![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
On Arisia, external behavior, and the state of response (2 of 2)
(If you missed the antecedent to all this, it's at https://drwex.dreamwidth.org/1009674.html - Reading it isn't strictly necessary to understanding this entry, but it'll help with context.)
The original questioner clarified that one of their concerns was:
I want to write about this, because I think this is a very hard problem, to which we don't have a good answer. So we (and I mean all of us, not just Arisia) are going on a case-by-case basis, and I think that's the right thing to do, even though I like systems that are predictable and not warty.
It's important first to talk about what "held accountable" means. In Mr Kimmel's case, he was deemed not to be a good choice to be a panelist this year. Being a panelist is a special privilege - there are more applicants for Arisia panel spots than there are spots. It's also a special responsibility because panels are an important part of why people go to Arisia. If panelists aren't doing their jobs to inform, engage, entertain, enlighten, share then they're making the whole convention experience less.
Additionally, although no panelist represents Arisia, the kinds of people that the Convention puts on panels says a lot about the convention. Elsewhere I've been talking about what "Arisia culture" means and arguing that a large part of that is formed by things like "this is how we do things" and "we don't do that here". So when Arisia puts someone on panels they are permitting that person's behavior to be calculated in the approved culture. Every Arisian must follow the Code of Conduct (https://www.arisia.org/Code-of-Conduct) but Staff are particularly called out as being held to a higher standard. Panelists are not staff but their position in the front of the room places them under heightened scrutiny.
The question, then, is about how far to extend the bounds of that scrutiny and why do we extend it? I've tried several ways to produce scales and dimensions to guide "how far" and principles to talk about why. Each one has collapsed under actual examples. Let's walk through this a bit:
People should be able to say what they want on their personal Facebook pages and the like, surely. Except, if someone is posting racist texts, homophobic jokes, or trash-talking women then why shouldn't we take this as evidence that this person would not be a good panelist at Arisia?
It's not a question of whether you are 'allowed' to say those things. Of course you are. The question is, what should Arisia say when someone asks, "Why are you allowing this person to be on your panels when they post this racist stuff?" Saying, "well, it's their personal page so we don't care" doesn't cut it. We do care because we're trying to (re)build a better community.
Well, sure, but there's got to be a limit somewhere. You wouldn't worry about what YouTube videos someone liked? That seems petty and trivial.
Yeah, it does. Right up to the point where you find out someone is consistently thumbs-up rating Daily Stormer videos and Alex Jones conspiracy stuff. At what point does that become a reflection on their character and a thing you want to take into consideration when you ask if this person should be part of our community?
I believe that we should respond to actions that occur outside Arisia's formal walls. I don't think it's possible for us to fulfill a mission of prioritizing the safety of the community by closing our eyes to things and saying "Well, that happened somewhere else so it's not our concern." At a minimum, that permits an offender to move from space to space with no consequence since their offensive behavior would happen "out of sight" of the community's Code or norms.
I also believe that not holding people accountable has costs. If we tolerate misbehavior elsewhere then we drive away people who are uncomfortable with that misbehavior. It's a reasonable question to ask whether, if a person misbehaved in a non-Arisia space, would they repeat that in Arisia space? A cautious person might see that as an unacceptable risk and therefore be driven away.
It's worth noting here that we're most often talking about disadvantaged people. People who are threatened by violent behavior, transgressive speech, and hostile attitudes are much more likely to be people who are already marginalized by society. That means they have less power to respond, and less opportunity to have a voice. By holding people accountable for ideas communicated in a non-Arisia forum, Arisia is acting to strengthen those with a weaker hand. That, too, loops back to this idea of "how we do things" and the culture we're (re)building. We're saying that, just like Staff, people with privilege and power are going to be held to higher standards. Is that "fair"? No, but neither is an unequal society in which I get a free pass for stuff just because I'm a cis white male. Any community standard is by definition "unfair" to someone; the myth of tolerance is that it's equally good for everyone. It's not. Tolerance acts within the privilege structures and, if you're not careful, it reinforces inequality.
I believe very strongly in the freedom to speak. I believe equally strongly that words have meaning and people must be understood in light of the speech they chose to make. Mr Kimmel has every right to his words; what he doesn't get is the freedom to speak and then have the world go on pretending he didn't speak.
**deep breath; we're about to cross from territory I'm pretty confident about into freakin' quicksand**
All this is right and good and yet it still doesn't give me reliable principles to work from because three things are built into this framework that require me to treat cases individually.
First, it assumes that people neatly divide into groups we'd call "well-behaved" and "transgressive". Much work has been done in relation to individuals who are clearly and repeatedly transgressive. "Missing stair" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair) terminology and its use are a great example of how we have often failed to deal with repeated boundary-pushing, context-skipping, and personally entangled problem individuals. But identifying a true missing stair isn't an easy task and I can't give you a good hard-and-fast rule for saying whether or not someone is a missing stair. At best, I know it when I see it.
