Help end harassment in hacking!

[Jen Kotila]

As many of you know, there have been quite a few incidents of sexual harassment and bullying in hacking and biohacking culture. In fact, Doubleunion was started after the founder Liz Henry suffered harassment at Noisebridge. Here is a great article that she wrote about harassment in hacking and what to do about it. 

I love this quote from her: 

Openness, that’s great, right? Except oddly, openness can mean we get rape and death threats while at the same time, the only thing we can't be "open" about is publicly naming a person who raped us. The “adhocracy” form of informal organizing sometimes look to us like the tyranny of structurelessness, where already-strong power structures and dynamics define our field, so already-powerful elites get stronger.

I am in touch with Liz because I have now myself been a victim of it at the hands of those who run Biologigaragen and The Kopenlab Festival I have been working there since November and the harassment started almost immediately. I tried long and hard to work it out internally but it only got worse over time. You can read an overview of what happened to me here.

Almost no one in lab denies I have been harassed (except for Emil Polny). What they are contending is that Malthe Borch and Emil Polny should stay in positions of power despite their extreme pattern of harassment. For the record, the ONE other woman in lab was mistreated in a very similar way to how I was mistreated. This is a pattern and it will not change. Bullies often re-offend without prejudice, especially when they only get slapped on the wrist for their behavior.  

Since Biologigaragen is flatly anarchistically organized, it is my voice against that of the two main perpetrators, who claim to have founded the lab (which is patently a false clam as Marc Juul, who is currently running sudoroom in Oakland, CA and setting up The Omni, also in Oakland, CA). For the record, Marc is one of my strongest supporters and warned me that I would have trouble speaking out here in Copenhagen due in part to the quirks in Danish culture that make it so that they have the most sexual harassment in the whole of the EU. 

Everyone here agrees that I have been harassed but no one takes the months of suffering I have endured seriously. I have suffered immensely both psychologically and physically as is common in victims of harassment. I have basically been stripped of my rights to operate within the organization. Even projects I brought in were taken from me and interfered with. Most recently, I have been removed as moderator from the mailing list for speaking out about my plight and there is talk of forcing me out of the organization because I have hurt it for coming forward. I have been accused of harming Biologigaragen by going public but I contend that it is MORE harmful to any institution to allow known harassers to remain in positions of authority and to tell a harassed and bullied person who tried for months to try to work it out in good faith that she has to share a lab with those who abused her. 

In fact this opinion is so widely held that during the last meeting I was mobbed by a group of seven very hostile people who want Malthe Borch to stay in power. Mobbing is very serious and after months of the stress caused from harassment and I had a nervous breakdown as it came in the wake of months of psychological torment. 

A friend of mine who was harassed after whistleblowing in the UN warned me this would happen. She was forced out and tormented for her coming forward. I told her "nah, that won't happen to me, the community will protect me, despite the fact that we have no HR and no union rep to deal with this". I have been met with some support but also with lots of scorn and derision. It has severely affected me and I believe that its extreme mishandling has severely affected all of biohacking. 

I have started a petition about the matter and I would like it if the community could show its support for ending harassment in hacking generally and also for ending it in Biologigaragen. Please fill it out honestly. I am curious to see how many people are ok with severe harassment and how many think it is not ok. I am intending to try to help biohacking over this hurdle and protect it from further instances of this. We should be the alternative to the traditional power structures and within our organizations, we should never allow bullying or sexual harassment to occur for whatever reason. I want to take what happened to me and make it into a positive thing for the whole community. I request your assistance in doing so. 

Tusind tak skal du hav (as they say in Denmark),

Jen Kotila

[Mega [Andreas Stuermer]]

it's not my place to pass judgement without knowing the exact facts.

However, it's a pity that even in such highly developed societies this happens. I've heard of cases where ideas were stolen, or people were intentionally insulated.

 

Maybe you should consider attending another biohackerspace? Depends on your bond to your city (family, friends, job) of course.

[Lisa Thalheim]

Hi Jen,

apart from the petition, is there any other way to support you?

-lisa

On 28.05.2014 13:33, Jen Kotila wrote:
> As many of you know, there have been quite a few incidents of sexual
> harassment and bullying in hacking and biohacking culture. In fact,

> Doubleunion <http://doubleunion.com> was started after the founder Liz

> Henry suffered harassment at Noisebridge. Here is a great article that
> she wrote about harassment in hacking and what to do about it.

> <http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-rise-of-feminist-hackerspaces-and-how-to-make-your-own>

>
> I love this quote from her:
>
> Openness, that’s great, right? Except oddly, openness can mean we get
> rape and death threats while at the same time, the only thing we can't
> be "open" about is publicly naming a person who raped us. The
> “adhocracy” form of informal organizing sometimes look to us like
> the tyranny of structurelessness,

> <http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm> where already-strong power

> structures and dynamics define our field, so already-powerful elites get
> stronger.
>
>
> I am in touch with Liz because I have now myself been a victim of it at
> the hands of those who run Biologigaragen

> <http://biologigaragen.org> and The Kopenlab Festival
> <http://kopenlab.dk> I have been working there since November and the

> harassment started almost immediately. I tried long and hard to work it
> out internally but it only got worse over time. You can read an overview
> of what happened to me here.

> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-DPJhdE71IyXx_Du9TlV5b2UvVvwkLhgOnVO-06pBCY/edit?usp=sharing>

>
> Almost no one in lab denies I have been harassed (except for Emil
> Polny). What they are contending is that Malthe Borch and Emil Polny
> should stay in positions of power despite their extreme pattern of
> harassment. For the record, the ONE other woman in lab was mistreated in
> a very similar way to how I was mistreated. This is a pattern and it
> will not change. Bullies often re-offend without prejudice, especially
> when they only get slapped on the wrist for their behavior.
>
> Since Biologigaragen is flatly anarchistically organized, it is my voice
> against that of the two main perpetrators, who claim to have founded the
> lab (which is patently a false clam as Marc Juul, who is currently

> running sudoroom in Oakland, CA <https://sudoroom.org/> and setting
> up The Omni, also in Oakland, CA <http://wiki.omni-oakland.org/>). For

> the record, Marc is one of my strongest supporters and warned me that I
> would have trouble speaking out here in Copenhagen due in part to

> thequirks in Danish culture that make it so that they have the most

> sexual harassment in the whole of the EU

> <http://www.b.dk/nationalt/vold-chikane-og-stalking-mod-kvinder-i-danmark-overstiger-eu-gennemsnit>.

>
> Everyone here agrees that I have been harassed but no one takes the
> months of suffering I have endured seriously. I have suffered immensely
> both psychologically and physically as is common in victims of
> harassment. I have basically been stripped of my rights to operate
> within the organization. Even projects I brought in were taken from me
> and interfered with. Most recently, I have been removed as moderator
> from the mailing list for speaking out about my plight and there is talk
> of forcing me out of the organization because I have hurt it for coming
> forward. I have been accused of harming Biologigaragen by going public
> but I contend that it is MORE harmful to any institution to allow known
> harassers to remain in positions of authority and to tell a harassed and

> bullied person who tried /for months/ to try to work it out in good

> faith that she has to share a lab with those who abused her.
>
> In fact this opinion is so widely held that during the last meeting I
> wasmobbed

> <http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beyond-bullying/201304/surviving-workplace-mobbing-control-emotional-flooding>by

> a group of seven very hostile people who want Malthe Borch to stay in
> power. Mobbing is very serious and after months of the stress caused
> from harassment and I had a nervous breakdown as it came in the wake of
> months of psychological torment.
>
> A friend of mine who was harassed after whistleblowing in the UN warned
> me this would happen. She was forced out and tormented for her coming
> forward. I told her "nah, that won't happen to me, the community will
> protect me, despite the fact that we have no HR and no union rep to deal
> with this". I have been met with some support but also with lots of
> scorn and derision. It has severely affected me and I believe that its
> extreme mishandling has severely affected all of biohacking.
>

> *I have started a petition*
> <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1q4-0qsLVLwN5msM_QfbrO2uJytEWfGi6fB8b0NswkmE/viewform> about

> the matter and I would like it if the community could show its support
> for ending harassment in hacking generally and also for ending it in
> Biologigaragen. Please fill it out honestly. I am curious to see how
> many people are ok with severe harassment and how many think it is not
> ok. I am intending to try to help biohacking over this hurdle and
> protect it from further instances of this. We should be the alternative
> to the traditional power structures and within our organizations, we
> should never allow bullying or sexual harassment to occur for whatever
> reason. I want to take what happened to me and make it into a positive
> thing for the whole community. I request your assistance in doing so.
>
> Tusind tak skal du hav (as they say in Denmark),
>
> Jen Kotila
>

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[Destiny Z]

I am so sorry to hear about what happened to you. I do hope that you take legal action. This kind of behavior is unacceptable in the work place, no matter what kind of work place you are in, no matter what kind of work you are doing. I would be terrified if what happened to you happened to me, and I am very happy to see you stand up against it.

Best of luck with this whole ordeal.

[Martin Malthe Borch]

Dear All

We cannot enter into a discussion based on the points that are brought forward here, as Jen Kotila’s interpretations of the concrete situations differ completely from how we experienced those same situations.  

Internally in Biologigaragen and Labitat we have had, and will continue to have, several meetings about this conflict. A facilitator is currently setting up a third-party conflict mediation process. This has been accepted by both parties.

With the Kopenlab project our intention is, and always has been, to advance diybio, maker and art-tech cultures, and to invite science, art and industry professionals to interact with these cultures and with each other.

Since the documents published in Jen’s e-mail contain serious allegations and personal information that does not belong on a public mailing list, we have requested that the mailing list administrators remove the e-mail.

Any questions you may have about either the conflict or the festival are more than welcome. You can contact us directly or we can talk about  it at the Kopenlab Festival.  

Sincerely,

Søren Borch, Malthe Borch & Emil Polny

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diybio.eu | biologigaragen.org | labitat.dk | energihojskolen.dk

[Will Canine]

Søren, Malthe and Emil,

No, we will not pretend like an important matter didnt because it makes you three uncomfortable to discuss it. Jen has clearly been put in an uncomfortable position -- to put it mildly -- for at least the last several months. I think you dudes can take it.

Whats more, your attempt at covering up this discussion makes me think you're all probably well aware your behavior was misogynist at best, sexual assault at worst, and you'd like to not let that fact come to light. And in my experience, people dont come forward with such important accusations unless they have been deeply hurt and feel they have no other option. I am inclined to believe the three of you have acted in completely inappropriate, if not criminal, ways. But while I cant prove that, its clear from the way you are handling this that you have not shown Jen the respect she deserves.

I have an absolute zero tolerance policy for sexual harassment and assault. And so should all of us. When a peer comes to us to say they feel unsafe in our midst, we need to respond and fix the problem. 

This movement needs to be a safe place for everyone -- except those who threaten their peers. Those people need to GTFO.

[John Griessen]

On 05/29/2014 07:22 PM, Will Canine wrote:
> Jen has clearly been put in an uncomfortable position -- to put it mildly -- for at least the last several months. I think you
> dudes can take it.

+1

No more evidence needed to justify, since there is no justifying childish, lewd,
unevolved behavior towards women wanting to do tech, when you all
should be helping more women do tech. There is no case. Case closed. You're guilty
by being a member of the past dominant sex and acting weasely.

[Josiah Zayner]

If you or someone you know feels as if they have been or currently are being sexually harassed please take the evidence to the proper authorities not an online message board.

I would suggest people refrain from harassing others on this issue without first-hand information. I also don't think public shaming is the correct way to deal with this situation. But that is just my opinion.

[John Griessen]

On 05/29/2014 08:40 PM, Josiah Zayner wrote:
> not an online message board.

But doesn't much of this kind of thing stem from
behaviors as portrayed in movies like "Real Genius"
where the women are secretaries, and the spoof of
nerdiness, "Earth Girls Are Easy", where the women do finger nail
treatments for a living, or wear their dad's Amex card fragments as
ear rings, or have no visible means of support? And then there
are the various sketches done on the TV show "Big Bang Theory",
where the techies are clueless, yet prevail?

Those behaviors could not work well in the real world,
but many nerdy techie types don't live in the "real world"
when young. They need to grow up in non-techie areas of life
before they get it.

So, there may be many who could benefit from this kind of
discussion right here on this public list. And grow up a little.
And grow up faster.

[Josiah Zayner]

Very very true. I just didn't want to see it to escalate without proper evidence. And if Jen is being harassed seriously she needs help that I think most of us cannot give. But you are correct a very good discussion to have.

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[Cathal Garvey]

I see nobody's occupied the fence yet, and I like the view..so here I go.

Firstly, I've met Martin, and we've shared some fun events in the UK in
the past. So, I know that I have a natural bias, and that's leading me
to take no strong role in this dispute. That doesn't mean that I can't
offer an opinion on the general issue, just that I'm not going to attack
or defend anyone.

In fact, I'd say nothing and let this play out, except that I keep
seeing people I otherwise respect leaping to attack one or the other
party..when they themselves have next to no grounding in this dispute or
the context behind it.

So I'm clear, I'm not asking that this discussion not happen; this is an
issue for our community if it takes place in our community. I disagree
with Martin asking for it to be removed. In an ideal world, Jen would
never have felt the need to post the dispute to a large and public
mailing list; I'm glad that they've all agreed to a third-party
mediator, which IMO is the better route to seeking resolution. But, now
that it's "out", it's not realistic to expect others not to feel they
have a stake in the outcome.

That does not mean, however, that we have a right to decide guilt based
on the emotive content of one or the others' arguments. We, the general
"we" who occupy the world and not Copenhagen in particular, need to make
sure that our community is free of misogyny or social exclusion. We will
*not* accomplish that goal by verbally bombarding anyone at the drop of
a hat; that is far more likely to accomplish the opposite effect, where
groups that have accreted a primarily male role by circumstance are
*less* likely to risk encouraging members of the other, equally numerous
and skilled sex, because of the experiences they've had with such
cooperation in the past. If we want justice and equality, then act like
people who value justice and equality and listen to whomever shares
their opinions, experiences and perspectives before shouting at them.

If I may, Jen: it sounds like you're an enthusiastic and competent
person. I don't know what situation you've been in, and if I'm honest I
don't feel I have enough context to work with here, either. I hope you
and the others find a resolution that pleases you all. I'd just like to
suggest something I observed in your writing, here:

You've praised and damned the anarchic structures of BG and Labitat, but
in your writing it sounds like at many points you were frustrated when
you asked for inclusion in a project from another member. Now, you are
coming out, assertively, and proposing (I think?) a new space. I think
that attitude, of assertiveness and willingness to go and do what you
want without waiting for permission, seemed missing in what you relate
of your past dealings in BG, and I hope you keep that steam going.
Because if an organisation is anarchic, then you'll get nowhere by
asking, only by doing.

I'm glad you're seeking third-party mediation. If that doesn't work, I'd
suggest one of two routes; if you view what happened as harassment at a
magnitude that merits intervention, then pursue intervention. But if
your grievance is with exclusion or representation, then proceed with
your hard-fork. The structures of "flat" hackerspaces were borrowed in
part from online structures; software, forums, etcetera. And the weapon
of last resort when people feel disengaged from de-facto leadership is
either to overrule leadership, or to fork the project and forge their
own path. I don't know you, but you seem more assertive now than you do
in your accounts of your past; I think you're up to the challenge,
whichever way you go.

best of luck to all,
Cathal

On 30/05/14 01:22, Will Canine wrote:
> Søren, Malthe and Emil,
>
> No, we will not pretend like an important matter didnt because it makes you
> three uncomfortable to discuss it. Jen has clearly been put in an
> uncomfortable position -- to put it mildly -- for at least the last several
> months. I think you dudes can take it.
>
> Whats more, your attempt at covering up this discussion makes me think
> you're all probably well aware your behavior was misogynist at best, sexual
> assault at worst, and you'd like to not let that fact come to light. And in
> my experience, people dont come forward with such important accusations
> unless they have been deeply hurt and feel they have no other option. I am
> inclined to believe the three of you have acted in completely
> inappropriate, if not criminal, ways. But while I cant prove that, its
> clear from the way you are handling this that you have not shown Jen the
> respect she deserves.
>
> I have an absolute zero tolerance policy for sexual harassment and assault.
> And so should all of us. When a peer comes to us to say they feel unsafe in
> our midst, we need to respond and fix the problem.
>
> This movement needs to be a safe place for everyone -- except those who
> threaten their peers. Those people need to GTFO.
>
>
>
>
> On Wednesday, May 28, 2014 7:33:03 AM UTC-4, Jen Kotila wrote:
>>
>> As many of you know, there have been quite a few incidents of sexual
>> harassment and bullying in hacking and biohacking culture. In fact,

>> Doubleunion <http://doubleunion.com> was started after the founder Liz

>> Henry suffered harassment at Noisebridge. Here is a great article that
>> she wrote about harassment in hacking and what to do about it.

>> <http://modelviewculture.com/pieces/the-rise-of-feminist-hackerspaces-and-how-to-make-your-own>

>>
>> I love this quote from her:
>>
>> Openness, that’s great, right? Except oddly, openness can mean we get rape
>> and death threats while at the same time, the only thing we can't be "open"
>> about is publicly naming a person who raped us. The “adhocracy” form of
>> informal organizing sometimes look to us like the tyranny of

>> structurelessness, <http://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm> where

>> already-strong power structures and dynamics define our field, so
>> already-powerful elites get stronger.
>>
>>
>> I am in touch with Liz because I have now myself been a victim of it at

>> the hands of those who run Biologigaragen <http://biologigaragen.org> and The

>> Kopenlab Festival <http://kopenlab.dk> I have been working there since

>> November and the harassment started almost immediately. I tried long and
>> hard to work it out internally but it only got worse over time. You can
>> read an overview of what happened to me here.

>> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-DPJhdE71IyXx_Du9TlV5b2UvVvwkLhgOnVO-06pBCY/edit?usp=sharing>

>>
>> Almost no one in lab denies I have been harassed (except for Emil Polny).
>> What they are contending is that Malthe Borch and Emil Polny should stay in
>> positions of power despite their extreme pattern of harassment. For the
>> record, the ONE other woman in lab was mistreated in a very similar way to
>> how I was mistreated. This is a pattern and it will not change. Bullies
>> often re-offend without prejudice, especially when they only get slapped on
>> the wrist for their behavior.
>>
>> Since Biologigaragen is flatly anarchistically organized, it is my voice
>> against that of the two main perpetrators, who claim to have founded the
>> lab (which is patently a false clam as Marc Juul, who is currently running sudoroom

>> in Oakland, CA <https://sudoroom.org/> and setting up The Omni, also in
>> Oakland, CA <http://wiki.omni-oakland.org/>). For the record, Marc is one

>> of my strongest supporters and warned me that I would have trouble speaking
>> out here in Copenhagen due in part to the quirks in Danish culture that
>> make it so that they have the most sexual harassment in the whole of the EU

>> <http://www.b.dk/nationalt/vold-chikane-og-stalking-mod-kvinder-i-danmark-overstiger-eu-gennemsnit>
>> .

>>
>> Everyone here agrees that I have been harassed but no one takes the months
>> of suffering I have endured seriously. I have suffered immensely both
>> psychologically and physically as is common in victims of harassment. I
>> have basically been stripped of my rights to operate within the
>> organization. Even projects I brought in were taken from me and interfered
>> with. Most recently, I have been removed as moderator from the mailing list
>> for speaking out about my plight and there is talk of forcing me out of the
>> organization because I have hurt it for coming forward. I have been accused
>> of harming Biologigaragen by going public but I contend that it is MORE
>> harmful to any institution to allow known harassers to remain in positions

>> of authority and to tell a harassed and bullied person who tried *for
>> months* to try to work it out in good faith that she has to share a lab

>> with those who abused her.
>>
>> In fact this opinion is so widely held that during the last meeting I was
>> mobbed

>> <http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beyond-bullying/201304/surviving-workplace-mobbing-control-emotional-flooding>by

>> a group of seven very hostile people who want Malthe Borch to stay in
>> power. Mobbing is very serious and after months of the stress caused from
>> harassment and I had a nervous breakdown as it came in the wake of months
>> of psychological torment.
>>
>> A friend of mine who was harassed after whistleblowing in the UN warned me
>> this would happen. She was forced out and tormented for her coming forward.
>> I told her "nah, that won't happen to me, the community will protect me,
>> despite the fact that we have no HR and no union rep to deal with this". I
>> have been met with some support but also with lots of scorn and derision.
>> It has severely affected me and I believe that its extreme mishandling has
>> severely affected all of biohacking.
>>

>> *I have started a petition*

>> <https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1q4-0qsLVLwN5msM_QfbrO2uJytEWfGi6fB8b0NswkmE/viewform> about

>> the matter and I would like it if the community could show its support for
>> ending harassment in hacking generally and also for ending it in
>> Biologigaragen. Please fill it out honestly. I am curious to see how many
>> people are ok with severe harassment and how many think it is not ok. I am
>> intending to try to help biohacking over this hurdle and protect it from
>> further instances of this. We should be the alternative to the traditional
>> power structures and within our organizations, we should never allow
>> bullying or sexual harassment to occur for whatever reason. I want to take
>> what happened to me and make it into a positive thing for the whole
>> community. I request your assistance in doing so.
>>
>> Tusind tak skal du hav (as they say in Denmark),
>>
>> Jen Kotila
>>
>

--
T: @onetruecathal, @IndieBBDNA
P: +353876363185
W: http://indiebiotech.com

[Mike Horwath]

+1 for Cathal's post.

--Zero tolerance for sexism or other bullying in hackerspace culture.
--Free expression > right to privacy...email should not be deleted, although...
--beware of emotional mob justice from a distance without knowing all sides

I think this issue is especially sad to see in DIYBio, since it's still a fresh movement with the potential to shed some of the old stereotypes.

Mike

[Sarah Choukah]

Hi Jen, 

I'm very saddened to read that despite you having tried for months to address this awful situation there hasn't seemed to be much support or effort to help you until now. I've only known what it feels like to be appreciated as a woman in a hackerspace and a biolab. I've been harassed only once so far, told my friends and fellow hackers in the space right away and the person in question was very quickly singled out and asked to apologize in front of me. And he did. I'm saying this because I want to let you know there's still a lot of potential in finding or creating something wonderful even within flatter or less obviously formalized decision/power structures in groups like ours. Although entrenched sexism can be allowed within a group if everyone lets it, there are also ways to make sure it doesn't get the better of us and keep it at bay.  

It's good to bring some useful distinctions: I think everyone agrees that any disrespectful behaviour, wether it is based on sex, gender, ethnic background or physical appearance can't be tolerated for our own well being and for groups like ours (or any society) to develop and grow. 

My goal is not to be dismissive about your experience, discredit your suffering or put your integrity in doubt (you mention this kind of thing regularly happening towards women in this situation in your messages). The problem is most people on this list haven't been there while the events you recount were going on and as much as we feel concerned as fellow hackers and biohackers about this, there's little we can do in how to go about the events after you tried to solve this highly problematic situation for so long. A lot of us haven't been to either Biologigaragen or Lhabitat and don't know the people there at all (I don't). Regardless of this I believe Cathal's right: the worse we can do at this point is to start publicly shaming people online or going after them — or after you for calling attention to this on the list. It's not a question of whether they deserve it or not. I think it's rather about doing better than hurt by finding a solution that puts people in a better path, that contributes better to this kind of agression to be mitigated and dealt with in our lives. 

I also really hope this mediation process will help people at Lhabitat and Biologigaragen to better make sense of what happened and understand how you feel, to acknowledge how badly you've been affected. Something that will help a lot is to be very clear about what you want out of this process. Apologies? A real acknowledgement of the way you've been treated? A change in attitude towards respect and the cessation of harassment within those spaces? I don't think you want to stay there at all now, so perhaps wanting to and working towards making a better place and bringing together another group elsewhere would effectively a great next step. It'll send a clear message, greatly contribute to improving hacking and biohacking cultures by making it a place where sexism or any kind of harassment for that fact is completely unacceptable and addressed when it does happen. And it can do you a lot of good as well: heal those past experiences with something much better coming out of them. 

My very bests, 

Sarah. 

[Will Canine]

Hey Everyone,

I appreciate all the moderate voices on here -- it is a good thing that cooler heads prevail. 

But, in these kinds of situations, I intentionally play a different role.  

As you all say, we are at the beginning of this movement. And, as you say, it feels like this has the potential to be something really amazing and different. Which is why I got so angry to see this all-to-typical request to cover up bad male behavior on the DIYBio listserv. And honestly, it always takes ruffling a few feathers to make clear how unacceptable this type of behavior is. 

Anyways, I'm not here to grid my axe, there are lots of places for that type of activism. Here is the place to work together to build the type of community we all want to be a part of. 

