[hackerspaces] Improve hackerspace diversity - Donate to Ada Initiative

Kristin-Leigh Brezinski okrysmastree at gmail.com
Tue Sep 23 23:45:09 CEST 2014


The organizers are ultimately responsible for the way they advertise
and present the events at their conference, so I don't think it was a
mistake to bring the issue directly to them. There's a disconnect
between VB's description of what the talk actually is vs the way it
was presented in the schedule, and ideally that could have been
addressed rather than cancelling the talk outright, but it may have
been too late in the game at that point.

On 9/23/14, Randall Arnold <randall.arnold at texrat.net> wrote:
> But instead of getting the talk killed outright, doesn't approaching the
> speaker
> openly and honestly to request she preface the talk with reasonable
> disclaimers
> make much more sense?
>
> I have no dog in this one so I'm being fairly objective I think when I
> submit
> that Violet was mistreated here.  Fear over a provocative talk title
> followed by
> knee-jerking political correctness was not at all the answer.
>
> Randy
>
>> On September 23, 2014 at 4:13 PM Kristin-Leigh Brezinski
>> <okrysmastree at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>     What was annoying about the Defcon penalty cards? I saw them as a
>> clever
>> way to bring attention to conference harassment issues and give people a
>> low-stakes, humorous way to flag bad behavior.
>>
>>     Re: Violet Blue, I think the whole thing got blown out of proportion,
>> but
>> really, who thought a talk titled "sex +/- drugs: known vulns and
>> exploits"
>> wouldn't raise red flags to a lot of women(/people in general)? Anyone
>> who
>> considers themselves enough of a wordsmith to play on puns like that
>> should be
>> open to criticism of the double-meanings in the terms they're invoking.
>>
>>     AI isn't the only organization working on this stuff, but I very much
>> appreciate any organization striving to make solid anti-harassment
>> policies
>> and codes of conduct a default at professional conferences, fan
>> conventions,
>> and hacker/makerspaces. Thanks for the post, Liz - I'll definitely keep
>> this
>> in mind when I evaluate the flexibility of my budgets end of month. :)
>>
>>     - Kristin-Leigh
>>
>>     On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 1:08 PM, matt < matt at nycresistor.com
>> <mailto:matt at nycresistor.com> > wrote:
>>
>>         > >         Ada has been a pretty toxic member of the infosec
>>         > > community. Their stupid harassment cards at defcon were
>> annoying,
>>         > > but the violet blue incident is but one of several incidents
>> of
>>         > > manufacturing drama for PR. that sort of behavior is
>> unacceptable
>>         > > in our community. And as you said... ada is a small org. 2
>> people.
>>         > > so i don't see the culture of ada ever changing. I'd rather
>> people
>>         > > invested in the gnome outreach program for women.
>> >
>> >         https://wiki.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen
>> >
>> >         -matt
>> >
>> >         On Tue, Sep 23, 2014 at 3:46 PM, Al Billings <
>> > albill at openbuddha.com
>> > <mailto:albill at openbuddha.com> > wrote:
>> >
>> >             > > >             Yes, the real problem that people care
>> > about
>> >             > > > is that Valerie hates Violet Blue and it isn’t that
>> >             > > > Valerie, using her role in AI, got a sex-positive talk
>> > by
>> >             > > > a woman cancelled at a conference because she didn’t
>> > like
>> >             > > > it. Since she still runs AI and clearly nothing has
>> >             > > > changed, I’m not sure why you’re surprised that
>> > people
>> >             > > > have a negative reaction.
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >             On Sep 23, 2014, at 12:44 PM, Liz Henry <
>> > > lizhenry at gmail.com
>> > > <mailto:lizhenry at gmail.com> > wrote:
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >                 > > > >                 Ada Initiative: A small non
>> > > profit
>> > >                 > > > > run by two people who once pissed off Violet
>> > > Blue.
>> > > >
>> > > >             > > >
>> > >
>> > >             _______________________________________________
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>> > >             http://lists.hackerspaces.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >         > >
>> >
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>> >
>> >
>> >     >
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>
>
>


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