More often, though, people who transgress aren't missing stairs or worse. They're people who made errors. Maybe they got drunk and didn't take 'no' for an answer. Maybe they didn't understand that absence of a "no" isn't a "yes". Maybe they're part of a relationship that was deeply fucked up and both people really need to get away from each other and do some work on themselves. Remember that our core goal is to prioritize community safety. Once a person is understood not to be a repeat transgressor it's reasonable to ask what risk they pose to that safety. People like this no longer fall into neat categories; they're individuals who have to be evaluated on individual bases.
Second, everything I said above assumes a perfection of judgment that just doesn't exist in the real world. We absolutely do our best to try and suss out what actually happened. "He said/she said" isn't just a dialectic, it's a reality. Often what happens is between two people behind closed doors or out of sight of others. Deliberate offenders often take great pains to cover their tracks, gaslight, and create plausible deniability. But normal people also don't go around thinking "what's my alibi for this?" As a result, people get caught in situations where they see things one way and another person sees it another way.
To work through this we rely on principles (e.g. believe the accuser because false accusations are exceedingly rare) and we use as much supplementary information as we can. But we're wrong some of the time. If we don't operate on a case-by-case basis there's no room for admitting and correcting our own errors. As humans, we overreact sometimes. We're terrible at estimating risk - it's why humans are afraid to fly and fine with the murder machines we call 'cars'. We're also walking piles of biases. Expecting perfect judgment is ridiculous.
Third, nothing in the principles talks about time, or the reality that people change. We need not only to say "this person should have understood that absence of no is not yes" but also "that's a thing they did in the past and they seem to understand it now." We, both as society in the small and in the large, are utterly fumbling over this one. We have big examples (Louis CK, Kevin Spacey) of people who seem to think they can just go away for a bit and then come back as if nothing ever happened. We have examples of people who are given one or two or three year breaks from Arisia and then come back and behave well. But if you think I (or really anyone else) can tell when a person has changed enough that they do not pose a risk to that overarching community safety... well, share your methods please.
Personally I'm a proponent of "ban the box" (http://bantheboxcampaign.org/). The notion that someone's past transgressions should follow them around for the rest of their lives is abhorrent to me. Arisia bans people forever, sometimes. I think some of those decisions are right. I don't know how to reconcile these two beliefs. Somewhere along the line, for the vast majority of people who've transgressed, there needs to be a re-evaluation of whether keeping that transgressor away still promotes the overall community safety. When should that happen and how remains a case-by-case thing for me.
I wish there was a neat answer, an ending or moral I could put here to wrap all this up nicely. There isn't one. This is a big hard problem and Arisia's instance of it is only a microcosm of the serious challenges our society is wrestling with. But it's my microcosm and a thing I continue to care about, deeply. For myself, I have a lot more reading and thinking to do. In about three weeks we're going to have a convention and after that convention there will be a stack of IRs that get handed to the Eboard and we're going to have to figure out how to apply our principles ... on a case by case basis.
Wish me luck.
The original questioner clarified that one of their concerns was:
"it didn't seem fair for somebody to be held accountable by Arisia for ideas communicated on a non-Arisia forum."
I want to write about this, because I think this is a very hard problem, to which we don't have a good answer. So we (and I mean all of us, not just Arisia) are going on a case-by-case basis, and I think that's the right thing to do, even though I like systems that are predictable and not warty.
It's important first to talk about what "held accountable" means. In Mr Kimmel's case, he was deemed not to be a good choice to be a panelist this year. Being a panelist is a special privilege - there are more applicants for Arisia panel spots than there are spots. It's also a special responsibility because panels are an important part of why people go to Arisia. If panelists aren't doing their jobs to inform, engage, entertain, enlighten, share then they're making the whole convention experience less.
Additionally, although no panelist represents Arisia, the kinds of people that the Convention puts on panels says a lot about the convention. Elsewhere I've been talking about what "Arisia culture" means and arguing that a large part of that is formed by things like "this is how we do things" and "we don't do that here". So when Arisia puts someone on panels they are permitting that person's behavior to be calculated in the approved culture. Every Arisian must follow the Code of Conduct (https://www.arisia.org/Code-of-Conduct) but Staff are particularly called out as being held to a higher standard. Panelists are not staff but their position in the front of the room places them under heightened scrutiny.
The question, then, is about how far to extend the bounds of that scrutiny and why do we extend it? I've tried several ways to produce scales and dimensions to guide "how far" and principles to talk about why. Each one has collapsed under actual examples. Let's walk through this a bit:
People should be able to say what they want on their personal Facebook pages and the like, surely. Except, if someone is posting racist texts, homophobic jokes, or trash-talking women then why shouldn't we take this as evidence that this person would not be a good panelist at Arisia?