<3s and huggies DIYBio,

Will Canine

 

 

On Wednesday, May 28, 2014 7:33:03 AM UTC-4, Jen Kotila wrote:

[Jonathan Cline]

Something loosely related, though not so severe, happened at the Carlsbad lab about a year ago.  I don't know the details.  



## Jonathan Cline
## jcl...@ieee.org
## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223
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[Raj Venkat]

This forum is being used to discus social personal conflict and fights between workers...I dislike such discussions

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[Jen Kotila]

First of all, thanks to all of you who are offering your support and empathy. It means a lot to me, even if you don’t or can't do anything besides that. That said, some people asked how else I can be supported and if you want to do more, it would be great if you were to write an open letter to the community stating your and/or your organization’s position on being against harassment that can be shared with others and that you think that the offenders in this case should not be running anything until they can demonstrate they demonstrate they have truly changed. You can also follow me on Twitter and retweet my tweets if you see fit as I am taking a page from Julie Ann Horvath's playbook and taking this matter there.

Perpetrators should not be apologized for or coddled or allowed to maintain positions of power just because they are powerful and influential. Victims should never be silenced when they speak out for any reason, but especially not if they are in weak positions. If events like these happen, they should be dealt with quickly and with honesty and openness and not refused to be discussed for many months on end as has happened in this case. Yes, they are uncomfortable to discuss but they represent structural problems within organizations (they are not merely personal conflicts as was the contention of Malthe, Emil and Søren at first) and therefore within the community as a whole and they must be addressed.

Secondly, apologies to all for starting this thread and then taking so long to respond. Instead of responding directly to everyone point by point, as I would normally do, I will write one VERY long letter and pick out pieces to respond to here and there this time in the interest of saving everyone's time. If I overlook an important point of yours, please let me know and I will try to address it in future correspondence.

Also, I deliberated on whether or not to explain why it took me so long to respond. I am landing on doing so and in so doing providing an -analogy- for those of you who seem to be asking that I lay out -all- of the evidence in this forum.

In addition to being heavily scheduled and trying to recover from the nervous breakdown I had after being mobbed in the May 22 meeting in Labitat, I have also recently learned that my mother, who is a cancer survivor, has discovered that she has a cyst on her spleen. This has caused me to become further depressed and anxious and made it very hard to be productive. Depression and anxiety are normal effects of harassment and this news intensified them in me so I felt like I needed to take it very easy on myself for a few days. I needed some time off.

In order to start proving to the community that my mother had cancer and may be redeveloping it, I will link to an email exchange between her and me showing that we have been speaking of it over the weekend. As the situation develops, I will be providing documentation regarding her condition so that I can be believed. I can also try to collect old data regarding her past bout with cancer so that I can demonstrate that she did indeed suffer from it and I am not making it up for some bizarre reason.

...For those of you who missed it, that’s an ohhhhh-so-slightly-bitter sarcastic analogy. Although it IS true that my mother is sick and may have redeveloped cancer and that is a large part of why it took me so long to post, I am drawing an analogy, here: I do not think that anyone would react to me saying “my mother has had and might again have cancer and so I took longer to respond than normal” with an “oh yeah? prove it then” or by saying “well, I wasn't there and I don't know her so I can’t know if it is true or not”.

In order to prove this harassment case in full in this forum, I would have to expose some of my personal life that I would rather not expose to the whole message board (yet, anyway). That is part of the violation of harassment so often. It is the initial violation (invasion of privacy and violation of boundaries) and it is part of having to prove it, too. The victim is on trial as much as the perpetrator. Still, I can and will show some that are relatively easy to show, but not all, right now.

Like this:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByARLazIQy3pSlREV3ZpemZoRGc/edit?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByARLazIQy3pTXlhM2pGeFlMbW8/edit?usp=sharing

These do have a lot of context surrounding them, such as the fact that the harassment got very bad in the middle of March (which dovetailed with me starting to speak up about the growing organization problems I was seeing with the Kopenlab Space and Festival) and I was basically pushed off of everything including projects I had brought in (and what I wasn't pushed off of was interfered with). Oh, also, coincidentally we stopped taking minutes in the Kopenlab steering group at the end of January when I first really firmly stated I was uncomfortable with Malthe and Emil's behavior. That's quite the coincidence, no? Instead notes were made on the whiteboard and I only have a few images thereof. 

But you can clearly see my role being eliminated from March 4th to the 18th. The only explanation I got when I demanded one on Apr. 1 after my role was totally wiped out on the 25th was that "the structure wasn't in place yet". That is ridiculous as before the bullying part of the harassment picked up (after I confronted Malthe and Emil on Jan. 26) we were talking about me having a large role in both the Kopenlab Space and Festival. After I told Malthe to back off romantically that day, he became a very mean bully and pulled me off of everything.

This case takes so long to present as it is so incredibly complex. I could write pages and pages and PAGES instead of those few paragraphs about what happened during that time and provide a lot of supporting documentation. It is hard to know where to start or if shortcuts can be taken such as just posting those images, which tell a lot as far as I am concerned. This IS only the tip of the iceberg, that much is true. There is so much more and it will take time and some editing out of extraneous personal info to present here.

That said, many influential people in biohacking, many of my personal friends and many in Labitat/Biologigaragen have heard my full story and seen the proof and those people all believe me. Will their integrity be called into question when they come forward to support me? Do I have to tell the story to every single person here in order to be believed? It takes quite a long time to tell as it is complicated and involved. Must my privacy be violated over and over and over again in order to demonstrate how it was violated by the harassment I suffered? Maybe it will come to that and if so, so be it because I care less about myself than I do about doing the ethical thing. Hopefully it will not come to that, though. Hopefully I will be able to speak to a few credible and influential people and have them vouch for me. It's sorta like going to court and speaking before a jury of one's peers, but instead of a court I am speaking to other hackers who are upstanding in the community. That process has only recently started so it will take some time.

Also, keep in mind that if this does go to court here in Denmark, they have recently rewritten their laws so that in cases of sexual harassment the onus of proof is partially on the accused, which is different from almost all other crimes because the reaction in these cases is so terribly often to blame and mistrust the victim. Here is a translation (search in page for “Der er en tendens til at bedømme” to see the original)

http://www.advokat-olesen.dk/cgi-bin/index.pl?side-1-200301.htm

:

Cases of sexual harassment are judged from a more lenient burden of proof compared to a traditional burden of proof rules. The parties often have a very different assessment of what has taken place. The burden of proof often is often significantly composed of evidence like psychology statements, doctor statements, change of workplace behavior, if the victim has trusted in other colleagues at the workplace, and the detailed and credible statement of the victim on what happened.

There are rarely or never witnesses to sexual harassment. Because of this, if a person in a workplace views themselves as having been violated, then it is up to the other party to prove that no harassment has taken place. Thus a part of the burden of proof is shifted to the employer, who will need to present a counter case.

Malthe, Emil and Søren have issued only a non-statement. This, I think, is for a specific reason. I think they know they are in the wrong and they have been extremely careful to talk about this in writing as little as possible. I think they also want to severely limit discussion of this topic to places where they feel they have an advantage. Will is entirely right when he says :

And in my experience, people dont come forward with such important accusations unless they have been deeply hurt and feel they have no other option.

I have an absolute zero tolerance policy for sexual harassment and assault. And so should all of us. When a peer comes to us to say they feel unsafe in our midst, we need to respond and fix the problem.

I would never have done this had I not felt like I had no choice and if I did not feel extremely harassed, silenced, and now more recently mobbed and in danger of being pushed out for being "destructive" and "harmful to Labitat for causing commotion" for speaking out. Never in recent times have I been met with compassion or concern. I have always only faced hostility and silencing and deflection. Earlier on, they would express concern to my face and then turn around and become worse. Which was actually perhaps worse behavior, frankly.

Malthe, Emil and Søren have, I think, very purposefully said next to nothing in writing and they have at every turn tried to silence me or only discuss the topic in venues that are totally unfavorable to me (such as the May 22 meeting where they stacked it with their supporters and ganged up on me). As Marc Juul said in response to me (and ONLY me) being stripped of moderation rights and disallowed from speaking about this on the Biologigaragen mailing list: 

That's a bunch of silencing bullshit right there Malthe. You have a major problem in your community (more than one), and you're trying to silence the person who is speaking up, with concerns of how it will negatively affect the perception of your group? We are way beyond the point where this is a personal conflict that can be resolved in private. 

That I have experienced nothing other than silencing and increasing attacks from them has led us all to this point and it makes me very damned sad to be at this juncture as, in retrospect, I gave them WAY too many chances they failed to take.

I first confronted Emil on Dec. 19th. I then confronted Malthe and Emil together on Jan. 26. Here is some documentation surrounding the Jan 26th confrontation: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByARLazIQy3pZ1JuLUN6REZTemM/edit?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByARLazIQy3pc3huZkxObXVMRlk/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KpzkpyHEzAWTcZ4wf32_MweL6_jDyP1IXwAPmg3jfYY/edit?usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W0_R0-e4sDqjLkqkb-dlnV7P8_TNavRL3yOy9JOuaF8/edit?usp=sharing

Oh! Wait! Let's make sure we all understand what often constitutes proof in discrimination cases. Refer upwards to how the Danes prove sexual harassment. Again: psychology statements, doctor statements, change of workplace behavior, if the victim has trusted in other colleagues at the workplace, and the detailed and credible statement of the victim on what happened.

Also see here and here and here.

Employment discrimination cases are rarely straightforward or simple---they tend to be subtle, complicated, and highly contextualized. Employees seldom have direct evidence of discrimination, and they often have to depend upon circumstantial evidence.

We have found that the likelihood of success in a sexual harassment lawsuit is based on the credibility of the victim and the alleged harasser [uh oh, he is well known and well liked and I am a no one, this isn't good for me!]. This credibility is  bolstered by providing circumstantial evidence by witnesses that the victim’s demeanor changed after an incident of sexual harassment or that a witness was told about the sexual harassment by the victim shortly after it occurred. [Oh good, I have TONS of circumstantial evidence (even though lots of it is sensitive and I am squeamish about releasing it publicly) and my demeanor -definitely- changed as before this I had not been angry in four years and I have't had a nervous breakdown since shortly after I was working as a photographer in Africa. My friends and family all saw this happening. Frankly, right now my mother is so worried for me, she thinks it may be part of why she got sick.] A contemporaneous complaint is also persuasive circumstantial evidence that the sexual harassment occurred.  Evidence can also be obtained from a social worker, psychologist, co-worker, friend or family member that the victim confided in regarding the sexual harassment.

Hopefully now we have a clearer picture. I think this is great education for the community, frankly, as before this all happened I didn't even have the clearest picture of how these things are proven. Now I know and now you do too! Information sharing is what this movement is all about, right? I'm being mildly sarcastic again but it is true that it is good for people to know this. Awareness creates a better world.

In more recent times, I was literally begging them to work it out and they were reacting to me with hostility and silence. See this letter and search for the term “begged”.

Also, everyone who still wonders if wrongdoing has been committed should read through the May 22nd Labitat meeting minutes. Those alone have been enough reason for some organizations to pull out from the Kopenlab Festival. More than one person called it “ barbaric”. In that meeting, the bloc supporting Malthe, Emil and Søren were attempting to bully me into talking about how I was bullied and sexually harassed when I was specifically saying I felt unsafe and mobbed and unready to discuss the matter without my supporters present.  I felt like a victim of abuse in a banana republic where a lynch mob has decided that she’s damned if she does and damned if she doesn't. I had to either talk about this very sensitive issue under extreme duress without many of my strong supporters present (some were out of town or otherwise unable to attend) or I had to give up the right to be present while it was the matter was discussed in plenum. The neutral people at the meeting supported suspending discussion, but they and my two supporters were shouted down as the Malthe/Emil/Søren bloc tried to force me into making that choice. Which is not a real choice as it is "be silenced or be forced to talk in an unsafe environment" and I had a breakdown which could actually, no joke,  have killed me.

See the letter I sent to the Kopenlab bloc here after the meeting for a more detailed account.

That incident was a problem of a ‘peer coming forward and saying that she felt unsafe and the midst of the Labitat/Biologigaragen community’ (as Will referenced in his general statement "When a peer comes to us to say they feel unsafe in our midst, we need to respond and fix the problem".

) and it was handled so incredibly poorly that it resulted in a person (who pretty much everyone who has actually sat with and listened to and seen the evidence thereof believes has experienced harassment and bullying) feeling so attacked and unsafe in the context of having been harassed for months, that she had a nervous breakdown. Again, for the record, extreme reactions to stress are not uncommon victims of mobbing and harassment. I had been mobbed ever since coming forward by the Kopenlab group and Malthe, Emil and Søren had promoted such behavior to spread into Labiat and Biologigaragen and they have used their position of power and influence to attempt to defame and silence me.

This is not remotely ok. This is not remotely how these things should be handled. This is why I am posting here. Also, the Kopenlab festival is happening in less than 20 days. That is probably not enough time for mediation or a lawsuit to be resolved in. The community needed to know ASAP and it should organize itself to demonstrate to harassers that their behavior is unacceptable. What I have heard is that ESOF/Science in the City is being accommodating to those who wish to pull out and start their own event.

It is true that mediation will be undertaken but in my view, this is solely an attempt to avoid ligation and to get them to finally see and understand that what they have done is unacceptable by any reasonable standard of human health and safety. Thye have been and continue to be so blatantly disrespectful it is almost beyond belief. I have requested that they stop using my work. Malthe has agreed to take my texts down off the Kopenlab front page but only after they rewrite. This is unacceptable to me and the texts are still on the website I led in creating (but I did not ask for that to be taken down as the site was collaborative, those texts are mostly my work besides one.That is just one of the more recent incidents in a long string of many wherein I am shown an utter disregard. This is a very good illustration of how Malthe operates. This community especially, being a nascent one wherein the culture is still forming, also needs to police itself. Many within it are doing so, thankfully. But not all. Yet. I hope eventually all will take a stand against harassment and discrimination of all kinds.

Anyway.

Part of why I felt unsafe during the May 22nd meeting was that I wanted to wait for my strongest supporter, Marc Juul, to be present via Skype to discuss the matter. Marc had overslept due to being extremely overworked (the time difference between CPH and CA is 9 hours) and missed the meeting.

Speaking of proof and Marc and taking a stand against harassment and discrimination, this brings me to discussing his role in this. Marc Juul is the original founder of both Labitat and Biologigaragen. He closely collaborated with Malthe to hand over control of Biologigaragen. Nowadays he is a key organizer and founder at http://sudoroom.org and is in the middle of setting up this collective http://wiki.omni-oakland.org/ in Oakland, CA. Marc has heard the full story. Marc has had full access to my evidence. Marc believes me and thinks that what has happened here in Copenhagen is very wrong. Marc is a credible member of the community who is in very good standing and he will vouch for me. Others in the community have listened to my story, seen the evidence and believe me and they are working on their strategies for speaking about it. In fact, I have asked Cathal to speak about it and he has refused. That raised my hackles a bit, I have to admit, as the only people who have doubted me in Labitat were those who refused to sit down with me one on one and insisted that I speak about it in the meetings only, where I get mobbed by Malthe’s supporters (only one of which has talked to me at length, but who is closely personally connected to Malthe and he thinks that I was harassed but that it is not that big of a deal) when I do. So I am leery of such entreaties to bare all in a forum that does not feel quite right to bare all in and then refuse to engage in one that does due to recent past experience, I have to admit. I would like to get Cathal off that fence by presenting the evidence to him via a phone call and then linking him to documents that I explain in context and ask him to keep private. How about it, Cathal?

Ah, to answer Sarah's statement that she doesn't know much about Labitat or Biologigaragen, here's some very important circumstantial evidence/context. Labitat/Biologigaragen have three active women members. Me, Amalie and a woman whose username is Jokskitty. Jokskitty's boyfriend's username is Joks. She is clearly spoken for and off limits so she is safe. However, Amalie and I both had very similar experiences with Malthe. He romantically pursued us both upon meeting us and then when it didn't work out in the way he wanted, he treated us both like crap. Also, Sarah, I noticed that you and I have a mutual friend in common on Facebook. I would encourage you to engage in a brief correspondence with that person to get their view on this. That might help you gain perspective.

Hm, not that it should really matter as I think it is ok for -people- to have very tight boundaries. I think it is ok for, for example, a woman to not want to be touched at all and for that to be respected 100% if she states that and for anyone to ask someone before touching them. That is fine with me and I am always ultra respectful of new people until I can get a sense of how they want to be treated. I ask before touching, etc. But it is worth noting I am not someone with rigid boundaries and I give a lot of leeway to those around me. For the record, and this is disclosing a personal thing of mine: I am 100% totally and utterly fine with being hit on by a man or a person of whatever gender I turn down and who treats me ok afterward. Check out my CS profile for proof of this, Look at how many men I have stayed with and hosted. I am not anti-male or squeamish about them or prudish about touch, interaction, etc. I love all humans equally if they treat me and others well. Many of my best friends are men, I have the best boyfriend a woman could ever hope to have (ooh, I am lucky in that sphere) and some of my close friends are men I have called romantic partners in the past (I am of the opinion that if romance doesn't work out, whatever, it is best to stay friends if possible as that kind of connection means you thought the other person was really special so why not preserve some connection?). Anyway, I will NOT name names, but it was ver common to get hit on while hosting and surfing on CS. Sometimes in ridiculously awkward ways because, hey, I was surfing and hosting mainly with scientists and engineers and they are often awkward. I am used to it. And so what? In the context of CS, that's called being human and it is FINE if you make one pass but then back off and treat me with respect when I say I want no part of it. For the further record, it was always "when" while CSing. I tried to never cross romantic boundaries while surfing because I always thought that the power dynamics made that kind of behavior inappropriate and I would often use that as a polite way to deflect any come ons. 

Just as the power dynamics within an organization when the person who holds all of it and is hitting on BOTH women involved make that inappropriate as well. The way I (and many others) see it, the power in Biologigaragen is almost entirely in Malthe's hands and he is very bad at sharing it but very good at using it to control and impress others. In many organizations, it is against policy for mangers or supervisors to date subordinates due to the power difference.

Company employees may date, develop friendships and relationships both inside and outside of the workplace as long as the relationships do not negatively impact work. Any relationship that interferes with the company culture of teamwork, the harmonious work environment or the productivity of employees, will be addressed by applying the progressive discipline policy.

Adverse workplace behavior or behavior that affects the workplace that arises because of personal relationships will not be tolerated.

The exception to this policy relates to managers and supervisors. Anyone employed in a managerial or supervisory role needs to heed the fact that personal relationships with employees who report to him or her may be perceived as favoritism, misuse of authority, or potentially, sexual harassment.

Emil Polny's harassment of me included things such as joking about me and Malthe being in bed together. He did this a lot and it made me extremely uncomfortable.

Yes, Biologigargen is supposed to be non-hierarchical but it is most definitely not. The tyranny of structurelessness is in play and Malthe is clearly in charge and when he was hitting on me, I felt beholden to him and as though I had to play along and try to be "cool" with being taken to burlesque shows and dance parties that were overtly sexually themed. I felt pressured and that was not good. My friends and family remember me talking a LOT about this dynamic and how I just wished I could hack in peace without having to consider this variable as it was very unnerving and made me incredibly anxious. It took me a long time to tell him this, though, due to shyness and uncertainty about how everything worked in this sector. So I dealt with it from Nov. 14th to Jan. 26th.

When Amalie and I first talked about the treatment we had both experienced, she was so angry she said that she wanted to fork Biologigaragen then. She sent me this text and you can see in my response that I am the cooler head back the. I will rue this until the day I die but because I am trusting and naive and believe that most people are capable of change, I entreated her to stay and that she allow Malthe to stay as well. I did that. It is one of my greatest regrets in this life, not listening to her then. I instead encouraged them to talk and make up. She and I discuss the matter in conversations here.

See this excerpt:

Me: I told him also that you had felt so bad about the crap treatment that you had considered leaving lab and that I thought that would realllllllllllllllllllllllly suck for all of us and asked you to stay because you are awesome. He did say that he wanted to talk to you. Hopefully this will actually mend things! I do believe that people can look at their behaviors and grow and change. Let's hope this is what happens with Malthe. Amalie:I feel very mixed about you talking to him about me. I told you I wasn't ready for a confrontation with him, and that I'd rather have him hear it from me. I'm happy you broke the ice and tried to talk some reason into him, i respect that. Now I'm just really nervous about how to handle him on my end.

She is saying she is nervous about the coming confrontation between her and him. He's unnerving and intimidating and we both felt that way in his presence after he went from the Malthe who hits on you and gives you the world and turned into the one who ignores you, is condescending and rude and picks apart your work and who you are.

I confronted Malthe on Apr. 1 and told him that Amalie felt similarly about his treatment as I did and that meant that what he was trying to convince me of, that I was just an "overly sensitive American woman" and that "it was all just my perception" was simply not true. This type of behavior (where he is trying to make me doubt my own perceptions and succeeding) is very dysfunctional and is called gaslighting.

What happened after I tell him that she felt the same is that Malthe apologized to Amalie and approached her romantically again and was very nice to her after April 1. She has now cut contact with him again. To me, however, he became worse. He never, ever apologized to me. The closest he ever came was "I am sorry you feel that way". I wrote him a series of letters after this talk telling him I had hope that he and Emil could change and detailing SOME of the bad behavior

This is a pattern. It is not just me. She is freaked out by this and is washing her hands of it because it is now so big, but she was initially so angry she wanted to leave lab. In fact, right now she is avoiding lab and this whole debacle. She has granted me permission to use that correspondence as proof, however, as you can see at the end of the document. She wants to see me and others treated well and she thinks hers and my conversation could help accomplish that.

Besides the circumstantial evidence I will release as seems fit, I feel like speaking with credible members of the community in good standing and showing them what is happening is enough for now. No one who has actually taken the time to listen and look at the evidence is in doubt that I was harassed and frankly, it is less stress on me if I can just talk to people one on one and then they can write open letters or vouch for me. I'll do the releasing if I have to, but it is better perhaps for everyone involved to do it in a more focused way of telling specific people who can then vouch.

Marc and others from sudoroom.org are writing an open letter to the community and those involved with the Kopenlab Festival to my understanding, stating that they do not think that unrepentant harassers should be in charge of anything and that there is no doubt in Marc’s mind that I have been harassed, that Malthe/Emil and Søren were given many chances to reconcile but didn't and instead reacted by attacking me further.

I am pretty sure that the open letter will say that Marc and the others involved think that what has happened in Copenhagen is very serious and should not happen anywhere, let alone within the context of vulnerable open knowledge institutions that are only recently coming to life and finding their role in society. Part of why this got so bad for me is that there is no HR, no union rep and Malthe is basically in control of both Biologigaragen and Labitat via the tyranny of structurelessness.

Marc agrees with Will when he says:

This movement needs to be a safe place for everyone -- except those who threaten their peers. Those people need to GTFO.

I also agree with this 100%. One thing I keep telling people is that if this had happened at an NGO with a structure in place to deal with it, I would not have suffered so much and there would be ZERO question about keeping them around. Since we are operating under the tyranny of structurelessness in Labitat, however, it IS a question of whether or not to expel them with just is almost beyond my comprehension as someone who is new to the male dominated tech industry and has a background in the arts and in humanitarian work where the gender ratios and operational polices are infinitely more humane than what I have endured in Kopenlab, Labitat and Biologigaragen.

Cathal rightly points out that I have made contradictory statements about anarchism lately. Well, there are different types of anarchism. I like the functional kind, ha. Not the barbaric "every manarchist for himself in an uneducated mob ruled brutal popularity contest" sort. I am not a fan of the traditional structures, no, but the kind of anarchism that is running in Labitat is amazingly dysfunctional and needs to shift as right now it is downright dangerous down there as anyone with charisma can walk in and manipulate it under the smokescreen the tyranny of structurelessness provides. This is part of why I would prefer to see if this nascent biohacking community can police itself before I head to the legal system. I don't know about the rest of you, but I dropped out of science a long time ago because I thought it was too rigid. I was so thrilled to discover biohacking because it allowed me to be in lab but not be trapped in the university or industry system. I love that there is this alternative to the traditional structure as I don't think that the traditional structures are very healthy. Of course, we may discover as I did in Labitat/Biologigaragen that the alternative is worse. That might happen. Still, I would like to give this a chance first (along with going through the mediation that Labitat has suggested after it proved itself to be incapable of handling this in a reasonable way) before filing suit.

