I see where Thunderf00t gets his name: he puts his foot in it hard. And that’s unfortunate, because before building up his credibility in in his new digs here at freethoughtblogs, he’s launched into an embarrassingly clueless defense of his privilege to chew on women’s legs.

I’m tempted to tear every sentence apart, but the structure of his post his so flimsy I’ll just knock out a few of the rickety bits.

Now first let me say from a strategically point of view sexual harassment at conferences really is a non-issue

And then he tells us the conference scene is unimportant because, for instance, the youtube and blog scene is much, much bigger.

He is incorrect. From Thunderf00t’s point of view it is a non-issue. From a strategic point of view, the position that we want the atheist/skeptic movement to grow and include more diversity, it’s a major problem that must be addressed.

This has never been about TAM, either. The argument encompasses meetings, but also the larger geek and atheist culture, which turns out to be pretty damned sexist. You do not correct the broader problem by turning a blind eye to the specifics; it doesn’t work to say that you reject misogyny, but oh, that meeting there? It’s OK if you hit on women there. It’s OK if you abuse women in a bar; bars are free-range markets for men to exercise their will.

Further a female friend of mine who repeatedly attends many such events has informed me that the most recent TAM was the best ever in this fashion.

I’m sorry, Thunderf00t, but with that you demonstrate that you’ve completely missed the point.

It’s an anecdote. So?

But also, it’s one that everyone involved in this fracas agrees with. This and many other blogs have enthusiastically supported TAM over the years, I have specifically pointed to TAM as a model conference for getting a more diverse audience, and Skepchick has been raising money to send more women to it. We’ve pointed to their anti-harassment policies last year as a good thing, we’ve applauded the balance of speakers, we’ve actually said nothing but good things about the meeting.

Until this year, when DJ Grothe screwed up bigtime. He announced that the attendance of women was down this year, and blamed it on individuals and blogs who had actively promoted the improvements in the conference. Then, denying that sexual harassment ever occurred at TAM (it has, as has been amply demonstrated) and dragging his feet over doing anything to continue the formerly good policies made it clear: he’s not interested in supporting women’s issues after all.

That’s what has people disgusted with the meeting this year: the management seems determined to unravel all the good will that has built up over the years, because rather than dealing with a common problem in this culture, they’ve decided to pretend the problem doesn’t exist. As Thunderf00t has.

The level of the warning suggests the issue is far more problematic than it is in reality.

Thunderf00t does not get to determine how other people respond to threats; only the threatened people get that option. And his solution, which is to ignore all threats except the ones where you get to bring in the FBI and have them arrest someone, is so laughably black-and-white that it suggests he is entirely oblivious to the situation.

For instance, I had multiple, daily death threats from a well-known internet troll, Dennis Markuze, for over a decade. The intensity of his obsession made it clear that there was a serious problem here, as did the escalating intensity of his behavior. I reported this guy to the local police, the FBI, the RCMP, and the Montreal city police…who did nothing. Nothing at all. It was only last year that his local police finally took him in for much needed treatment.

So often the FBI solution is no solution at all. And I’m saying that as a man — the first response women get when they try to bring in authorities to deal with harassment is doubt and denial.

But also, I know that Thunderf00t does not call the police every time someone says something rude, stupid, or threatening to him: there are other responses besides lying down and pretending it didn’t happen.

You can point and laugh.

You can block them, if it’s on the internet.

You can refuse to associate with them in real life.

You can ask friends to back you up.

If it’s a conference that you suspect will be full of assholes, you can turn down invitations to attend.

You can try to change the culture that tolerates such abuse, if you’re ambitious.

These are perfectly reasonable, rational responses. They are better responses than bluntly dichotomizing every situation into do-nothing vs. “drag their legally beaten carcass around the walls of Troy”.

The VAST majority of people at these conferences are civil, honest, respectable folks.

Nobody has said anything different, and in actual fact we’ve said that TAM tends to be better than your average crowd of random human beings.

But here’s the thing. The instances of harassment are rare and usually (not always) effectively dealt with…but there’s a massive culture of internet bravos who want to diminish and demean the concerns. There is an attitude that women are there not as colleagues and respected partners in the goals of the movement, but as eye candy and sex toys, so please please please don’t you dare suppress my right to hit on women all I want!

