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mjg59(This post contains some discussion of rape and sexual assault but does not go into any specifics)
There was a brief controversy at Linux.conf.au back in 2011. The final keynote speaker gave a compelling presentation on online privacy, including some slides containing sexualised imagery. This was against the terms of the conference policies, and resulted in an apology from the conference organisers and the speaker. The situation was unfortunate but well handled, and that should have been the end of it.
Afterwards, there was some pushback on the conference mailing list. Concerns were raised about the policy being overly restrictive and the potential for it to be used to stifle speech that influential groups disagreed with. I don't agree with these arguments, but discussion of why policies have been implemented is completely natural and provides an opportunity for a community to determine what its expected standards are.
And then Ted Ts'o effectively called rape victims liars[1]. At first I assumed that this was just some sort of horrific failure to understand the implications of what he was saying, so I emailed him to check. The reply I got drew a pretty clear distinction between the case of a drunk college student raping another drunk college student in their room and the case of knifepoint rape in a dark park. You know, the difference between accidental rape and rape rape. The difference between the one any of us might have done and the one that only bad people do. Legitimate rape and the "rape" that those feminists talk about. The distinction that lets rapists convince themselves that they didn't really rape anyone because they weren't holding a knife at the time.
Ted Ts'o argues that only a small percentage of rape really counts as what people think of as rape. Ted Ts'o is a rape apologist.
There's an ongoing scandal in the UK at the moment. A well known DJ, Jimmy Savile, died last year. He grew up in a working class family, but through hard work and natural talent was one of the most significant figures in promoting pop music in the UK in the 50s and 60s, and worked in various parts of the BBC for the best part of 30 years. He spent significant amounts of time raising money for charity, and it's estimated that he raised over £40 million for various causes. Since his death, around 300 people have accused him of sexually abusing them. The BBC is desperately trying to explain why it cancelled an expose shortly before it aired. Multiple people who worked there at the time claim that everyone knew he was involved in indecent activities, but saying anything would risk both their career and the charities that depended on his fundraising. Nobody said anything, and he was allegedly free to continue his abuse.
Ted Ts'o is a significant figure in the Linux kernel community. He has expressed abhorrent beliefs that damage that community. Condemnation was limited to a mailing list with limited readership, meaning, effectively, that nobody said anything. Last week the Ada Initiative published a blog post pointing out the damage that did, and I realised that my effective silence was not only helping to alienate 50% of the population from involving themselves with Linux, it was also implicitly supporting my community leadership. I was giving the impression that I was basically fine with our community leaders telling people that it wasn't really rape if you were both drunk enough. I was increasing the chances of members of our community being sexually assaulted. Silence is endorsement. Saying nothing is not ok.
In the absence of an apology and explanation from Ted, I'll be interacting with him to the bare minimum that I'm compelled to as a result of my job. I won't be attending any Linux Foundation events he's involved in organising. If I'm running any events, I won't be inviting him. At a time when we're finally making progress in making our community more open and supportive, we don't need leaders who undermine that work. Support organisations who encourage that progress, not the people who help drag us back.
Footnotes
[1]The original archive has vanished. I've put up a copy of the relevant thread here. Throughout, Ted states that he's actually arguing against the idea that women need to be frightened of sexual assault, and not against the definition of rape. Except saying things like
(Update 2012/10/30: Adam Williamson suggests in this comment that this mail is a better example of Ted's behaviour - there's some explicit victim blaming and a lot of "Is that rape" questioning with the obvious implication that the answer should be "no". Ted Ts'o is a victim blaming rape apologist.)
(Update 2012/11/05: It's been suggested that I haven't been sufficiently clear about which of Ted's statements justify my claims. So, here we go.
In this mail, Ted links to and endorses this article. He explicitly links to it because of its treatment of rape statistics. Quoting directly from that article:
Ted explicitly endorses an article that claims that a significant percentage of reported rapes are false. The study that generated that figure is held in poor regard by other researchers in the field - Australian police figures indicate that 2.1% of rape accusations were classified as false. Ted asserts that he was trying to argue against poor use of statistics, so it's a fair assumption that he agrees with the alternative statistics that he's citing. Ted believes that many rape victims are making false accusations. Ted believes that many rape victims are liars.
Again in this mail, Ted argues against a claimed figure that 1 in 4 women have been sexually assaulted. One of his arguments is that
There was a brief controversy at Linux.conf.au back in 2011. The final keynote speaker gave a compelling presentation on online privacy, including some slides containing sexualised imagery. This was against the terms of the conference policies, and resulted in an apology from the conference organisers and the speaker. The situation was unfortunate but well handled, and that should have been the end of it.
Afterwards, there was some pushback on the conference mailing list. Concerns were raised about the policy being overly restrictive and the potential for it to be used to stifle speech that influential groups disagreed with. I don't agree with these arguments, but discussion of why policies have been implemented is completely natural and provides an opportunity for a community to determine what its expected standards are.
