Even then, it may be far from clear-cut. We don't know what those problems are. Have there been reports of harassment regarding this guy? If so, that's fairly clear-cut. But maybe this is just kind of a jerk, but hasn't done anything over the line before.

While conference organizers certainly shouldn't put their heads in the sand, realistically they're a small part of the potential solution. The community at large really has the most power here - it has many more eyes and ears than the (usually overworked) conference organizers.

I'm wondering where the rest of the community was when this harassment was going on at the bar. The victim says they were there in a group. So a whole group of conference attendees was just standing around, letting this victim be harassed?

Unlike the conference organizers, they were there. At the bar. In close proximity.

All of this is idle speculation that is really besides the point. The point is that conferences should have a policy for how to deal with these kinds of situations. Those policies are probably going to depend on a certain amount of judgement from the conference organizer. They make all kinds of other judgements, about who to include as keynote speakers or accept for talks. One of their criteria should, perhaps, be whether the person in question has stepped seriously out of bounds at previous events.

> I'm wondering where the rest of the community was when this harassment was going on at the bar. The victim says they were there in a group. So a whole group of conference attendees was just standing around, letting this victim be harassed?

You have been to a bar before, right? Many of them are dark, and loud. There can be many conversations going on at once. It's pretty easy, even with a large groups present, for people to have a conversation that no one else can hear, because there's music playing, and they are involved in their own conversation.

If people did overhear, there's always the bystander effect. In groups, people are sometimes less likely to intervene in a situation, because they expect someone else to intervene, or because they see no one else intervening and feel some social pressure not to break the ice.

And we've seen several other incidents like this. Sometimes, it happens off in a corner where no one else is around; or in a hallway in the conference hotel. Those are situations we need to deal with just as much, and we can't depend on there being a helpful bystander.

The only point is that we need a policy. The policy does not need to be bulletproof. These are human situations. There will always be cases that slip through the cracks. Some of them might just turn into a he-said, she-said that can't be resolved. Some people might never come forward to the conference organizers. Some people might abuse a policy to just get someone kicked out that they don't like. But you do your best to try and provide the best, most accepting environment that you can.

And right now, we have a real problem. We have people abusing the lack of any policies, the lack of will of organizers to do anything, to continue coming to events without repercussion for repeated behavior that is clearly unacceptable. We can do better.

You know, the policy might be a warning at first. It might include some form of adjudication if the events are in dispute. It might give someone a cooling off period, and allow them back after a certain amount of time. There are lots of options, and a large space to explore. But it is fundamentally unacceptable that we just say "well, we can't tell what really happened with a legal level of proof, so we're going to keep inviting creeps to our conferences and let anyone who feels uncomfortable with that stay away."

What I'm saying, though, is that the people around them at the bar are far more likely to be able to assist than a conference organizer who's not physically there.

"The point is that conferences should have a policy for how to deal with these kinds of situations. Those policies are probably going to depend on a certain amount of judgement from the conference organizer."

I totally agree that there need to be policies. But policies are just words, and they won't get the job done alone.

What will get the job done is looking out for each other. In social situations, particularly bars, we should all be looking out for each other, especially women, since they're disproportionally the ones on the receiving end of predatory/harassing behavior.

If she went to the bar with a group, every single one of them ought to have been looking out for each other. And yes, I've been in scores of similar situations where I and others have looked out for the welfare of others. You don't need to be an obnoxious "white knight" about it; you don't even need to be overt. Creeps tend to look for girls whose friends aren't paying attention.

Example: Your female friend is caught in a conversation with a potential El Creepo. Play dumb and introduce yourself to the guy in a purely friendly way. Heck, maybe buy a round of drinks. Just knowing that somebody noticed him will often nip things in the bud.

Yes, there are things that we should do while we are there in person. And there are things that should be handled at the conference organizer level, if there is someone who has demonstrated unacceptable behavior at the conference. And, of course, there is also the police level, for things that go so far beyond the bounds as to be able to make it to that level.

I was just concerned that a lot of people were saying things like "well, she doesn't have proof, so we should do nothing" or "well, this should be a police matter, so we should do nothing," and I thought that your comment might be along those lines, "the other people in the bar should have done something, so we shouldn't do anything." Sorry for having misinterpreted you, and yes, I agree that we should fight this kind of behavior at all levels.

As somebody who's organized community gatherings himself (and made plenty of mistakes in this area himself) I do feel that organizers play an important role as you say.

To put it in really literal terms, when I organized my first meetup, we had a mix of under- and over-21 members. I was really concerned about underage drinking. I really strongly let our members know what was expected of them. I think I stopped just shy of threatening to beat them up and/or report them to the FBI if I caught one whiff of something bad happening to anybody, especially the underage members. I definitely got the message across, at least.

While that kind of approach obviously doesn't directly scale/translate to a professional conference, I think the overarching principle is the same. The organizers set the tone, outline accountability, and (if it's a multi-year event) weed out repeat offenders. The rest is up to the community.

As many of the comments here suggest, people just expect that these types of people will stop if/when a woman puts her foot down and says something to the guy. This sounds great in theory, but for people like the harasser, it often just agitates their behavior.

In a male-dominated group setting, he probably felt even more comfortable and possibly even validated by his peers when none of them chimed in (if they were overhearing any of the conversation). For men and women alike, even though it isn't right, people find it easier to try to ignore it than make it an issue in front of others -- especially people you respect and are likely to see and interact with again.

What Julie really emphasizes in her post is that this innocent-bystander attitude needs to be addressed -- this guy shouldn't have felt it was within his grasp to solicit her to begin with. Even creeps have limitations and a more active community approach in dealing with the very concept of them can help stop it.

From the post this read like a really uncomfortable /inappropriate conversation between two people, not a violent + public confrontation.

