More on hacker conferences and sexual harassment

At the beginning of this year, I blogged about a Mexican security-minded hacker conference scaring away its female audience by advertising in a sexist way.

I don't know if it is the need to be l33t or kewl, to show off that hackers are really socially inept, or what... but this seems to carry on. I know many are familiar with the red/yellow card project (and followup) by kdotcdot.

I am (rightfully? naively?) proud that at DebConf we have achieved a clean conference environment, without such problems... Yes, I know that, during the last ~year at DebConf11 we discussed an anti-harassment policy (look at the thread, it was quite interesting!), came up with standards of respect — And Debian as a whole voted on a GR that ratifies a diversity statement. The fact that we had those very positive discussions, documents and events shows we needed to have them. But, again, this shows that being a hacker does not necessarily mean being a jerk. And I'm very proud to be part of this community.

I recently stumbled across a very nice, insightful post by Valerie Aurora on The Ada Initiative: Supporting women in open technology and culture — DEFCON: Why conference harassment matters. Take a good read at it. I hope it helps shape other hacker groups in a less-aggressive, more welcoming way.

Oh! And before closing: Be sure to at least skim through both Valerie Aurora's and kdotcdot's comments. LOTS of insight in them.