Unfortunately, Thunderf00t expresses that same sense of privilege.

Giving people a list of things they are and are not allowed to do in the bars in the evenings gives the impression that this is not a conference for grown-ups but an expensive and repressive day/night care where your every action will be vigilantly vetted for dis-approval by the conference organizers. Put simply this sort of thing is a killjoy for the civil, honest respectable majority. If I want to chew on some womans leg in a bar, I don’t want to have to consult the conference handbook to see if this classes as acceptable behavior!

The people who have been arguing for better harassment policies are not killjoys — you apparently don’t know Rebecca Watson or Greta Christina very well if you think that they aren’t enthusiastic participants in the bar and party scene.

If you want to chew on some woman’s leg, no, you don’t have to consult the conference handbook.

You have to fucking consult the woman.

That’s the message. Not that you will be policed by a mob of impersonal killjoys, but that you damn well better appreciate that that woman is a person who has just as much right to be there and to demand some respect for herself as you do. And that if you fondle someone because you think you have that right, there will be people who have the back of your target and who will tell you NO you don’t get to dictate to that person how she will participate in your games.

If she wants you to nibble on her leg, or she wants to nibble on yours, fine, have fun.

But let’s be clear on this: the women at a conference are not your buffet.

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Cristina Rad does it right. She asks if something were an instance of sexual harassment. In this case, a companion was nagged with requests to participate in sexual activity until she felt she had to move away to escape it.

Yes, that is sexual harassment. Undeniably so.

But here’s the contrast with Thunderf00t’s argument. He seems to think it’s either something you ignore, or something you call the FBI to handle. I think every rational person would agree that no, you don’t call in the FBI or the local police to handle a nuisance hitting on you at a bar. But that doesn’t mean it’s something that should be encouraged or tolerated — no means no. It would be nice if conferences encouraged intermediate levels of reaction, somewhere between “Bye, I’m not attending this event” and “Boom, I’m calling in a swat team.”

This attitude that if a situation doesn’t require the police to beat on someone, it should be tolerated, is exactly the kind of position that creates a safe space for pick-up artists and their ilk — they’re given the latitude to push right up to the point the nightsticks are hauled out.

Talk about missing the point — now we’ve got someone declaring the TAM harassment problem solved — why, just call casino security, and they’ll take care of it!

Uh, yes. We know. We can go to a meeting, and if there is a jerk causing problems, we can seek out authorities and maybe get it resolved (although, in the case of women complaining of harassment, we’re more likely to see the problem treated dismissively). That’s always been an option, and it’s really patronizing to bring it up as if no other person on the planet ever even thought of it.

It’s not the issue. What’s wanted is a recognition of the fact that no one has the right to harass others at a public meeting, and that the meeting organizers have a zero tolerance policy towards sexual harassment, to discourage harassment before it happens.

Why is this so hard to understand?

These events are safe: they are well-bounded, contain security staff, and all the organizers want them to proceed with little disruption. Nobody has complained that there was no available recourse to deal with jerkwads.

The problem is that they are not safe spaces, which means a place where women can feel comfortable speaking without risk of unwelcome advances. You can’t just announce that there are security guards outside the door to create a safe space; it takes a bit more effort than that.

The author of that blog actually hit on the real problem by accident in a comment on that thread.

Honestly, if your a woman at an event like TAM, expect to be hit on.

EXACTLY!

You know, there’s a lot of whining that Rebecca Watson or myself have claimed that TAM is unsafe, a claim that we actually haven’t made at all. To the contrary, we’ve both supported TAM and encouraged people to attend. But we’ve also asked that it be better, and I do give DJ credit — it has improved in the representation of women speakers during his tenure.

But if you’re looking to pin the blame on people who have said TAM isn’t a good place for women, who might be spreading the word that women shouldn’t attend, you might want to start with people who declare that women ought to “expect to be hit on”.

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Some people seem confused by the phrase “safe space”. They seem to be unaware of the fact that in English, one word in context can modify the meaning of another: like “parkway” is actually a place where cars drive, rather than park. But to help out those poor naive simpletons, here’s an explanation of “safe space”.

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As usual, Cuttlefish distills the whole wrangle down nicely.