On sexual harassment and violence in human rights tech communities.

***Content warning for sexual harassment and HR gaslighting***

I wrote a thing about starting with the bad behavior you can see, because calls for “due process” are just another way to say “shut up and deal with the abuse.” Never mind the fact that people who come forward about abuse usually get fired, and none of the people standing up for rapists seem to cite the treatment of whistleblowers when they call for “due process.”

Apparently I need to write another thing, because getting rid of jerks or having “no drama” rules may seem like an easy out. Tl;dr — that’s step one, and if you do it badly you’re going to make it worse. You need experienced (as in formal training and lived experience) help for this.

ONWARD TO THE SCHOOLING.

I can’t speak for everyone else, but I want to clarify something about
firing assholes. Everyone should read “The No Asshole Rule” because it gives
you a way to track the damage such people are doing to your organization, but when it comes to sexual harassment that’s not why I cite it.

Abusive people cultivate networks of people who will cover for them. This is
why “but they never abused me!” is such a frustrating statement. It’s not
relevant, and it enables abuse. Some abusers will be people you trusted and
respected. Ban the charming abusers, too.

The “No assholes!” rule is especially relevant when:
– there are multiple people saying they were sexually harassed AND
– the person who did it is also being a jerk in front of many witnesses AND
– the abuser is hurting the work of coworkers AND
– sabotaging outreach efforts (be it funding or code contributors) AND
– the abuser is violating human rights principles in order to cover up
their bad behavior AND
– the abuser is so busy harassing people that they aren’t even doing their
own work.

What message does that send to victims? It sends the message that their
humanity is ranked below that of someone who is actively harming the
mission of the organization. You should fire harassers whether “they do
good work” or not, but not firing the obvious saboteurs is especially
heinous. It’s also gaslighting, which is itself a form of abuse.

The “no asshole” rule is kindergarten-level diversity and inclusion. It’s step one.

Other people have pointed out that “drama” and “rumors” are highly gendered terms.
This brings me to the main point:

The failure of tech organizations to deal with harassment is a failure to respect
subject matter expertise in non-tech fields. I have heard a variant of “Just
get an engineer to do it, because engineers are the smartest people” too many
times. “She’s not a culture fit, so we’re firing her” said about outreach
professionals who were mopping up after the mistakes of engineers. When you hire HR people this way, you end up with someone who will cover up crimes and re-traumatize victims just long enough for you to look even worse when the story comes out.

You could also end up with someone who has never built a Code of Conduct incident response team dealing with incidents *alone*, and making an utter mess of it.

You *do not* need an HR person who is going to “learn how to build a process” or “study gender discrimination, be patient” while they call women “abrasive” for not wanting to work with rapists. You need an HR professional who has *experience* making sure your organization stands with victims. You need an HR professional who has a track record of building diverse *and* inclusive teams. Especially here, you need an HR person who has international experience, or the awareness to call in people who studied cross-cultural communication.

If you just address the concerns of white women like many Silicon Valley
companies do, you have failed.

This person is probably not going to be a straight white dude who studied
engineering. When it comes to racism, you shouldn’t be relying on white women to do this work, either. This person better be able to quote the same studies and articles that underrepresented people in tech know by heart.
They better know why the words “hysterical” and “aggressive” and “abrasive”
are red flags when applied to women, *especially* Black women.

Why? Because there’s no derisive, gendered term for men covering for rapists.

Why? Because when women stand up for their fundamental human rights, risking
– stalking
– getting fired, and
– being blacklisted from jobs and conferences
it’s called “drama.” Because when women build whisper networks to protect other women from rape, it’s called “spreading rumors.” Let’s call these things what they really are:

An activist response to human rights violations, something leaders would be
praising from a high stage at a conference if it wasn’t a response to their failures.

Let’s fund it like the human rights issue it is. Let’s treat this project like
a social sciences CDC. You wouldn’t send a lone cryptographer to an outbreak of plague. It’s just as ridiculous to expect cryptographers to be gender-based
violence specialists. Let’s be as critical of the idea of rolling your own diversity program

as we are when amateur cryptographers roll their own crypto and deploy it without peer review.