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Comment by knowtheory | Hacker News Reader

Honestly I don't think you're operating from the same baseline for behavior that I and others do.

If you're at a conference, you're there amongst your peers and colleagues, there is a certain level of respect and decorum that I would like to assume would be present amongst a community that aspires at least to some modicum of collegiality.

You can say that the security community (which granted isn't particularly my scene) is rough and tumble, but surely there should be some expectation of some basic human respect.

I guess put more succinctly, just because it's held at a night club, doesn't make a conference party any less a conference related function.

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> If you're at a conference, you're there amongst your peers and colleagues, there is a certain level of respect and decorum that I would like to assume would be present amongst a community that aspires at least to some modicum of collegiality.

I would agree. The difference is that unlike, say, Black Hat or RSA, DEFCON is not a security conference. DEFCON is (and is advertised as) a hacker conference.

Sure, the speakers are generally in the industry (though not always) and there is no blatant illegal activity happening (most of the time), the target audience for DEFCON is not the infosec community. I think that leads to the problems that happen at cons like DEFCON, HOPE, and CCC vs. Black Hat (mostly), RSA, USENIX, CRYPTO, SANS training, etc.

However:

> just because it's held at a night club, doesn't make a conference party any less a conference related function.

Totally agree with you there; I was not trying to excuse the behavior, simply indicate a possible explanation therein.

The issue is perhaps not only behavior at conferences, but the predatory behavior that is fairly common of males in that environment.

Yes, you're absolutely right. I've always associated DEFCON with security stuff, mainly because that's all the interesting stuff I remember reading coming out of DEFCON (and I've never been). Thanks for the clarification.

It's not just a conference, but a conference of mostly socially inept and humanly horny gentle(or less-so)men. Not at all to excuse the behavior, but as always, buyer beware.

Perhaps a partial solution would be to have a track dedicated to social relations (not engineering!). Maybe include some of the finer points of a stay in Las fucking Vegas.

Again, and I can't reiterate this enough, I'm not excusing inappropriate or damaging behavior. It is important, though, that situational awareness be accounted for. In a conference for cops, of course this behavior wouldn't be expected. In a conference of mostly lonely males...

What I'm saying is that perhaps education may warrant a better outcome rather than furthering the perpetrators into a social black hole. That is if we are talking about otherwise "normal" folk in a drunken state rather than something more pathological--which I think we are. Goons can should an do deal with those others handily afaik.

-- Edit: here we go with the downvotes. If you feel that way, and read past the first paragraph, please expand beyond an anonymous click of the mouse.

How do you ever expect anything to progress without discussion? I may very well be far off base, and am more than happy to discuss. I'd also be more than happy to admit I'm wrong if that's the case. But please, I beg of you, let's talk about it.

My experience is that tech conferences are mostly comprised of socially competent people. In a group of 20 people, for example, I might find that one person in a group is truly inept. So, to do the arithmetic for everyone, that's 5%. Unfortunately, that's often about the same percentage as the number of women present. :/

I won't lay out all of the problems with identification, getting the "socially inept" into one room and educating them, making sure that whoever is teaching this (as yet undefined) social skills curriculum is a good teacher, making sure the education sticks, etc... Instead, I'm just going to share that I don't think education of socially incompetent people will significantly improve my conference experience.

Things that help include:

* An assumption on the part of conference staff, speakers and attendees that women are there to participate, not just observe or tag along

* Swift, friendly, supportive responses from staff if verbal or physical harassment is reported - often made possible by staff who are aware of an anti-harassment policy, and are trained in what to do (LCA did a great job of this in 2012)

* Allies who help stop hostile, harassing and inappropriate comments if they occur

And there's other stuff that helps too. There's some good stuff in the "what can allies do" section of the Geek Feminism wiki.

Anyway, I appreciate your willingness to converse about this issue and hope I've shed some light on why people might be down-voting your comment.

I agree setting up a track for it would be difficult. I imagine, though, any married dude could speak at the track. And wasn't thinking so much a mandatory class, but a track like any other. Could be humorous/fun interspersed with nuggets of info. Perhaps some tips and tricks as to where there may be a local setting (not at the con) where the attendees could start to ply their new skills.

Another possibility would maybe be a page in the booklet detailing unacceptable behavior--or a request from con founder or such. I think almost all the people attending are very smart; if they were to hear/see a request from someone they look up to very highly, it might be enough to stifle bad behavior even through a drunken lens.

To your points:

1) I think this comes back to the education thing. Be it a page in a booklet, on the website, or something else--sometimes people need to actually see/hear it. It's dangerous to assume that just because people are smart, they know how to behave and how to be respectful to others.

2) I only have experience at the big 2 in Vegas, but thought the staff were trained on such... Don't know. I agree, though, that having them trained to be responsive would be a huge help.

3) Yes. I actually (unfortunately) had the opportunity to do as much this year. I know people I was with would be more than willing to step in as well. But, again, perhaps it would help for everyone to know that they can be on the lookout for this behavior and step in/get help when necessary. We can't just assume that people will do the right thing, either.

Thank you for the well though-out response. I very much hope that in the future your con experiences improve dramatically regardless of what makes that happen.

The blame the victim mentality sprinkled throughout this comment and a few others is the problem have with them.

"Not at all to excuse the behavior, but..." "I'm not excusing inappropriate or damaging behavior. It is important, though..."

Those sentences should end before you go on to give the impression that we just have to accept that sexual assault/harassment is going to happen when a room is dominated by men. There is no good reason why grown men who happen to be some of the brightest minds in computer security should be excused from treating their female peers with the same respect that they would want for themselves or their own daughters, wives, mothers, and aunts.

Your comment seems to suggest otherwise, because "In a conference of mostly lonely males..." hey what do those women expect? Apparently, they should have had more "situation awareness". It reminded me of the common victim blaming argument "she shouldn't have dressed like that if she didn't want the (bad) attention".

No. What I'm saying is that educating or helping these people might be a better solution than straight ridicule. Whether the education be how to control self, or how to appropriately engage woman, it would seem to strike the root of the problem.

If I came across otherwise, I appologize.

I really appreciate you being open to discussion - its the biggest reason why I value the HN community and why I even bother to comment. I read your original comment many times and think that it needed clarity, eventually you did get to your point about education but that did not come off as your main point.

I assume the Ada Initiative's goal, at least in part, is education. Even through this post alone they have educated part of the HN community that women get harassed at conferences. But I don't think the problem here is that men need to be educated about these behaviors - every decent human being knows its not okay to grab a womans crotch and hide in a crowd. This article wasn't about borderline cases where it wasn't clear what acceptable behavior was. It was about blatant disrespect like telling a female peer at a conference to "show her tits".

I think the men who are doing the harassment need to be made to feel this is not tolerated behavior in this community. If a few perpetrators get embarrassed about being called out and being given a colored card, thats acceptable if it helps prevent sexual assaults/harassment and alters their behavior.

> Honestly I don't think you're operating from the same baseline for behavior that I and others do.

Exactly. This is not just a minor annoyance, in the examples above we should be talking about sexual battery, and sexual assault charges. There should be a mechanism to identify and point out the perpetrators, call the police, get them booked in etc. For other non-criminal but just discriminatory and harassing behavior there should be a quick and easy mechanism to shame, weed out, exclude and expel perpetrators. Take a picture with a phone and post on a public board (maybe a bad idea, haven't thought this through...).

The sad part is the lack of outrage from the majority and form the organizers. This apathy indicates some complicity. And that's probably why not much happens to fix this.

Isn't his point that a party is a party? Being a party at a night club, conference or not, makes all the difference.

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