I fully agree with Will when he says that I have an absolute zero tolerance policy for sexual harassment and assault. And so should all of us. We should. We are creating something amazing here in this nascent biohacking and hacking and generally open knowledge communities and we need to protect it and grow it. We are the alternative to industry and academia, and we should be better than them in our HR practices, not worse. If this had happened to me in a traditional organization, there is zero question in my mind that it would have been over and done with quite some time ago That is very, very, VERY bad not only for me and Labitat/Biologigaragen, but for hacking generally and it needs to be rectified.

I believe that we need to work together to stamp out this behavior in biohacking, hacking, science and tech as it is absolutely rampant. I am not remotely the only person I know who has been mistreated. So many others (women, people of color, disabled individuals) have come to me to complain of their own treatment it is utterly, deeply shocking. Many are afraid to speak openly because they fear what I am facing in Labitat/Biologigaragen, serious backlash and further abuse and ostracization. Women who lurk on the Labitat mailing list emailed me to thank me for doing what I am doing as they, to a one, said they went down there a few times and then never went back because the culture made them feel unwelcome and uncomfortable. One even used the word "harassed" to describe what it felt like to be there despite having been in the space only a few times. The ones outside of Labitat who are actively involved in others spaces, often prefer to remain silent so they can stay engaged with their spaces. I fully understand and respect them, sometimes you have to do that to survive, but I have chosen to speak out along with some others who have also done so. Speaking of speaking out, my path has been carved by other brave women. I urge you all to read about Liz Henry’s experience at Noisebridge. It's sickening and it mirrors mine quite a lot. There are several other cases as well. Once you start looking, you find a great many who are speaking out but there’s no centralized place besides Geek Feminism's Timeline of Incidents and medium.com's Power of Harassment series that I currently know of.

Liz eventually left Noisebridge even after succeeding in getting them to implement an anti-harassment policy and a definition on the wiki. The culture stayed toxic despite her amazing efforts and she left for doubleunion instead.

I don't want to leave. Yet. I want to help Labitat and Biologigargen overcome this. I want to hack the culture. I want to create a shift wherein it will see collectively that this is NOT OK and that the idea "you were harassed, but so what you are soooooooooooo annoying with your inconvenient emotions and, whoa, you are so upset and we cannot handle that and we wish you would just go away. Besides, we like Malthe and Emil, they are our friends, so what happened to you is less important than having them around" is beyond insane. I believe in change. Of course, that is what helped make this problem so bad-- I kept putting faith in Malthe/Emil/Søren when I should have called it long ago. I do not think that the answer of "you were harassed so you have to leave and go somewhere else" is remotely a fair one and it would not happen in a sane structure, a sane society. It just wouldn't. It is deeply unfair and it encourages and perpetuates this behavior. This is a structural problem in hacking and it needs to be solved. I am happy that many of you report having functional labs, that's totally awesome. That is what I expected in a community such as this, but it is not what I am finding here in Copenhagen. That's what we should strive for.

In having this discussion, I want the help of the community in making the vision of hacking as a safe, fun and good alternative to being within the traditional structures a reality not just lipservice. It's great that there are functional models out there. I would love to hear more about how that is accomplished and I would REALLY love to see the codes of conduct from the various labs so that when we work together in Labitat/Biologigaragen to put some in place we can see what the community has done and do-it-together as is the spirit of biohacking. We need to take as stand and say "no, we will not let harassers be in prominent positions in this field". There is precedent for this in other fields. Science blogging just had an instance wherein a very well known and prominent science blogger had to step down over his mistreatment of women. To the best of my knowledge, that community policed itself without lawsuits having to be filed. Can we do the same in biohacking and hacking? I hope so. I have faith that we can as I have only had a few people not listen to me or be unwilling to so far (outside of Labitat/Biologigaragen that is).

I hope that this unfortunate, horrible incident will have positive effects instead of merely destructive ones. I think raising awareness of this major structural problem is positive, not negative. If we always react to victims of harassment the way I was reacted to in Labitat/Biologigaragen when I first approached those I trusted within it by them saying "I believe you 100% but shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, you CAN'T talk about that kind of thing down here, woman! You will get attacked. You have to remember that you are a woman and these people cannot handle your 'histrionics' so shhhhhhhhhhhhhh, keep quiet. Shhhhhh! Hsst! SHHHHH! Say nothing. Shhhhhhhhhhhh. Play the game. Work within the system we operate under. You have to do so because, Malthe and Emil are too powerful and there is no way you can get them expelled for this because you are weak. You first need to consolidate power before you do anything against them. DO things that make you better them then and THEN you can ask for their removal" then nothing will ever change. Ever. We need to stop tolerating such behavior in those who have power vs. those who do not especially, or we will all end up way worse off for it. It shouldn't matter if I have an alpha position in the do'ocracy or not. Hell, I would have had that had they not bullied me out! I think it is highly likely that I was bullied in part (the motivations were definitely complex and wide ranging and evolved over time) so that, as one friend put it, I would not "outshine the master". Well, I have no damned master and neither should any of us. I really want a functional flat structure and I am not scared to work towards it by speaking about inequality wherever I see it. This is not about man vs. woman. Every single human being should all be equal and treated with equal respect and dignity no matter who we are, no matter what power we hold, no matter what gender we are, no matter what ethnicity, no matter what age, no matter what period. It is a ridiculously dysfunctional culture that does not treat everyone as equal humans deserving of respect and dignity and it needs to change, now.

Thank you so much if you read all of that. I will try to keep the length down in the future. I will try to be responsive but IF my mother does have cancer again, I will send a scan of a doctor's note (to prove I am not lying about it or making it up for whatever reason (...I just cannot help the sarcasm and driving the analogy home, sorry)) and bow out for a while unless she pushes me to fight on anyway. She is an inspiring woman and she didn't raise me to turn tail when I face difficulty and I will not do so in this instance. In between now and knowing her status, I will be a bit sparse but it is critically important for me to spread this information as I have been silenced for too long and it is time to speak out so I will try my best to do so. Again, I thank DIYbio for promoting the ideals of openness and transparency and for facilitating a good and respectful conversation. It is living up to what I hoped for when I signed up for this movement. I'm glad that there is a chance that what I told to my friend who was harassed out of the UN is true-- that the community might protect me in the end and in doing so protect itself as well and, as an added bonus, maybe inspire some broader societal change that desperately needs to happen.

Regards,

Jen

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/diybio/CAEcYmfxhp0VPHGKAemz-boGScdXFUSrXWb4Ae%3DQyXiWWejLpYw%40mail.gmail.com.

[Jen Kotila]

I am not copyediting well at 5am while intensely stressed out. Go figure! This link was broken in the original document. Here is the fixed version:

I had a breakdown which could actually, no joke,  have killed me.

Please alert me to any other broken links, etc. 

[David Murphy]

>"...For those of you who missed it, that’s an ohhhhh-so-slightly-bitter sarcastic analogy."

If I say "My friend Steve broke his leg and won't be in today" it's not going to ruin Steve's life if everyone just takes my word for it and believes his leg is broken. There's no social stigma around breaking your leg or having cancer. Steve isn't going to suffer if I'm wrong or if I've misdiagnosed Steve. There's no need to provide proof because my claim doesn't effect anyone else's life very much. 

On the other hand if I said "My friend Steve tortured by dog to death and can't be here because he's off burying the remains" then most of the people in the room are going to instantly hate him because he's an evil animal torturer. If my dog is in fact alive and well then it's a big deal. It's not unreasonable for people to ask for proof when I'm asking them to make someone a social pariah. 

If nobody cared about it then there would be no need for proof of any kind.

I don't know you, I don't know any of the people involved in the case and I'm inclined to believe you when you say people were dicks to you but it's not unreasonable for other people, before shunning those involved, to await the verdict of some impartial 3rd party who have all the facts and who've heard the other sides version as well.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/diybio/CAO5_%3Dmitm8OifiWP8%2B2Ff24jS4%2BWugkSfoUJ%3D%3DXEoLinooiR9A%40mail.gmail.com.

[Jen Kotila]

Thanks for your input. I am fully aware of the differences between the situations in terms of gravity. It was an analogy, not a direct analogy.

Perhaps a better analogy would be this: you encounter a woman on the street who is running and screaming "I have been attacked by a guy who attacked me before and now he's enlisted a gang of his friends to also attack me, I am so scared, please help me". She looks normal otherwise, but this is how she is behaving. Is your first instinct to say "hold it right there, missy, tell me in a calm, reasonable tone with well sorted reams of evidence that this is what is happening to you I will not believe or help you". Oh, also, then someone you know and trust and respect comes up and says "I have seen her evidence of his previous attacks, I believe she has previously been attacked by this person and is being attacked now". This is why the third party thing will be decisive, yes. I do undertand the gravity of the situation. I just do not undrestand how anyone could, say, not think that something was really rotten in the state of Denmark after only reading through those May 22nd meeting minutes. You can see them attacking me there. Everyone who knows about resolving serious conflict in flat structures I have talked to thinks that what happened to me in Labitat/Biologigaragen on May 22 was appalling. It is also appalling that I was told to "keep it quiet" at first. 

Mediation will happen soon and maybe that will help. Also, hopefully the well respected members of the community who have examined the case in good faith will be listened to as well. 

As Will says, women almost never come forward with harassment allegations unless they feel they have a strong case and if they feel they have no other choice. I am just weary of being questioned over and over again, sorry. The mistrust gets so old after a while and it's been a long while of this, of having to explain it so often to everyone and to almost always be greeted with suspicion I have to tackle before being listened to. It feels like this:

I quote from this article about the Github/Julie Ann Horvath scandal:

When a woman says “X thing happened to me” and you say “I have no evidence that X happened,” you are calling her a liar. You’re saying her report of her own lived experience is not ‘evidence.’ Women hear that constantly–we are perpetually having our reports questioned, our behavior audited, our pain dismissed. So while this story is about what GitHub did to Horvath, Ellen Chisa is right to point out that GitHub’s reaction–and that of the tech community at large–is scary for many of us.

Also, I refer you to so many articles and a few choice quotes that speak of women being afraid to come forward. I was told to stay quite and just take it, remember. http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/priya-shetty/sexual-harassment-in-science_b_4102449.html

Anonymous game developer: "The code of silence is real, and it's very dangerous."

I've never known any woman to name the man involved, for the same reason that most women don't speak up about sexual harassment in the workplace in general - science and journalism are both fields in which funding and job opportunities are increasingly precarious, and women stay silent for fear that their careers will suffer.

I know what it is like not to be able to share details of my own experience for fear of the professional repercussions it could have for me. When the person who harasses you has enough power that he could literally destroy any chance of a career for you in your chosen field -- when it's clear that your professional community values that person a lot and that it hasn't even gotten a chance toknow you, let alone to value you -- choosing to go public looks an awful lot like choosing to burn your own career.

My situation has been extreme. It has really been beyond the pale and part of why it got so bad is that I trusted them way more than I should have and stayed way too quiet for way too long. That is why I am speaking out so loudly now and it does get hard to maintain a chipper demeanor through it, especially when it comes to being doubted as not one person who has seen the evidence things that what happened to me was ok. 

I can do this because this isn't my career and because I am not attached to it. I care for the movment deeply and biohackign is a great passion of mine but I am not reliant on it for anything thefore I am not as full of the very reasonable fear that so many other women have when confronted with such a situation. Many credible witnesses who I count as my close friends and family believe me. Many in the community do, too. Hopefully I can figure out a way to convince the fencers. I still think that one on one dialogue is the most constructive and safe for now but I am open to reinterpretation as this goes on.

Regards,

Jen

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/diybio/CAP0RkBB6g-VXxNHu0MOAc495WPTf_T6k9%3DSp%3Ds0crMOv81wvcQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Meredith L. Patterson]

On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 1:45 PM, David Murphy <murphy...@gmail.com> wrote:

I don't know you, I don't know any of the people involved in the case and I'm inclined to believe you when you say people were dicks to you but it's not unreasonable for other people, before shunning those involved, to await the verdict of some impartial 3rd party who have all the facts and who've heard the other sides version as well.

I haven't said anything until now for this exact reason: I don't know, haven't met, and until this thread had not even *heard* of any of the people or labs involved in this situation. Granted I live in a hole with a rock on top of it, but that does not obligate me to act, or even make a decision, without reasoning through the information available to me.

It is certainly the case that nobody should be made subject to harassment or unwanted attention, from anybody. I haven't heard any disagreement with that point.

It is certainly the case that harassment should have consequences. I don't think anyone particularly objects to that notion either.

It is also the case that the people Jen accuses have not presented any substantive response to her quite detailed accounts of their actions, and that has a bad smell to it.

But "end harassment in hacking" is one of those open-ended aspirations like "end terrorism," and it also smells a bit off that Jen has so far sidestepped all the questions people have asked about what specific consequences would make amends for the harassment she experienced. Jen also appeals to the authority of Julie Horvath and Liz Henry. Liz Henry is one of the founding members of the Ada Initiative, an organization whose primary activity is to whip up social media frenzies about sexism in technology. Their website at one point mentioned that they provided "consulting services" to companies that were having "diversity issues"; this language has disappeared from the site, probably because it made "corporate blackmail as a business model" just a little too obvious. (Now they just provide workshops and trainings like any other diversity org, but they remain a huge mover and shaker in the 24-hour outrage cycle that lampreys like BuzzFeed and DailyDot feed off for the advertising clicks.) 

It's probably too late for this situation to escape the attention of the 24-hour outrage cycle. Not much we can do about that; try not to get too distracted by it, folks. Jen does still have a problem.

So, Jen, can you answer that question for us? These "culture wars" drag on because the discourse always stays at this high level of abstraction. But we're scientists. We observe what happens in nature and induce patterns from it. Then the engineers step in and figure out how to scale it. What would solve *your* problem? We all know that there's a *general* problem. Let's find out what solving individual cases of it looks like, one at a time, and find the patterns in those solutions, because that's where we're going to find the solution to the general problem.

--mlp

[David Murphy]

>"Perhaps a better analogy would be this: you encounter a woman on the street who is running and screaming"

unfortunatly, again, that's a loaded one. In a long running dispute there's little cost in waiting for the decision of 3rd party mediation while in this example it would be a matter of life and death over the course of seconds and also, nobody I know and trust personally has waded in with confirmation or denial on either side. 

Your friend from the UN is wrong on one point: open "communities" are awful at mediating disputes. For a long list of reasons. Mainly that most people are not willing to spend the hour to both wade through all the material and also listen to both sides. It's like relying on a mob for justice. you either get people making snap decisions and pediatricians getting their houses burned out or nothing much happening.

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[Jen Kotila]

Thank you for your input Meredeth. 

On 3 June 2014 14:41, Meredith L. Patterson <clon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jun 3, 2014 at 1:45 PM, David Murphy <murphy...@gmail.com> wrote:

I don't know you, I don't know any of the people involved in the case and I'm inclined to believe you when you say people were dicks to you but it's not unreasonable for other people, before shunning those involved, to await the verdict of some impartial 3rd party who have all the facts and who've heard the other sides version as well.

I haven't said anything until now for this exact reason: I don't know, haven't met, and until this thread had not even *heard* of any of the people or labs involved in this situation. Granted I live in a hole with a rock on top of it, but that does not obligate me to act, or even make a decision, without reasoning through the information available to me.

Of course there has to be some balance struck here. Education needs to happen, evidence does need to be presented, others who have seen all of the evidence and listened to the very long narrative surrounding it and the incident have to come forward. We are in new territory here for biohacking and we will all figure it out together. Everyone starts with different frameworks, different perceptions and different levels of knowledge in this. If I step back and take a breath and calm down from all of the stress due to the attacks I have been under, I can see that. So some people, especially if they have had similar things happen to them or seen them happen before feel very comfortable gauging the situation and acting quickly an decisively. For you, you are saying that you want more info and that is fair. 

Can you please tell me if you have read everything I have presented so far? Have you ever seen an emial with 15 attachments on it before? :) That was me holding back. What do you think of the May 22 minutes, for instance?

It is certainly the case that nobody should be made subject to harassment or unwanted attention, from anybody. I haven't heard any disagreement with that point.

 

It is certainly the case that harassment should have consequences. I don't think anyone particularly objects to that notion either.

Yes, this is utterly non-controversial which makes it all the more disturbing that it is so often the case that victims of harassment face more harassment for coming forward. The actions of many communities and organizations often do not reflect the supposed values and this rampant tendency is what I want to expose and address, along with the meat of my own case. This talk the talk and the not walk the walk behavior is pepetuated by the reaction to "protect the heard" that usually happens when powerful, influential men are accused. 

The reaction on Twitter was one of disbelief and anger from his network of science bloggers and friends. “Science blogosphere, I am tweetless… I can’t even retweet what has left me so stunned.” “Enraged children with a persecution complex are out on a witch hunt, it’ll blow over eventually…” “My closest friend is @boraz. I know him better than almost everyone. I would give my life for him. Thought you should know that.”

At first, I was paralyzed. But when I saw the “protect the herd” mentality among my friends, with some doubting that this behavior even qualified as sexual harassment, I had to speak up. 

It is also the case that the people Jen accuses have not presented any substantive response to her quite detailed accounts of their actions, and that has a bad smell to it.

They have been doing this for quite some time. They avoid discussion at all costs. Again, read this letter I sent to them telling them they were doing this. 

But "end harassment in hacking" is one of those open-ended aspirations like "end terrorism,"

I fully disagree. Terrorism is a very rare thing and is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY overly talked about, in my opinion. This is the exact opposite of this. Harassment is ridiculously common (see all of the links to resources I proived above) and it is NOT talked about. They are opposites. 

and it also smells a bit off that Jen has so far sidestepped all the questions people have asked about what specific consequences would make amends for the harassment she experienced.

Ok, sorry. I just missed it. Please bear in mind that I am under EXTREME duress right now and I did entreat the community to ask me if they needed elucidation if I had missed a point. Instead of saying it smells, please reread above where I ask you guys to ask me this stuff due to being up until 5am with anxiety over everything right now, ok? 

 

Jen also appeals to the authority of Julie Horvath and Liz Henry.

I am not appealing to authority, I think. I am citing others who have been forced into the same position I have due to their bad circumstances and using what is becoming a well accepted technique of naming and shaming after Labitat not only failed me, but attacked me on May 22. I am drawing attention to the fact that I am not alone in this. I am not a pioneer, this is not an isolated incident. It is sadly very common and we need to stop it. 

 

Liz Henry is one of the founding members of the Ada Initiative, an organization whose primary activity is to whip up social media frenzies about sexism in technology. Their website at one point mentioned that they provided "consulting services" to companies that were having "diversity issues"; this language has disappeared from the site, probably because it made "corporate blackmail as a business model" just a little too obvious. (Now they just provide workshops and trainings like any other diversity org, but they remain a huge mover and shaker in the 24-hour outrage cycle that lampreys like BuzzFeed and DailyDot feed off for the advertising clicks.) 

 

I do not agree with your assessment of Liz, but I have to admit that I do not know enough to defend her properly. I will entreat her to come here and defend herself as my sense of her is quite different than the one you portray. 

 

It's probably too late for this situation to escape the attention of the 24-hour outrage cycle. Not much we can do about that; try not to get too distracted by it, folks. Jen does still have a problem.

So, Jen, can you answer that question for us? These "culture wars" drag on because the discourse always stays at this high level of abstraction. But we're scientists. We observe what happens in nature and induce patterns from it. Then the engineers step in and figure out how to scale it. What would solve *your* problem? We all know that there's a *general* problem. Let's find out what solving individual cases of it looks like, one at a time, and find the patterns in those solutions, because that's where we're going to find the solution to the general problem.

Ok! Yes! Sorry to have missed this the first time and made you feel like my oversight smelled. In this particular instance of mine, due to how severe and how prolonged the pattern was and how many times I tried in very good faith to work things out but how I was met only with hostility and blame and every turn at this juncture I have to say that I would like the following to occur:

1. I want the Kopenlab Festival shut down. Malthe and Emil are being paid as coordinators and, I believe, the addition of money in the form of funding from Industriens Fond is -part- of what made Emil Polny harass me (I am better qualified than he is and even though I would not take money for the role, I was a threat to his paying position as if I am doing it for free then there was no reason to pay him). I am working to try to shut it down and I would like community support for that. Also, please again see this letter and read the attached agenda to see that there was a lot of unethical, non-DIY spirited practice in the festival. My complaint with it is maifold: it is being billed as open knowledge when it is not, it was orignally supposed to be for everyone to participate in but my ideas were shouted down, I was pushed out and the whole thing has really only been Emil, Malthe and Majken Overgaard. There was a long period where they were hiding information about it from me and from Labitat. 

Also, the Festival was sold to other ogranizations as Labitat's festival. I spoken with a guy from an open knowledge organization who thought Labitat was organizing it. It was not. They were. They never asked Labitat if they could count on Labitat as a partner until May 15, during which meeting I stood up and said (and I paraphrase, not quote) "er, guys, I don't think we should do this because of the "misconduct" I was still not openly talking about harassment in Labitat plenum then, although many attending members knew the story and had seen the evidence. 

Many partners have already withdrawn support. I have been told by my advisers, one of whom is very familiar with this kind of thing, that in order to shut it down centrally I need to make it a bigger issue. Which sucks and I did give them many chances to admit their fault and pull the plug themselves to spare us all this mess. Again, please read this letter.

2. I want Malthe, Emil and Søren to be expelled from Labitat and Biologigaragen and I want the community to help me in this. Again, if you look at the record-- I have been trying to work this out starting on Dec. 19th. That is a verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry long time! I regret it has gone on for this long and I wish there would have been a way to solve it but at this point, I see that as sadly impossible. I would like them to learn and grow from this mistake and to seek help to change, but I cannot work with them in the near future and I do not see why I should be forced to (as Labitat/Biologigaragen seems to want to do) just because they are in power. It is non-controversial in that basement that they have harasssed me, but it is quite controversial to ask them to leave and this is very sick and wrong as far as I am concerned. I will not be able to be in there, nor will I be able to recruit new people to the organization in good faith if they remain involved. 

3. I want biohacking to demonstrate to the world that it is an alternative to the traditional structures and not allow them to continue working just because they are good old boys. At least not in the near future. I think that all humans are capable of change, but that it is harder for some than others and, yes, from what I have seen this will take years if it is possible. Marc agrees with this assessment as do many others here in CPH and abroad. I want it to say "we not only do not accept harassment in theory, but we also do not accept it in practice". 

4. I want to help foster a climate wherein these things are openly discussed and thus dealt with. We are open knowledge, right? Let's be open, then. Power games are as old as human kind. Harassment is just one of those, bullying another. They happen in hierarchies, both formal and informal. It happens in biohacking, too. We are new, though, and just setting up our ethos. Let's stop it from taking root before it poisons us the way it does so many other institutions. We can start by making it easier for people who have been harassed to speak out. By not silencing them or attacking them. By doing what the Danes do and putting the burden of proof more heavily on the accused than the accuser. I linked to this source above so please find it up there but I quote:

Because of this, if a person in a workplace views themselves as having been violated, then it is up to the other party to prove that no harrasment has taken place. Thus a part of the burden of proof is shifted to the employer, who will need to present a counter case. 

 

5. Again, I am stressed and it is hard to think of everything. I hope that list satisfies you. I may have other concrete items I will want to add later, but if so none are springing to mind.

Please do ask me any other questions you have and I will try to respond ASAP, but also please keep in mind that I am stressed and very busy so that may not always be possible. 

Thank you for your time. 

Jen

--mlp

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[Cathal Garvey]

I can't commit to a response to everything being discussed, because the
volume is waay too large for me to digest and properly consider, but
this jumps out at me:

On 03/06/14 14:27, Jen Kotila wrote:
> By doing what the Danes do and putting the burden
> of proof more heavily on the accused than the accuser.

..this is the sort of idea that crops up all the time as a seemingly
common-sense approach, but usually ends up being absolutely poisonous to
a free society. It's always been popular to accuse ones' neighbour of
the crime-de-jour, hence inquisitions, witchhunts, wars on terrorism.
For a time in my own country, it was sufficient to accuse a person of
IRA membership to have them locked up.

A person must be considered innocent in the absence of evidence, so the
burden of proof must remain upon the person accusing, not the accused.
There are ways to help encourage those who feel abused to come forward,
but assuming the guilt of the accused is not one of them; it will cause
too much collateral damage, and create more victims.

[Jen Kotila]

On 3 June 2014 14:56, David Murphy <murphy...@gmail.com> wrote:

>"Perhaps a better analogy would be this: you encounter a woman on the street who is running and screaming"

unfortunatly, again, that's a loaded one. In a long running dispute there's little cost in waiting for the decision of 3rd party mediation while in this example it would be a matter of life and death over the course of seconds and also, nobody I know and trust personally has waded in with confirmation or denial on either side. 

Well, there is no direct analogy other than those quotes I gave you. The thing is that it does suck to have the reaction so often feel like "I don't believe you". I can tell you that although I can definitely see why that would happen in some people's consciousnesses it does just wear on a person to hear it over and over again and to have to be constantly paddling up waterfalls. 

