Thoughts on sexual assault at conferences.

thoughts.txt

So, let's talk about sexual assault at conferences.

If you don't understand why agreeing to X is not agreeing to Y afterwards, please have yourself committed. You're dangerous.

A Code of Conduct would not have helped. It would have been ignored, just like decency was ignored.

(CoCs often come with escalation policies, and staff training. _Those_ are probably helpful. But only at the con.)

The Police and Justice system are a giant failure, hence the creation of community pseudo-police and quasi-justice.

Ostracising _one guy_ from the community will not make it safer. And I'm not talking about rape culture, here.

I'm not talking about the demon in a bottle either. Those are both excuses.

The underlying problem is much deeper. And harder to fix. And more important to fix.

Look at what people chose to do, and ask, "why did they choose to do that," and you'll see a pattern emerge.

We're all pressured to adopt roles, and the most common role we adopt is the gender role.

So we see people as men or women _first_, and only as colleagues second.

Two common ways that comes out are "I'm the only man here; I'd better adjust my behavior to accommodate", and...

"Boy, they're hot, I'd like to fuck them." But that's fundamentally an error.

But this is a professional conference, right? We should be bonding over our shared hatred for CSS, not hooking up over body shots.

It doesn't matter if the seed of the assault is entitlement, or just incompetence at the mating game.

The fertile soil in which is grows is seeing people by gender first, and everything else after.

The good news is that we can do something about this, and do it every day of the year, conference or no.

We can train ourselves to see others by similarities. Enjoy our common bonds as makers first. Vive le difference later, if at all.

That's the best I've been able to come up with. I'll let others trot out the same tired "solutions" that don't work.