[DIYbio] Re: Help end harassment in hacking!

As many of you know, there have been quite a few incidents of sexual harassment and bullying in hacking and biohacking culture. In fact, Doubleunion was started after the founder Liz Henry suffered harassment at Noisebridge. Here is a great article that she wrote about harassment in hacking and what to do about it. 

I love this quote from her: 

Openness, that's great, right? Except oddly, openness can mean we get rape and death threats while at the same time, the only thing we can't be "open" about is publicly naming a person who raped us. The "adhocracy" form of informal organizing sometimes look to us like the tyranny of structurelessness, where already-strong power structures and dynamics define our field, so already-powerful elites get stronger.

I am in touch with Liz because I have now myself been a victim of it at the hands of those who run Biologigaragen and The Kopenlab Festival I have been working there since November and the harassment started almost immediately. I tried long and hard to work it out internally but it only got worse over time. You can read an overview of what happened to me here.

Almost no one in lab denies I have been harassed (except for Emil Polny). What they are contending is that Malthe Borch and Emil Polny should stay in positions of power despite their extreme pattern of harassment. For the record, the ONE other woman in lab was mistreated in a very similar way to how I was mistreated. This is a pattern and it will not change. Bullies often re-offend without prejudice, especially when they only get slapped on the wrist for their behavior.  

Since Biologigaragen is flatly anarchistically organized, it is my voice against that of the two main perpetrators, who claim to have founded the lab (which is patently a false clam as Marc Juul, who is currently running sudoroom in Oakland, CA and setting up The Omni, also in Oakland, CA). For the record, Marc is one of my strongest supporters and warned me that I would have trouble speaking out here in Copenhagen due in part to the quirks in Danish culture that make it so that they have the most sexual harassment in the whole of the EU. 

Everyone here agrees that I have been harassed but no one takes the months of suffering I have endured seriously. I have suffered immensely both psychologically and physically as is common in victims of harassment. I have basically been stripped of my rights to operate within the organization. Even projects I brought in were taken from me and interfered with. Most recently, I have been removed as moderator from the mailing list for speaking out about my plight and there is talk of forcing me out of the organization because I have hurt it for coming forward. I have been accused of harming Biologigaragen by going public but I contend that it is MORE harmful to any institution to allow known harassers to remain in positions of authority and to tell a harassed and bullied person who tried for months to try to work it out in good faith that she has to share a lab with those who abused her. 

In fact this opinion is so widely held that during the last meeting I was mobbed by a group of seven very hostile people who want Malthe Borch to stay in power. Mobbing is very serious and after months of the stress caused from harassment and I had a nervous breakdown as it came in the wake of months of psychological torment. 

A friend of mine who was harassed after whistleblowing in the UN warned me this would happen. She was forced out and tormented for her coming forward. I told her "nah, that won't happen to me, the community will protect me, despite the fact that we have no HR and no union rep to deal with this". I have been met with some support but also with lots of scorn and derision. It has severely affected me and I believe that its extreme mishandling has severely affected all of biohacking. 

I have started a petition about the matter and I would like it if the community could show its support for ending harassment in hacking generally and also for ending it in Biologigaragen. Please fill it out honestly. I am curious to see how many people are ok with severe harassment and how many think it is not ok. I am intending to try to help biohacking over this hurdle and protect it from further instances of this. We should be the alternative to the traditional power structures and within our organizations, we should never allow bullying or sexual harassment to occur for whatever reason. I want to take what happened to me and make it into a positive thing for the whole community. I request your assistance in doing so. 

Tusind tak skal du hav (as they say in Denmark),

Jen Kotila