Thank you for your input Meredeth.
On 3 June 2014 14:41, Meredith L. Patterson <clonearmy@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 1:45 PM, David Murphy <murphy.david@gmail.com> wrote:
I don't know you, I don't know any of the people involved in the case and I'm inclined to believe you when you say people were dicks to you but it's not unreasonable for other people, before shunning those involved, to await the verdict of some impartial 3rd party who have all the facts and who've heard the other sides version as well.I haven't said anything until now for this exact reason: I don't know, haven't met, and until this thread had not even *heard* of any of the people or labs involved in this situation. Granted I live in a hole with a rock on top of it, but that does not obligate me to act, or even make a decision, without reasoning through the information available to me.
Of course there has to be some balance struck here. Education needs to happen, evidence does need to be presented, others who have seen all of the evidence and listened to the very long narrative surrounding it and the incident have to come forward. We are in new territory here for biohacking and we will all figure it out together. Everyone starts with different frameworks, different perceptions and different levels of knowledge in this. If I step back and take a breath and calm down from all of the stress due to the attacks I have been under, I can see that. So some people, especially if they have had similar things happen to them or seen them happen before feel very comfortable gauging the situation and acting quickly an decisively. For you, you are saying that you want more info and that is fair.
Can you please tell me if you have read everything I have presented so far? Have you ever seen an emial with 15 attachments on it before? :) That was me holding back. What do you think of the May 22 minutes, for instance?
It is certainly the case that nobody should be made subject to harassment or unwanted attention, from anybody. I haven't heard any disagreement with that point.
It is certainly the case that harassment should have consequences. I don't think anyone particularly objects to that notion either.
Yes, this is utterly non-controversial which makes it all the more disturbing that it is so often the case that victims of harassment face more harassment for coming forward. The actions of many communities and organizations often do not reflect the supposed values and this rampant tendency is what I want to expose and address, along with the meat of my own case. This talk the talk and the not walk the walk behavior is pepetuated by the reaction to "protect the heard" that usually happens when powerful, influential men are accused.
It is also the case that the people Jen accuses have not presented any substantive response to her quite detailed accounts of their actions, and that has a bad smell to it.
They have been doing this for quite some time. They avoid discussion at all costs. Again, read this letter I sent to them telling them they were doing this.
But "end harassment in hacking" is one of those open-ended aspirations like "end terrorism,"
I fully disagree. Terrorism is a very rare thing and is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY overly talked about, in my opinion. This is the exact opposite of this. Harassment is ridiculously common (see all of the links to resources I proived above) and it is NOT talked about. They are opposites.
and it also smells a bit off that Jen has so far sidestepped all the questions people have asked about what specific consequences would make amends for the harassment she experienced.
Ok, sorry. I just missed it. Please bear in mind that I am under EXTREME duress right now and I did entreat the community to ask me if they needed elucidation if I had missed a point. Instead of saying it smells, please reread above where I ask you guys to ask me this stuff due to being up until 5am with anxiety over everything right now, ok?
Jen also appeals to the authority of Julie Horvath and Liz Henry.
I am not appealing to authority, I think. I am citing others who have been forced into the same position I have due to their bad circumstances and using what is becoming a well accepted technique of naming and shaming after Labitat not only failed me, but attacked me on May 22. I am drawing attention to the fact that I am not alone in this. I am not a pioneer, this is not an isolated incident. It is sadly very common and we need to stop it.
Liz Henry is one of the founding members of the Ada Initiative, an organization whose primary activity is to whip up social media frenzies about sexism in technology. Their website at one point mentioned that they provided "consulting services" to companies that were having "diversity issues"; this language has disappeared from the site, probably because it made "corporate blackmail as a business model" just a little too obvious. (Now they just provide workshops and trainings like any other diversity org, but they remain a huge mover and shaker in the 24-hour outrage cycle that lampreys like BuzzFeed and DailyDot feed off for the advertising clicks.)
I do not agree with your assessment of Liz, but I have to admit that I do not know enough to defend her properly. I will entreat her to come here and defend herself as my sense of her is quite different than the one you portray.