It's not a question of whether you are 'allowed' to say those things. Of course you are. The question is, what should Arisia say when someone asks, "Why are you allowing this person to be on your panels when they post this racist stuff?" Saying, "well, it's their personal page so we don't care" doesn't cut it. We do care because we're trying to (re)build a better community.
Well, sure, but there's got to be a limit somewhere. You wouldn't worry about what YouTube videos someone liked? That seems petty and trivial.
Yeah, it does. Right up to the point where you find out someone is consistently thumbs-up rating Daily Stormer videos and Alex Jones conspiracy stuff. At what point does that become a reflection on their character and a thing you want to take into consideration when you ask if this person should be part of our community?
I believe that we should respond to actions that occur outside Arisia's formal walls. I don't think it's possible for us to fulfill a mission of prioritizing the safety of the community by closing our eyes to things and saying "Well, that happened somewhere else so it's not our concern." At a minimum, that permits an offender to move from space to space with no consequence since their offensive behavior would happen "out of sight" of the community's Code or norms.
I also believe that not holding people accountable has costs. If we tolerate misbehavior elsewhere then we drive away people who are uncomfortable with that misbehavior. It's a reasonable question to ask whether, if a person misbehaved in a non-Arisia space, would they repeat that in Arisia space? A cautious person might see that as an unacceptable risk and therefore be driven away.
It's worth noting here that we're most often talking about disadvantaged people. People who are threatened by violent behavior, transgressive speech, and hostile attitudes are much more likely to be people who are already marginalized by society. That means they have less power to respond, and less opportunity to have a voice. By holding people accountable for ideas communicated in a non-Arisia forum, Arisia is acting to strengthen those with a weaker hand. That, too, loops back to this idea of "how we do things" and the culture we're (re)building. We're saying that, just like Staff, people with privilege and power are going to be held to higher standards. Is that "fair"? No, but neither is an unequal society in which I get a free pass for stuff just because I'm a cis white male. Any community standard is by definition "unfair" to someone; the myth of tolerance is that it's equally good for everyone. It's not. Tolerance acts within the privilege structures and, if you're not careful, it reinforces inequality.
I believe very strongly in the freedom to speak. I believe equally strongly that words have meaning and people must be understood in light of the speech they chose to make. Mr Kimmel has every right to his words; what he doesn't get is the freedom to speak and then have the world go on pretending he didn't speak.
**deep breath; we're about to cross from territory I'm pretty confident about into freakin' quicksand**
All this is right and good and yet it still doesn't give me reliable principles to work from because three things are built into this framework that require me to treat cases individually.
First, it assumes that people neatly divide into groups we'd call "well-behaved" and "transgressive". Much work has been done in relation to individuals who are clearly and repeatedly transgressive. "Missing stair" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_stair) terminology and its use are a great example of how we have often failed to deal with repeated boundary-pushing, context-skipping, and personally entangled problem individuals. But identifying a true missing stair isn't an easy task and I can't give you a good hard-and-fast rule for saying whether or not someone is a missing stair. At best, I know it when I see it.
More often, though, people who transgress aren't missing stairs or worse. They're people who made errors. Maybe they got drunk and didn't take 'no' for an answer. Maybe they didn't understand that absence of a "no" isn't a "yes". Maybe they're part of a relationship that was deeply fucked up and both people really need to get away from each other and do some work on themselves. Remember that our core goal is to prioritize community safety. Once a person is understood not to be a repeat transgressor it's reasonable to ask what risk they pose to that safety. People like this no longer fall into neat categories; they're individuals who have to be evaluated on individual bases.
Second, everything I said above assumes a perfection of judgment that just doesn't exist in the real world. We absolutely do our best to try and suss out what actually happened. "He said/she said" isn't just a dialectic, it's a reality. Often what happens is between two people behind closed doors or out of sight of others. Deliberate offenders often take great pains to cover their tracks, gaslight, and create plausible deniability. But normal people also don't go around thinking "what's my alibi for this?" As a result, people get caught in situations where they see things one way and another person sees it another way.
To work through this we rely on principles (e.g. believe the accuser because false accusations are exceedingly rare) and we use as much supplementary information as we can. But we're wrong some of the time. If we don't operate on a case-by-case basis there's no room for admitting and correcting our own errors. As humans, we overreact sometimes. We're terrible at estimating risk - it's why humans are afraid to fly and fine with the murder machines we call 'cars'. We're also walking piles of biases. Expecting perfect judgment is ridiculous.
