Aug 3, 2016 at 5:32
 PM, Patrik D'haeseleer <patrikd at gmail.com>
 wrote:
 Sean is a regular CCL member, and has been working
 on the liquid handling robot in the basement for almost two
 months now.
 I've
 interacted with him on several occasions. He is definitely
 enthusiastic and talkative, but he didn't strike me as a
 problem before. But then again, I'm not a woman
 either.
 I would really
 want to hear Jake's friend's reaction to this event,
 and the opinion of some of the other women in CCL he's
 been interacting with over the past several
 weeks.
 Patrik
 On Wed, Aug 3, 2016 at 4:49
 PM, Marc Juul <juul at labitat.dk>
 wrote:

 On Wed, Aug 3, 2016 at 2:17 AM,
 Jake <jake at spaz.org>
 wrote:
 Dear
 Sudoroom,

 sorry for streaming mode, i'm not sure how to talk about
 this.

 there's this guy who's been at sudo a few times
 during hardware hacking tuesdays.  I think his name is Sean
 but i can't remember for sure now.

 he likes talking about his workout routine, and getting
 rich, and says he's going to invent bio-drones and says
 he's working on some secret project that's going to
 show to elon musk and it's going to make him super
 rich.

 well tonight he crossed the line from annoying to
 unacceptably creepy.

 tonight a friend of mine came to sudoroom so we could use
 the robot to cut holes in these christmas ornaments.  It
 was a big project that took hours and a lot of focus.  Sean
 (is that his name?) was on her like glue the entire time,
 trying to be helpful, talking to her.

 It made me uncomfortable, but she's a grownup and can
 speak for herself, but at the same time the power dynamic
 and assertiveness imbalance was quite stark and I really
 wanted to say something.

 But i didn't know what to say.

 the first time he went away for a minute, which was after
 what seemed like a long time, i said to my friend "you
 know, if anyone's bothering you here you can tell them
 to go away" because i couldn't think of anything
 better to say.  maybe i should have offered to tell him to
 go away?  but that would have only parried the problem that
 one time.

 Of course he soon came back.  I think we were both trying
 to ignore him as best we could, and we did get some good
 work done thanks to Zack and Fenn, who are great.  But
 eventually they left and it was just the three of us.

 I don't know what other things he said to my friend when
 i wasn't watching, but I did see him eventually ask her
 on a date.  She told him no, and then he made it very clear
 to everyone that he was fine with that and not bothered by
 it at all, because he's not bothered by anything.

 I was super bothered by it.  I wanted to tell him to leave
 right then, but I really didn't want to talk to him, I
 just wanted him to go away on his own.  I guess eventually
 he did.

 I want two things.  I want Sudoroom to ask this person to
 take a break from the space so that he can study up on our
 anti-harrassment policy and maybe write us an essay about
 why it's unacceptable to mack on people in sudoroom.

 and I also want us to look into how we can make it clearer
 to people like him, and to his targets, that sudoroom is
 expressly a safe place from this kind of behavior.  I would
 like for there to be a sign that I can point to in moments
 like that, so that I don't have to try to say it with my
 own words, in front of other people.

 it's a complex issue, because if someone is being
 talkative and helpful they're not necessarily doing it
 as a creep move, so how do you know where to draw the
 line?  We can remind people to check their own intentions,
 but maybe we need more ways for people who feel
 uncomfortable to get relief from unwanted attention without
 having to then engage the person in Lesson 101 right
 then.

 maybe we need yellow cards?  to hand to people that say
 "please go to the fridge and read the entire sign
 reminding you about proper behavior in sudoroom.  Do not
 ask any more questions of the person who gave you this card,
 they have other things they want to do now.  thank
 you."

 Noisebridge seems to have a great vibe, at least the other
 night when I was there, Zach explained to one of our friends
 why it would be inappropriate to "ask someone out"
 at Noisebridge.  I'm not sure how their
 anti-harrassment policy differs from ours, or what we could
 learn from it, but I would like for us to be more
 out-in-front of this issue so it doesn't come up anymore
 without being addressed.

 thanks for reading this, let's figure this
 out.

 I also interacted with this person.
 Definitely some weird ego problem going on there. Pointed
 out several times how skilled he is and all the things he
 knows and kept repeating how he does mixed martial arts in
 places where it made no sense to the conversation. He
 didn't seem threatening just really intent on making me
 understand how amazing he is, though the repeated references
 to his martial arts skills were definitely creepy. I saw
 some of his interactions with the robot arm group but
 apparently not the worst of it. This is definitely a case of
 someone who doesn't have a clue about social
 interactions, which isn't new to sudo, but couple that
 with his pushiness and I think we have a problem. 

 There's asking
 someone on a date and then there's an evening of
 imposing yourself and making others uncomfortable followed
 by asking someone on a date when they're not showing any
 interest.

 We
 could talk to him about his behavior. We could couple that
 with a short-term break from the space (e.g. 1 month).
 It's unlikely that he'll come back to the space
 after a short term ban (few people do).

 Meet in sudo or on the sudo room
 riseup pad at 7 pm for a group decision on this.

 -- 
 marc/juul

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