And then Ted Ts'o effectively called rape victims liars[1]. At first I assumed that this was just some sort of horrific failure to understand the implications of what he was saying, so I emailed him to check. The reply I got drew a pretty clear distinction between the case of a drunk college student raping another drunk college student in their room and the case of knifepoint rape in a dark park. You know, the difference between accidental rape and rape rape. The difference between the one any of us might have done and the one that only bad people do. Legitimate rape and the "rape" that those feminists talk about. The distinction that lets rapists convince themselves that they didn't really rape anyone because they weren't holding a knife at the time.
Ted Ts'o argues that only a small percentage of rape really counts as what people think of as rape. Ted Ts'o is a rape apologist.
There's an ongoing scandal in the UK at the moment. A well known DJ, Jimmy Savile, died last year. He grew up in a working class family, but through hard work and natural talent was one of the most significant figures in promoting pop music in the UK in the 50s and 60s, and worked in various parts of the BBC for the best part of 30 years. He spent significant amounts of time raising money for charity, and it's estimated that he raised over £40 million for various causes. Since his death, around 300 people have accused him of sexually abusing them. The BBC is desperately trying to explain why it cancelled an expose shortly before it aired. Multiple people who worked there at the time claim that everyone knew he was involved in indecent activities, but saying anything would risk both their career and the charities that depended on his fundraising. Nobody said anything, and he was allegedly free to continue his abuse.
Ted Ts'o is a significant figure in the Linux kernel community. He has expressed abhorrent beliefs that damage that community. Condemnation was limited to a mailing list with limited readership, meaning, effectively, that nobody said anything. Last week the Ada Initiative published a blog post pointing out the damage that did, and I realised that my effective silence was not only helping to alienate 50% of the population from involving themselves with Linux, it was also implicitly supporting my community leadership. I was giving the impression that I was basically fine with our community leaders telling people that it wasn't really rape if you were both drunk enough. I was increasing the chances of members of our community being sexually assaulted. Silence is endorsement. Saying nothing is not ok.
In the absence of an apology and explanation from Ted, I'll be interacting with him to the bare minimum that I'm compelled to as a result of my job. I won't be attending any Linux Foundation events he's involved in organising. If I'm running any events, I won't be inviting him. At a time when we're finally making progress in making our community more open and supportive, we don't need leaders who undermine that work. Support organisations who encourage that progress, not the people who help drag us back.
Footnotes
[1]The original archive has vanished. I've put up a copy of the relevant thread here. Throughout, Ted states that he's actually arguing against the idea that women need to be frightened of sexual assault, and not against the definition of rape. Except saying things like
This one does a pretty good job of taking apart the Koss / Ms. Magazine study, which is the source for the "1 in 4" number. For example, it points out that over half of those cases were ones where undergraduates were plied with alcohol, and did not otherwise involve using physical force or other forms of coercionis difficult to read in any way other than "Half of the people you're counting as having been raped haven't really been raped", and favourably referring to an article that asserts that the rate of false rape reports is probably close to 50% is pretty strong support for the idea that many rape victims are liars.
(Update 2012/10/30: Adam Williamson suggests in this comment that this mail is a better example of Ted's behaviour - there's some explicit victim blaming and a lot of "Is that rape" questioning with the obvious implication that the answer should be "no". Ted Ts'o is a victim blaming rape apologist.)
(Update 2012/11/05: It's been suggested that I haven't been sufficiently clear about which of Ted's statements justify my claims. So, here we go.
In this mail, Ted links to and endorses this article. He explicitly links to it because of its treatment of rape statistics. Quoting directly from that article:
the rate of false reports is at least 9 percent and probably closer to 50 percent
Ted explicitly endorses an article that claims that a significant percentage of reported rapes are false. The study that generated that figure is held in poor regard by other researchers in the field - Australian police figures indicate that 2.1% of rape accusations were classified as false. Ted asserts that he was trying to argue against poor use of statistics, so it's a fair assumption that he agrees with the alternative statistics that he's citing. Ted believes that many rape victims are making false accusations. Ted believes that many rape victims are liars.
Again in this mail, Ted argues against a claimed figure that 1 in 4 women have been sexually assaulted. One of his arguments is that
Also found in the Koss study, although not widely reported, was the statistic that of the women whom she classified as being raped (although 73% refused to self-classify the event as rape), 46% of them had subsequent sex with the reported assailant. Ted disagrees with a statistic because some rape victims subsequently have sex with the reported assailant. This means that Ted believes that this indicates that they were not really raped. Ted is a rape apologist.)
Re: So, lemme get this straight
Date: 2012-10-30 11:43 pm (UTC)In the sense that, far as I can see from justification presented, I'm supposed to adopt some sort of an idiot's view (i.e. mine -- I've certainly not seen enough Dreamwidth feminism to properly know it) of the uncited and unreferenced background reasoning, I'd rather be seen as obtuse than a software engineer pretending to be an entry-level male feminist for a temporary viewpoint's sake. Especially when the argument is presented in a traditionally chauvinist format of "fuck you, believe this or else".
