On 3 June 2014 15:45, Cathal Garvey <cathalgarvey@cathalgarvey.me> wrote:
I can't commit to a response to everything being discussed, because the
volume is waay too large for me to digest and properly consider
Fair enough, it is massive. The amount of documentation is overwhelming, as is the amount of information regarding context and background that needs to be assimilated to render first hand judgement from some positions/frameworks of which yours is certainly one.
but
this jumps out at me:
..this is the sort of idea that crops up all the time as a seemingly
On 03/06/14 14:27, Jen Kotila wrote:
> By doing what the Danes do and putting the burden
> of proof more heavily on the accused than the accuser.
common-sense approach, but usually ends up being absolutely poisonous to
a free society. It's always been popular to accuse ones' neighbour of
the crime-de-jour, hence inquisitions, witchhunts, wars on terrorism.
For a time in my own country, it was sufficient to accuse a person of
IRA membership to have them locked up.
A person must be considered innocent in the absence of evidence, so the
burden of proof must remain upon the person accusing, not the accused.
There are ways to help encourage those who feel abused to come forward,
but assuming the guilt of the accused is not one of them; it will cause
too much collateral damage, and create more victims.
They have made an exception for sexual harassment here because it is so poorly handled so often. I quote myself:
so, keep in mind that if this does go to court here in Denmark, they have recently rewritten their laws so that in cases of sexual harassment the onus of proof is partially on the accused, which is different from almost all other crimes because the reaction in these cases is so terribly often to blame and mistrust the victim.
They have the highest rate of this kind of stuff in the EU for a reason and, good on them, and I think with this law they are trying to figure out how to shed that dubious distinction. While I agree with you in large part, I do think that often exceptions need to be made to almost every set of rules, laws, ideas. When I first came forward, I did so internally to the Kopenlab group over email on April 25. You can see that thread here.
(Note: this case is incredibly complex. I was also seeing misconduct in terms of them 1. not taking minutes and then saying that taking minutes would be "overly bureaucratic" 2. not being transparent about the proposed new space to Labitat and 3. trying to block Labitat members from attending the Kopenlab steering group meetings. )
Instead of meeting any of my concerns with compassion and a genuine intent to solve the problems, they fought against discussing all of them until their backs were to the wall, but they eventually fixed the minutes and the day after the Apr. 28th meeting, my Dropbox was pining incessantly with documents being uploaded that should have been there all along.
They blamed me and accused me of being destructive and completely refused to see the wrong they had done, acknowledging the behavior but not the harm. Emil Polny keeps saying that it was "just his humor" and I keep saying "I have friends who have the crasses, least PC humor you can imagine but they do not use it to attack me as you do and I asked you to stop many, many times" They never owned anything beyond "I am sorry you are feeling that way". They said that my tone made it impossible to listen to me, which is classic silencing.They were SUPER careful to not put too much if anything in writing.
They keep silencing me about the harassment and they only want it to be discussed in forums favorable to them if at all, such as that May 22 meeting where I had a very serious breakdown or quietly in mediation that will take weeks to resolve. They want to do this, I think, as it allows them to get away with it and be paid for and get the credit for hosing an open knowledge festival that is not open knowledge! This is not ok and I 1. wanted to test how this nascent community would react and police itself. Would it do a better or worse job than science blogging? 2. It also just kinda sucks that in biohacking we have no HR or union rep to go to with this stuff. Thankfully, Labitat and Biologigaragen have
This is why I am here on DIYbio trying to get help.
This also is why my beloved Denmark (and I still love it despite all of this crap) has taken it upon itself to make it easier for victims of harassment to speak out in court.
This is why many countries have whistleblower laws.
It is SO common for a victim of harassment to be doubted, silenced, treated with hostility and blame, doubted and mobbed it might as well just be assumed that that is what will happen when one steps forward and in fact it IS assumed, as I linked to above in a response to David. People are scared to come forward and rightly so. Which is why most women just keep quiet and don't rock the boat. But are people scared to come forward if someone punches them in the face? No! Are they scared to come forward if they have been raped? Sometimes still, yes. But that is better than it used to be because of a change in consciousness. We no longer blame rape victims or say they were asking for it and yet Søren Borch did precisely that to me when I told him about the harassment. I had to write him to correct him after a phone call in which he accused me of inciting men to do this to me via my looks and dress.
This whole thing, up to and including me speaking out, happened because I am damned naive and trusting and think that people will just do the right thing mostly. I think that because I want to live in that world, where is it? I want to make it happen. I want this world to be a place where things like this do not happen.
I really, honestly thought that when I took the matter to Labitat, I would get help. I thought that I would be listened to. Haha. AHAHAHA. Instead I was victim blamed and mobbed.
THIS is why the Danes have that law putting the onus of proof on the accused in these kinds of cases (and I think only in these kinds of cases (as far as I am aware)). It is a taboo subject and the accuser almost always gets reabused in coming forward. My character has been called into so much question over this. My motives questioned. I have been interrogated time and time again. One of my friends who was supporting me in this is now averse to my tactic of taking this big and he said to me the other day "if you keep talking about this, no one will want to work with you" even though he 100% thinks that what has happened to me is harassment and fully acknowledges that it has messed up my life in an incredibly severe manner. Yet he still warns me this and the horrifying thing is that he is possibly right. I hope DIYbio is better than that, though. The movement, I mean. I hope that we are. I have faith in it as so many have taken the time and energy to hear me out and are incredibly supportive.
That said, it is usually the case that harassment truly is a winning strategy as the victim is so often damned if they do and damned if they don't.
This needs to end. In hacking and in the broader world.
Regards,
Jen
P.S. Wait! Cathal! So you are saying you don't want to talk? ;) It's fine, but if not please try to restrain yourself from getting in the middle and casting doubt on me and not on them as that is what I feel you are currently doing. I fel the need to be open and honest and state that this interaction is reminding me a BIT of a Labitat guy who in the end was a textbook concern troll. I am not saying you are that, per se with so little information to go on and all-- it's just an intuition of mine and maybe it is just my bullying induced hypervigelence getting the better of me, but yeah... There was at least one Labitat guy who refused to engage constructively overall, especially not to good points I raised, but still felt like slipping in little contrary things to derail debate who was definitely a concern troll.
Do you see yourself at all here? I kinda have to say I do (again it might be hypervigelence):
A concern troll is a person who participates in a debate posing as an actual or potential ally who simply has some concerns they need answered before they will ally themselves with a cause. In reality they are a critic. Concern trolling in geek feminism communities can result in continual reversion to Feminism 101 discussions in attempts to appease the troll's concerns, frustrating attempts at more serious discussion. Concern trolls are not always self-aware, they may also view themselves as potential allies who have just, oddly, never met a feminist opinion they liked.
Concern trolls can be identified primarily because they will retreat from, rather than engage with or be convinced by, answers to the questions they pose. They may repeatedly ask a certain question in feminist discussions without ever absorbing or replying to answers from previous discussions. They will often back into typical anti-feminist arguments, such as expressing concern that an argument is too "extreme" or a feminist too "strident" or even "hysterical". Another common tactic is insisting that some subjects are more important than others, for example, that media depictions of women shouldn't be criticised while violence against women continues.
Concern trolling is frequently banned in feminist communities.
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I think it is very true that often this type of person is not self aware of their actions. I am sure the guy in Labitat isn't and that he doesn't mean harm, but that he has a hard time processing and accepting that his friend would do this kind of thing. That is what I think is happening there. I'm not sure what's going on here. :)
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