Hey,

Longtime lurker on this list, with a closer view of the situation than most people here. I’m a member of Noisebridge, and was part of the discussions that led to Jake’s exclusion from the space.

The most striking thing about the accusations against Jake is that so many of his longtime friends and acquaintances quickly believed the stories, even when they were anonymous, because they matched up with what they have personally witnessed in his behavior over the years. If the accusations of harassment and assult did not seem in character for this guy, this would not have happened.

It simply isn’t true that someone could hurl a sexual assault allegation against a random person—especially someone with a lot of social capital—and get instant credibility. Look at Cosby. Look at the Catholic Church. Look at Penn State. When people invest part of their self-image in a hero figure or institution, they are not eager to cast them aside.

“Innocent until proven guilty” is an important check on the State, which has incredible power to harm innocent people, as well as the enormous financial resources necessary to stand up a court system that makes that model (in theory) possible. It is not the standard for deciding whether or not to welcome someone into a community. A hackerspace can not afford a court system, nor can a conference, or a anonymity software development nonprofit, or whatever.

You have to make reasonable judgments about who to welcome and who to exclude without a three-year trial with a judge, jury, and paid advocates. No one is going to jail here. We’re talking about who is welcome in a community space. “Innocent until proven guilty” is a non sequitor.

Noisebridge had a major problem with sexual harassment in the space for years because harassers would always have one member advocating for them who wanted a long process of investigation and mediation for every single claim—even for people who unzipped other’s pants in the space without consent. Check the mailing list if you’re interested in the horrorshow of the past. As a consequence, by demanding long investigation and mediation for every complaint, we excluded a huge number of people by default.

If you are new to a community space and someone grabs your tits on the first day, you’re not going to stick around for a year-long mediation process to remove that person from the space and convince every random person that yes, this happened. No one has time for that shit. So if there’s a serial harasser in the space, they will drive away dozens of people, and you as a community have made the subjective judgment that their safety from possible false accusations is more important than the safety of all of the people accusing them of harassment. You have decided to exclude the people being harassed. This is not an abstract thing—this has practical consequences. A large part of the community leaves, and you won’t even know they have left.

Since getting an anti-harassment policy and a stronger culture of excising problematic people, we have a much healthier space. People are working on projects rather than spending dozens of hours each week gathering evidence to push out people they know are a problem, or a similar amount of time gathering allies to fight against the ban (if you’re the shitty person). We have women in the space again. There were years there where there were almost no women working there. A few Noisebridge exiles started a woman-only hackerspace partly because of all of the problems at our space. It is not a coincidence that an anti-harassment policy improved the culture of the space.

Secretly recording your sexual activities in case someone accuses you of rape in the future is a whole other can of crazy paranoid worms that I can’t even dig into.

Anyway, Jake is not welcome at Noisebridge, and that’s a symptom of a culture that’s finally healthy.

Bye,
John
> On Jun 25, 2016, at 12:31 PM, Özer Tayiz <otayiz@???> wrote:
>
> Since I have no idea about what actually happened in the particular case of Jake and any of his accusers (I know neither him nor any accusers), from now on I will only suggest hypothetical ways to resolve such conflicts, in a free market anarchy, like rape accusations, without state monopoly on conflict resolution (police and courts).
>
> 1) First we must define rape. Nowadays many laws define consent and rape so vaguely there is no clear cut line drawn between consensual sex and rape. And this is by design.
>
> For example, feminists are totally against any kind of recorded proof of consent to sex, including simple and secure web apps. Or video recordings of the act to be used at courts by evidence.
>
> Google online if you don't believe me.
>
> 2) There are good principles to follow from history of justice and conflict resolution. Like, presumed innocent till proven guilty and burden of proof lies with the accuser.
>
> More and more in western countries we see these principles thrown to the trash when it comes to accusations like rape, domestic abuse, sexual harassment and similar.
>
> I have known several people who are ruined by false accusations. And it is more common than most people think.
>
> Men are presumed guilty till they prove innocence, which is a huge burden.
>
> If anyone suggests that we get rid of evidence based investigation, and presumption of innocence, and burden of proof to be shifted, I will only remind that, you may be accused next too. Those protections are there to protect all the innocent.
>
> 3) Definition of all crimes should be sex and gender neutral. Just like murder can't be defined as a crime for one group (like blacks vs whites etc), but not a crime for another, rape, domestic violence, and sexual abuse cannot be legally defined as crimes only man can commit either.
>
> Anyone can initiate violence and crime. It is an action any adult human is capable of and therefore, should be accountable for.
>
> A female can hold a handgun and kill a man, or threaten to kill a man as easily as a man can hold a gun and kill a woman, or threaten to kill a woman.
>
> So this "men are the criminal aggressors, women are the victims" narrative, totally based on bs lies and propaganda, should be discarded.
>
> Somehow feminists are totally against that too. See laws for gender neutral rape laws not being able to pass in Israel for example.
>
> 4) Whenever there is a proven crime, the punishment must be about repairing the damage to the victim. In most practical terms, this would be the criminal paying money to cover the costs of damage done by the violation of the victim's live, liberty, and property. Plus any expenses made by the private security, investigation, and conflict resolution. Burden of payment is on the criminal.
>
> I won't discuss things like how to put a $ amount to a rape victim's trauma etc, but in a free market anarchy, voluntary justice system, there are gazillions of ways we can do that. Just like, say, in a Common Law court, people can judge a fast food company for millions of dollars in reparations for one client who spilled hot coffee on herself and burned herself.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cR5NWkWMzw <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cR5NWkWMzw>
>
> And common law is one voluntary conflict resolution system, but not the only one. There maybe many other voluntary systems like that. But it has a history of almost 1000 years, applied in many anglo-saxon english speaking countries already. So that is one historical example.
>
> Till then for both the falsely accused and victims of rape/harassment: I suggest you video record everything, just in case.
>
> Pen cams, keychain cams, wearable cams, cams on phones, hidden security cams for homes etc are cheap and available everywhere.
>
> I bet hacker/anarchist community here are well capable of using such devices, no?
>
> In case you are falsely accused, you prove your innocence. In case you are abused, you can prove your abuse.
>
> And we won't be arguing forever about who to believe in a "he said vs she said" situation.
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7y8IZys034 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7y8IZys034>
>
> I won't reply any more to ad hominems and personal insults etc.
>
> That adds nothing to the conversation.
>
> On Thu, Jun 16, 2016 at 12:46 AM, Caleb James DeLisle <cjd@??? <mailto:cjd@cjdns.fr>> wrote:
> At the beginning of June 2016, news broke that a prominent member of the Hacker/Journalist/Leak
> Community had become the target of multiple serious allegations of sexual misconduct. I was aware
> of certain aspects of this person and after reading the accounts, certain things *clicked* for me
> which I had not seen or could not perceive before. If this person had acted alone, lead a
> double-life and secretly done terrible things, I might never have cared to collect this information.
> The most painful realization was that these things could never have been done alone, at every step
> of the way the Community *had* to have protected him, covered up the stories and shushed the
> victims. This event lead me to the tragic realization that the Open, Tolerant and Progressive Hacker
> Community of which I believed myself a member - was no more than a figment of my imagination.
> It is fair to say that in my heart I believe the victims, but I have chosen to maintain this
> repository with the highest level of impartiality that I can, so I might sleep at night even if I am
> proven to be wrong.
>
> https://github.com/cjdelisle/JakeGate <https://github.com/cjdelisle/JakeGate>
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