[CREATE] Code of Conduct

[Dave Crossland]

Hi!

NB: This email offers no practical advice about an LGM CoC, but answers
emails that have not yet been answered about the overall context of CoCs in
the wide tech community today.

Also, the following is my person opinion and doesn't reflect the views of
any clients, organisations or projects I am associated with.

Dear Christoph and Gregory,

On 17 January 2014 12:30, Gregory Pittman <gpittman at iglou.com> wrote:

> On 01/17/2014 01:07 PM, Susan Spencer wrote:
> >
> > The discussion about keeping people safe and providing a reasonable
> > assurance of a respectful environment has been all over the web for
> years.
>
> This just sounds like "everyone is doing it so it must be a good thing
> to do." Or maybe it's just something that's gone viral.
>
> If someone feels unsafe at LGM, they should be notifying the local
> police to have them deal with the issue.
>

and on 18 January 2014 00:09, "Christoph Schäfer" <christoph-schaefer at gmx.de
> wrote:

>
> >> The discussion about keeping people safe and providing a reasonable
> assurance of a respectful environment has been all over the web for years.
>
> These are two completely distinct issues.
>
> >> I can't possibly cover all the bases about this, especially to
> everyone's satisfaction.  I'm sorry if this sounds like I'm avoiding the
> issue,
>
> But that's exactly what you do.
>
> >> but truly there is so much content that I would be spending several
> days trying to provide you a synopsis.
>
> If I want to publish a paper in a peer-reviewed scientific magazine, a
> footnote following your model ("[T]here is so much content that I would be
> spending several days trying to provide [...] a synopsis.") would
> immediately disqualify the whole text. I also didn't ask for a synopsis. I
> asked some very simple questions, which I'll repeat:
>
> Your bold statement was: "CoCs help keep people safe."
>
> Original reply from me (I changed Q to S -- for "statement"):
>
> >> S: "Both are necessary."
> >>C: Please explain why.
>
> No answer so far.
>
> As to the other questions, you cavalierly ignored them, so let me repeat
> them, one by one:
>
> - Please explain how a CoC can help to keep people safe.
>
> - Define who's being threatened.
>
> - Who's the threat?
>
> - What's the threat?
>
> - Who's the safeguard against threats?
>
> - If a threat can't be identified with a single person or a group, please
> define what else should be considered a threat and how a CoC can "help (to)
> keep people safe" other than law enforcement or civic common sense.
>
> Would you mind answering them? Examples would be sufficient.
>
> Your Norwegian example is pretty weak, btw, since this is boilerplate
> legal language in many European states.
>

Your line of questioning is pretty weak, yet I think you show good faith
that you would like to better understand. I hope I can explain what is
going on here to you.

You are both questioning the premise that a CoC improves actual safety or
perceived safety.

But what things mean for very privileged people like you and me is not the
same as what they mean for less privileged people.

That is the point I want to make here, about what 'unsafe' means. To make
this point I want to challenge your most extreme example of safety.

In your emails, you both propose the police as a beacon of safety. Do you
feel certain in your believe about that? Please reflect on the amount of
certainty you feel about that, and read on.

I guess that you would feel very certain, believing the police to be
peaceful, honest, etc, and thinking that these are all rational beliefs. I
guess you have never experienced anything to even suggest the contrary; in
fact it may even be sort of 'unthinkable,' and you are perhaps slightly
frowning as you read these lines, as I am saying that the police are
violent liars who you should fear.

Here's an example of that which I noticed earlier today in the headlines:

www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/18/philadelphia-teen-suffers-ruptured-testicle-and-hit-with-misdemeanors-during-police-patdown/

Here is the quote from the mother:

  “I blame myself,” Coney said. “I taught my
  son to respect cops, not to fear them.
  Maybe if he was afraid, he would have
  run like the other boys and he would have
  [not had his testicle ruptured by a policewoman,
  rendering him unable to be a biological father.]”

Do you respect or fear police? Can you imagine it is rational to teach your
children to fear the police? I expect your default posture towards the
police is one of total respect, as is mine, and you will pass this belief
into your [potential future] kids. [0]

However, I recognize that my sure belief (that I will be treated fairly by
police) is rational because of my circumstances, and my circumstances are
not universal. I understand that it is rational for many people to fear
police, in the same way you and I fear people who look, talk and act like
thugs in the very rare moments we chance upon them. [1]

So far I didn't get disabused of my beliefs about the police, but violently
unfair treatment by police does happen to privileged people like us. Here's
an example of it which I happened to read earlier this week:
www.nytimes.com/2014/01/17/nyregion/professors-detail-brutal-tangle-with-police.html

Okay, these articles are in the USA, and the LGM has to date not been held
in the USA. It has most often been held north of there. No need for me to
fear the police there will beat me up and lie about it, right?

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/10/23/stuart-blower-tamari-hewko-toronto-police_n_4147856.html

Being white, no need for me to fear the police will kill me in the airport?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Dzieka%C5%84ski_taser_incident

No, would never happen to me -- I speak English. Right.

The point I am driving at is that your assumptions about the way the world
works, and what things mean, are not universal. Questioning the integrity
of the police is extreme, and I'm not really wanting to discuss that topic,
but instead to make a point: What we think about the police is not
universal.

I've given you concrete, here-and-now examples of people who have very good
reasons to not share our beliefs on this, so I am hoping we can agree that
people who have different circumstances to our own understand 'police
safety' differently than we do.

With that agreement in mind, I hope you will be curious to read about the
single word for the concept that ideas are not universal -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnocentrism - and for the concept that the
same word can mean different things to different people -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Register_%28sociolinguistics%29

I am curious if either of you would agree you were using an ethnocentric
definition of 'unsafe'?