To respond to the comment below yours -- does it not suggest an execution to you that not only is Ted Ts'o decried as being solely at fault, but also anyone who'd stand up for him? That if he does not display sufficient submission, nor his supporters, then they should be cast out? Presented in the context of an appeal to community, I catch an undertone of group ostracism in the making.
Re: So, lemme get this straight
Date: 2012-10-31 12:24 am (UTC)No, not really. Or to put it slightly more controversially: I don't think group ostracism is a bad thing in all cases.
The problem with what you're saying is it's essentially the 'absolute free speech' argument rephrased: the misunderstanding that the concept of 'free speech' means 'anyone can say anything they like at any time and no group can place restrictions on speech within that group'. This is not what it means.
The world of F/OSS is a set of overlapping communities. It is entirely valid for communities to set standards of behaviour. I don't believe that if someone was, say, espousing racist views within the Fedora community and refusing to renounce or apologize for them, that the appropriate response is to say 'well, we believe in free speech, that person can believe whatever they want, we should just respectfully disagree and move on, we can't publicly execute them for their beliefs'.
I believe that it is healthy and necessary for F/OSS communities to clearly reject certain types of behaviour. They do not have to be anarchies. As F/OSS communities usually work by consensus, the _only_ way to establish what forms of behaviour should be considered unacceptable is to clearly declare a belief and persuade a sufficient amount of others that it is correct. Matthew and I are declaring a belief that it should not be acceptable in F/OSS communities to diminish the significance of the crime of rape or to state a belief that rape victims are in some cases responsible for getting themselves raped. I believe this. There are other forms of behaviour I do not believe should be tolerated in F/OSS communities - sexism, racism, homophobia, for instance - and if instances of such behaviour occur I would speak out against those too, and do whatever is in my power to influence the communities of which I am a part to actively reject such behaviour.
The problem with your position is it seems to imply that F/OSS communities should exercise absolute tolerance of any kind of belief or behaviour, no matter how abhorrent - that it is always worse to condemn and refuse to accept certain types of behaviour than the consequences of that behaviour could possibly be. I do not accept this. I believe the consequences of tolerating and accepting behaviour like Ted's - specifically, the consequence of repulsing women from becoming or remaining involved in our communities - are worse than the consequences of condemning and refusing to accept it.
Free speech, especially as interpreted in the U.S. means that someone like Ted can make posts like he did and not face criminal prosecution or government persecution. Fine. It does not mean that it is wrong for others in the community not just to disagree but to condemn his position. It does not mean that it is wrong for a community to agree not to tolerate such behaviour. Communities in general are free to set and enforce standards of behaviour, and I believe F/OSS communities benefit from doing so.
I think you are vastly exaggerating the complexity of the issue. Go and read http://www.codon.org.uk/~mjg59/ted_mail/0038.html again. Read this specifically:
"All aside from the legal question, there's also the question, in the Alice and Bob thought experiment, regardless of whether Alice is guilty of raping Bob (assume that Bob was inebriated and couldn't give consent, and she knew that Bob was drunk), should Bob be faulted for putting him into a situation where he was so drunk that he couldn't take responsibility for himself? What if it was pretty clear that he regularly did this *because*
he could lose control and not take responsibility for what he did? Suppose he hadn't yet had sex without giving consent? Would, should he, face opprobrium for his actions? If yes, does that magically go away once he is raped, and is now a victim, since that would now be blaming the victim?
My personal opinion is that things aren't black and white, and even if Alice is guilty of raping him, Bob should also be faulted for his contribution towards the incident, and should
take at least some responsibility for avoiding being put in similar situations in the future."
and tell me you can't understand why it constitutes rape apology. Ted very clearly and directly states that he believes that someone who gets drunk and is raped - _regardless of the state of mind or inebriation of the other party_ - "should take at least some responsibility" for the rape occurring. This is not Advanced Feminism 303. It is very very simple. I don't think you need a degree in feminist studies and a giant vat of Kool-Aid to understand what's abhorrent about such a statement.
Re: So, lemme get this straight
Date: 2012-10-31 10:20 am (UTC)Frankly I'm shocked by your admission that group ostracism is a method you see as valid. It is a method used by cults to enforce their subjects' loyalty and submission: break these codes, and we will have your friends and family cast you out. Not because they'd suddenly find you disagreeable, but because otherwise they too would be heretics, and cast out. Personally, I rather disagree that the so-called kernel community would accept your demand that a rule of "no statements disagreeable to [insane people]" be not only enforced, but seemingly created bespoke for the sake of punishing and humiliating a top filesystem developer.
Wherever you go after the first two paragraphs is immaterial as your assumption is false. Mine is not an argument from free speech despite your effort to paint it as such.