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

[Roy Vestal]

Nope. At this point I've spoken my peace and am moving on. 

-Roy

Sent from my iPod

On Apr 26, 2013, at 10:43 PM, Brandon Van Every <bvanevery at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
> -- 
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