Here are 2 examples I read about in the last few months, in a community
overlapping with ours [2], that use the word 'safe' in a different register
to the one you are using:

http://comicsalliance.com/brian-wood-tess-fowler-sexual-harassment-accusations-statement/

http://www.xojane.com/it-happened-to-me/marinaomi-harassed-comics-panel

Specifically, you meaning of 'safe' implies a 'hard threat' of violence.
But neither incident involves any violence. Yet both use the word 'safe.'

Why is that?

...

Returning to both your emails:

On 17 January 2014 12:30, Gregory Pittman <gpittman at iglou.com> wrote:

> If someone feels unsafe at LGM, they should be notifying the local
> police to have them deal with the issue.
>

Gregory, here's a question I hope you can answer: If similar incidents to
those 2 happen to women at this year's LGM, should they notify the local
police to have them deal with the issue?

And, do you think that in each hypoethical situation, a CoC explaining who
to speak with about the incident when it happens would improve the
experience at LGM of the hypothetical women?

There is probably more to be gained from group consensus and peer
> pressure than from some regulation. Which individual or group at LGM has
> the right to eject someone from the meeting?
>

I don't think there is one from the LGM side - and that's something a COC
can do, to create such a right in the first place by way of contract.

I believe in previous years that no individual or group from the LGM side
has any right to that, but instead, it is a right of the host organization
staff. Their right comes from the event being held on private property
whose interest they are authorised to represent. But, for sure, most years
the host organization staff were not around 100% of the time; and some of
the event's calendared meetings are not on that property.

On 18 January 2014 00:09, "Christoph Schäfer" <christoph-schaefer at gmx.de>wrote:

>  >> The discussion about keeping people safe and providing a reasonable
> assurance of a respectful environment has been all over the web for years.
>
> These are two completely distinct issues.
>

 ....to you, using your register.

I assert that providing a reasonable assurance of a respectful environment
increases the probability that people are safe and feel safe.

>>> I can't possibly cover all the bases about this, especially to
everyone's satisfaction.  I'm sorry if this sounds like I'm avoiding the
issue,
>
> But that's exactly what you do.

I expect you to cover all the bases in your response to this email, and
continue the discussion to my satisfaction. And I'm not sorry about it.

>> but truly there is so much content that I would be spending several days
trying to provide you a synopsis.
>
> If I want to publish a paper in a peer-reviewed scientific magazine,
> a footnote following your model ("[T]here is so much content
> that I would be spending several days trying to provide [...] a
synopsis.")
> would immediately disqualify the whole text.

This is an email discussion list, and the criteria for publishing academic
papers are not relevant.

> I also didn't ask for a synopsis.

I hope this email conveys one.

> I asked some very simple questions, which I'll repeat:

I'll take the liberty of giving you my answers.

> Your bold statement was: "CoCs help keep people safe."
>
> Original reply from me (I changed Q to S -- for "statement"):
>
>> S: "Both are necessary."
>>C: Please explain why.
>
> No answer so far.

Given the cavalier tone of your email, this is probable, c.f. find
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Silencing

> As to the other questions, you cavalierly ignored them, so let me repeat
them, one by one:
>
> - Please explain how a CoC can help to keep people safe.

A CoC helps keep people safe because it gives everyone pre-emptive
instructions about who to talk to and how to contact them if an incident
they are unhappy with arises, which means that they will be more likely to
take pro-active action to de-escalate an incident in the making.

Here is an graphic account of an incident that continued to escalate, which
happened about a year ago at a Ruby on Rails web development conference [2]
and more recently went public:

http://archive.is/20131012091136/blogjustine.wordpress.com/2013/10/12/because-it-needs-to-be-said/

> - Define who's being threatened.

People with less privilege.

> - Who's the threat?

People with privilege.

> - What's the threat?

There are 2 classes of threats:

1. Soft threats - abuses of privilege

2. Hard threads - violence, and threats thereof.

>- Who's the safeguard against threats?

Instead of the de facto escalation chain being

person -> friends -> cops

an Event CoC provisions a incident response team which is known to everyone
at the event, so the chain multiplies:

person -> incident response team -> cops
friends -> incident response team -> cops
strangers -> incident response team -> cops

The incident response team might span event regulars, to committee members,
to organizers, to the location's regular staff, to the location's security
staff.

>- If a threat can't be identified with a single person
> or a group,

Since every human has the potential to cause an incident...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pogo_%28comic_strip%29#.22We_have_met_the_enemy_and_he_is_us..22

> please define what else should be
> considered a threat and how a CoC can "help (to)
> keep people safe" other than law enforcement
> or civic common sense.
>
> Would you mind answering them? Examples would be sufficient.

I hope this email is sufficient.

If you want to, I'll be very happy to chat to you about this for as long as
you wish at LGM.

I apologies if my tone was a little insulting in places, but I've simply
tried to mirror your own.

Looking forwards to your considered response, and best regards,
Dave

[0]: Maybe by the time and in the place I am raising kids, it will be
rational for me, since I want to work on driving the adoption of libre
software. At the moment I believe I can have the most impact by working in
a developed country, but I am skeptical it will remain this way:
http://devfordev.blogspot.fr/2014/01/access-is-solved-so-where-are-users_6.html

[1]: I believe the primary definition of the state is power to redefine
which violence is permitted; with an anthropological perspective I see what
the police do is what organized thugs do, plus state permission.

[2]: The last few years I have seen presentations about comics graphics
from people using Krita, Synfig, Blender, and Ruby projects, so there is
overlap between the LGM community and these example communities.
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