Third, nothing in the principles talks about time, or the reality that people change. We need not only to say "this person should have understood that absence of no is not yes" but also "that's a thing they did in the past and they seem to understand it now." We, both as society in the small and in the large, are utterly fumbling over this one. We have big examples (Louis CK, Kevin Spacey) of people who seem to think they can just go away for a bit and then come back as if nothing ever happened. We have examples of people who are given one or two or three year breaks from Arisia and then come back and behave well. But if you think I (or really anyone else) can tell when a person has changed enough that they do not pose a risk to that overarching community safety... well, share your methods please.
Personally I'm a proponent of "ban the box" (http://bantheboxcampaign.org/). The notion that someone's past transgressions should follow them around for the rest of their lives is abhorrent to me. Arisia bans people forever, sometimes. I think some of those decisions are right. I don't know how to reconcile these two beliefs. Somewhere along the line, for the vast majority of people who've transgressed, there needs to be a re-evaluation of whether keeping that transgressor away still promotes the overall community safety. When should that happen and how remains a case-by-case thing for me.
I wish there was a neat answer, an ending or moral I could put here to wrap all this up nicely. There isn't one. This is a big hard problem and Arisia's instance of it is only a microcosm of the serious challenges our society is wrestling with. But it's my microcosm and a thing I continue to care about, deeply. For myself, I have a lot more reading and thinking to do. In about three weeks we're going to have a convention and after that convention there will be a stack of IRs that get handed to the Eboard and we're going to have to figure out how to apply our principles ... on a case by case basis.
Wish me luck.
no subject
We all mess up. We get angry, we do mean things, we make bad decisions. Some kinds of messing up are small things that everyone moves on from, others can land you in prison, and of course there's a whole range of stuff in between.
Whether or not we are aware of having messed up at the time that we do it, a big part of how we learn what "counts" is by experiencing the consequences. In _Engineering for a Safer World_ (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/engineering-safer-world), Nancy Leveson writes about various facets of how sociotechnical systems contribute to (often catastrophic) accidents. She notes a pattern of investigations into why big accidents occurred concluding that the problem was some low-level employee not adhering to safety standards. But that in reality almost no one adheres to safety standards 100% of the time. Instead, people make mistakes and bend the rules and whether or not these broken rules produce negative outcomes determine how seriously those rules are taken, moving forward. Sometimes this decision is actually just fine. Sometimes it lays the systemic groundwork for a catastrophic outcome. Sometimes hindsight is 20-20.
If you go through 30+ years of adult life behaving in ways that hurt people and you do not experience any personal catastrophes, and maybe don't even hear the voices of the people you hurt, life moves on, and you (and others with similar backgrounds and patterns of behavior) continue to thrive, I can imagine how easy it might be for a person to trick themselves into thinking that the hurt they inflicted must not have been so very bad.
What is happening right now, with increasingly widespread examination of privilege, rape culture, the #metoo movement, and so on, is a big learning process as the feedback loops following certain behaviors are undergoing rapid change. You do something a thousand times with no enduring consequences, and then the thousand-and-first time something that you'd taken for granted gets taken away. A response of "where did *that* come from?" is natural. In the case of Mr. Kimmel and many others who have been in the spotlight recently, it is not good, healthy, compassionate, or enlightened but insofar as we respond to conditioning, it is still natural. The flip side of this is that what is happening now, in 2018-2019, might be just the first stages of a long learning/relearning process. We don't know how this will play out.
Another part of the learning process is the reactions of bystanders, who of course have made their own mistakes in the past. Maybe I see someone from my social circles do something she has done a thousand times before with no ill consequences and then, in the changed cultural environment, they are suddenly be stripped of a status-marker for the exact same behavior, and questions arise about what *other* rules might be changing. It can be scary.
So, I very much hear where you're coming from. It's not so much that it's hard for old dogs to learn new tricks as that it is hard to unlearn old behaviors that we've been trained to perceive as okay.
Hopefully in the years and decades ahead we can make the conversation, and the ebb and flow of consequences for behaviors, productive enough that we can all learn to be better.
no subject
I worked with Ms Leveson at a job many lifetimes ago and had utterly lost track of what she's been up to since. I think I'll go get that book.
I also think that using a systems engineering thought framework for Code of Conduct and Incident Reporting activities might give some interesting new insights. Thanks for that.
no subject
Really cool that you've worked with her. I've only taken a look at the first few chapters of the book, but from what I've read she seems like one of the most clear-headed thinkers I've encountered.
The book is available for free online from MIT Press (https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/engineering-safer-world). It's a real tome, though, so I can see the value in having a hard copy to flip through if you can find one.
Engineering a Safer World
http://psas.scripts.mit.edu/home/2019-stamp-workshop/
no subject
I'm currently going through chemotherapy for breast cancer, and it makes me so tired that I can only keep my eyes open for a couple of hours a day. Sadly, that means that I don't have the spoons to give you the kind of thoughtful reply you deserve, but I wanted you to know that I did read and appreciate what you said.
no subject
Your words are greatly appreciated.
no subject