I have to say that I am unsure of this whole mediation thing. I have heard and experienced lots of mixed things with mediators. I'm open to it, but not putting my faith in it as though it is the final arbiter. Hopefully it will be, though. 

Your friend from the UN is wrong on one point: open "communities" are awful at mediating disputes.

Sorry, it was me telling her that, not the other way around. I hope I wrote that correctly. 

 

For a long list of reasons. Mainly that most people are not willing to spend the hour to both wade through all the material and also listen to both sides.

Yes This has been a rather massive problem. To put it mildly. I have all of this evidence and I can tell you that the whole shebang sit down with showing some, but not all and maybe not even "many" of my documents takes forever. Also, just trying to educate people on what harassment and bullying are is very hard. The Labitat guys really thought that sexual harassment meant just groping at the start of this. Hell, even I had a confusing few days after bringing it up to the Kopenlab group thinking "these aren't just "personal" issues like they say, are they?". People are not educated, they don't like being told they are not, the do not want to read the evidence. Those who do sit down with me and then the other side (or vice versa), often do land with me though.

This really sucks for me, frankly. I didn't really, er, have experience with actually being in such a community before and so I idealized the notion of flat, open governance. I thought that in such a system people would take the time and effort to educate themselves and get engaged as that is what I would do. Look, this whole thing just shows everyone one thing definitively: Jen is incredibly naive. Ha. I am not proud of that, but that is the truth I am finding out.  

 

It's like relying on a mob for justice. you either get people making snap decisions and pediatricians getting their houses burned out or nothing much happening.

 

Yes, this is what is happening. Literally. I literally got mobbed on Thursday the 22nd. It was one of the most harrowing things that have ever happened to me and I have been in the south of Tchad during active rebel fighting visiting hospitals. I thought biohackign was supposed to be the alternative to the established structures. We should really try to figure out how to deal with this internally without having to reach out to established, paid 3rd parties. We need a kind of HR for the movement. I still hope that it can figure out some way to deal with this without having to cry uncle and go to court. If we can figure out how to do it in a humane way, we can evolve. We all agree that it is good that we can do biology without the auspices of the formal structures and set up a counter culture to that apparatus. Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaybe we can do that for this kind of thing too. 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/diybio/CAP0RkBCPasVZ4YJmziYLbEPcDUfr7pCCnyD5TNYAmim8Rs47RQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[SC]

Dear Jen,

I'm sorry this happened to you.  In regards to the things you would like to happen, I have some practical questions:

>I would like the following to occur:
>
>1. I want the Kopenlab Festival shut down.

What exactly would make this happen?  You mention that Industriens Fond provided some funding and hired the people
in question to be paid coordinators.  Would the festival still be possible if this funding were withdrawn?

>
>2. I want Malthe, Emil and Søren to be expelled from Labitat and Biologigaragen

Who or what process would make this happen?  I'm not familiar with the structure of the institution.
.
The other things you mentioned "fostering a climate", "demonstrating to the world", are admirable goals, and I
support them and share them, but are less concrete so it's difficult to identify what nuts and bolts actions
must be taken to make them happen.  Let's stick with 1) and 2) for the moment, which are more definable.

How can we help?

Stacy

[Jen Kotila]

On 3 June 2014 15:45, Cathal Garvey <cathal...@cathalgarvey.me> wrote:

I can't commit to a response to everything being discussed, because the
volume is waay too large for me to digest and properly consider

Fair enough, it is massive. The amount of documentation is overwhelming, as is the amount of information regarding context and background that needs to be assimilated to render first hand judgement from some positions/frameworks of which yours is certainly one. 

but
this jumps out at me:

On 03/06/14 14:27, Jen Kotila wrote:
> By doing what the Danes do and putting the burden
> of proof more heavily on the accused than the accuser.

..this is the sort of idea that crops up all the time as a seemingly
common-sense approach, but usually ends up being absolutely poisonous to
a free society. It's always been popular to accuse ones' neighbour of
the crime-de-jour, hence inquisitions, witchhunts, wars on terrorism.
For a time in my own country, it was sufficient to accuse a person of
IRA membership to have them locked up.

A person must be considered innocent in the absence of evidence, so the
burden of proof must remain upon the person accusing, not the accused.
There are ways to help encourage those who feel abused to come forward,
but assuming the guilt of the accused is not one of them; it will cause
too much collateral damage, and create more victims.

They have made an exception for sexual harassment here because it is so poorly handled so often. I quote myself:

so, keep in mind that if this does go to court here in Denmark, they have recently rewritten their laws so that in cases of sexual harassment the onus of proof is partially on the accused, which is different from almost all other crimes because the reaction in these cases is so terribly often to blame and mistrust the victim.  

They have the highest rate of this kind of stuff in the EU for a reason and, good on them, and I think with this law they are trying to figure out how to shed that dubious distinction. While I agree with you in large part, I do think that often exceptions need to be made to almost every set of rules, laws, ideas. When I first came forward, I did so internally to the Kopenlab group over email on April 25. You can see that thread here.  

(Note: this case is incredibly complex. I was also seeing misconduct in terms of them 1. not taking minutes and then saying that taking minutes would be "overly bureaucratic" 2. not being transparent about the proposed new space to Labitat and 3. trying to block Labitat members from attending the Kopenlab steering group meetings. )

Instead of meeting any of my concerns with compassion and a genuine intent to solve the problems, they fought against discussing all of them until their backs were to the wall, but they eventually fixed the minutes and the day after the Apr. 28th meeting, my Dropbox was pining incessantly with documents being uploaded that should have been there all along. 

They blamed me and accused me of being destructive and completely refused to see the wrong they had done, acknowledging the behavior but not the harm. Emil Polny keeps saying that it was "just his humor" and I keep saying "I have friends who have the crasses, least PC humor you can imagine but they do not use it to attack me as you do and I asked you to stop many, many times" They never owned anything beyond "I am sorry you are feeling that way". They said that my tone made it impossible to listen to me, which is classic silencing.They were SUPER careful to not put too much if anything in writing. 

They keep silencing me about the harassment and they only want it to be discussed in forums favorable to them if at all, such as that May 22 meeting where I had a very serious breakdown or quietly in mediation that will take weeks to resolve. They want to do this, I think, as it allows them to get away with it and be paid for and get the credit for hosing an open knowledge festival that is not open knowledge! This is not ok and I 1. wanted to test how this nascent community would react and police itself. Would it do a better or worse job than science blogging? 2. It also just kinda sucks that in biohacking we have no HR or union rep to go to with this stuff. Thankfully, Labitat and Biologigaragen have 

This is why I am here on DIYbio trying to get help. 

This also is why my beloved Denmark (and I still love it despite all of this crap) has taken it upon itself to make it easier for victims of harassment to speak out in court. 

This is why many countries have whistleblower laws. 

It is SO common for a victim of harassment to be doubted, silenced, treated with hostility and blame, doubted and mobbed it might as well just be assumed  that that is what will happen when one steps forward and in fact it IS assumed, as I linked to above in a response to David. People are scared to come forward and rightly so. Which is why most women just keep quiet and don't rock the boat. But are people scared to come forward if someone punches them in the face? No! Are they scared to come forward if they have been raped? Sometimes still, yes. But that is better than it used to be because of a change in consciousness. We no longer blame rape victims or say they were asking for it and yet Søren Borch did precisely that to me when I told him about the harassment. I had to write him to correct him after a phone call in which he accused me of inciting men to do this to me via my looks and dress. 

This whole thing, up to and including me speaking out, happened because I am damned naive and trusting and think that people will just do the right thing mostly. I think that because I want to live in that world, where is it? I want to make it happen. I want this world to be a place where things like this do not happen.

I really, honestly thought that when I took the matter to Labitat, I would get help. I thought that I would be listened to. Haha. AHAHAHA.  Instead I was victim blamed and mobbed. 

THIS is why the Danes have that law putting the onus of proof on the accused in these kinds of cases (and I think only in these kinds of cases (as far as I am aware)). It is a taboo subject and the accuser almost always gets reabused in coming forward. My character has been called into so much question over this. My motives questioned. I have been interrogated time and time again. One of my friends who was supporting me in this is now averse to my tactic of taking this big and he said to me the other day "if you keep talking about this, no one will want to work with you" even though he 100% thinks that what has happened to me is harassment and fully acknowledges that it has messed up my life in an incredibly severe manner. Yet he still warns me this and the horrifying thing is that he is possibly right. I hope DIYbio is better than that, though. The movement, I mean. I hope that we are. I have faith in it as so many have taken the time and energy to hear me out and are incredibly supportive. 

That said, it is usually the case that harassment truly is a winning strategy as the victim is so often damned if they do and damned if they don't.

This needs to end. In hacking and in the broader world. 

Regards,

Jen

P.S. Wait! Cathal! So you are saying you don't want to talk? ;) It's fine, but if not  please try to restrain yourself from getting in the middle and casting doubt on me and not on them as that is what I feel you are currently doing. I fel the need to be open and honest and state that this interaction is reminding me a BIT of a Labitat guy who in the end was a textbook concern troll. I am not saying you are that, per se with so little information to go on and all-- it's just an intuition of mine and maybe it is just my bullying induced hypervigelence getting the better of me, but yeah... There was at least one Labitat guy who refused to engage constructively overall, especially not to good points I raised, but still felt like slipping in little contrary things to derail debate who was definitely a concern troll. 

Do you see yourself at all here? I kinda have to say I do (again it might be hypervigelence): 

A concern troll is a person who participates in a debate posing as an actual or potential ally who simply has some concerns they need answered before they will ally themselves with a cause. In reality they are a critic. Concern trolling in geek feminism communities can result in continual reversion to Feminism 101 discussions in attempts to appease the troll's concerns, frustrating attempts at more serious discussion. Concern trolls are not always self-aware, they may also view themselves as potential allies who have just, oddly, never met a feminist opinion they liked.

Concern trolls can be identified primarily because they will retreat from, rather than engage with or be convinced by, answers to the questions they pose. They may repeatedly ask a certain question in feminist discussions without ever absorbing or replying to answers from previous discussions. They will often back into typical anti-feminist arguments, such as expressing concern that an argument is too "extreme" or a feminist too "strident" or even "hysterical". Another common tactic is insisting that some subjects are more important than others, for example, that media depictions of women shouldn't be criticised while violence against women continues.

Concern trolling is frequently banned in feminist communities.

-

-

-

I think it is very true that often this type of person is not self aware of their actions. I am sure the guy in Labitat isn't and that he doesn't mean harm, but that he has a hard time processing and accepting that his friend would do this kind of thing. That is what I think is happening there. I'm not sure what's going on here. :)   

[Will Canine]

Cathal,

I agree with you on this. Its important to keep innocence until proven guilty in the eyes of the law. But I think you're misunderstanding whats going on. 

The burden of proof is not on the accused in most criminal proceedings but on the state. Except in civil suits (where one person is suing another) the state is expected to investigate and uncover the relevant evidence, provide a judge for moderating proceedings, and organize a jury of peers for determining the result. In places like Denmark these days, sexual violence is being treated as a different sort of crime where the victim also has to play the role of state prosecutor, gathering all their own evidence to put forth in court. 

This is equally problematic for justice as "guilty until proven innocent," creating a situation where unless you are wealthy enough to afford your own army of lawyers, you have no recourse when a crime of sexual violence is committed against you. If we are interested in truth and justice, its crucial that we do not place the burden of proof on the accused, but take that burden on ourselves. Jen should not be forced to be victim and prosecutor all in one (though it seems like she is more than willing to take up that second role herself, the point remains that a state should be concerned enough with upholding its own laws and the appearance of justice to provide prosecution).

Just hope to clarify! 

[Cathal Garvey]

Hi Jen,
Actually, I have been reading all of the documents you've posted
(although I'm afraid I have to speed read some), and I'm keeping on top
of the discussion as best I can.

As I've previously stated, I have worked with Malthe in the past, and
I'm wary of my own bias. Given that, however, I don't even accept the
existance of concern-trolling, and I'm highly sceptical of much of the
content of that tenor on the geekfeminism wikia. Much of the content
there (which I have encountered before) is designed to foster a
black-and-white war mentality, where anyone not instantly agreeing with
a viewpoint can be assigned to a classification of enemy (in this case,
"concern troll") and discredited, discarded, or attacked for nonconformance.

The DIYbio community means a lot to me, as it clearly does to you. And,
like most here, I'm sorry to see that your work in Denmark (regardless
of whether I or others would feel similarly about the events) have left
you feeling this way. Whether or not what you say about your experiences
actually reflects sexism, it does seem that the culture in
Biologigaragen is suffering from a structural problem. The minutes
mention another issue of aggression and a difficulty in dealing with it,
for example.

While I don't think the others in the minutes were wrong to avoid
imposing written strictures in that case or others, if an informal
resolution process is what the membership overall prefer, it does seem
that the discussion/resolution process isn't up to task in cases like
that, and cases like yours.

However, having read the documents you posted, and many of your
annotations of said documents, I can't say that I understand your
position, either. You posted a document where Malthe asked you to bring
a neutral third party of your choosing, and you presented this as an
attack or an undermining position.. I genuinely don't understand that
argument at all. To me, perhaps as an outsider, Malthe's proposition
seemed entirely reasonable.

Reading over the minutes, I can see the event you describe, with others
saying "shut up", and I would condemn that on its hostility. It's an
emotionally charged event, but civility is critical, and (assuming the
minutes are not your own version) there is no record of you showing that
form of hostility to others. However, I don't think it's appropriate to
blame the moderator for asking you to keep your silence while others
speak (as I hope he did to others if they interrupted you), nor for
asking you to keep things brief, because that's what a moderator is
supposed to do. A good moderator annoys everyone in equal measure.

I have no role in this except that I am vocal about DIYbio, and because
this arrives in my inbox and includes entreaties to my opinion. But if
you want my opinion, and if it means it'll be discarded as "concern
trolling" or some other frame/construct, then so be it. I think that
there is a serious personality conflict in BG, and I think that
mediation with a neutral third party is the proper avenue to approach. I
don't think, based only on what you have presented, that what you are
describing is anything near the Scientific American blogging case, nor
the Github fiasco, and I think those comparisons are overly colourful.
Boraz was constantly asking coworkers about their sex lives (not just
teasing them on new relationships, which would be mildly inappropriate,
but actual bedroom activity), picking up physically and spinning a
coworker (after being asked not to) and inviting an affair repeatedly
with a coworker. The github story is murkier, but still pretty messed up
by all accounts, and the fact that they regarded a HR employee as a
suitable mediator in a case involving a company founder was just farcical.

When you elaborate on the "sexual" harassment you allege, it sounds like
you felt marginalised for being addressed differently because you are a
woman ("we should lock the doors", etc). You're entitled to be offended
at this behaviour if it bothers you, and it should cease if you ask for
it to. I would object if a fellow hacker behaved in this way, because
being made to feel different at all is somewhat exclusionary, even if in
jest. But this isn't earth-shaking misogyny, either. You are offended
that a coworker teased you about a relationship with another coworker,
but while that's inappropriate I don't think it even fits the
categorical description of "sexism", because your gender didn't have
anything to do with it, and it was applied equally to your then-partner.

Your description of Malthe's behaviour towards you is hard to understand
from the outside; humans are complex. But you object that, after a
failed start, he became "cold". From without, it's hard to know how much
of this assessment is down to the subjective; clearly he was "warm"
before, because you and he were mutually interested. Malthe's baseline
can appear pretty reserved to begin with (sorry Malthe!), and that's
before factoring in the awkwardness of a failed start and a growing dispute.

I'm not going to go on. My aim is not to make you feel marginalised, not
to tell you what to feel or believe. I think that your position is
complex, and that a great deal of the story is lost in interpersonal
relationships that are impossible to translate to email. I do think that
the severity of the things you allege are amplified by these
interpersonal conflicts, and that perhaps is why it is hard for me to
relate.

So, in closing; I hope that the arrangement to undergo external
mediation is still on the table, and that you all take it seriously. A
neutral third party is not a judge to mete punishment, and I think if
you are seeking punishment then nobody's going to find closure or
resolution.

yours in concern,
Cathal

> *so, keep in mind that if this does go to court here in Denmark, they have

> recently rewritten their laws so that in cases of sexual harassment the
> onus of proof is partially on the accused, which is different from almost
> all other crimes because the reaction in these cases is so terribly often

> to blame and mistrust the victim. *

>
> They have the highest rate of this kind of stuff in the EU for a reason
> and, good on them, and I think with this law they are trying to figure out
> how to shed that dubious distinction.

> <http://www.b.dk/nationalt/vold-chikane-og-stalking-mod-kvinder-i-danmark-overstiger-eu-gennemsnit>

> While
> I agree with you in large part, I do think that often exceptions need to be
> made to almost every set of rules, laws, ideas. When I first came forward,
> I did so internally to the Kopenlab group over email on April 25. You can
> see that thread here

> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/19J-RtJDDtHegcIYNYDWlCKy-_3TPP5kCMgwP9a5Isiw/edit>.

>
>
> (Note: this case is incredibly complex. I was also seeing misconduct in
> terms of them 1. not taking minutes and then saying that taking minutes
> would be "overly bureaucratic" 2. not being transparent about the proposed
> new space to Labitat and 3. trying to block Labitat members from attending
> the Kopenlab steering group meetings. )
>
> Instead of meeting any of my concerns with compassion and a genuine intent

> to solve the problems, they fought against discussing *all* of them until

> their backs were to the wall, but they eventually fixed the minutes and the
> day after the Apr. 28th meeting, my Dropbox was pining incessantly with
> documents being uploaded that should have been there all along.
>
> They blamed me and accused me of being destructive and completely refused
> to see the wrong they had done, acknowledging the behavior but not the
> harm. Emil Polny keeps saying that it was "just his humor" and I keep
> saying "I have friends who have the crasses, least PC humor you can imagine
> but they do not use it to attack me as you do and I asked you to stop many,
> many times" They never owned anything beyond "I am sorry you are feeling
> that way". They said that my tone made it impossible to listen to me, which

> is classic silencing <http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Tone_argument>.They

> were SUPER careful to not put too much if anything in writing.
>
> They keep silencing me about the harassment and they only want it to be
> discussed in forums favorable to them if at all, such as that May 22
> meeting where I had a very serious breakdown

> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UBXIbR9BY9BTmaSe7dDenBkKCIyAuHySsgtwKFMVQck/edit?usp=sharing>

> or
> quietly in mediation that will take weeks to resolve. They want to do this,
> I think, as it allows them to get away with it and be paid for and get the
> credit for hosing an open knowledge festival that is not open knowledge!
> This is not ok and I 1. wanted to test how this nascent community would
> react and police itself. Would it do a better or worse job than science
> blogging

> <http://www.indyweek.com/triangulator/archives/2013/10/18/the-fall-of-triangle-scientist-and-scientific-american-blog-editor-bora-zivkovic>?

> 2. It also just kinda sucks that in biohacking we have no HR or union rep
> to go to with this stuff. Thankfully, Labitat and Biologigaragen have
>

> *This is why I am here on DIYbio trying to get help. *
>
> *This also is why my beloved Denmark (and I still love it despite all of

> this crap) has taken it upon itself to make it easier for victims of

> harassment to speak out in court.*
>
> *This is why many countries have whistleblower laws. *

>
> It is SO common for a victim of harassment to be doubted, silenced, treated
> with hostility and blame, doubted and mobbed it might as well just be
> assumed that that is what will happen when one steps forward and in fact
> it IS assumed, as I linked to above in a response to David. People are
> scared to come forward and rightly so. Which is why most women just keep
> quiet and don't rock the boat. But are people scared to come forward if
> someone punches them in the face? No! Are they scared to come forward if
> they have been raped? Sometimes still, yes. But that is better than it used
> to be because of a change in consciousness. We no longer blame rape victims
> or say they were asking for it and yet Søren Borch did precisely that to me
> when I told him about the harassment. I had to write him to correct him
> after a phone call in which he accused me of inciting men to do this to me
> via my looks and dress.

> <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_8eMJXPG5y7D-2ffqSn5xqgWIfbZa-zU9oZEzpvJu9A/edit?usp=sharing>

>
> This whole thing, up to and including me speaking out, happened because I
> am damned naive and trusting and think that people will just do the right
> thing mostly. I think that because I want to live in that world, where is
> it? I want to make it happen. I want this world to be a place where things
> like this do not happen.
>
> I really, honestly thought that when I took the matter to Labitat, I would
> get help. I thought that I would be listened to. Haha. AHAHAHA. Instead I
> was victim blamed and mobbed.
>

> *THIS is why the Danes have that law putting the onus of proof on the

> accused in these kinds of cases (and I think only in these kinds of cases

> (as far as I am aware))*. It is a taboo subject and the accuser almost

> always gets reabused in coming forward. My character has been called into
> so much question over this. My motives questioned. I have been interrogated
> time and time again. One of my friends who was supporting me in this is now
> averse to my tactic of taking this big and he said to me the other day "if

> you keep talking about this, no one will want to work with you" *even

> though he 100% thinks that what has happened to me is harassment and fully

> acknowledges that it has messed up my life in an incredibly severe manner*.

> Yet he still warns me this and the horrifying thing is that he is possibly
> right. I hope DIYbio is better than that, though. The movement, I mean. I

> hope that we are. I have faith in it as so many *have* taken the time and

> energy to hear me out and are incredibly supportive.
>
> That said, it is usually the case that harassment truly is a winning
> strategy as the victim is so often damned if they do and damned if they
> don't.
>
> This needs to end. In hacking and in the broader world.
>
> Regards,
>
> Jen
>
> P.S. Wait! Cathal! So you are saying you don't want to talk? ;) It's fine,
> but if not please try to restrain yourself from getting in the middle and
> casting doubt on me and not on them as that is what I feel you are
> currently doing. I fel the need to be open and honest and state that this
> interaction is reminding me a BIT of a Labitat guy who in the end was a

> textbook concern troll. <http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Concern_troll> I

> am not saying you are that, per se with so little information to go on and
> all-- it's just an intuition of mine and maybe it is just my bullying

> induced hypervigelence <http://www.bullyonline.org/stress/ptsd.htm>getting

> the better of me, but yeah... There was at least one Labitat guy who
> refused to engage constructively overall, especially not to good points I
> raised, but still felt like slipping in little contrary things to derail
> debate who was definitely a concern troll.
>
> Do you see yourself at all here? I kinda have to say I do (again it might
> be hypervigelence):
>

> *A concern troll is a person who participates in a debate posing as an

> actual or potential ally who simply has some concerns they need answered

> before they will ally themselves with a cause.* In reality they are a

> critic. Concern trolling in geek feminism communities can result in
> continual reversion to Feminism 101 discussions in attempts to appease the
> troll's concerns, frustrating attempts at more serious discussion. Concern
> trolls are not always self-aware, they may also view themselves as
> potential allies who have just, oddly, never met a feminist opinion they
> liked.
>

> *Concern trolls can be identified primarily because they will retreat from,

> rather than engage with or be convinced by, answers to the questions they

> pose.* They may repeatedly ask a certain question in feminist discussions

[Cathal Garvey]

Hey will,
While I agree that wealth and power disparity is a dangerous thing to
bring to court, I still disagree that putting a burden of proof on the
accused is in any way useful.

Other ways I'd prefer to see reform might be the abolition of asymmetric
legal representation, so that if one party can afford a private lawyer
(and in my preferred system the legal profession would be nationalised
in much the same way as functional healthcare systems), they must also
contribute to hire equally skilled representation for the other party.
Justice (the godess, that is), bears scales for a reason, and if we let
people heap gold to one side of the scales we get predictable results.

This is something that weighs on me, I should add. Ireland has a pretty
bad record on womens' and childrens' rights, and although offenders are
(I think) usually assigned a sentence these days, the leniency shown at
sentencing and parole for even aggravated and life-threatening cases is
shocking.

[Jen Kotila]

On 3 June 2014 16:40, 'SC' via DIYbio <diy...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Dear Jen,

I'm sorry this happened to you.  In regards to the things you would like to happen, I have some practical questions:

Dear Stacy,

Thank you so much for your concern. It is relieving. Thank you.  

>I would like the following to occur:
>
>1. I want the Kopenlab Festival shut down.

What exactly would make this happen?  You mention that Industriens Fond provided some funding and hired the people
in question to be paid coordinators.  Would the festival still be possible if this funding were withdrawn?

