Re: On harassment at IETF

[John C Klensin <[e-mail]>]

Sam,

Many thanks.  I had been trying to figure out how best to
respond to Jordi's note but you have covered everything I would
have wanted to say and far better than I could have done so.

--On Friday, March 29, 2019 22:43 -0400 Sam Hartman
<[e-mail]> wrote:

>>>>>> "JORDI" == JORDI PALET MARTINEZ
>>>>>> <jordi.palet=[e-mail]> writes:
> 
>     JORDI>    I don't think this is something to be handled
> in private 
>    JORDI> messages.  Those cases should be 
> publicly exposed and point 
>    JORDI> to specific names, so
> the rest of us take our own personal
>     JORDI> decisions on
> those folks in addition to IETF actions.

> Please follow your own antiharassment procedure.  As Dave
> Crocker pointed out during the development of the BCP in
> question, there are some (non-addressed) problems with it.
> Still, it's far better than what you propose above.
> 
> Victims of harassment often don't want their experience
> dragged through the consensus judgment process of the IETF.
> Theey don't want the details of a difficult and painful
> experience exposed and debated on a public list.  Theyalmost
> certainly don't want to face the inevitable victim blaiming
> and debating of whether they or the harasser are more
> reasonable.  They don't want to watch the debate about whether
> the harasser is so valuable to the organization that their
> behavior *has to be* accepted.
> 
> And speaking from personal experience as a victim, some of the
> time you don't even want to see people dragged through the
> mud.  Some of the time people do improve and understand why
> what they are doing is problematic.  Or some of the time they
> are your friends and you just don't want to be the one who
> causes that mess to land on them.  And yes, you have to
> evaluate your silence against the potential that someone else
> will get hurt, and yes that tradeoff sucks.  But people make it
> every day.
> And denying them that option is both inconsistent with your
> policies and with approaching the realities of
> harassment/bullying with compassion.
> 
> I'd say that the last time I was tracking the IETF closely, it
> was behind the curve in approaching some of these issues.
> Doubtless things are better now, but it seems inevitable that
> to some degree or another the sorts of problems I raise will
> absolutely come up if details become public.
> Absolutely if victims want to come forward and tell their
> story, they should be able to do so.
> Demanding or expecting that lacks compassion.
> 
> I may sound a bit worked up here.  Debian has been facing
> similar issues where some names did come forward (at least in
> private) earlier this year.  Everything you can imagine
> happened.
> 
> Or for another data point take a look at
> https://crystalhuff.com/2018/10/25/why-im-not-at-arisia-anymor
> e-my-rapist-is-president-again/ a frank and well written
> discussion of what happened to one victim who came forward and
> discussed her rape at the hands of one of the officers of a
> local science fiction convention.
> 
> Thanks for your consideration,-
> 
> --Sam