Excellent TED talk by Jackson Katz, one of the folks behind the bystander approach. Watch it. Then ask your friends to watch it.
Inside Higher Ed on APA efforts to combat sexual harassment March 29, 2013
An excellent story, here. Importantly, though, there’s an error: site visits are emphatically NOT just for departments with problems. They’re for anyone, including departments that already have an excellent climate and yet nonetheless want to improve/avoid complacency. Please do correct this if it comes up in your conversations with people.
The Ethics of Public Shaming March 22, 2013
I came across an article today about an instance of public shaming and its backlash in the tech industry. There is something about this story that bothers me, so I’m going to try to spell out exactly what. It’s connected to my experience of conversations about public shaming within philosophy as a profession. I’m hoping people who have thought longer and harder about this than I have will chime in.
Here’s the story of Donglegate from the annual Python developer conference. Here’s a follow up piece about the reactions to this incident.
The Crowd at PyCon with the two jokers. Photo taken by Adria Richards.
Here are my (underdeveloped) thoughts on public shaming and the ethics of using it to combat hostile environments:
When it comes to holding people accountable for their actions in a community, our uncertain knowledge of others’ action is a big morass–one that I want to leave to the side for right now. In the articles I’ve linked to, there is a big issue that goes beyond uncertainty as to whether something inappropriate did occur. PyCon was relatively certain the men in the audience did something inappropriate, since it reprimanded them. The men in the audience pretty much admitted they did something inappropriate, since they apologized and promised to alter their future behavior. But given that relative certainty, PyCon and others have still said that Richard’s use of public shaming was an inappropriate response to overhearing inappropriate jokes. (I believe, regardless of whether such shaming had led to anyone getting fired or not.)
In short, PyCon and Ars Technica seem to be making the following argument: While there is indeed a hostile atmosphere for women in the programming field, publicly shaming two men on twitter for making sexually offensive jokes at a programming conference was uncalled for, overkill, and a violation of their privacy.
I disagree.
(more after the jump)
Sexual harassment: looking beyond definitions and institutional remedies
There’s been an excellent discussion of sexual harassment over at Leiter. Lots of people have rightly been pointing to a lack of information about what constitutes sexual harassment, and about the nature of legal and institutional procedures. This is all deeply important. However, I think focussing just on these issues is a mistake. In fact, I’ve just finished a paper arguing for this. I won’t try to argue for it in a blog post, but you can read the paper here if you feel like it!
Kate Norlock on the New APA Committee on Sexual Harassment March 19, 2013
Over at Leiter Reports, guest blogger Rebecca Kukla interviews feminist philosopher Kate Norlock on the new APA Committee on Sexual Harassment she’s chairing.
Here’s a taste:
Harassment can be experienced as both isolating and isolated. If there’s one thing philosophers can do to help each other, it is to call attention to a possibility that one is not alone, that one’s own colleagues and organizations can establish cultures in which this is affirmed, and that there is even a possibility for a systemic response, at least a small one.
Sexism as seen on Facebook December 16, 2012
This comes with a trigger warning, but there’s a tumblr, “Sexism! As Seen on Facebook,” that documents sexism on Facebook. Sort of like a hollaback for social media.
It happens here. October 27, 2012
An online magazine about sexual violence at Amherst College. Trigger warning, but some really moving stuff. This (along with some recent email notices from campus police at my own institution) really makes me want to think long and hard about what we can do to help make campuses safer spaces.
“It Stands to Reason, Skeptics Can Be Sexist Too”
I spoke out about sexual harassment among atheists and scientists. Then came the rape threats.
Blogger and podcast co-host Rebecca Watson has a piece up at Slate about the sexist backlash she received in the skeptic community when she talked about feminism and her experiences as a woman. Sadly, her story resembles others you’ve probably heard: threats, accusations that she’s lying or exaggerating or can’t take a joke, more threats, etc.
Her piece is somewhat cathartic, especially with snappy observations like this:
What I said in my video, exactly, was, “Guys, don’t do that,” with a bit of a laugh and a shrug. What legions of angry atheists apparently heard was, “Guys, I won’t stop hating men until I get 2 million YouTube comments calling me a ‘cunt.’ ” The skeptics boldly rose to the imagined challenge.
The Logic of Who Deserves Respect September 6, 2012
I came across an article on the Consumerist which got my attention. The article is here and you can read the original news story here.
Potty Training Your Kids At The Restaurant Table Might Possibly Upset Nearby Diners
“I noticed that this lady was having her two — she had two twins, two little girls about 2-and-a-half years old, sitting on what I thought were booster seats,” one witness to a public potty training tells KSL-TV in Utah.
But she soon discovered that those booster seats were actually kiddie toilets. ”She had to undo the jumpsuits, and take them all the way down so they were completely nude, with the jumpsuits down to their ankles just eating their chicken nuggets, sitting on little toddler potties,” the diner recalls. “I was like this is not ok, we’re eating, there was a business meeting with about five or six businessmen going on right next to me. The place was packed.” So she did what lots of people would probably do in the same situation: Take a photo with her phone and post it on Facebook.
What is going on with the reasoning in this paragraph?: ”It is inappropriate to have your children exposed and naked in public. THEREFORE, I am going to take a picture of your naked children and display it in public.” It’s not a good enough answer to simply say, “Stupid people are stupid” because we see the same weirdly-contradictory logic in other situations:
–When people talk about women, self-respect, and sex. The narrative I’ve seen played out numerous times goes something like this: Dude is upset that woman is not protecting herself properly against inappropriate sexual advances; so, he starts making inappropriate sexual advances towards her. The idea is something like, in not ‘respecting’ herself enough, she is no longer worthy of respect from him.
–When someone is harassing a person on the street and they yell out, ”You’re beautiful!” but if ignored they will tack on, “F*** you, you Ugly B****!”
–When we talk about how innocent and asexual kids are but if one of them gets raped (but not also murdered) or has sex all of a sudden it’s completely plausible that they are mature, worldly, experienced, and sexual beings.
–When, “Black women are only seen in a barely positive light FOR sex. It’s an awkward turn to this stereotype – everyone wants to f[***] me, but I’m the ugliest thing walking, huh?” (From here.)
This incident with the potty training kids highlights the weird part of this madonna/whore logic where the meaning of “inappropriate” shifts. It starts out as, “These children are being inappropriately exposed and need to have their bodies protected” but then changes into, “the other diners are being inappropriately exposed to these bodies and thus (the diners) have a right to ridicule and display them (the bodies).” It begins as an impulse to protect but ends as a desire to punish.
What are other instances of this sudden flip from respect to disrespect or from protection to exploitation? And what are the unspoken premises here?
Bonus Rant:
The whole, “Please stop, I’m unable to partake of food in the presence of grossness and/or social inappropriateness,” screams of #firstworldproblems.
If something is upsetting your sensibilities, please just be quiet and eat your damn dinner instead of proceeding to tell other people how gross and inappropriate their bodies are. (And I’ll admit, I still catch myself wanting to do this sort of thing because it’s a cheap and easy joke to deride someone for being gross and unseemly. But really it’s just spiteful judgement and petty hierarchy-climbing.)
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