From what I have been told Industriens Fond has granted something like 1.3mm DKK to the Kopenlab steering group. The Festival would NOT be possible without this funding. I have contacted Industriens Fond to alert them of this situation and they responded saying that they considered it to be an internal matter and that they would think about what to do. I don't know if anything has happened with that. I have a very close friend who knows a lot about funds and whatnot and she said that to get them to revoke the funding, I do have to cause a big commotion at this juncture. I think that if people were to write open letters decrying harassment and saying that they think that what has happens within the Kopenlab group constitutes harassment, that would be the best solution to everything, 

But it might also be very good for everyone to send such open letters to the organizations involved. IF is here:  http://www.industriensfond.dk/en/node/100

I have been in touch with Head of Secretariat Cecilie Alsted  c...@industriensfond.dk and Lars Møller Holmegaard  l...@industriensfond.dk

I have similarly been in touch with the Science in the City people. This is the spinoff of the ESOF conference and is the umbrella organization under which Kopenlab is included. Mette Seneca Jensen is the contact there: ms...@fi.dk

Her reaction was similar: "this is a sad situation, but it is not in my hands". 

So I guess: write an open letter, send it to involved parties who have not withdrawn support yet. 

>
>2. I want Malthe, Emil and Søren to be expelled from Labitat and Biologigaragen

Who or what process would make this happen?  I'm not familiar with the structure of the institution.

Ok, so they are two connected but distinct organizations. 

Labitat was conceived of by Marc Juul  (again, of sudoroom.org and http://wiki.omni-oakland.org/ ) as a "habitat for labs"-- it has a 3D printing lab, a programming lab, an electronics lab, a metal and a wood workshop and a biohacking lab (this is Biologigaragen). You can read its early founding document here. It is donation based (150dkk/month gets you door access, but literally anyone can use it as long as you contribute something). It is anarchisticlaly and flatly organized, but it basically has no real organization except for the good ol' tyranny of structurelessness. In that paradigm, Malthe is in charge. In theory, every single user is on the "user board" and although there is a formal board, that has historically just been a formality. All decisions have historically been taken at the Thursday meeting. Until after the 22nd when the decision to moderate the list was made after the mobbing by the board without consulting the user base. Now everything is in turmoil and in the air.

Oh, also, we only have one rule. Rule 0 which is "don't make us make other rules". That does not work. At all. While I admire the utopian vision, it has created a very dysfunctional community. 

 Labitat currently has a total of 893 members, of whom I would say maybe 50 are active and regularly in the space. ANYONE can be a member. YOU can sign up here and it would be great if you could!  If you then subscribe to the Discuss mailing list where most discussion happens, that would also be great. 

The list has been moderated ever since the 22nd. I have not tried posting on it since no one is listening to me right as, while pretty much everyone thinks this has happened, they do not think that Malthe and Emil should be expelled and think I am "evil and stupid and destructive" for wanting to shut down the Festial and expel them and nowadays I am met with silence or hostility when trying to talk about this. I see a massive amount of cognitive dissonance down there. I often hear people say "I do not support harassment nor do I think harassers should be in charge of anything, but you are annoying and they are our friends so they stay and you suck for talking about this in the open". 

You might be able to post, though, or maybe help me think up a post. Actually!  I was talking to a few supporters about Labitat maybe writing an open letter in the way Marc Juul will soon. I may ask Discuss to do that soon and in that case, support from the broader community would be vital in shifting opinion there.  

Now that the board is taking some power, you can write to them as well: besty...@lists.labitat.dk

Biologigargen is another animal entirely. Marc set it up and then left for CA three years ago. About two years ago, Malthe, Noah Weiss and I think Emil Polny decided to take over Biologigaragen. Marc helped them in this process. They moved it within Labitat and got it more room. Biologigaragen was supposed to be a part of Labitat but when I was added to its board, Malthe, Emil, Noah and Søren were in the process of making the structure more formally separate from Labiat's (which is contrary to the founding spirit). There is now a legal entity wherein, I think, Malthe, Søren, Emil and Noah are legally on the board. I am not. I was bullied out of this by Emil! Also, Biologigaragen now has its own, separate bank account as well. I do not have access to that either. 

Also, one part of all of this is that Malthe and Emil had been planning to privatize part of Biologigaragen and hid that from Noah and me.

Currently, Biologigaragen is a quasi independent entity and I am worried that Malthe, Emil and Søren will try to take it from Labitat. The active (as in doing things in lab frequently) membership is currently: Malthe, Noah, Rune and me. Amalie used to do stuff, but has bowed out. Rune is very new and doesn't want to take sides in this. Noah and Malthe are old friends and Noah tacitly sided with Malthe, which was very disappointing to me. 

ANYWAY: Biologigaragen also has a mailing list. I used to be a moderator and was at some point removed without being informed. Also, I was told by Marc Juul that Malthe and Noah had, on Thursday the 22nd, put me and only me moderation so that I could not post about this there. You can also join that group: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/biologigaragen I will send an open letter at some point, I actually saw that they might remove me as a mod after I started making noise and I have all the emails stored so I can re-set up the list and reach people that way.

.
The other things you mentioned "fostering a climate", "demonstrating to the world", are admirable goals, and I
support them and share them, but are less concrete so it's difficult to identify what nuts and bolts actions
must be taken to make them happen.  Let's stick with 1) and 2) for the moment, which are more definable.

How can we help?

You are right. I am getting ahead of myself. I do have a concrete vision for that, and I have even registerd the domain opendiscrimination.org I want to eventually use it to help open knowledge organizations share their codes of conduct, and as repository for all of the information I have had to find myself in this matter. I would have been SO much more effective had I had the pile of knowledge I have now. I also want it to be a place where people can speak out about discrimination they face and therefore let this kind of stuff get into the open, instead of hiding in the shadows. That hidng and the shame and danger attached to speaking out is what gives it is power. 

But, yes, one step at a time. 

I think the most important thing anyone can do is write an open letter. I think we can all write one decrying harassment generally. It would be great, however, to write one tailored to this incident. If people can also send it to Industriens Fond and Science in the City, that would be great. 

Thank you again for your support. I am glad that some people come to the table with the framework and facility to understand this. 

Jen

Stacy

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[Josiah Zayner]

I agree will Cathal.

I have read many of the documents and things you posted and though it seems you were marginalized I am having a hard time finding sexual harassment.

At most it seems like jilted would be lover than sexual harassment. In fact you even mentioned in one of the original documents on google drive that you had a romantic interest in one of them!

I highly believe in innocent until proven guilty. 

A good example of why is the Duke University Lacrosse Case, were players were accused of rape with no evidence just the word of someone and they were kicked out of the university and names tarnished. They were later found to be innocent and the person was fabricating.

There is a fine line is situations like these. I am not saying you are fabricating this but I believe that people should not be defamed as you are doing to these people.

You keep saying people were around and in the minutes there were people around but no one has come on here saying that they think you were harassed. Why not? Why are you fighting this alone if there were witnesses? That would be the only burden that you need.

As for the files:

In the Soren file you are very aggressive in some of your emails. Even in one saying that they better be prepared for a fight. 

You also claim you don't speak Danish well or at all? English is not their first language. How much does the language that they use create a perceived threat rather than a real threat?

As Cathal said, people telling you to shut-up sucks but appeared a little warranted in the situation however you say it is harassment but it doesn't appear so. 

Again, take it to the proper authorities the more stuff you post here the more it seems like a vendetta and not that you were harassed. 

You are also constantly contradicting yourself in these "statements"

One example is:

"Critically, everyone in the opposition tried to shut down the discussion of safe space and defining harassment and tried force me into talking about harassment when I didn't want to because I felt mobbed and was saying I felt unsafe."

Everyone shut out the discussion of harassment but tried to _make_ you talk about it? In the notes you were skirting the issue. Even after you defined a safe space you seemed like you wanted an argument not a discussion about harassment. No one was trying to shut you down when you brought up harassment you were trying to shut them down. They asked to talk about it and you kept going on about a safe space and were avoiding bringing up any allegations. You seem to make the discussions all about what you feel and not about what should be done.

You say you were "mobbed" but in all the minutes you appear dismissive and aggressive towards others. Rarely, do other seem this way to you and usually only in response to you.

"Passive aggressively" pushing people off topics is not sexual harassment. I am sorry.

You want a festival shut-down and people expelled. That is not a solution. That is a hatchet job. It will not fix any problems. These requests are very vindictive. 

Why don't you leave the space?

I think if there are moderator on this forum that his thread needs to be closed. I feel you are harassing these people. And your "evidence" is not that at all. It is evidence of a lack of sexual harassment. It is evidence of you threatening others. Instigating fights with others. Nothing you present is sexual in nature or gender biased in any way.

Please stop this Jen. Find help in a proper way if you truly feel threatened but harassing others is not the answer.

Having a calm open discussion about sexual harassment on this, what seems like male dominated forum would be good. But this is not the way to do it!

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[David Murphy]

>where anyone not instantly agreeing with
>a viewpoint can be assigned to a classification of enemy (in this case,
>"concern troll") and discredited, discarded, or attacked for nonconformance.

I've heard such things refereed to as a "conceptual superweapon" 

http://squid314.livejournal.com/329561.html

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[Liz Henry]

Hi there, I'm not part of this list but am speaking up briefly to say that I'm a little annoyed by being invoked by Jen (and Meredith) in this way. Nobody harassed me at Noisebridge particularly. Double Union was started because quite a lot of people (who had nothing to do with Noisebridge) got together to make a new hackerspace to our liking. In fact I still help out with some of the practical aspects of Noisebridge's organization and several DU members are still part of Noisebridge. I regularly refer people and resources to all the SF Bay Area hackerspaces figuring that it's good that we have so many.

I don't know Jen, and never heard of the people or hackerspaces she talks about, until a couple of weeks ago, when she sent me several very long emails similar to what she says in this thread.  I answered with fairly generic advice that it sounded like a messed up situation that it might be best to step away from, and my sympathies that it is difficult. That is still my view. Everyone has to decide where their own boundaries are and whether to keep working on organizations or relationships, or whether it is unfixable and time to go do something else.

Having a good look at the Running a Hackerspace tumblr now as an antidote...


Cheers,

Liz

[Cathal (phone)]

About to enjoy dinner so won't fully reply yet. But, fwiw I don't think this thread should be closed. I may not be convinced (either way) on Jen's case but I think we must remain open to uncomfortable discussion as a community.

Also, for the absence of doubt I don't think saying "shut up" to a person ( rather than a room) in a community meeting is ever "warranted" even if they speak out of turn.

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[Dan]

Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.

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[Jen Kotila]

On 3 June 2014 17:28, Cathal Garvey <cathal...@cathalgarvey.me> wrote:

Hi Jen,
Actually, I have been reading all of the documents you've posted
(although I'm afraid I have to speed read some), and I'm keeping on top
of the discussion as best I can.

Ok, great. But I still think that a one on one is the best and maybe only way to get people off the fence. It feels a bit unfair as, yes, you are personally connected to Malthe. Those people are always harder to convince. 

As I've previously stated, I have worked with Malthe in the past, and
I'm wary of my own bias.

It's good you see it as it is often very powerful! Some people who consider Malthe to be a friend have come around, however.

 

Given that, however, I don't even accept the
existance of concern-trolling,

We disagree strongly there. I didn't know about the phenomenon before, hm, a few days ago? I stumbled on it there and when I did I was excited as it described exactly the actions of one of the Labitat guys. To a T. I think it is very real and that it is possible you might traipse there, especially if you reject its existence. I mean, we are getting off topic right now debating it! That is a part of it. ;) 

 

and I'm highly sceptical of much of the
content of that tenor on the geekfeminism wikia.

I am sure you are! 

 

Much of the content
there (which I have encountered before) is designed to foster a
black-and-white war mentality, where anyone not instantly agreeing with
a viewpoint can be assigned to a classification of enemy (in this case,
"concern troll") and discredited, discarded, or attacked for nonconformance.

This is your opinion and yet you present it as a fact. Oh, well, you get a pass I do this too all too frequently. It's a bad debating tactic, though. I don't remotely agree with your assessment of Geekfeminism.  I don't, for instance view you as an enemy, I view you as on the fence and think that we should talk as you are vocal and more negative to me than to Malthe. 

The DIYbio community means a lot to me, as it clearly does to you.

Yep.

 

And,
like most here, I'm sorry to see that your work in Denmark (regardless
of whether I or others would feel similarly about the events) have left
you feeling this way.

This is more than just some nebulous way "I am feeling". That is Malthe's line to a T. Are you sure you haven't been talking to him about this? Well, maybe you guys just see things in a similar way. 

This experience has left me pushed off of projects I signed up for and shut out of workshops I should by all rights have been invited to. It has left me experiencing very real harm to my health and to my reputation and my ability to work within the community. I sent this to one of the Labitat guys who fits the concern troll bill as I was describing to him what happened to me http://counseling.uoregon.edu/dnn/SelfhelpResources/SexualAssaultSexualAbuse/SexualHarassmentMythsandRealities/tabid/390/Default.aspx:

Psychological Reactions

• Depression [Check!], anxiety [Check!], shock [Check!], denial [Check-- well not any more]
• Anger [Check-- thankfully this is ebbing], fear [Check!], frustration [Check!], irritability [Check!]
• Insecurity [Check!], embarrassment [Check!], feelings of betrayal [Check-- honestly I feel a bit betrayed by you and we need to talk about why (he originally said "they harassed you and that's bad, but they shouldn't be expelled)]l,  Confusion [Check!], feelings of being powerless [Check!],  Shame, self-consciousness [Check!], low self-esteem [oddly, I feel more confident in myself these days]
• Guilt [Check, but I tell myself that it is irrational], self-blame [nope], isolation [nope]

Physiological Reactions

• Headaches [nope]
• Lethargy [Check!]
• Gastrointestinal distress [nope]
• Dermatological reactions [nope]
• Weight fluctuations [Check!]
• Sleep Disturbances, nightmares [Check!]
• Phobias, panic reactions [nope]
• Sexual problems [nope]

Career-Related Effects (let's think of this as Labitat/Biologigaragen related effects)

• Decreased job satisfaction [Check!]
• Unfavorable performance evaluations [Check!]
• Loss of job or promotion[Check!]
• Drop in academic or work performance due to stress [Check!]
• Absenteeism [Check!]
• Withdrawal from work or school [Check!]
• Change in career goals [Check!]

These are extremely real effects. I have been demonstrably hurt. On Thursday the 22nd, I had a nervous breakdown and that wasn't just a "feeling".  My friendships and relationships have all suffered due to this. I can't hack! This is very, very serious.   

Whether or not what you say about your experiences
actually reflects sexism, it does seem that the culture in
Biologigaragen is suffering from a structural problem. The minutes
mention another issue of aggression and a difficulty in dealing with it,
for example.

Full. Stop. You cannot have actually read the documentation and say this in good faith. You cannot seriously have read this and think that there is no sexism involved. Labitat has about 50 active members. Two women were mistreated. One has the username of Jokskitty and her boyfriend is Joks.  

How is that not sexist? And the guys down there know it! They talk about wanting more women down there but then they turn around and saying things like "was that woman on her period?" after I give an impassioned speech. 

In Biologigaragen, Malthe hit on the two women he had as direct reports. He had power over them. This is wrong. Full stop. Then, after romantic interaction ended he became incredibly mean and condescending. Full stop. This is not ok.

This is what Amalie has to say about it, it is a structural problem of Malthe sexually harassing women: 

• 
  

• 3/26, 11:43pm

• Amalie Knage

• Sorry I was gone from the computer. With Malthe and me, it's more like he shifts all the time in how he acts around me. He's being condesending towards me when we are around other people especially. And he needs to stop flirting with all the females around him, cause it affects the environment in the project in a negative way.

While I don't think the others in the minutes were wrong to avoid
imposing written strictures 

in that case or others, if an informal
resolution process is what the membership overall prefer, it does seem
that the discussion/resolution process isn't up to task in cases like
that, and cases like yours.

Well, I think it is wrong to not impose some guildlines. Noisebridge eventually had to after Liz spoke out. https://noisebridge.net/wiki/Harassment  https://noisebridge.net/wiki/The_Anti-Harassment_Policy Some people won't get it until it's written down and we need to do this in Labitat/Biologigaragen in order to become functional. Much of membership is also currently striking the bizarre position of "you were harassed and we do not condone harassment, however, in this case we want him to stay because he is our friend and your pain and suffering mean less than the fact that we like him". 

However, having read the documents you posted, and many of your
annotations of said documents, I can't say that I understand your
position, either.

Which position? The overall position or the one you are arguing about below? 

 

You posted a document where Malthe asked you to bring
a neutral third party of your choosing, and you presented this as an
attack or an undermining position.. I genuinely don't understand that
argument at all. To me, perhaps as an outsider, Malthe's proposition
seemed entirely reasonable.

It wasn't in the given situation. Look at how long it took from Apr. 28 to now to find someone else. I knew that would happen and I called it. Also, the person I had was fully trained in these matters and is a well accredited group psychologist. It was not ideal, no, but it would have been WORLDS better to start with SOMETHING and then move on if need be as even then the situation was critical. Here is a key point: instead of my trained mediator, we were using another member of the steering group as a mediator. Oh, and then we started using one of Malthe's old friends who is dating a woman who is a close friend of Malthe's as a defacto mediator. That is soooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo much more fair, right? Oh, and it is way smarter to use untrained people who are old friends of the bloc instead of a trained and qualified individual, right=  No. Not at all and it is part of why you and I are talking. Yay! Good times. 

Reading over the minutes, I can see the event you describe, with others
saying "shut up", and I would condemn that on its hostility. It's an
emotionally charged event, but civility is critical, and

Yes, it was horrifying. Also that Søren was allowed to veer off topic to badger me and faced no reprimand.

 

(assuming the
minutes are not your own version)

Wow, did you really just accuse me of editing the minutes? Did you? What. The. Hell. I feel like stopping dialog with you if you can't 'splain that one right quick. 

 

there is no record of you showing that
form of hostility to others. However, I don't think it's appropriate to
blame the moderator for asking you to keep your silence while others
speak (as I hope he did to others if they interrupted you), nor for
asking you to keep things brief, because that's what a moderator is
supposed to do. A good moderator annoys everyone in equal measure.

Yes, exactly, that last point is key. It is fine to interrupt me, sure, if I am interrupting someone as did happen. What didn't happen was the moderator interrupting or sanctioning those that interrupted me, often with great hostility. When Søren and the others told me to shut up, he should have sanctioned them and yet he didn't. 

I have no role in this except that I am vocal about DIYbio, and because
this arrives in my inbox and includes entreaties to my opinion.

Well, I think everyone has many complex motivations in this life and this is selling yourself short. 

 

But if
you want my opinion, and if it means it'll be discarded as "concern
trolling" or some other frame/construct, then so be it.

Well, I don't particularly want your opinion  right at this instant as, gauging from  my past experiences with those who present as you do, you really could go either way. You could. There was one other Labitat guy who came off as a a huge concern troll, but when we sat down together and talked he was actually quite able to listen and understand me. But you are unlikely to do that in this format, I think. 

I think that
there is a serious personality conflict in BG,

I think that this is WAY beyond a personality conflict and most who know the story agree. There are two women in Biologigaragen. The other one also felt mistreated and has left. This is in part, as she says, a systemic problem with Malthe's interactions with women that "affects the environment in the project in a negative way". This is also a problem in that Labitat/Biologigaragen, which has 50 some active members, has three women. One of whom has left over this, one who is clearly in a committed relationship and one who is suffering severe and very real psychological, social and physical effects from the treatment she has endured. That is not personality conflict, sorry. 

and I think that
mediation with a neutral third party is the proper avenue to approach.

I think it is one approach of many that should be employed together.  

I don't think, based only on what you have presented, that what you are
describing is anything near the Scientific American blogging case, nor
the Github fiasco, and I think those comparisons are overly colourful.

Boraz was constantly asking coworkers about their sex lives (not just
teasing them on new relationships, which would be mildly inappropriate,
but actual bedroom activity), picking up physically and spinning a
coworker (after being asked not to) and inviting an affair repeatedly
with a coworker. The github story is murkier, but still pretty messed up
by all accounts, and the fact that they regarded a HR employee as a
suitable mediator in a case involving a company founder was just farcical.

This is way worse. Malthe took me out to burlesque shows and dance parties that were very heavily sexually themed. After I rejected his advances, he turned on me and pushed me out of the organization. It is NOT just about the sexual harassment, either, remember. It is also about the workplace bullying. 

Amalie also had a similar experience. 

I do not see how you see this as ok. Please explain. This is WORSE.  

When you elaborate on the "sexual" harassment you allege, it sounds like
you felt marginalised for being addressed differently because you are a
woman ("we should lock the doors", etc).

No, you are wrong. I did not like him initiating sexual and romantic contact with me. Full stop. When I finally told him to stop, he became a very mean bully. He was my defacto supervisor. In many organizations, it is prohibited for managers to initiate romantic contact with underlings due to power imbalances as I have explained and referenced above. He then used his power to try to push me out after I did not react in the manner he wanted. This is very, very wrong.

 

You're entitled to be offended
at this behaviour if it bothers you, and it should cease if you ask for
it to. I would object if a fellow hacker behaved in this way, because
being made to feel different at all is somewhat exclusionary, even if in
jest. But this isn't earth-shaking misogyny, either.

Sorry, it is. You're just wrong here, Cathal. 

 

You are offended
that a coworker teased you about a relationship with another coworker,
but while that's inappropriate I don't think it even fits the
categorical description of "sexism", because your gender didn't have
anything to do with it, and it was applied equally to your then-partner.

This betrays that you have a very poor understanding of what constitutes sexual harassment.  See the intro here (this is a scan so I cannot copy/paste): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByARLazIQy3pZ0lNVlRQcjUxd3M/edit?usp=sharing In that example, a man shames a woman who threatens his position by spreading a rumor that she is in bed with her boss. This is wildly inappropriate behavior by any standard. 

Your description of Malthe's behaviour towards you is hard to understand
from the outside; humans are complex.

No it isn't, not for most people I have spoken to. When I told this story to a purely neutral guy in Labitat he remarked upon hearing how Malthe had treated both me and Amalie that Malthe sounded like a "sexual psycopath" to him. Well, one thing that isn't in the documentation I've yet linked ot is how Malthe was often talking to me about sexual subjects like tantric sex clubs, sex therapy, etc, etc. Not ok! 

 

But you object that, after a
failed start, he became "cold".

I don't just say "cold" and neither does Amalie.  I say "cold, condescending, dismissive and difficult" and "a mean bully".

From without, it's hard to know how much
of this assessment is down to the subjective; clearly he was "warm"
before, because you and he were mutually interested.

Yes, he was clearly giving me preferred treatment because he wanted to get in my pants. This is very wrong.  Again, as you seem to have missed it:

it is against policy for mangers or supervisors to date subordinates due to the power difference.

Company employees may date, develop friendships and relationships both inside and outside of the workplace as long as the relationships do not negatively impact work. Any relationship that interferes with the company culture of teamwork, the harmonious work environment or the productivity of employees, will be addressed by applying the progressive discipline policy.

Adverse workplace behavior or behavior that affects the workplace that arises because of personal relationships will not be tolerated.

The exception to this policy relates to managers and supervisors. Anyone employed in a managerial or supervisory role needs to heed the fact that personal relationships with employees who report to him or her may be perceived as favoritism, misuse of authority, or potentially, sexual harassment.

Malthe's baseline
can appear pretty reserved to begin with (sorry Malthe!), and that's
before factoring in the awkwardness of a failed start and a growing dispute.

You are his friend and you are missing the point. In some ways, it doesn't even matter what happened after the start. The start itself should never have happened. Everyone, and I mean everyone, in Labitat agrees with this. He has turned Biologigargen into a hunting ground. Oh, here is another way this created a hostile environment. Once I was in the space with a visiting artist. There was a guy in the space I didn't recognize. He introduced himself and then asked if I was with Biologigaragen. I said I was. He then asked me if I were "one of Malthe's girls". To which I awkwardly responded no. I do not like being in an enviornment where the boss has such a reputation as (as his friends say) a "lady's man" or a "player" that it is assumed I am one of "Mlathe's girls". That is dysfunctional.  

I'm not going to go on. My aim is not to make you feel marginalised, not
to tell you what to feel or believe.

Thanks. You are doing that, though, in a way, 

 

I think that your position is
complex, and that a great deal of the story is lost in interpersonal
relationships that are impossible to translate to email.

This is true. This conversation with neutrals, especially ones who fit your profile, tends to go very south over emial. This is why I suggested we talk. 

 

I do think that
the severity of the things you allege are amplified by these
interpersonal conflicts, and that perhaps is why it is hard for me to
relate.

I am not quite sure what you mean here, but I do think that you're having trouble relating, yes. Which makes some sense. 

So, in closing; I hope that the arrangement to undergo external
mediation is still on the table, and that you all take it seriously.

This will happen very soon.  

