[hs-equality] People at Metalab have taken issue with some incidents at 29c3

[Henryk Plötz]

Moin,

Am Sat, 5 Jan 2013 03:33:23 -0800 schrieb Mitch Altman
<maltman23 at hotmail.com>:

> I left at 3am, and the people there were continuing to bolster their
> anger, and focused on their anger about the cards, and not the
> issues that handing out the cards is intended to bring up, or the
> feelings of the people who gave out the cards.

The Hacker Jeopardy incident was an instructive one for me as it
pointed out crass differences in individual reality perception. Some
points:
 + The moderators (and in this they are representative of the majority
   of congress-goers) perceived the creeper move cards as some sort of
   art project, trolling, satire.
 + Especially Ray, who was talking most of the time, has, when on stage,
   a base demeanor of bitter humor and sarcasm, directed equally at
   all. This was also directed at the card project.
 + People were offended by this for a variety of reasons and offered up
   cards.
 + Ray, being confronted with the perceived satire project, satirized
   back, only further inflaming the situation.
(Note: There may or may not have been explicit sexist statements, only
a detailed play-by-play will show that. I believe there was no
harassment which would have warranted immediate disruption of the show.
Note that talking about sexism or asking if something is sexist is
generally not sexism in itself and for sure it's not harassment.)

So the base conflict, as I understand it, was this:
 + Most attendees couldn't imagine the cards as being serious.
 + People intimately associated with the card project couldn't imagine
   how anyone could *not* imagine the cards to be serious.
(I'm just thinking that this is not unlike cats and dogs: A dog wags
its tail when it's happy, a cat will perceive a moving tail as an
aggressive gesture. Even though both react plausibly and not actively
confrontational from their respective view points the combined effect
is not good.)

I don't want to place blame or define sides. Any rhetoric involving a
grouping of people and transfer of individual actions on the entire
group, any 'us' vs. 'them' schematic, is not helpful to the entire
situation. I think it's best to refer to individual people and
individual actions, and not to insinuate malice on anyone's part from
the beginning.

Specifically regarding your impression about the anger felt by the
moderators: Claudia and Andreas from the A-team had a discussion with
Ray and Sec immediately after the Hacker Jeopardy, and while I was not
there, it is my understanding that they were receptive, shocked to
learn that the cards were meant in earnest, and then able to appreciate
how their actions could have been interpreted. Last I looked explicit
sexist statements were not pointed out, but Ray stated that he would
accept the blame and apologize if something was pointed out
specifically using the video recording.

Regarding the card project: It is my personal opinion that it was,
while well-meant, poorly executed. The main problem is that there were
no instructions, no man page. The cards were dumped on participants and
everyone left to draw their own conclusions. Quite obviously this may
lead to different results based on different starting positions. If
your starting point is that there is no sexism problem, "I am not a
harasser", etc. then your conclusion will be biased towards "this must
be a joke". Most of the grief could have been avoided if, as in fact I
have been told has been the case in other applications of similar
cards, the cards had been accompanied by detailed instructions on their
use and an URL to a website with a more in-depth discussion of the
underlying problem.

This oversight and the sheer number of (especially red) cards lead to
them becoming ineffective and perceived as a joke. As far as I know the
initiators of the project have heard and understood this feedback.

Personally I think I understand the cards, their goal and intended
uses, but this does not extend to most participants. For example I
would judge that the use of red cards (meant for crass harassment where
otherwise a slap in the face would be justified) during the Hacker
Jeopardy was uncalled for, and therefore, again, not helpful to the
entire situation.

In conclusion: Most of what happened at 29C3 and is being talked about
is not malign in origin and could be cleared up by face-to-face
(possibly mediated) discussions between the involved parties, trying to
understand the other party's view of reality and how their own actions
must look therein. This is one of the raison d'êtres for the A-team as
I understand it and we would have been (and I for one still am) glad to
help there. Actual harassment was virtually non-existent and the one
case that has been brought to our attention has been handled and
sanctioned. If there were cases that we missed I would hope to try to
instill trust in the victims that we will help them if the ask us for
it and make them comfortable to come to future events.

-- 
Henryk Plötz
Grüße aus Berlin
~ Help Microsoft fight software piracy: Give Linux to a friend today! ~
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