What do you expect other bar patrons to do? Listen in and chase the guy out of the bar because he made inappropriate advances? Do I need to point out that this behavior is fairly common in bars?

Look, not questioning that what the guy did was inappropriate but I think this expectation on the rest of the community is not reasonable.

I don't know what sort of configuration people were in at this bar, obviously. But when she mentioned that the fellow singled her out, I took it to mean that he got into a one-on-one conversation rather than pitching his offensive remarks across a conference table. Bars tend to be noisy and people often break up into pairs or mini-groups as the evening wears on.

Woah, hold on just a minute there!

The only reason there is no dispute is because we're getting the story 100% from one side. I don't know either of these people involved and I suspect none of the commenters here do either. There are several possible narratives that fit this story:

* "Sleazy dude attacks woman"

* "Clash of cultures; open-marriage dude meets conservative girl"

* "Crazy bitch made it all up"

A couple days ago there was a HN story about WhosHere suing WhosNearMe and the thread was full of "we need to hear the other side before rushing to judgement". This insight seems to have been lost here.

This isn't something where we need to hear another side of the story, other than maybe from the conference organizer (though even there, she's not trying to blame one conference or one organizer, just pointing out that this is something that is frequently overlooked).

If you have any decent amount of life experience, you have seen something like this happen at some point. There are men, who sexually harass women, and don't take no for an answer. In any large enough group of men, you will find one at some point. Have you never met someone who has done such a thing? Never met someone who has been a victim of such a thing? Actually, even if you think you haven't met such a victim, you may have, since most people don't like to talk about this sort of thing.

The story is that the conference didn't have any effective way of dealing with the situation, not the details of what actually happened. This sort of stuff happens. The question is, what do we do about it? Do we ignore the problem, hide our head in the sand and hope it sorts itself out? Do we say "well, if you don't like it, don't go to conferences, or don't go to meet ups at the bar afterwards"? Or do we try to do something about it, make it clear what sort of behavior is acceptable and what is not, and tell people that if they cross that line, they won't be welcome at events any more?

And your two alternative readings are quite a stretch. The second is "Clash of cultures; open-marriage dude meets conservative girl." I know many people with many alternative lifestyles, open marriages, polyamorous relationships, Master/slave relationships, and the like. In none of those cultures would this behavior be considered acceptable. He didn't take no for an answer; that's one very clear signal that he is ignoring, and no matter how open you are in your marriage, no means no. He also, after going far beyond the line to someone who had already said no and stating that he's in an open relationship and would have a threesome with his wife involved, went on to call his daughter a slut. There is no sense in which that can be considered healthy; that is either blatantly hypocritical, or a creepy sexualization of his own daughter, and he clearly has some issues.

Your third reading is also incredibly uncharitable. Here is someone who is posting under her own name. She is putting herself out in public, describing a rather personal and traumatic scene, under a real name. But you will notice, she has not named the person in question. She has not named the conference in question. She has not named the conference director in question. It is clear that she is not trying to smear anyone. All she is asking for is that we think about these kinds of issues, and have an answer for how we will deal with them in the future.

So, yes, it is worthwhile to take stories with a grain of salt. Think about whether someone could be lying; what they would stand to gain, or who they might hurt. But really? Does she stand to gain anything here other than a little notoriety as that person who was sexually harassed and spoke out about it? Does she stand to hurt anyone? As far as I can tell, the greatest thing she could gain from this is a more well defined sexual harassment policy at more conferences. Would that be a bad thing?

So, even if this was all a misunderstanding, or made up, do you really think that this isn't an issue? That we shouldn't have any way of dealing with this kind of issue?

The least charitable way to read this is that she is simply trying to make the issue of sexual harassment at conferences sound more important than it actually is. I know, from personal experience, that this is a very important issue. People like she described are extremely harmful to a community. Even if her story was entirely made up, there are people like that out there, and you need to have an effective way of dealing with them or you will get hurt or allow others to be hurt.

Here you are again putting absolute faith in one side's description of the events. Do you think Swinger Dude would describe the story in the same way? We really have no idea.

Even more importantly, conference organizers really have no way to know. Let's say you are running a conference and you get this story about one of your speakers. You talk to him and he says "it wasn't like that". What do you do? Cancel his talk?

Unless you're asking for HR-style processes, any policy you try to create will continue on exactly as it has in this case: Information flows to the event organizer, and the organizer makes future decisions based on his/her judgement of the credibility of the actors involved. Maybe the speaker won't be invited back next year. Maybe Ms. Elman won't be invited back next year. Maybe the organizer won't care. Who knows.

As far as being uncharitable: People lie. Even more often, they misrepresent situations to their narrative advantage. This story has certainly gotten the author a lot of attention, and probably many new fans of her blog. There are many potential motives here and I see no reason suspend healthy skepticism.

Do I really think this behavior isn't really an issue? I don't know. All I have here is a one-sided anecdote from a stranger. I'm not even sure it clearly qualifies as Sexual Harassment, ie intimidation, bullying or coercion of a sexual nature, or the unwelcome or inappropriate promise of rewards in exchange for sexual favors.[1] Even taking the story at face value, it's not clear there was actual intimidation involved - just awful behavior. Take her summary paragraph:

"It was incredibly disappointing, humiliating and degrading on so many levels. I had been turned from a professional colleague into "a hook-up" at a bar. I was disgusted by his behavior, his comments about his family and the fact he is even associated with the Django community."

There's no variation on "it was scary, I was concerned for my safety, I felt intimidated". Taking the story at face value - yes, this was incredibly boorish behavior, but the right solution IMHO was to get him bounced from the bar. This kind of behavior happens in all kinds of bars to all kinds of women - bouncers are well-equipped to deal with it. Conference organizers are not.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_harassment