I must be suffering from withdrawal

I’ve actually got this lovely two-month long block of time with no conferences scheduled, where I get to stay home. And what do I do? I sign up for another one, simply because it’s right here in my own backyard. I shall be attending <duh-duh-duuuuh>the Canary Party National Convention, in Minneapolis MN, July 20 – 22.

It’s a conference of anti-vaxxers and other such ilk. I could not resist. Orac has mentioned them a few times, and they sound entertaining.

They have not asked me to speak. I’m just going to sit quietly in the back of the room and report on what they’re talking about.

Unless they get wind of my presence and revoke my privilege of attending, which could happen.

Damn. That was fast. Really fast. They got my application at 2:10, at 2:20 I posted my intent to attend, and at 2:22 I got this.

Mr. Myers,

Thank you for your interest in the Canary Party Convention.

However, as you are not a member of the Canary Party, and as your public stance runs counter to the values of our party, it is quite difficult to believe that you actually want to come and work on our issues in good faith.

As such, I am returning your registration fee.

Have a nice day.

Ginger Taylor, MS
Executive Director

Expelled again. It’s as if they knew who I was. I guess I’ll have to stay home.

How it’s done

You know, when a few goons and derpwads threatened to harass me at the Global Atheist Conference, and I expressed my discomfort with their threats, the organizer of the conference quickly called me directly and personally and reassured me that no such nonsense would be tolerated at the meeting, and even offered to provide me with a personal bodyguard while I was there (I turned down that generous offer; it was enough that they would do their best, and the pissants really weren’t worth the trouble).

Just sayin’.

Victim Blaming 101

Talk about missing the point — now we’ve got someone declaring the TAM harassment problem solved — why, just call casino security, and they’ll take care of it!

Uh, yes. We know. We can go to a meeting, and if there is a jerk causing problems, we can seek out authorities and maybe get it resolved (although, in the case of women complaining of harassment, we’re more likely to see the problem treated dismissively). That’s always been an option, and it’s really patronizing to bring it up as if no other person on the planet ever even thought of it.

It’s not the issue. What’s wanted is a recognition of the fact that no one has the right to harass others at a public meeting, and that the meeting organizers have a zero tolerance policy towards sexual harassment, to discourage harassment before it happens.

Why is this so hard to understand?

These events are safe: they are well-bounded, contain security staff, and all the organizers want them to proceed with little disruption. Nobody has complained that there was no available recourse to deal with jerkwads.

The problem is that they are not safe spaces, which means a place where women can feel comfortable speaking without risk of unwelcome advances. You can’t just announce that there are security guards outside the door to create a safe space; it takes a bit more effort than that.

The author of that blog actually hit on the real problem by accident in a comment on that thread.

Honestly, if your a woman at an event like TAM, expect to be hit on.

EXACTLY!

You know, there’s a lot of whining that Rebecca Watson or myself have claimed that TAM is unsafe, a claim that we actually haven’t made at all. To the contrary, we’ve both supported TAM and encouraged people to attend. But we’ve also asked that it be better, and I do give DJ credit — it has improved in the representation of women speakers during his tenure.

But if you’re looking to pin the blame on people who have said TAM isn’t a good place for women, who might be spreading the word that women shouldn’t attend, you might want to start with people who declare that women ought to “expect to be hit on”.

Some people seem confused by the phrase “safe space”. They seem to be unaware of the fact that in English, one word in context can modify the meaning of another: like “parkway” is actually a place where cars drive, rather than park. But to help out those poor naive simpletons, here’s an explanation of “safe space”.

As usual, Cuttlefish distills the whole wrangle down nicely.

A conversation about TAM

A subset of Freethoughtbloggers and the Queen Skepchick got together on Google+ to discuss the recent contretemps. The people who participated were me, Al Stefanelli, Daniel Fincke, Greg Laden, Ian Cromwell, Jason Thibeault, Ophelia Benson, Rebecca Watson, and Stephanie Zvan.

Here’s how I introduced it:

The latest controversy to embroil freethoughtblogs is over the James Randi Educational Foundation’s big yearly meeting, The Amazing Meeting, or TAM for short. After DJ Grothe, the president of the JREF, announced his concern that, despite the fact that he’d done a fine job of making the roster of speakers well balanced, at roughly half and half men and women, the registration of women in the meeting was significantly down from last year. What to do?

