>> I think we need *both* the organisations in place that teach people like Shiv and Kincade and Sanquez - and Calliope and Vagary, and Mallory, how to deal better *and* rules that when they get crossed you get invited to work someplace else <<
We already have laws against sexual harassment and so forth. They aren't solving the problem. If laws won't, then rules are unlikely to do any better. I've seen this with conventions adding harassment policies, and they run into exactly the problems I predicted when the whole craze started:
* People think that making a rule solves the problem. Tick the box and move on. It doesn't work that way.
* The people who make the rules usually have no idea what they're doing. They are neither trained in gender relations nor in policy formulation. This leads to poorly constructed rules. What's worse, once a few sets of such rules exist, most people will simply copy someone else's rather than make their own, which quickly propagates low-quality polices.
* And then what? What do you do when someone reports harassment? The people to whom it is reported are almost never trained in either survivor support or investigation. Why are we even trying to do this in every school and business? We have people trained for investigation, police. (If survivors don't want to talk to police, will they really be that much more willing to talk to someone else charged with policing sexual behavior?) We have people trained in survivor support, counselors and gender activists. Shall we engage them? Generally people do not wish to do this, as it costs money. So what happens when someone reports harassment tends to fall in one of three unsatisfactory categories: ** They can't prove the allegation, so they ignore it. ** They can't prove the allegation, so they summarily ban the accused without attempting to sort out what actually happened. ** They can't prove the allegation, so they ban both parties.
I've seen all of that play out at conventions. I'm not really eager to see it spread all over Hollywood too. I would greatly prefer to see more competent solutions, but nobody else seems eager to invest the hard work and money required to do it right. They just want to tick the box. That won't solve the problem, so it goes unsolved, and over the years it is picking up a lot of cruft from poor solutions that get dragged along for the ride.
>>I'm not sure *how* to get a big melting pot of folks together in a reasonably safe space and show them how to live together<<
Montessori does it by breaking things down into baby steps at preschool level. It works great. That's a hardcore scientific approach, though, and not everyone can afford it.
A club is a great way to start because it's simple to set up. The trick is finding a good mix of people to do it. Then you just do presentations on different interesting topics.
For living together, yes, colleges are the place to try that. Offer classes in homesharing skills. Gods know people need it, and few colleges teach that. Then they wonder why people fight. Get someone to teach intentional community, that's solve a LOT of problems.
>>Something tells me music is the right approach, but... never was much good at design.<<
For that, drum jams. All you need is at least two drums, and preferably some cheap things for random people to bang on. We like PVC drums because they are cheap and sound surprisingly good, especially en masse.
Re: Well ...
We already have laws against sexual harassment and so forth. They aren't solving the problem. If laws won't, then rules are unlikely to do any better. I've seen this with conventions adding harassment policies, and they run into exactly the problems I predicted when the whole craze started:
* People think that making a rule solves the problem. Tick the box and move on. It doesn't work that way.
* The people who make the rules usually have no idea what they're doing. They are neither trained in gender relations nor in policy formulation. This leads to poorly constructed rules. What's worse, once a few sets of such rules exist, most people will simply copy someone else's rather than make their own, which quickly propagates low-quality polices.
* And then what? What do you do when someone reports harassment? The people to whom it is reported are almost never trained in either survivor support or investigation. Why are we even trying to do this in every school and business? We have people trained for investigation, police. (If survivors don't want to talk to police, will they really be that much more willing to talk to someone else charged with policing sexual behavior?) We have people trained in survivor support, counselors and gender activists. Shall we engage them? Generally people do not wish to do this, as it costs money. So what happens when someone reports harassment tends to fall in one of three unsatisfactory categories:
** They can't prove the allegation, so they ignore it.
** They can't prove the allegation, so they summarily ban the accused without attempting to sort out what actually happened.
** They can't prove the allegation, so they ban both parties.
I've seen all of that play out at conventions. I'm not really eager to see it spread all over Hollywood too. I would greatly prefer to see more competent solutions, but nobody else seems eager to invest the hard work and money required to do it right. They just want to tick the box. That won't solve the problem, so it goes unsolved, and over the years it is picking up a lot of cruft from poor solutions that get dragged along for the ride.
>>I'm not sure *how* to get a big melting pot of folks together in a reasonably safe space and show them how to live together<<
Montessori does it by breaking things down into baby steps at preschool level. It works great. That's a hardcore scientific approach, though, and not everyone can afford it.
A club is a great way to start because it's simple to set up. The trick is finding a good mix of people to do it. Then you just do presentations on different interesting topics.
For living together, yes, colleges are the place to try that. Offer classes in homesharing skills. Gods know people need it, and few colleges teach that. Then they wonder why people fight. Get someone to teach intentional community, that's solve a LOT of problems.
>>Something tells me music is the right approach, but... never was much good at design.<<
For that, drum jams. All you need is at least two drums, and preferably some cheap things for random people to bang on. We like PVC drums because they are cheap and sound surprisingly good, especially en masse.