Serious question

[liv]

So jenett is being a superhero-librarian. She conspired with her friend elisem [ETA: and others] to get a really well written post about being sexually harassed at an SF con posted simultaneously on six highly trafficked blogs. And now she's curating the conversation and reactions that are arising from this bombshell.

Conversation, both in comment threads and response posts, is going somewhat less badly than these things sometimes do. I think this is partly because elisem's post has been carefully constructed to head off some of the obvious awful responses. I'm reminded of Livesey's BSFA talk at Eastercon: even though this is sexual harassment of an adult, not sexual abuse of children, there is still the expectation that Elise's post must be either confession, hence people clamouring for more details of what exactly happened, or testimony, hence people mouthing off about innocent until proven guilty. elisem has quite intentionally chosen not to discuss the details of what happened to her, so she's not confessing anything, and she's published the post on other people's blogs so she's not dealing with people trying to police her emotions. And she's done exactly the right thing in terms of making a formal report of harassment to the perp's employer, precisely so that they can follow the appropriate processes to determine whether he really did the things he's accused of. That hasn't entirely headed off commenters trying to set themselves up as amateur, unbriefed defence lawyers, including tearing down the character of the accuser to undermine her credibility, but it's somewhat mitigated this problem.

More speculatively, I think another reason that the conversation is going relatively well is that elisem is pretty much the ideal victim. She's extremely well-connected within fandom, in fact she possibly even outranks the status of the rather influential person she's making an accusation against. I mean, the fact she was even able to get her post on Whatever and other very prominent blogs speaks volumes about her being friends with the movers and shakers. Even other senior people at Tor, colleagues of the editor who is accused of harassment, are willing to push the envelope legally speaking by linking approvingly to elisem's post. I think it also helps that elisem is middle-aged, white, and averagely good-looking (but not notoriously "sexy"). Which is a depressing thought, but there you go. As Elise describes herself:

The thing is, though, that I’m fifty-two years old, familiar with the field and the world of conventions, moderately well known to many professionals in the field, and relatively well-liked. I’ve got a lot of social credit.

But in spite of starting from a relatively ideal situation, in spite of being backed up by some really big names, the usual pattern of minimizing responses hasn't been eliminated completely. One thing that always always seems to come up in these discussions is, but what if he was just a bit socially clueless and now he's getting lynched [sic] by the internet for an honest mistake? I mean, that could hardly be less relevant in this case: for a start, we're talking about a guy who holds a senior job at an influential publisher, and one who has a decades-long history of making women uncomfortable and being the sort of guy those in the know warn eachother about.

I'm sort of interested in why people always jump to worrying about that possibility, though. One interpretation is that it's part of a great misogynist conspiracy to stop women from taking any effective action when they get harassed. I don't find that very likely, because I don't believe in conspiracy theories, and because while I'm seen some unambiguous misogynist troll comments, I have definitely seen more that look to me completely sincere. There does seem to be a great terror that if sexual harassment of women at cons is taken at all seriously, it will lead to disaster for socially clueless men.

So the question I have is, how many people reading this personally know someone who has ever been falsely / inappropriately accused of sexual harassment? Just how widespread is this problem, really? I'm particularly concentrating on accusations made against men, but judge for yourselves whether accusations against socially clueless people of other genders are relevant to this conversation. Anon comments are on, and in many ways I'd prefer anonymous comments if personal anecdotes are involved.

Comments

[jenett]

Thanks for the larger discussion! (I feel I ought to clarify your first paragraph, though: Elise talked to a sizeable number of people before deciding on posting and *how* she posted. I'm only one of them.

(That said, I've been Elise's occasional External Brain for a number of years, for organising tasks and wrangling data, and this is certainly another one of them.)

The six bloggers who volunteered to help are all friends of hers: the idea was definitely to have conversation going in multiple places (and so that Elise would not have to be the one moderating the conversation when necessary.) They all were exceedingly glad to help (from the comments she's made to me, the longest back and forth was about when and how to release it, everyone said "Oh, yes, absolutely" very quickly when she asked.)

To answer your question: I don't think I know anyone who has been falsely accused, nor do I think I know of anyone (people I know directly - people I consider friends, not just 'vague overlap in online space without a lot of individual interaction') who's made an accusation without having a fair bit of backup for it (whether that's witnesses or evidence in some form or whatever.)

[liv]

Thank you, I think you're seriously awesome spearheading this! It's starting to look like a watershed moment where the community as a whole comes to a consensus that this kind of behaviour is not acceptable. Really amazing to watch actual positive change happening in front of my eyes. And thanks for the clarification that other people also helped Elise write her magnificent post; I've edited my post. But yes, the wrangling data thing is amazing, that's why I think you're a superhero.

I'm really glad the six bloggers have been so supportive, and yes, keeping the moderation duties away from Elise herself seems like an extremely good idea.

[liv]

Huh, nobody who has been falsely accused or made a false accusation among your immediate circle. I sincerely doubt anyone could ever say "nobody I know has been harassed or perpetrated harassment".

[jenett]

It's also true that I don't have a very large number of people who've made accusations. (which is to say, I'm not entirely sure how usefully applicable my data set is in the first place.)

[liv]

Yeah, it's always impossible to get good data about rare events (short of actually doing an expensive formal study). Straw polls like this one don't improve things very much in terms of dataset, but hopefully will be a way to get discussion going.

[adrian_turtle]

I know a lot of people who have been harassed. Before this year, I don't think I knew anybody who had made a formal accusation of harassment.

[liv]

That's a really good point, actually. I didn't think who ask, who knows someone who has reported harassment? I feel sure I must know some people who have done, but I really can't think who now I think of it.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

I sincerely doubt anyone could ever say "nobody I know has been harassed or perpetrated harassment".

I can, at least in the sense that I don't know about it. I guess statistically there are probably some cases among people I know, but I can't bring any to mind.

(Assuming we're still talking about sexual harassment. There was someone at sixth form who behaved towards me and a couple of my friends in a way I'd describe as harassing, but not sexually.)

[liv]

Wow, that's a really heartening counter-example, I'm so glad you don't know anyone who has been sexually harassed. I certainly know people who haven't been, myself included, but probably a minority among my female friends.