Well, he could have asked big boosters of TAM, like Skepchick and Freethoughtblogs, to rally together and help get more women involved, as Skepchick has done every year. Instead, in a bizarre twist, he basically accused Rebecca Watson and a certain blog network, ours, of scaring women away with our horrible stories of sexual harassment. He also denied that sexual harassment had ever occurred, a story that has been steadily unraveling over the last few weeks.

Then, to make matters worse, a number of poorly informed people have been ranting that we, that is people like Rebecca Watson and Stephanie Zvan, want to “harm TAM” — another weird claim that ignores the history of our involvement with skeptical and atheist meetings.

So the point of our session today is to clear the air, get our position expressed, and maybe vent a little frustration.

It’s always the coverup

I don’t even know what to think anymore. It turns out there were several harassment incidents at TAM, which were all sort of dealt with (although why the notorious guy with the camera on a pole that he was using for upskirt photos was allowed to come back at all is a mystery), but I’m more and more getting the impression that the way the JREF was handling this stuff was to close their eyes real hard and pretend they didn’t happen.

Oh, well. They’ll get it all straightened around by next year, right?

(I have to add: I don’t think TAM is particularly rife with harassment, and I suspect they’re actually better than most conferences. But I want them to be much better than the culture as a whole, and the first step is acknowledging a problem, not letting it fester and then blaming anyone who tries to mention it.)

A con with an anti-harassment policy

Both Freethoughtblogs and Skepchick are going to be represented heavily in the science and skepticism track at CONvergence on 5-8 July in Bloomington, MN (you’re all coming, right? If you’re not, what’s wrong with you?). Both of us are going to be hosting party rooms on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights, which will be fun and welcoming, but you should be prepared: there is a policy in place, and both party rooms will be staffed with polite, friendly people who will call the con staff to take care of you if you get out of line.

By the way, it’s not just skeptic/atheist conventions that have problems with a few rude assholes who try to ruin everything for everyone; CONvergence last year experience several harassment incidents and are taking strong steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again. I was very impressed in conversations with ops the other day; they aren’t in denial, they aren’t pretending this stuff goes on, they are going to actively try to prevent bad stuff from going down. Women should feel safe and comfortable attending!

Why I won’t be going to TAM this year

Regretfully, I won’t be going to The Amazing Meeting next month. It’s a small thing; it’s a great meeting, I do think DJ Grothe has made a good effort to improve it over the years, but recent events have simply cooled my enthusiasm. It was a terribly clumsy mistake to accuse Rebecca Watson of undermining the meeting (a mistake he has apologized for) — she has not only cheerfully promoted TAM every year, but has been an activist doing fundraising to send more people to the meeting. Then we got the accusation that “one blog network” (this one) fosters the idea that going to skeptic/atheist meeting means you would be “assaulted, harassed, or worse“, which is simply not true. Every year I have promoted TAM enthusiastically, and as an activist, I’ve been encouraging people to attend these kinds of meetings everywhere…and I’ve been specifically encouraging women to increase their participation.

So I find myself a little less than gung-ho about flying off to Vegas next month. Sorry. Maybe next year.

I know DJ is wondering why fewer women are registering this year, and I’m sure he wants to keep the meeting lively and enticing for the coming years, so I’ll explain a little more why I can be lackadaisical, and it might help DJ understand where the problem really lies. It’s not in the people who offer constructive criticism — they’re the sensors who help the meeting be more adaptable — it’s simpler than that.

TAM isn’t the only game in town any more. There’s Skepticon, NECSS, SkeptiCal, and lots of local meetings. Atheist meetings have adapted and become a lot less dry and far more inclusive; I’d go so far as to say that the TAM style has been stolen and freely used, with atheist meetings becoming more diverse and including science and skepticism in their purview. Heck, science fiction conventions like Dragon*Con and Convergence are doing it. The success of the movement means we’re entering Darwin’s domain, and competition is growing fiercer.

It is a huge mistake to see attendance at one con experiencing a few rough spots, and to then turn to your most fervent, reliable participants and pin the blame on them. You’re in a situation where the little things can cost you your edge; adapt or die.

So, in this world of many great conventions, I simply have no difficulty at all in crossing one off my list this year. It’s not a condemnation, just a little “meh” from one potential attendee (I know, those can add up), and maybe next year the current wobble will be corrected and I’ll be back cheerleading.

