Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing

Over on io9, Annalee Newitz has an excellent round up of the recent problems with sexual harassment at Readercon, TAM and DefCon. Despite some signs of hope — Readercon finally doing the right thing; the excellent idea of using colour cards to signpost bad behaviour — it's still pretty depressing to find that there are some people who don't have a problem with this sort of thing or whose privilege blinds them to the scope (or even existence) of the problem.

I think Jen McCreight got it right when she said, vis-à-vis intolerance in the skeptical movement:

I don’t want good causes like secularism and skepticism to die because they’re infested with people who see issues of equality as mission drift. I want Deep Rifts. I want to be able to truthfully say that I feel safe in this movement. I want the misogynists, racists, homophobes, transphobes, and downright trolls out of the movement for the same reason I wouldn’t invite them over for dinner or to play Mario Kart: because they’re not good people. We throw up billboards claiming we’re Good Without God, but how are we proving that as a movement? Litter clean-ups and blood drives can only say so much when you’re simultaneously threatening your fellow activists with rape and death.

Exactly. If you're committed to some sort of set of progressive, enlightenment ideals — as much of geekery often claims to be — you shouldn't find the principles of equality and justice controversial. And if you do, well, you'd better find some new people to play Mario Kart with...