A
neutral third party is not a judge to mete punishment,

and I think if
you are seeking punishment then nobody's going to find closure or
resolution.

There need to be consequences. I get a lot of "you are out for blood and vendetta" which is confusing to me. I just do not think that people who behave in such a rainbow of dysfunctional ways are good for the community until they can straighten themselves out. I also think that being rewarded for employing bad behavior is a great way to reinforce that those behaviors are ok. 

yours in concern,

At least you are mildly hilarious. But, really, I do feel a bit concern trolled here especially since you are missing things that are very obvious and I feel the need to explain them to you again.  I do feel like throwing my hands up like Lisa did on Twitter. She's right, you can be pretty condescending. And if you were really concerned, you would engage with me in dialog. She did. Many others did. You won't, I think for the same reason Noah Weiss won't and some of Malthe's other friends won't either. it sucks to hear this about a friend and people seem to try really hard to rationalize around it. 

Jen

Jen 

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[Jen Kotila]

Wow, that article is a trip. It's a joke, right? 

When I Googled for good examples of those bingo games to post above, it was pretty hard to find the Zionism ones and so on. Almost every ideological bingo game out there was feminist. This is not a coincidence.

For those who have absorbed the associated memes, feminism is a fully general conceptual superweapon. It has attempted and probably completed the task of making every possible counterargument so unthinkable that any feminist can refute it just by reciting the appropriate bingo square, then pointing and laughing.

...Right?

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[David Murphy]

no, it's simply written by someone who takes more issue with tricks of human nature, psychological tricks, fallacies and other "dark side" tactics used by movements which he likes (such as atheists) than in movements he dislikes. 

As he says, lots of other movements use the same tactics.

Why do you think he also points to the pro-israel movement and the athiests? note that he's jewish and he also doesn't believe in god. What do you think that say about his choice of movements who's methods he critiques?

When you watch people who's goals you oppose use fallacies or mind tricks it's a chance for a cheap shot back at them.

When you watch people on your own side do the same it can just make you want to shout "For gods sake! argue honestly!"

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[Jen Kotila]

On 3 June 2014 18:21, Josiah Zayner <josiah...@gmail.com> wrote:

I agree will Cathal.

I have read many of the documents and things you posted and though it seems you were marginalized I am having a hard time finding sexual harassment.

I bet you just do not understand sexual harassment. Go back and read the overview again. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-DPJhdE71IyXx_Du9TlV5b2UvVvwkLhgOnVO-06pBCY/edit It defines what happened in terms of sexual harassment AND workplace bullying and gives links to resources that will explain it to you. 

At most it seems like jilted would be lover than sexual harassment. In fact you even mentioned in one of the original documents on google drive that you had a romantic interest in one of them!

It does not matter that I had an interest at one point. This is a common misconception. What matters is that his advances were inappropriate and unwanted. They created an uncomfortable atmosphere for myself and for the other members in lab. This is some of the "sensitive" documentation I don't want to release yet as it is between myself and personal friends.  

Also, this matters hugely:

it is against policy for mangers or supervisors to date subordinates due to the power difference.

Company employees may date, develop friendships and relationships both inside and outside of the workplace as long as the relationships do not negatively impact work. Any relationship that interferes with the company culture of teamwork, the harmonious work environment or the productivity of employees, will be addressed by applying the progressive discipline policy.

Adverse workplace behavior or behavior that affects the workplace that arises because of personal relationships will not be tolerated.

The exception to this policy relates to managers and supervisors. Anyone employed in a managerial or supervisory role needs to heed the fact that personal relationships with employees who report to him or her may be perceived as favoritism, misuse of authority, or potentially, sexual harassment.

I highly believe in innocent until proven guilty. 

A good example of why is the Duke University Lacrosse Case, were players were accused of rape with no evidence just the word of someone and they were kicked out of the university and names tarnished. They were later found to be innocent and the person was fabricating.

They are welcome to come here and defend themselves and yet they are not. How would you react if you were innocent and someone said this about you? They have been incredibly careful to not put anything in writing. That is part of the circumstantial evidence, in fact, that they have avoided this so thoroughly. You cite one of the incredibly rare examples of someone faking it. I don't know that case, but I guess it must happen sometimes. What happens way more often, though, is people being afraid to speak out for fear of being called liars. Oh, and also, real cases are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more common than fraud. There is a lot of harassment in this world. Malthe admits some fault, or has to Noah and Amalie anyway, but to me very little. 

There is a fine line is situations like these. I am not saying you are fabricating this but I believe that people should not be defamed as you are doing to these people.

Naming and shaming is a well recognized technique for trying to get people to realize what they have done and hold them accountable. I have linked to many examples of this, too. Also, again, there is a time crunch wherein it is impossible to get the just outcome in the allotted time. And there's the idea that maybe we should develop an hr for biohacking that ISN'T the legal system or a paid mediator. We are a non-traditional movement, why should we lean so heavily on traditional mechanisms? 

 

 

You keep saying people were around and in the minutes there were people around but no one has come on here saying that they think you were harassed. Why not? Why are you fighting this alone if there were witnesses? That would be the only burden that you need.

Ah, in Labitat lately we've been having a meeting a week. After the 22nd, a few others in lab apparently also almost had nervous breakdowns of their own from the stress. People are disaffected right now and many disagree with me having posted here as it makes Labitat look bad, even my supporters so they don't want to go this big with their support. Also, I haven't really asked anyone to do so. Maybe some would. I do have witnesses in terms of credible people who have heard the story and seen the evidence and believe me. Marc Juul is going to come out with an open letter soon. 

As for the files:

In the Soren file you are very aggressive in some of your emails. Even in one saying that they better be prepared for a fight. 

Yes, I am aggressive in those mails. I'm aggressive after months of being sweet and offering olive branch after olive branch and being treated like crap. I did literally tell Søren out loud "no more Ms. Nice Guy". I was fed up. It is common for victims of harassment and bullying to become angry after prolonged exposure to such treatment. 

You also claim you don't speak Danish well or at all? English is not their first language. How much does the language that they use create a perceived threat rather than a real threat?

Their English is picture perfect. Søren says he has trouble understanding but all educated Danes who are younger than 50 speak nearly perfect English. The language had nothing to do with it. 

As Cathal said, people telling you to shut-up sucks but appeared a little warranted in the situation however you say it is harassment but it doesn't appear so. 

It was 100% not warranted as the moderator should have listened to me as I was interrupting to make a point of procedure as Søren was going off topic. It was part of the mobbing behavior and. 

Again, take it to the proper authorities the more stuff you post here the more it seems like a vendetta and not that you were harassed. 

Don't do biology in any space that isn't a university lab or an industry lab. Naming and shaming is a common tactic. I cannot take it to the authorities in time to do what should be done. 

You are also constantly contradicting yourself in these "statements"

One example is:

"Critically, everyone in the opposition tried to shut down the discussion of safe space and defining harassment and tried force me into talking about harassment when I didn't want to because I felt mobbed and was saying I felt unsafe."

Everyone shut out the discussion of harassment but tried to _make_ you talk about it?

Yes, they did both. They shut down discussion at all other times. In that situation, I wanted my strongest supporter there. Think of it as wanting your lawyer in court. They tried to force me to talk about the issue without him and with only two supporters in the room. They had 7-10 dependnig on how you draw the boundaries. That is sick and wrong, to try to force a victim of harassment who is unready to do so in the forum she is in after having taken hours worth of hostility, and pretty much everyone that is not you has seen that. 

In the notes you were skirting the issue.

I was trying to put it off until my "lawyer" was there. I did not want to talk about it just me vs. them. That was highly messed up that they tried to force me to do that. 

 

Even after you defined a safe space you seemed like you wanted an argument not a discussion about harassment.

Safe space was never properly defined and the moderator tried to shut that discussion down in order to move on. As I have said repeatedly, it is insane to talk about a violation of safe space without having properly defined safe space.

 

No one was trying to shut you down when you brought up harassment you were trying to shut them down.

Yes they were, at alllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll other junctures other than this instance where they had massive advantage. You are sitting here arguing with someone who has been harassed and saying that I should talk to a hostile group of people with no support? That is very twisted logic, sorry. 

 

They asked to talk about it and you kept going on about a safe space and were avoiding bringing up any allegations. You seem to make the discussions all about what you feel and not about what should be done.

In that instance, I was feeling mobbed. Mobbing is very serious behavior and the meeting should have been stopped. They were being very hostile the whole time.  

You say you were "mobbed" but in all the minutes you appear dismissive and aggressive towards others. Rarely, do other seem this way to you and usually only in response to you.

Your reading here is very different from Cathal's and from everyone else's.  

"Passive aggressively" pushing people off topics is not sexual harassment. I am sorry.

Topics? You mean projects. That is workplace bullying.  

You want a festival shut-down and people expelled. That is not a solution. That is a hatchet job. It will not fix any problems. These requests are very vindictive. 

Yes, it is solution as it 1. protects the community from this kind of behavior and 2. it illustrates to the people who behaved this way that this kind of behavior is not tolerated and will not be rewarded. 

Why don't you leave the space?

It's my space too, that's why.  

I think if there are moderator on this forum that his thread needs to be closed. I feel you are harassing these people. And your "evidence" is not that at all. It is evidence of a lack of sexual harassment. It is evidence of you threatening others. Instigating fights with others. Nothing you present is sexual in nature or gender biased in any way.

This is reminding me of the Labitat thread. You're the Frank Pedersen/Peter Bøgley of DIYbio and like Frank, I am going to choose to ignore you.  Peter posted this on Discuss: http://lists.labitat.dk/pipermail/discuss/2014-May/013596.html

HVORFOR ER DER IKKE EN MODURATOR DER KAN LUKKE MUNDEN PÅ JEN, JEG BLIVER SKU TRÆT AF AT HØRE PÅ HENDE!

Why isn't there a moderator who can shut Jen's mouth? I am tired of hearing from her!

They also staunchly sided with Malthe and it is less about me or this case, I think, than it is about your own entrenched sexism and suspicions. Almost every one else, everyone, has seen this as a very fucked up thing at least and most have said it was sexual harassment. 

Please stop this Jen. Find help in a proper way if you truly feel threatened but harassing others is not the answer.

Having a calm open discussion about sexual harassment on this, what seems like male dominated forum would be good. But this is not the way to do it!

There are plenty of others here who want to have a constructive debate. I think I will stop, though, responding to you as I have better things to do than to try to convince those who simply cannot see what should be very plain.  

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[Jen Kotila]

Well, I don't see how it would be possible to produce good logic out of that mess. That was one of the craziest things I have ever glanced at. Whoa. 

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[David Murphy]

funny you should say that. For reference he also goes by the name Yvain and is known for logical and well reasoned articles in a community dedicated to avoiding falling victim to or using cognitive biases and fallacies. He genuinely takes more issue with the use of  bad arguments than with a movement itself. 

http://lesswrong.com/lw/6ga/index_of_yvains_excellent_articles/

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[Jen Kotila]

I just got off the phone with the neutral party from Labitat who is coordinating the meditation process. Apparently the mediators he's spoken to want me to desist from posting here as a condition for mediation to take place. Since I DO want to give that a shot (and the suggestion was originally mine, and the mediator I had ready to go on Apr. 28th was declined), I agreed pause this discussion from my end as long as mediation takes place in a reasonable time frame. He was joking about not getting mad at him for silencing me and I am not mad at him. I am not quite sure if I am entirely comfortable with ceasing public discourse here. In fact, I am definitely uncomfortable with it. But I have agreed to do so for now in the interest of trying to reach a solution ASAP as I really just want this to be over and it is possible that the mediator can help them see that they really are not in the right and really do need to step down and away from power. I have been asking for constructive dialog since January and have not been able to get it. It's way overdue and maybe this will actually work. 

Achieving resolution IS why I came here-- to try to see if this could speed up the conclusion. Hopefully it has helped. 

Well, I am grateful for the pause for the more personal reasons I cited earlier anyway. I think that's part of why I assented. So I'm making a concession to that request and pausing discussing this in this public forum for now. 

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[Emil Polny]

Dear All

As you can read in this thread, Jen Kotila has attacked and accused us and several others publicly for alleged bullying and/or sexual harassment. So far we have tried to keep a low profile, because we wanted to avoid contributing to an aggravation of the conflict, and because we were trying to establish a mediation process.

However, since Jen Kotila has repeatedly trumpeted her story on international mailing lists and is continuing to contact a large number of our collaborators and friends, we wish to tell everybody the background and facts, as we see them.

You can find the document here:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/5in7g08ewq4rg7n/AABamCKMD14I1Rcwb3K7vwvca/JenKotilasAllegations.pdf

Kind regards,

Emil, Malthe, Søren

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[dk2012]

I am one of the people repeatedly contacted (and at this stage harassed) by Jen Kotila before this public attack. I collaborate on some of the Biogarageen/Labitat/Kopenlab projects, in which we often disagree, which was also how Jen found me, but I never felt any gender bias nor other forms of harassment. She sounded very distressed and I didn't want to question her intents at the time, but decided to give her the benefit of the doubt while saying very clearly that the privacy is as important as gender equality and other values.  I also respected her privacy and decided not alert any of the people she talked about while offering her mediation and also trying to explain, why this needs to be addressed in a constructive and less personal manner. Her rather aggressive insistence to support her petition, but even more the blatant disrespect for the privacy of other people involved in this dispute (which no one outside Copenhagen can really claim to understand), made me question her intentions and her plea for gender equality etc. I simply don't find her interest in the gender issues around hackerspaces genuine and I'm really disappointed that she misused it for something that looks and feels more like a vicious attack on the reputation of the whole Copenhagen group of biohackers. I stopped communicating with her, because she started accusing even me of various biases and I don't know how I can help her. I invited her to a session in Finland to meet other DIYbio groups and people and maybe realize how diverse the whole group is and make new friends, but she didn't show any interest and continues to send vicious and aggressive e-mails slandering everyone who doesn't share her mission to destroy the Copenhagen group while making the whole gender issue ridiculous now.
What I'm even more worried about is that this whole threat opened a dangerous precedent, where the DIYbio list will become a cesspool of gossips and anyone, who had a dispute, can publicly shame and humiliate people by posting here private conversations and other documents, which we can't even verify. The moderators of this list should make a better judgement in the future or even delete this whole threat. They could refer people with similar complaints to the advisory boards of their organizations or other institutions, which deal professionally with similar problems. Saying this, I'm impressed by the restrain most people showed in this discussion and this gives me hope that we all do care for creating inclusive and supportive environments in our various DIYbio organizations and maybe it is time to share tips & tricks, ideas how to improve the gender balance and support people with interest in science to join. If we are serious about social and gender issues, we need an appropriate form to address them without destroying other values and goals, such as privacy, trust, freedom to disagree.There are important structural problems - most citizen science initiatives and places don't have an advisory board, where similar disputes should be addressed and dealt with, before they become such public issues - and we need to remind every group to have such board...  Copenahgen is after all one of the most active and interesting scene in the world and I hope soon they will have the peace to work on their projects.

...

[David Murphy]

>The moderators of this list should make a better judgement in the future or even delete this whole threat.

once it's in someones inbox it's in their inbox.
which only leaves the option of moderators filtering *everything* in advance which isn't great.

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[Jen Kotila]

Dear DIYbio,

It had been agreed to cease discussion of this case on public forums until after mediation started. As mediation starts tomorrow, I will withhold further comment until after that meeting. 

Regards,

Jen Kotila

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[Jen Kotila]

Dear all, 

I already wrote a response to this outrageous libel on Labitat's Discuss list (I am now allowed to post there again) and on Bioloigigaragen's list (I can post there as well-- I thank DIYbio for not silencing me as that did force them to lift the gag order that was intended for me only at Biologigargen and also the more general moderation in Labitat)). As I am very busy seeing if I can't throw some last-minute direct action together counter the Kopenlab Festival via the organization I and a few others created to help combat discrimination in hacking using the principles of openness and transparency called opendiscrimination.org, I will not tailor it for DIYbio. If anyone is interested in participating in Occupy Kopenlab, please contact us at in...@opendiscrimination.org. There are many actions you can take that take very little time and effort . 

Well, one thing I will add to this is just remember that the burden of proof is on the accused in these cases and we've seen none of that from them. In fact, as you will see below, I have proof to counter much if not all that they allege. 

I dearly want to seek resolution on this but they have chosen to proceed with the crippled Kopenlab Festival instead of addressing the psychic harm they have done to me. Something like this must never happen again in this movement or anywhere on this planet. 

Here follows the original message:

Mediation is still underway but as the opposite side did not agree to my condition of stopping work on the Kopenlab Festival (which was marketed as a project of Labitat's without Labitat's permission and is part of why they got the money from Industriens Fond) and thus I declared that I would no longer be silenced and would continue speaking out.  

The amount of lies, dissembling, untruth, and libel in this report and from them in general is absolutely astounding and I and my legal counsel are confident it constitutes libel and slander is actionable in court, along with the harassment and discrimination. I feel compelled to respond to these ridiculous claims. I knew Malthe, Emil and Søren were unethical, but this goes very, very far.  I believe it signals either delusion or sheer desperation. I hope it is the latter as the former is very dangerous. Often, those who are accused of bullying and harassment (or other such misconduct) make increasingly desperate counter accusations of libel and slander until they are finally forced to admit guilt to the harassment or bullying. It is classic behavior and has been seen in many such cases.  In fact, what they are doing in falsely accusing me of slander/libel textbook behavior of harassers who have been 'named and shamed'. It is criminal behavior under Danish law. Their false claims of libel and slander are themselves libel and slander. 

In fact, seeing as there is an audio record of Søren Borch trying to calm me down after he INDIRECTLY threatened me by saying "SOMEONE could turn you in to the police for false allegations" on April 27, 2014 by saying, "I didn't say anything was false. I said what you could risk" he has zero case when he claims libel and slander, which he has done repeatedly. None whatsoever. Most lawyers are even leery of taking what appear to be strong libel cases, and this case has all the hallmarks of a "boomerang" case. Him accusing me of libel and slander is simply another lie, another bully tactic from a group of bullies to try to scare me into silence and it is not remotely unheard of. It is a very common one and both of the lawyers I have consulted with have seen it before. No one, especially no one with legal authority,  tends to look kindly on this type of behavior. It is, in fact, criminal and he risks hurting his reputation quite a lot more than if he had simply apologized and tried to work it out like any decent human being would. 

For the record I told him I was going to record that conversation. The audio clip I have provided is a mere snippet. The rest of it is also very damning. 

Actually, one famous case their statement reminds me of is Bill Clinton's denial of wrongdoing in the Lewinsky case. Except in this framework it would read:

 'We wanna to say one thing to the hacking community, I want you to listen to us. We're going to say this again: We did not sexually harass that woman, Jen Kotila. These allegations are false. And we need to go back to work for the hacking community. Thank you.' 

It took Clinton months to rescind that false statement. He was almost impeached over lying about consensual misconduct. I think that if he had been lying about sexual harassment or bullying it is highly likely he would have been impeached. Hopefully now that Søren is caught on audio directly contradicting himself, we can understand what has happened here and start to rebuild a better Labitat. 

Harassment and bullying are extremely serious and damaging behaviors and in this case were perpetrated over a very long period of time and has had extremely negative consequences for everyone and everything involved including but not limited to myself, Labitat/Biologigaragen, biohacking generally, the accused and their other projects. They often claim that I am at fault for harm done to the community, but that is also a very common silencing tactic called, you guessed it, "harming the community".  

They are, I believe, either lying or delusional when they say they haven't committed sexual harassment or bullying as their behavior does constitute that and has been clearly explained to them as being such on several occasions and in writing, using well-accepted definitions from the Danish Working Environment Authority and the UN's definition. 

Actually, speaking of, my short overview of the bullying and sexual harassment perpetrated against me was never posted here on Space. So I will link to that now. It includes bullet point lists describing Malthe, Emil and Søren's sexual harassment and organizational bullying towards me.

Also, it is very important for those reading this to understand that in Danish Law, the burden of proof is more heavily on the accused, which is different from almost all other crimes because the reaction in these cases is so terribly often to blame and mistrust the victim. Here is a translation from the original (search in page for “Der er en tendens til at bedømme” to see the original)

Cases of sexual harassment are judged from a more lenient burden of proof compared to a traditional burden of proof rules. The parties often have a very different assessment of what has taken place. The burden of proof often is often significantly composed of evidence like psychology statements, doctor statements, change of workplace behavior, if the victim has trusted in other colleagues at the workplace, and the detailed and credible statement of the victim on what happened.

There are rarely or never witnesses to sexual harassment. Because of this, if a person in a workplace views themselves as having been violated, then it is up to the other party to prove that no harassment has taken place. Thus a part of the burden of proof is shifted to the employer, who will need to present a counter case.

They issue only non-statements or false and misleading one liners and in no way shape or form do they prove that no harassment has taken place. I have seen no evidence. The lawyers I have spoken with think that they will lose if it gets to that level. I still hope to work it out with the ongoing mediation process, however, because I want to honor Labitat and Biologigaragen's spirit to the best of my ability.

I will now proceed to respond in line to the libel that has now been perpetrated by Emil Polny, Søren Borch and Malthe Borch.. According to the legal counsel I have received, there is absolutely no way I can be convicted for slander or libel when speaking the truth. In fact, I have proof that what they are alleging is false and that no lawyer worth their salt would take such a case as this. However, that Emil, Søren and Malthe have now chosen to tell rather outrageous lies in writing the can be held accountable for the charges of slander and libel that they falsely charge. 

Before I start, however, I would like to point out that the day they sent their long overdue and false counterclaims was the day right before we started mediation. On June 3rd, a neutral representative from Labitat said that Emil, Søren and Malthe had requested that I cease discussing this subject on large, public international forums such as DIYbio and I complied. It strikes me as an act of incredibly bad faith that Emil, Malthe and Søren would request my silence and then choose to respond publicly on the eve of mediation. However, given the unethical nature of their conduct not only towards me but towards Labitat/Biologigaragen generally, hacking and the general principles of human decency it is not really that surprising.

In fact, I strongly feel that Malthe Borch actually has a disability when it comes to being able to behave in an ethical manner. I, and many others who know him, feel that he demonstrates many of the traits of Narcissistic Personality Disorder and that due to this, he may actually believe his false claims. His pattern of bullying fits the definition of narcissitic bullying to a T. Also, I believe what is going on in Labitat/Bilogigargen currently is almost exactly what's described in this article entitled "The Dark Side of Executive Narcissism: How CEOs Destroy Companies' Reputation and Employee Morale" I feel strongly that this is very, very sad for Malthe and I want him to get well if this is in fact what is wrong with him. But it is in many ways sadder and very dangerous for those around him and for the organizations he is associated with, Labitat, Biologigaragen and Kopenlab. Kopenlab has been nearly destroyed as a direct result of his malfeasance. Let's not let it happen to Labitat as well. 

Here follows my inline response to their statement. 

===================================================================== 

 Version 2014-06-16 11.30 

================================================================================ 

Jen Kotila’s allegations against Kopenlab and us 

 

To whom it may concern, 

 

As you perhaps know, Jen Kotila has attacked and accused us and several others publicly for alleged 

bullying and/or sexual harassment. So far we have tried to keep a low profile, because we wanted to 

avoid contributing to an aggravation of the conflict, and because we were trying to establish a mediation 

process. 

I do not believe that this was the reason for the silence. I think it likely that you were all weighing whether to confess and apologize or to continue behave like bullies. It seems that you have chosen the latter path. 

 

However, since Jen Kotila has repeatedly trumpeted her story on international mailing lists and to a large 

number of our partners and friends, we wish to tell everybody the background and facts, as we see 

them. 

 

The background: 

● A group around Biologigaragen and Labitat has for 2 years worked on finding a new space for 

both organisations. As volunteers in this group, we started a new project, called Kopenlab Space 

or Ryparken amba, with which to broaden the scope and establish a collaborative citizen science 

centre in Copenhagen.Labitat and Biologigaragen were invited as major and independent 

players in their own right. 

The Kopenlab bloc, I believe, identified Labitat as a soft target two years ago. They came in, took it over with their manipulative tactics and charm and conceived of the Kopenlab Space and Ryparken AMBA in order to further their own personal gain and create careers for themselves while privatizing parts of the anarchistic, not-for-profit organizations Bilogigaragen and Labitat in the process and using Labitat's savings to fund the start up of what would have been basically another biotech incubator with the twist that a formerly independent anarchisitc hackerspace was anchoring it. From what I have seen a one of only two members of the Labitat/Biologigaragen community who was consistently present in the Kopenlab project's steering group meetings, they had no real care or concern toward the well being of Labitat/Biologigaragen or their core values. 

It is fine to try to make careers out of hacking and DIYbio but it is not fine to lie to and manipulate a community into making decisions that would be harmful to it and would go against its core values in order to do so. 