Also, let me emphasize that I have no illusions that I’m ‘punishing’ TAM — in this happy world of an expanding movement, there is also no shortage of participants, and I certainly don’t consider myself indispensable. It’s also the month before the meeting, so most of you will have already made the commitment or not, so I’m not trying to dissuade anyone, either. I do hope DJ listens more attentively to this year’s attendees, though.

DJ, please fix this genuine problem

The Amazing Meeting is having some enrollment problems — and strangely, they are going against the overall trend I’ve seen in many skeptic/atheist conferences, as reported by the JREF president, DJ Grothe.

…this year only about 18% of TAM registrants so far are women, a significant and alarming decrease, and judging from dozens of emails we have received from women on our lists, this may be due to the messaging that some women receive from various quarters that going to TAM or other similar conferences means they will be accosted or harassed…I think this misinformation results from irresponsible messaging coming from a small number of prominent and well-meaning women skeptics who, in trying to help correct real problems of sexism in skepticism, actually and rather clumsily themselves help create a climate where women — who otherwise wouldn’t — end up feeling unwelcome and unsafe, and I find that unfortunate.

There it is, in one paragraph: the problem AND the cause. Only it’s not the cause DJ thinks it is.

It’s unfortunate. Years ago, TAM was a leader in getting a wider range of people motivated and attending — it was the meeting with the smallest percentage of old white men like me attending, and I considered it a nice model for getting more diversity in the movement. I also have to give DJ credit; he’s really gone to bat to get more women represented on the stage. I don’t think DJ has a malicious, anti-woman bone in his cheerfully gay body. It’s also good to see that he sees declining female registrations as a serious problem, and feels some urgency in correcting it.

But sometimes, he can be so oblivious.

First of all, when women are talking about harassment problems, listen: don’t try to tell them that they really shouldn’t feel that way, and worst of all, don’t treat it as a mere perception problem. Your concern should be to address the root causes so that their complaints disappear, not merely wave your hands at them to rationalize a stance of ignoring them. Think, “Hmmm. These people have concerns, how can I address them?” not, “Hmmm. These people have concerns, how can I get them to stop expressing them?”

Secondly, don’t blame the reporters. They’re your sensory network, they’re out there experiencing your meeting and coming to you to tell you what they thought. Dismissing unpleasant reports is a good way to blind yourself to what’s going on, and to increase the magnitude of the problems. Good job, DJ, you just discouraged all the women who want your meeting to be successful by telling them it’s their fault if they talk about sexism.

I think TAM was also a leader in some ways: last year, they were very quick to post an official anti-harassment policy. Good work, except now DJ is claiming that it has never been used.

It is true that harassment issues are much discussed in some quarters of the skeptics and atheist and other allied movements (all generally for the better, to the extent the emotionally charged issues are tempered with evidence) but to my knowledge there has never been a report filed of sexual harassment at TAM and there have been zero reports of harassment at the TAMs we’ve put on while I’ve been at JREF.

What? Ashley Miller was harassed and reported it, and now DJ is denying it happened. I heard from another person near the end of the conference that someone had blown through the nearly empty hallways while a session was ongoing to make lewd remarks to someone sitting at the tables; it was reported, I heard, and I joined in with another fellow to look for the “gentleman”…he’d escaped, so it didn’t happen? There was also an incident on twitter in which a prospective attendee threatened to grope Rebecca Watson on an elevator at TAM; I thought his registration was revoked (I also heard that it was restored when he said pretty please, but I’m not sure about that).

So now these incidents didn’t happen? Baffling.

It’s all well and good to have a piece of paper that you can wave around, saying that harassment will not be tolerated…but the next step is effective implementation, and that hasn’t occurred. Document everything: there should be a formal procedure for submitting a report in writing that gets filed away. There should also be an action taken — dismissing the offender from the conference, escorting someone out of the hall, giving a verbal warning, whatever — and that should be written down, too.

Without all that, we get into these ugly situations where the victims experience these events, and then watch them get flushed down the memory hole — their concerns are simply dismissed.

DJ needs to own up to the existence of a real problem, rather than closing his eyes to it and pretending it’s only a PR issue. He’s got to take TAM’s anti-harassment policy seriously, and give it some teeth and engage in some record-keeping. I do think he means well, but good intentions are not enough. There has to be some solid effort beyond drafting a list of dos and don’ts.