[TriLUG] Palmer for another SC term; proposed amendment to the bylaws

[Brandon Van Every]

On Fri, Apr 26, 2013 at 4:13 PM, Roy Vestal <rvestal at trilug.org> wrote:

>
> Well, me for one. I won't leave per-say, but I will move away even more
> away from the group. One of the things that I found enjoyable when I could
> get to a meeting was to chew the fat with some of the guys I know and poke
> fun, both at them and vice versa, not in any harassing way mind you, but in
> a goofy "guy" way. This policy, in my opinion, would cause folks like me to
> think twice about coming because we might offend someone by picking on our
> friends. Maybe I'm the only one.
>

Maybe you could break down for some of us what a "guy" way of ribbing is.
 See, i didn't like being bullied as a kid.  I didn't get into team sports.
 I eventually found the martial arts.  I don't do a lot of "bro" behavior.
 I don't have much frame of reference for what you're talking about.  The
farther I got in the martial arts, the less likely women were to show up,
and the more painfully polite and professional we all were to the few brave
women who *did* show up.  Because as you can imagine, not that many women
are interested in learning how to kill people Russian style.  But hey, the
few that show up, why would we think to be "guy" about it?  We always made
accommodation for people's different level of physical strength, there's
nothing particularly "guy" about that.  Someone's always bigger than me,
someone's always smaller.  Newcomers can be surprisingly sensitive to
having their arms and muscles grabbed in certain ways, even if they're "big
guys" that you wouldn't think would be squeamish.  Pain is funny that way,
it affects different people differently.  I have a higher pain tolerance to
certain things, even though / actually because I'm not particularly strong
or muscled....

Anyways if "guy" ribbing means being sexually offensive somehow, I really
would't mind displacing anyone who's into having some kind of "guy's club"
with a "guy's handshake" or whatever those things are supposed to be.


> As for the other things, I listed my experience with other volunteer
> organizations, some of which when this type of policy was enacted, changed
> the way the organization worked and made it feel tense, where people didn't
> feel they could be themselves.


Maybe they shouldn't be and that's to the good?  It depends on people's
judgment.


> Eventually, this led to the demise of some of these organizations.
>
>
Maybe that's to the good.  Who's to say.  I've been ousted from some
organizations that I definitely wish would implode, that were living in
dysfunction.  And it wasn't always just me, sometimes entire subgroups felt
disaffected and left.


> I've never had that feeling with TriLUG and I don't want to take the
> chance.


Well voting is about everyone's individual and collective level of risk.
 Not just what you think will be a problem.  I don't believe in the veto
power of 1 individual's "concerns," not unless it's for something serious
like personal danger, etc.


>
> The main, overarching point I was making, not at Cristobal because he
> truly gets it, but to all the other men in TriLUG: Stand up and say "Stop
> it you jerk! That's not going to happen while you're around me and my
> friends!" (referring to harassment of course). It shouldn't take a policy
> to get you to stand up for the rest of us.


In the real world, policies help the cause and shift the balance of power
towards proper behavior.  People can certainly say "I won't stand for this"
in the absence of a policy... and they can have policies too.


Cheers,
Brandon