● The whole citizen science centre idea is to connect makers, university researchers and 

entrepreneurs in a playful, open source, and collaborative innovation. 

Across the citizen science/open knowledge/hacking movements it is hotly debated how much space business should have within such organizations. It was my strong belief, that was echoed by most in the community that the Kopenlab project would be way too business oriented to suit the vision and values of Labitat/Biologigaragen. As our founder Marc Juul said in one of the Kopenlab meetings he Skyped into (and I paraphrase instead of directly quoting) 'the revolution always gets sold and we should stop it'.

● The initiative to create the Kopenlab Festival as part of the ESOF Science in the City Festival was 

taken by us as an opportunity to promote open, international and collaborative citizen science in 

a way that would benefit members of Labitat and Biologigaragen on many levels. 

One thing that I have not yet informed the Labitat/Biologigaragen communities of is that The Kopenlab Festival was being marketed as a Festival organized by Labitat and Bilogigaragen without either organization having been asked for permission to have their names attached to such a marketing strategy. I was producing quite a lot of the PR material and assumed that Labitat had oked it (I was pushed off of Labitat coordination as you can see in the maps of responsibility here (my name is in small letters because I was trying to argue to be on it but was subsequently bullied off of the task in the next meeting as I was similarly bullied off of most other tasks) so I didn't know what was going on as well as I could have). I was very shocked to find out that the Festival was never pitched to Labitat before the May 15th Thursday meeting. At which point I recommended that Labitat not join and it never did. 

However, many other hacker spaces and organizations are under the false impression that Labitat was in charge of this top-down, non-transparent farce of a Festival. This misuse of Labitat's name without permission has damaged Labitat's reputation unduly. 

● We initiated what later became the Kopenlab Festival by obtaining acceptance from the ESOF 

organisation and by receiving a generous donation from Industriens Fond. We saw the Festival as 

a kick-starting event for the new citizen science centre. 

I strongly believe that Malthe and Emil also saw it as a way of enriching themselves in terms of both money and prestige. One thing I didn't grasp until very late in the game was that Malthe Borch and Emil Polny are being paid as coordinators of this Festival. Kennet Harpsøe, who was also regularly attending the Kopenlab Steering group meetings was unaware of this fact. In fact, no one I know of knew about this besides them, myself and Søren Borch. I strongly believe that I was harassed by Emil Polny in part because he wanted to ensure that he would be paid. I do remember confronting him at one point and bringing this point up to him in April. During that confrontation he said simply "I'm not worried about getting my money". 

● At a general assembly in April a large majority in Labitat voted in favour of proceeding to move 

to this new space. Concerns were raised, as the projects evolved very quickly and there was a 

wish for more communication, but the workgroup received support to continue the work. 

I now regret my statement during the GA. Even during that night, I was considering simply not speaking at all due to how conflicted I felt. In fact,  I was the last to speak and I said this:

* Person 17 er meget enig med de fleste andre. Synergien er fed. Der

er mulighed for noget kryds-pollenation, og det vil desuden bidrage

til en sundere kønsfordeling. Enig i at AMBA'et er "u-labitatsk", men

at anarkien fortjener at komme videre ud i nye lokaler.

That's the note in the meeting minutes, here is what I remember saying:

I agree with many of the others. Interaction between disciplines is a great and necessary thing. If we move, it should be into a space that allows for cross pollination of ideas. Also, that will help solve the problem we have of not having women down here-- other disciplines have more women in them and so there will be more there. [At this point, the guy running the meeting interrupted and said "can we go now" in a joking tone and I just as jokingly "sure, let's-- take my hand!" and everyone laughed]. I am one of very few people here who has been on the inside at the AMBA coordination meetings and I agree strongly that it is not very Labitat-esque right now, but I am hopeful we can reach a compromise. I do agree with JC when he says that we could lose our autonomy and our anarchistic spirit if we move into a space under the control of a group who doesn't share our values. But I feel strongly that those ideals will not spread if they stay confined to this basement in Frederiksberg and so I think it is worth it to try to make this work. 

I was hoping, at that time, that this was all just a "terrible mistake" (another silencing tactic they have used in both the corporatism and the harassment charges) and that it could be fixed. The comments are all pointed, however. Yes, I think Labitat would greatly benefit from getting out of its basement and into a space with others. I also strongly beleive that the AMBA was not behaving in a manner in line with Labitat's values. I had hope that it could change then. It wasn't until May 2/May 5 when my requests that we fix things were met with extreme hostility and lies that I saw it was all lost. 

 

The facts about the Jen Kotila-case: 

I find this terminology to be ridiculous. I strongly feel that it  should be called the case of harassment perpetrated in Biologigaragen/Labitat and Kopenlab.  

● There has been absolutely no behaviour from our side that could be classified as sexual 

harassment. 

That is an absolutely false statement. I had told Malthe and Emil of their behavior, which at the time I did not understand was sexual harassment, starting on Dec. 19 with Emil and Jan 26 with Malthe and Emil. Please see here for a description of the behaviors and why they constitute sexual harassment and bullying and a description of some of the times I challenged them I also was forced to eventually send them both letters describing their bad behavior. Here is one I sent to Emil on Apr. 22, it put into writing things I had been telling him for months. And one I sent to Malthe about his behavior.

● Jen has expressed her amorous attraction to Malthe, but this was not mutual. 

This is a ridiculous lie on his part, but it is common for narcissists to lie and actually believe the lie they tell to themselves when they feel rejected. I bet there is part of Malthe that thinks this is true. While it is true that I was initially attracted to Malthe, it is NOT true that it was one sided and in fact I would never had expressed anything to him about it had he not initiated romantic contact with me. He has admitted that he was also initially attracted to me verbatim in our meeting on May 2.

In fact, I have many friends who can testify to the fact that I was hoping he wasn't actually hitting on me when we first started interacting as it was nerve-wracking to me and it was causing me a lot of anxiety-- I wished that I didn't have to deal with his advances and was worried about whether or not they could harm my position in lab in some way as Malthe clearly had all the power. One friend warned me "if he is in fact dictator, if you cross him in some way, heads will roll. I think you should abstain from romantic contact with him and politely deflect his advances". 

Malthe was constantly inviting me to events that were sexually themed such as performances involving nudity and underground, sexualized dance clubs wherein people were dancing in incredibly sexual ways and he was too with many women. In fact, it was after he took me to the Samsara Dance Club that I lost all attraction for him due in part to my realizing that he was a womanizer and that he was interested in parts of the sexual underground that do not interest me. He has this reputation as a "player" as one of his close friends says, and it is so bad in lab that I was once asked by a Labitat member if I was "one of Malthe's girls" which I most certainly never was. Also, other lab members, including Emil Polny, explicitly asked me if I had slept with him which made me feel very uncomfortable as I never had and it never even came close to that. Thankfully I realized quickly that between that trait and others that I now see as a very dysfunctional constellation of behavior, I could never truly be attracted to him. In fact, in retrospect, I was probably only attracted to the ideas he initially represented to me-- those behind Labitat and Biologigaragen which are most certainly not his own. I was also expressing confusion over this possibility to friends during that time. 

After I made it clear that I wanted him to stop behaving in flirtatious, amorous, too-intimate ways with me he shortly thereafter became an incredibly mean bully to me and tried to push me out of the organizations, I think, in part in order to salve his hurt ego.

● Jen joined a project that subsequently developed into the present Kopenlab Festival project, 

with us as initiators. 

Malthe tried to put me on the board of Biologigaragen unilaterally on Nov 14, 2013 on our second meeting. The other board members were upset by this to different degrees and there was an internal argument about what my role was to be. I don't care for power or titles and so said I was happy just to help out. Emil was most displeased and came up for a name for the new working group that I believe denigrated my shy, passive, anxious personality. See here for a description of that. 

This group eventually became the Kopenlab Steering group. It had always been discussed and agreed that I would take a large role in coordinating both the festival and the space as my background sets me up perfectly to do both competently. I have experience with managing staff, overseeing the execution of large-scale events at a non-profit. I even was a member of the operations staff at a major non profit during its expansion and helped ovesee that process so I was the only one who had direct experience with helping a non-profit expand and thus an incredibly valuable resource. 

However, after I confronted Malthe and Emil about their negative behaviors on January 26th (it was on that day that I told Malthe to stop hitting on me and Emil to stop making mean jokes), my role started to be reduced without explanation or qualification other than "but we had been planning it for years and the structure wasn't in place". Which is a defense that holds no water. 

● Jen demanded concrete, well-defined tasks, 

We were all in the process of defining our roles in March. Malthe was voted as "head coordinator" at one point and his role was defined and others had defined roles as well. What happened during that period is that I was often not allowed to choose tasks for one reason or another and I was taken off of tasks without explanation or good reason. Basically I couldn't do anything, which in a do'ocracy" is a rather significant problem. I asked Malthe why on April 1 and all he could tell me was that the roles hadn't been defined, which wasn't true for anyone else but was for me and was a non-explanation. I then suggested we define mine and sent him a letter reflection on what I thought would make sense. 

He agreed to my suggestions at that meeting but then did not actually adhere to what we agreed on. For instance, he agreed that since I am a professional copyeditor and his English is very bad, I should copyedit all public material relating to Biologigagen or Kopenlab. Instead of honoring that, he immediately went and made a post on the Facebook page that was riddled with typos.I then formally asked for us to discuss what my role would be and that discussion didn't happen in that meeting despite me trying to bring up the topic.

There was no reason for him to be publishing content with typos in it when we had agreed that I would copyedit everything in order for Biologigargen and Kopenlab to present a good image to the world. I think he did this as he simply has no regard for others and thinks that he is always right and that he has a great desire to control everything. He also seems to react very badly to being told that he is less than perfect (as is the implication when I point out that his grammar is sub-par). This is very, sadly common behavior pattern in narcissists. 

and at the same time she wanted to be present at 

and overview all activities of our projects, which we were not able to comply with.

This is a misrepresentation of reality. I think what Emil is referring to here is that I suggested that due to the organization malfeasance (misrepresenting the true nature of the Kopenlab project to Labitat) perpetrated that an ombudsman should be assigned to oversee operations until which time it was determined that everything was ok. You can see my basic thoughts on the matter here in the Agenda from the Apr. 28th Kopenlab steering group meeting: 

3. One or more ombudsman should be appointed that will observe the working groups (which is where the action happens now that the Tuesday meetings have been split up) in order to ensure that the original values of open knowledge and a flat, non-hierarchical, inclusive democratic structure are being adhered to.

3a. Jen has said that she would do this, but others are welcome to volunteer as well.  Meetings must not be held in secret, information must NOT be hoarded. Everything must be as open and widely disseminated as possible.

 ● There was no employer-employee relationship, and she was free to leave at any moment, as 

she was an independent volunteer. 

This is patently ridiculous! It's like saying "it was perfectly fine for us to harass and bully her because no money was involved so that makes our behavior irrelevant". I certainly could have left.

My friends and family were telling me to walk away as the whole thing sounded so horrible. I did not leave. Why didn't I leave? Because I think it highly likely that I am the only person who was ever so moved by the values behind Bilogigaragen and Labitat that I went home from them after discovering them and wept with joy at the implications that they existed in what appeared to be a functional manner (little did I know at the time). 

This is the only anarchistic, flatly-organized open tech and biology lab in Copenhagen and if was forced to leave it, its not like there's another one right around the block. 

● The Kopenlab team stopped her work with writing project flyers and website content, because 

the results were not suitable. We regret that this was done too late and not in a sufficiently 

well-communicated manner. 

This almost is the most bald faced lie of them all. Not only did I continue working despite them trying to grab all of my projects from me, including ones I spearheaded such as Genspace coordination and logo design among others, I was also producing fliers right up until the bitter end that rather than being rejected were so well liked, apparently, that they were appropriated for use that I did not approve or authorize by Emil Polny.

I made this flyer for Biologigaragen. Emil then took that flyer and made this one for Prolab (the planned privatization of Biologigaragen), despite knowing that I would object to Prolab had I been properly told about it (which I was not and neither were other lab members).

Further, I recieved compliments and constructive input from the other members who I sent the flyer to. Conversely, when Emil changed my Biologigaragen flyer into a Prolab flyer he did it in secret and did not run it by the group at all as was standard practice for things like that. Further, again, as I am a copyeditor he should have run it by me despite any ideological objections I may have had as Prolab was designed to be a part of Biologigaragen and I was agreed to be copyeditor of the organization. 

I called Emil out for this transgression in this letter and said:

"Also! Why in the world didn't you send those other two flyers around for review? The Prolab and the Kopenlab space ones?There are typos and grammatical errors in both of them and the Prolab one has some wording that reads as really stiff to the average anglophone. I sent mine to the appropriate audiences for review, why did you not do the same?"

● The Kopenlab team finally excluded Jen from the Kopenlab projects, because she disagreed with 

the whole strategy of bringing makers, researchers and entrepreneurs together, and because 

she declared that she wanted to actively sabotage the project. 

This is also a false representation. I think they bullied me out for various reasons: over Malthe's hurt ego after I rejected him romantically, because I am a progressive/anarchist and they are business oriented and I was exposing that fact to the progressive/anarchistic Labitat/Biologigaragen and they wanted to silence me. They also wanted to silence me regarding Emil's harassment and bullying of me. 

After I gave them chance after chance after chance to change and they demonstrated that they were going to continue behaving in an unethical manner that was not in line with Labitat/Bilogigaragen's values and some of which was not in line with any standard of decent conduct, period, I wanted to tell the community what had happened and recommend that both projects be voluntarily shut down while the offenders took some time to figure out why they had done what they had done and grow and change. 

● Labitat and Biologigaragen recently decided to moderate (i.e. censor) this conflict on their main 

mailing lists, after both organisations found Jen’s emails damaging. 

 Now you are accusing Labitat of lying to me. I was told by several members of Labitat that the list was put under moderation because it was decided that the matter was beyond Labitat's organizational capacity to handle and that Labitat didn't want to make matters worse for either side. For the record, at no time was it directly expressed to me from anyone inside of Labitat that they found that the fact that I had sent emails to the list about this matter to be damaging. I have heard it directly expressed, however, that it is widely thought that the misconduct perpetrated by Malthe Borch, Emil Polny and Soren Borch is damaging to Labitat. My speaking out about it is only a natural consequence of the matter not being resolved in a timely manner and that is widely agreed within Labitat and on DIYbio. 

However, I was silenced by Noah Weiss on the Biologigaragen mailing list after he and Malthe decided I was damaging to Bilogigaragen (they are close friends and hold most of the power in Biologigaragen). Further, I was not informed of this at all. Also, my moderation rights to this list were removed without explanation. Noah says he didn't do it but no one else has come forward to own that action. 

This was universally condemned by many of the anarchists and progressives I spoke with as downright authoritarain silencing of a rightfully aggrieved victim. Noah agrees that I have been mistreated and it is very wrong that he silenced me. He has subsequently apologized and I accepted that apology from him. Especially since only I was silenced on Biologigargen whereas on Labitat Discuss, everyone was moderated before they could post. This singling out was ridiculous, especially since at the same time information was being posted about projects I disagreed with with no regard to the fact that they should have been put on hold until the harassment situation was resolved.  

● The Kopenlab team has taken her off the project’s shared Google Drive and Dropbox folders, 

since she seriously threatened to and later actually did contact partners behind our backs with 

the declared intention to damage us and the project. 

At no time did I ever interfere with any of their work. 

However, it is true that if they did not address this critically important situation that they have been avoiding for months I would feel compelled to take the matter further in order to protect myself AND the community from those who would perpetrate misconduct and the lie about it. 

For the record, to my knowledge, no one who has actually take the time to listen to me for the 2-3 hours it takes to tell the story properly and to read the documentation has thought anything other than that something very wrong happened. Some have not done that and they have made snap judgements based on personal loyalties or other prejudices but no one who has openly listened to my witness testimony or seen the evidence thinks that nothing happened as Malthe Borch, Emil Polny and Søren Borch now falsely say is the case. 

● She has now sent libel (untrue written accusations, in Danish “injurier”) to large mailing lists, to 

our donor and to several project partners. She has scared some partners away by using the word 

“sexual harassment”. 

Søren Borch, Emil Polny and Malthe Borch have sent libel in this statement. They have slandered and threatened me in person. They have bullied, sexually harassed me and together with other supporters mobbed me. They are incredibly unethical and almost no one who see this case thinks anything other than that. 

Many biohacking and hacking labs, including the most prominent ones on the planet Genspace and La Paillasse and, sudoroom, that of our own founder Marc Juul have removed support from any project or organization that Malthe Borch, Emil Polny and Søren Borch are involved with including currently Labitat/Biologigaragen and the Kopenlab Festival. 

In fact, as this news spread and the documentation started reaching other organizations many reached out to me to state support and to withdraw from the Festival such as HUB Heidelberg. HUB has rescheduled its event at ESOF to be seperate from Kopenlab due to this matter based in part on how I was mobbed in the May 22nd Thursday meeting by the Kopenlab bloc. 

If there are people still attending, it is only, I think, due to personal loyalty to Malthe or my not having contacted them. 

● In her communication Jen invokes and quotes third parties as supporters to her cause without 

their consent, and thus misusing their name in her slanderous attacks. 

Give me concrete examples and I will make a counterargument. 

We are of the opinion that: 

● We are the victims of cyber harassment and libel, and that Jen is the aggressor. There is ample 

documentation of this (her emails, public googledocs and tweets). 

This, again, is absurd. I have only done what so many other women who were harassed and not reviving justice have done-- name and shame my unrepentant attackers who lie to avoid owning their behaviors. It is, sadly, very often that sexual harassment cases are not resolved properly within the organizations they occur due to structural deficiencies in those organizations and after I was mobbed in the May 22 meeting, I decided I needed to seek help elsewhere as many other women such as Julie Ann Horvoth, Monica Byrne, and many, many others. 

● Her way of acting is totally out of line and unacceptable. 

I contend that their way of acting is totally out of line and unacceptable. Harassing and bullying others and then lying about it is not ok. Neither is trying to use a non-profit, anarchistic open knowledge organization to gain individual profit and fame at the expense of said organizations. 

● According to a legal advisor she is in legal terms guilty of slander and libel. 

According to my legal advisers, you are all guilty of exactly what you charge me with as I am speaking the truth, which is my right, but you are speaking untruths and I have you on record directly contradicting yourself. 

  

● We find her description of events twisted and out of proportion, and her allegations totally 

unfounded and unjustified. 

I find the fact that Malthe and Emil have ignored my distress caused by their severe campaign of bullying and harassment to be no big deal to be completely unethical and dangerous. As is common in victims of harassment, I have experienced many very real negative impacts on my mental health, my physical health, my social well being and my ability to participate in the organizations we are all a part of.

That they would then lie about it makes it all the worse. 

● We risk serious problems in the future when our names may pop-up in Google searches etc. in 

relation to (unfounded) allegations of sexual harassment and other offenses. 

You are facing the consequences for your actions. This line is straight out of the silencing playbook. You perpetrated a very serious transgression against me and against Labitat/Biologigargen. 

The only thing you can hope to do now is to apologize, make yourself better and try to regain respect that way. Recently, Peter Madsen of Copenhagen Suborbitals had to leave that project due to mismanagement and his dysfunctional interpersonal behavior He apologized and left the project. From what I hear from the community, this action has redeemed him in the eyes of many as he is thought of as being a strong person for owning and facing his deficiencies. 

Lying about them and continuing to attack a person you have been attacking for a very long time now is not going to do anyone any favors. 

 

Present status: 

● Her refusal of two qualified mediators, and continuous slander and libel do not signal willingness to reach a solution through mediation. 

It is utterly shocking to me that this is STILL being stated despite me having refuted this argument twice over email. Again, this is absurd especially considering that I had a well trained and objective mediator ready to go on Apr. 28th that Emil, Søren and Malthe rejected.. Here is the second refutation I sent to the group. 

● Recently Jen has proposed a mediator that she prefers, and we have agreed to try this 

mediation. But Jen has continued to send slanderous emails to key festival contributors and 

collaborators even after this mediation has been agreed upon. 

It seems like this group has difficulty in understanding what libel and slander are (which may be part of why they have chosen to make false, libelous and slanderous claims against me). Written defamation is libel, not slander. 

I prefer this mediator as she came highly recommended from within the local anarchistic/progressive community and is not a corporate mediator or laywer OR Noah Weiss, who I have been in conflict with, like the ones Emil, Søren and Malthe were proposing

When mediation was being negotiated I agreed with Micheal that I would be silent on DIYbio. I specifically told him to communicate that I would not be silent in terms of communication between individuals. 

● We have now sought counsel from a lawyer on the legal aspects of a potential libel suit against 

Jen Kotila in order to restore our reputation. 

I have similarly sought counsel from a lawyer about this case. I have been told that my sexual harassment/discrimination case is very strong and that in light of the accusations of libel and slander I can also consider prosecuting for that as well.

I do not want to do this. I want to solve it within the community if possible. But I will wipe the floor with them in court if need be. 

 

For everybody, also for us, it is evident that sexual harassment and bullying are totally unacceptable. 

This is why many participants pulled out of the Kopenlab Festival and now have no wish to intersect with Labitat or Biologigaragen if they allow those who perpetrate such seriously damaging behavior to remain active members of the community.

 

In the present case, however, the only harassment is Jen’s slander and libel against us and many other 

people. 

You are either lying or delusional when you say that you have not harassed me. Also, this whole disingeous tact of "you are the bully" is yet another silencing technique. It is not bullying to speak the truth, it is a moral and ethical imperative I firmly believe that if we as a society continue to allow this behavior to be silenced and pushed into dark corners and not dealt with, it will keep happening. This ordeal has been hell on me but I hope that what will come of it is that other people (women, men, black, white, whoever) who face bullying, sexual harassment and other forms of discrimination will feel more confident in speaking up when it happens next. 

Jen Kotila’s behaviour has already hurt herself, as it has hurt many other people, and several 

organisations and projects, and taken up far too much valuable time for many people as well as reduced their joy of the voluntary work.  

The behavior of Malthe Borch, Emil Polny and Søren Borch has been extremely damaging to me, Labitat/Biologigaragen, their own projects, many other individuals, the hacking community and the broader community. 

If, instead of trying to turn Labitat/Biologigaragen into a vehicle for their personal gain to its detriment they had simply been honest and tried to start an independent start up, that would have been no problem. That they came in and tried to use Labitat/Biologigaragen's cachet as branding to start a for-profit enterprise is horribly unethical, however. Imagine what Labitat/Biologigaragen could have done instead had it not been mislead by their corporate interests for years. 

If, instead of harassing me and bullying me they had behaved decently, I would not have been suffering from serious effects of stress for many months and I may also have become better integrated into the Labitat community (I avoided lab for a long time due to their mistreatment of me). I might have contributed a hell of a lot to the place during that time, in fact, as I was extremely passionate about it and have a lot of resources to give to projects I care for (having had much success in my past endeavors). Often, people who have integrity and who stand out as being well suited for a role will be bullied by those who are less ethical and less well suited. I strongly believe that this is what happened between Emil Polny and me.

Instead, due to their abuse and their malfeasance now both organizations stand on the brink of ruin. 

This behavior is a plague in our society at large and in hacking in particular. 37% of Danish women have experienced sexual harassment. Feminist, women-only hacking labs are created because so many women within the movement experience so much mistreatment it makes it impossible for them to enjoy hacking, 

That Labitat and Biologigaragen have so far protected and harbored Emil Polny and Malthe Borch by allowing them to remain active members and issuing no sanction for their sexual harassment and bullying and now their libel and slander against me has hurt those organizations quite a lot. I find this to be very sad as I expected, and was assured, better from both. It is in their best interests, in the best interest of the hacking community and in the interest of society at large to stop this kind of thing from happening and to sanction those who perpetrate such extremely harmful misdeeds. 

I have suffered for too damn long. Labitat and Biologigaragen have been under siege by this crisis and its origin is in their behavior and the lack of any structures in place to address that bevaior, not my response to their behavior. This is not, however, just about me. This is about trying to get everyone to recognize that we are all human and that competition and power games, which are what sexual harassment and bullying are in large part, eventually destroy so much that they touch. We need to protect open knowledge structures, which represent a potential for real positive social change from being contaminated by this kind of behavior. Destructive behavior on an individual level aggregates to become destructive behavior on an organizational and then a societal level. 

As MLK said:

 "We have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and non-violent pressure. History is the long and tragic story of the fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily… We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; It must be demanded by the oppressed. We must come to see with the distinguished jurist of yesterday that justice too long delayed is justice denied." 

Justice has been a long time in coming both for me and for Labitat/Biologigargen and for the principles of basic human decency. I hope it can be rendered in mediation very soon and that they will not delay or deny this request at the expense of Labitat, Biologigaragen and myself for their own personal gain or due to sad but hopefully treatable disorders any longer. 