It's probably too late for this situation to escape the attention of the 24-hour outrage cycle. Not much we can do about that; try not to get too distracted by it, folks. Jen does still have a problem.So, Jen, can you answer that question for us? These "culture wars" drag on because the discourse always stays at this high level of abstraction. But we're scientists. We observe what happens in nature and induce patterns from it. Then the engineers step in and figure out how to scale it. What would solve *your* problem? We all know that there's a *general* problem. Let's find out what solving individual cases of it looks like, one at a time, and find the patterns in those solutions, because that's where we're going to find the solution to the general problem.
Ok! Yes! Sorry to have missed this the first time and made you feel like my oversight smelled. In this particular instance of mine, due to how severe and how prolonged the pattern was and how many times I tried in very good faith to work things out but how I was met only with hostility and blame and every turn at this juncture I have to say that I would like the following to occur:
1. I want the Kopenlab Festival shut down. Malthe and Emil are being paid as coordinators and, I believe, the addition of money in the form of funding from Industriens Fond is -part- of what made Emil Polny harass me (I am better qualified than he is and even though I would not take money for the role, I was a threat to his paying position as if I am doing it for free then there was no reason to pay him). I am working to try to shut it down and I would like community support for that. Also, please again see this letter and read the attached agenda to see that there was a lot of unethical, non-DIY spirited practice in the festival. My complaint with it is maifold: it is being billed as open knowledge when it is not, it was orignally supposed to be for everyone to participate in but my ideas were shouted down, I was pushed out and the whole thing has really only been Emil, Malthe and Majken Overgaard. There was a long period where they were hiding information about it from me and from Labitat.
Also, the Festival was sold to other ogranizations as Labitat's festival. I spoken with a guy from an open knowledge organization who thought Labitat was organizing it. It was not. They were. They never asked Labitat if they could count on Labitat as a partner until May 15, during which meeting I stood up and said (and I paraphrase, not quote) "er, guys, I don't think we should do this because of the "misconduct" I was still not openly talking about harassment in Labitat plenum then, although many attending members knew the story and had seen the evidence.
Many partners have already withdrawn support. I have been told by my advisers, one of whom is very familiar with this kind of thing, that in order to shut it down centrally I need to make it a bigger issue. Which sucks and I did give them many chances to admit their fault and pull the plug themselves to spare us all this mess. Again, please read this letter.
2. I want Malthe, Emil and Søren to be expelled from Labitat and Biologigaragen and I want the community to help me in this. Again, if you look at the record-- I have been trying to work this out starting on Dec. 19th. That is a verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry long time! I regret it has gone on for this long and I wish there would have been a way to solve it but at this point, I see that as sadly impossible. I would like them to learn and grow from this mistake and to seek help to change, but I cannot work with them in the near future and I do not see why I should be forced to (as Labitat/Biologigaragen seems to want to do) just because they are in power. It is non-controversial in that basement that they have harasssed me, but it is quite controversial to ask them to leave and this is very sick and wrong as far as I am concerned. I will not be able to be in there, nor will I be able to recruit new people to the organization in good faith if they remain involved.
3. I want biohacking to demonstrate to the world that it is an alternative to the traditional structures and not allow them to continue working just because they are good old boys. At least not in the near future. I think that all humans are capable of change, but that it is harder for some than others and, yes, from what I have seen this will take years if it is possible. Marc agrees with this assessment as do many others here in CPH and abroad. I want it to say "we not only do not accept harassment in theory, but we also do not accept it in practice".
4. I want to help foster a climate wherein these things are openly discussed and thus dealt with. We are open knowledge, right? Let's be open, then. Power games are as old as human kind. Harassment is just one of those, bullying another. They happen in hierarchies, both formal and informal. It happens in biohacking, too. We are new, though, and just setting up our ethos. Let's stop it from taking root before it poisons us the way it does so many other institutions. We can start by making it easier for people who have been harassed to speak out. By not silencing them or attacking them. By doing what the Danes do and putting the burden of proof more heavily on the accused than the accuser. I linked to this source above so please find it up there but I quote:
Because of this, if a person in a workplace views themselves as having been violated, then it is up to the other party to prove that no harrasment has taken place. Thus a part of the burden of proof is shifted to the employer, who will need to present a counter case.
5. Again, I am stressed and it is hard to think of everything. I hope that list satisfies you. I may have other concrete items I will want to add later, but if so none are springing to mind.
Please do ask me any other questions you have and I will try to respond ASAP, but also please keep in mind that I am stressed and very busy so that may not always be possible.
Thank you for your time.
Jen
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