Med venlig hilsen,

Jen

...

[John Griessen]

On 06/20/2014 09:18 AM, Jen Kotila wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> I already wrote a response to this outrageous libel

You seem to be the one making claims of problems. The addused say essentially,
"there is no problem." And you've made accusations publicly
to people in other countries far away that have not much ability
to verify anything you say.

Please stop making political posts to this list Ms. Kotila.

Please stop using words like outrageous on this list unless it is
describing a biological specimen, process, discovery, etc...

John Griessen

[Alex]

+1

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[Shubham Goyal]

While I agree with John in that many of us on this mailing list have not much ability to verify anything Jen says and that I too don't particularly love political posts on this list, I disagree with

You seem to be the one making claims of problems.  The addused say essentially,
"there is no problem."

​If the victim​

 

​has been wronged and the intersection of the set of accused with the set of victims is null, I do not think the accused will ever claim that there are problems. Of course, if the accused include Mahatma Gandhi, its another story :P

Thanks.

Warmest Regards,
Shubham​

+1

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[Shubham Goyal]

While I agree with John in that many of us on this mailing list have not much ability to verify anything Jen says and that I too don't particularly love political posts on this list, I disagree with

You seem to be the one making claims of problems.  The addused say essentially,
"there is no problem."

​If the victim​

 

​has been wronged and the intersection of the set of accused with the set of victims is null, I do not think the accused will ever claim that there are problems. Of course, if the accused include Mahatma Gandhi, its another story :P

Thanks.

Warmest Regards,
Shubham

On Fri, Jun 20, 2014 at 11:26 PM, Alex <spid...@gmail.com> wrote:

+1

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[John Griessen]

On 06/20/2014 02:06 PM, Shubham Goyal wrote:
> I disagree with
>

>> You seem to be the one making claims of problems. The accused say essentially,

>> "there is no problem."
>
>
> ​If the victim​
> ​has been wronged and the intersection of the set of accused with the set of victims is null,
> I do not think the accused will
> ever claim that there are problems.

OK. Maybe so. There's still not much way through this list, or any email list, to
assess this kind of emotionally charged dispute. We would do well to limit this
discussion to general cases. Jen has not been succinct.
She has not offered general or specific law cases that are relevant, or concise
descriptions of what happened, that I could tell. She offered so much data I could not look
at it all, so cannot say, really.

[Alex]

Absolutely this. She spends so much time talking about how offended she is that we're not all rioting that you have to skip through it to try to find the points.

Alex

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[Jen Kotila]

Dear Denisa, 

Please see my response inline. 

I am one of the people repeatedly contacted (and at this stage harassed) by Jen Kotila before this public attack.

e I am so sorry but also sort of glad you feel that way. Allow me to explain: when someone feels harassed that feeling is legitimate regardless of intent. It makes me feel TERRIBLE that you feel this way, it really does. The best way to solve a harassment situation is for the parties to talk it through openly, honestly and with respect for both person's perspective and experieience. I would love to do that with you. Thereafter, I resolve to understand why you feel harassed to the best of my ability and then to change my behavior to act in a way that may even land us in a friendship but at least will not make you feel harassed any longer. 

I feel very bad about this and humbly request that you allow me to speak with you about it. 

I collaborate on some of the Biogarageen/Labitat/Kopenlab projects, in which we often disagree, which was also how Jen found me, but I never felt any gender bias nor other forms of harassment.

Just because you never felt it does not mean it does not or can not happen. I have subsequently spoken to a few women involved in the contact imporv scene who describe Malthe as "creepy". Also, the other woman member of Biologigaragen left after this incident in part over her disgust, confusion and torn feelings (which I maintain he consciously and callously manipulated).  

 

She sounded very distressed and I didn't want to question her intents at the time, but decided to give her the benefit of the doubt while saying very clearly that the privacy is as important as gender equality and other values. 

We have had the discussion of privacy vs. transparency. I strongly support personal privacy but also believe it goes right out the window when you commit a serious transgression in an organization and then instead of getting better lie about it. We all know that Clinton got a blow job from "that woman, Monica Lewinsky" because he transgressed and then lied. It's not like this never happens. Also, naming and shaming is a time honored technique as I described in my first post. I think it is such a good one, I founded an organzation opendiscrimination.org to try to give other women one more platform to use when they are harassed as this is a horrifying systemic problem in hacking. 

 

I also respected her privacy and decided not alert any of the people she talked about while offering her mediation and also trying to explain, why this needs to be addressed in a constructive and less personal manner.

I didn't ask you not to tell them, that was your call. I thanked you for your offer of mediation.

 

Her rather aggressive insistence to support her petition, but even more the blatant disrespect for the privacy of other people

involved in this dispute

Again, this is about transparency not personal privacy. 

 

 (which no one outside Copenhagen can really claim to understand),

This claim is absurd in the modern era. I have spoken at great length about this with friends, family and biohacking and hacking and open knowledge "colleagues". Just because you do not understand it does not mean that others cannot. 

made me question her intentions and her plea for gender equality etc. I simply don't find her interest in the gender issues around hackerspaces genuine

That is hurtful and I find that to be an aggressive and mean comment, but it's ok-- it's common to lash out when you are upset. I also am curious as to what you think my intentions are. 

 

and I'm really disappointed that she misused it for something that looks and feels more like a vicious attack on the reputation of the whole Copenhagen group of biohackers.

It is downright normal to try to silence a victim who is Naming and Shaming by saying "you are attacking the community".

 

I stopped communicating with her, because she started accusing even me of various biases and I don't know how I can help her.

wI wish you had informed me of this privately first. I informed Malthe and Emil of their harassmet of me in person and in private for many, many months before going public. I started with Emil on Dec. 19 and wiht Malthe on Jan 26. That is a very long time and many letters sent to them explaining their behavior before I went public and I WARNED them I would do that if they did not change repeatedly. 

You, on he other hand never asked me in private. You never gave me warning. You just went public. You question my methods and intentions and now I question yours-- you may feel genuinely harassed but you are no longer in any credible place to question my methods as yours have been even more violent and public towards me than mine were towards them. Still, I would like to enegage in constructive dialog with you because I am willing to attempt to resolve our conflict. 

 

I invited her to a session in Finland to meet other DIYbio groups and people and maybe realize how diverse the whole group is and make new friends, but she didn't show any interest

This is an outright lie. I said, and I quote:

Anyway, to answer your question I am not sure about coming Finland. I don't know how things will shake out here and I feel unable to plan ahead for even tomorrow let alone a few weeks from now. This has majorly disrupted both my life and the local community. It is part of why I didn't come to Hacketeria. I may now have to miss being in Finland to meet you and others which sucks because I am part Finnish and although I grew up in the states I consider it to be a second home. 

and continues´to send vicious and aggressive e-mails slandering everyone who doesn't share her mission to destroy the Copenhagen group while making the whole gender issue ridiculous now. 

My mission is to protect Bioloigaragen and biohacking and grow both. I have met quite an alarming number of women at ESOF who have been harassed in TRADITIONAL science. Some of them live in CPH and are very interested in helping rebuild Biologigaragen. It is common in science and teck and it must be stopped by any means necessary. When my methods are questioned I respond with this quote from Malcolm X:

"Our people have made the mistake of confusing the methods with the objectives. As long as we agree on objectives, we should never fall out with each other just because we believe in different methods, or tactics, or strategy. We have to keep in mind at all times that we are not fighting for separation. We are fighting for recognition as free humans in this society."

 

What I'm even more worried about is that this whole threat opened a dangerous precedent, where the DIYbio list will become a cesspool of gossips and anyone, who had a dispute, can publicly shame and humiliate people by posting here private conversations and other documents,

eAgain, naming and shaming is a time honored tactic. As Will said "And in my experience, people dont come forward with such important accusations unless they have been deeply hurt and feel they have no other option." This is very very true. No one except for a totally crazy person does this with no reason. I am crazy because I have been harassed. Normally I am pretty awesome as my CS profile and any of my friends or family or fomer or current other colleagues and collaborators will tell you. Read my couchsurfing profile, where many of my personal friends have left me references, to understand me better. 

which we can't even verify.

Wow, now you are indirectly accusing me of making up the documents? Of forgery? That's low! 

The moderators of this list should make a better judgement in the future or even delete this whole threat. They could refer people with similar complaints to the advisory boards of their organizations or other institutions, which deal professionally with similar problems.

Due in part to this nasty flame war here at DIYbio and the even worse one on Discuss I created opendiscrimination.org to give myself and other women a safe space to name and shame in. That said, Will was right to allow the discussion here and I would support any other woman who chose to take her case here. I do not think that naming and shaming should be banned if the victim wants to speak out. 

Saying this, I'm impressed by the restrain most people showed in this discussion

I agree. A lot of people were restrained. But there were many misogynistic attacks as well, which is just what happens on internet forums. It makes sense, as I said, as the least socially adept people tend to spend more time online and the more socially adept do not want to get involved with a flame fest. So the aggressive, misogynistic voices are the loudest and clearest. 

 

and this gives me hope that we all do care for creating inclusive and supportive environments in our various DIYbio organizations

I am sorry, I do not feel that you can say that in good faith at all when you are supporting people who created such a hostile environment for me that I was seriously harmed as result psychologically, physically and socially and in terms my ability to participate in biohacking. 

and maybe it is time to share tips & tricks, ideas how to improve the gender balance and support people with interest in science to join

One tip and trick I know of is: expel harassers and do not support their projects. Then women will feel safe and decent men won't feel like jerks for being in a lab or associating with projects led by aggressive, unrepentant harassers who lie, retaliate and bully more intensely instead of try to make the situation better when confronted.  

. If we are serious about social and gender issues, we need an appropriate form to address them without destroying other values and goals, such as privacy, trust, freedom to disagree.

t Sometimes, we all have to agree that a little racism is ok. I mean, they're negroes right? Fuck 'em. I mean, it is not like she was LYNCHED or something, she was just yelled at and forced to sit at the back of the bus. Whatever! What an uppit sow, amiright? And it is DESTROYING 'MURICA for the damned Negroes to want to be treated withe equality and respect. All racists should be able to be racist. That will help with trust. 

 

There are important structural problems - most citizen science initiatives and places don't have an advisory board, where similar disputes should be addressed and dealt with, before they become such public issues - and we need to remind every group to have such board... 

This is why I created opendiscrimination.org. It is intended to act as an interactive, build it together movement wide HR. I intend to collect codes of conduct from all biohacking labs and from many hacking labs. I would love it if we could produce a detailed movement wide code of conduct to prevent this. 

 

Copenahgen is after all one of the most active and interesting scene in the world and I hope soon they will have the peace to work on their projects.

Well, you are entitled to your very odd opinion. I am involved and what I see is  that it was me, Amalie. Noah, Rune and Malthe who were active in lab and that is IT. That's hardly lots of active members. We get some people into the GENs but they never come back because Malthe and Noah are VERYbad at outreach. They are both kinda, well, mean. Noah is cranky. Malthe is snappish. I have had multiple people say that they were made to feel uncomfortable and disrespected by him. Those who demonstrated the hallmarks of narcissistic personality disorder can be really nice to those they like and respect and I am sure he is nice to you, but to many others he is arrogant, condescending and downright mean. It has not only been me who has felt this, his own uncle Søren Borch has confessed feeling bullied by him to me in the past (which was part of why Søren allowed a budge for the Kopenlab space to be published when he had no faith in it).

So I will close by saying that I am sitting in the press and media office at ESOF and after the next session or two will head over to Kopenlab to hopefully meet you. I look forward to engaging in constructive dialogue and in line with this year's theme, building bridges. 

Regards,

Jen

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[Mega [Andreas Stuermer]]

Don't see this as a statment on this situation, it isn't. But may consider...



>When a woman says “X thing happened to me” and you say “I have no evidence that X happened,” you are calling her a liar.
>You’re saying her report of her own lived experience is not ‘evidence.’ Women hear that constantly–we are perpetually having our reports questioned, our >behavior audited, our pain dismissed.

Is that really a woman-specific problem?

If a women in my country/society a woman says "XY raped me", he will get heavily investigated, be in arrest, be observed long time,
his name will be in the newspapers, etc.
Maybe 2 years later it was disproved, but his life is destroyed.

Personal freedom stops, where others are damaged. Finding the balance is realy really difficult.

Was it Julian Assange? A woman claimed he slept with her without condom and in that country it was legally seen as rape. How could he ever dispove that, if he was innocent? It is like a witch-haunt.  Maybe jump into the garbage landfill and search for the evidence and do a DNA test?
Noone ever can know what really happened, so what should you do? Ruining his (maybe innocent) life? Or not listening to her (maybe true) issues?




>That said, many influential people in biohacking,
>many of my personal friends and many in Labitat/Biologigaragen have heard my full story and
>seen the proof and those people all believe me.

I kind of have a problem with "all people believe XY".
More people believing in it doesn't make it right. Like creationism. Or terroristic religions.
In 1934, whole Germany believed in *one guy*.

[Mega [Andreas Stuermer]]

Ah sorry. I didin't read the marked words.

[SC]

Dear Jen,

I understand your situation.  I am going to give you a piece of advice I wish you would consider.  I provide this advice with your best interest at heart.

Future potential employers will google your name to get a picture of what type of person you are.  One of things a potential employer will find is this lengthy diatribe.  It could be that it will cause the reader to think; what a brave woman, she is fighting to right a wrong and make the community a better place.  It's also possible they will be left with a different, not so favorable impression.  The information that you have provided is extensive and most employers will not read it all.  This information will exist on the internet probably for the rest of your life.  I suggest you keep this situation as private as possible.  If you feel you would like to share information for the public good (and I get that, I do), please avoid being dramatic and keep it brief.

 

I wish you the best of luck in your future work.

[David Murphy]

Jen: First: this is nothing to do with tone, this is to do with shooting yourself in the foot.

If this topic had just been the initial post and the other sides replies I'd have assumed them creeps and left it there but it's your posts, not theirs, that are alienating me.

They're *wisely* saying little because the more they say the more likely they'll shoot themselves in the foot, contradict themselves and generally confirm any negative suspicions we have about them or negative impressions we may get from things they say.

indeed what little they did post would have been better omitted for that reason.

you are utterly free to keep talking but you are not coming across a good advocate for your own cause right now.

When you flat out declare that you feel *glad* that a 3rd party feels that you've been harassing them you don't come across in the most positive light.

Minor side note when did racism come into this?
It's not been mentioned anywhere in this topic but your website has added it to the list of sins.

They're racists now?

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[Mac Cowell]

Hi everyone, Mac here. Wearing my community-member hat, not my moderator hat.

Firstly, I am proud of the community for the good manners and dignity that has generally characterized this conversation so far. On the whole, we seem to be a group of level-headed, open-minded, thoughtful folks with a deep abiding interest in biotech. That's pretty cool and the latter is somewhat rare on public forums (and I wonder what it is about diybio that draws such civil people together).

I believe it would have been detrimental to our community and to the personal development of each individual here if we, the mods, had unilaterally shut down this thread as originally requested by Martin Borch et al. I personally had never encountered a situation like this and it has helped me develop my own values and ethics in this area. I hope it has led to similar valuable development in each of you.

In my opinion, *in general*, when someone speaks up in public with a complaint and a cry for help, they are doing so as a last resort. While some fraction of these calls for help may be made in bad faith, I am confident most are legitimate. Occam's razor is a good principle to remember when imagining the motives of the person requesting help. Starting a big, public conversation is not the simplest way to deal with most, if not all, interpersonal problems. Therefore, one should assume most discussions that are started are the result of the other, simpler avenues of recourse already having been explored and seen to be dead-ends.

In particular, I don't think it's controversial to state that white, western, working men have historically comprised a privileged class compared to other groups, and members of said class are obliged today to empower members of historically- or contemporarily-disenfranchised groups to find the solution to the problems they face in as equitable a way as possible. So, in this situation, as a privileged white guy, I didn't just say, "Oh, Jen, sorry to hear about all this, let me fix everything for you." Or, "Oh, Jen, sorry to hear about this distressing situation, let me tell you how you are allowed to discuss it on the mailing list I control".

Instead, the conversation has developed from first principles, and my only goal has been to gently correct any instances of incivility, of which I have not seen any significant examples. Jen, the person asking for help, has been proceeding with the conversation as she thinks is proper, and I don't think there is a fairer way proceed with such a situation.

Jen: I'm glad you've led this discussion here, and I am more-than-glad that you are establishing opendiscrimination.org to explore ways in which it may operate as a support community and global "HR" group for hackerspace culture. By its very nature it will be a lightning rod for controversy. Your challenge will be to channel this into constructive outcomes for the culture at large.

Jen, you have asked the global community to boycott a local group and festival. Everyone is free to make their own decisions and act accordingly, but I personally prefer to contribute to a solution in ways that are positive and constructive, rather than negative and censuring.

Jen, you recently wrote that you were planning to take this discussion to some place at opendiscrimination.org. If so, I encourage you to summarize your position and what you, and we, have learned in a final post here, and include a link to the opendiscrimination mailing list for all who are interested in following future developments or contributing further.

Everyone else, I encourage you to write a "conclusion" post expressing your stance and aspirations for this issue if you feel so compelled.

I am not trying to terminate this discussion as some have called on me to do. Personally, if you don't want to read it, don't read it. The relative harm of forcing you to filter your inbox is far less than the potential harm caused by censoring the discussion.

Regards,

Mac

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[John Griessen]

On 06/24/2014 07:29 PM, Mac Cowell wrote:
> I encourage you to write a "conclusion" post expressing your stance and aspirations for this issue

I'd like to see it resolved. From the US, I have not seen enough ways to figure out what is
the essence of the problem from the volumes of writings Jen has posted or linked, so
I say, "The jury is still out". Concise descriptions would help, but since some of it
may be negative, I can see why conversation transcriptions are what Jen posted.
Interpreting the meaning of some of those writings might be difficult without
further interviewing of people involved. Good luck with it Jen.

John Griessen

[Alex Murer [Open Biolab Graz Austria]]

Am Mittwoch, 25. Juni 2014 01:30:02 UTC+1 schrieb Mackenzie Cowell:

I am not trying to terminate this discussion as some have called on me to do. Personally, if you don't want to read it, don't read it. The relative harm of forcing you to filter your inbox is far less than the potential harm caused by censoring the discussion.

Regards,

Mac

That's not the point. It's about people (potentially wrongly) accussing other people here on the diybio list, mentioning their full names and that information being forever visible on the internet. If moderators here want to support such behaviour or not.

[Alex Murer [Open Biolab Graz Austria]]

Am Mittwoch, 25. Juni 2014 01:30:02 UTC+1 schrieb Mackenzie Cowell:

I am not trying to terminate this discussion as some have called on me to do. Personally, if you don't want to read it, don't read it. The relative harm of forcing you to filter your inbox is far less than the potential harm caused by censoring the discussion.

Regards,

Mac

Or, to clearifiy my statement, what would you do if someone accussed you here of whatever crime? Leave it for the sake of the discussion, or delete it?

[Cathal Garvey]

This is the sort of scenario for which the "right to be forgotten" was
invented, but that only applies AFAIK to searches within the EU, so a
legacy of accusation can continue to harm social and professional stuff
for many years elsewhere.

Even if ye aren't planning to prevent future discussion of this type on
the list (which is a your decision, and I understand and respect your
position), I *do* think you have a responsibility to delete the copies
held on the public-facing web interface. The discussion's been had, the
only purpose served by the archives in this case is to harm the
discussion participants on both sides in future engagements.

[Jonathan Cline]

Here we have another demonstration of the age old rule about groups.  It really does not need to be proven again and again.  Here it is:

On Tuesday, June 3, 2014 8:42:16 AM UTC-7, Jen Kotila wrote:

>Oh, also, we only have one rule. Rule 0 which is "don't make us make other rules".
>That does not work. At all. While I admire the utopian vision, it has created a very
>dysfunctional community.

The dysfunctional result is a very obvious conclusion, for any group.  It should not need to be tested and the result should have been obvious from the start.  The fact that the group operated in this way is a give-away to the lack of professionalism present and a hint of subsequent problems of miscommunication and biasing of agendas mentioned later in the discussion.  I mention professionalism, and a standard way to handle it is Robert's Rules of Order -- a great set of rules.   If members insist on not having any rules, or having no hierarchy, or on insisting that rules only cause problems, it is not a good team to join.  Find somewhere else, as bad groups are their own ultimate downfall.  Jen mentions "manipulate a community .. against is core values" yet without rules, there are no core values; the values are ad hoc and unlikely to be shared by all.   Assuming a position which presumes her perspective on core values is the group's perspective is naive. 

Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert%27s_Rules_of_Order



Mac, by the way, good response.   There is no way to really delete the topic anyway - it's the internet - even if google groups does have a mechanism to delete this thread, it will only get mentioned later, then likely interpreted out of context, and with no history to refer to, it might rehash again.

On 6/20/14 7:18 AM, Jen Kotila wrote:
>It is fine to try to make careers out of hacking and DIYbio but it
>is not fine to lie to and manipulate a community into making
> decisions that would be harmful to it and would go against its
>core values in order to do so.

## Jonathan Cline
## jcl...@ieee.org
## Mobile: +1-805-617-0223
########################

 

[Jen Kotila]

First of all, I want to again extend my thanks to the DIYbio organizers (especially Mac and Will) for allowing me to speak out and for their extremely enlightened take on such matters. It was huge to be able to do that after I was moderated on both Labitat and Biologigargen's mailing list. I am very grateful for their evenhandedness (they not only allowed by actively encouraged Malthe, Søren and Emil to speak out) and I feel like this attitude needs to become more common. Mac and Will were both right when they understood that my taking up this issue here was a matter of desperation after I was mobbed in Labitat on May 22 and advised to not expect justice there due to its dysfunctional nature, even by my staunchest supporters. 

Here's an update on the conflict: 

Malthe, Emil and Søren have pulled out of Labitat requested mediation on spurious grounds. 

Their reasons, as I understand them, are that I did not comply with their demands to remain silent and that further they do not trust me to adhere to the result of a mediation. Well, they did not comply with my demands (that they step down from an active role within the community until after this matter is settled and that they recognize that discussion of this matter needs to happen). The mediator and all those present at the first mediation meeting on June 17 heard that clearly. Further, I have zero trust for them either, but I do somewhat trust that if they were to violate the mediator's decree, that Labiat would probably take action against them. 

I feel very strongly that this is the latest in a long string of stunts they've pulled in a desperate attempt to silence me and dodge accountability. Labitat asked for this mediation as did the DIYbio community, nearly everyone respects and approves of the mediator and it was very shocking to all involved when they withdrew from participation. 

I feel that even if you were to ignore everything else, this is enough for them to be expelled as they are putting the organization and myself in a position that is one or two steps away from court and negative press, which would be very damaging to everyone, including hacking at large. Therefore,  I urge you to write a short letter to the board of Labitat besty...@lists.labitat.dk to ask them to expel Malthe, Søren and Emil according to bylaw 3.4 which states: by obstructing the association's interests, membership involuntarily terminated by expulsion from the Association, by majority decision of the board. There is no reason for them to remain active within an organization whose requests they are actively and arrogantly disregarding. 

-

-

-

Here's an update on how the conflict will be discussed going forward here on DIYbio and the organization that grew out of this conflict in order to help prevent future instances of this kind of thing from happening:

During the course of this situation I learned that harassment in hacking is a huge, systemic problem that's so bad in some places that feminist women-only hackerspaces have developed. I also learned the VERY hard way that the broader community is ill-equipped to deal with such matters and that DIYbio is a less than perfect forum for this sort of in-depth discussion. It's a utopian ideal to think otherwise. I think that posting short updates here but linking to more in depth analysis would be a good compromise. Those who want the full volume of information have access to it, but otherwise the info is kept brief, but not silenced, on this list. The experience I had here and at home on Labitat Discuss got me to thinking that victims of harassment and discrimination need a dedicated portal to tell their stories where they will not be attacked. This is part of why I created openinclusivity.org

I also learned that most hacking/making/citizen science labs do not have written codes of conduct. In fact many, like Noisebridge in SF, only write codes of conduct AFTER a serious incident such as this one. I see no reason for each organization to reinvent the wheel over and over again every time the inevitable heated and complex conflict arises. I see no reason for victims of harassment to be subjected to more misogyny and abuse when they come forward on public mailing lists as I have (although DIYbio was a LOT better than the fiasco on Labiat Discuss, I grant you that). In fact, I think that simply by writing codes of conduct and discussing openly what behaviors are acceptable and what aren't we could avoid another mess like this in the future. 

In light of this, I created openinclusivity.org to help the movement write codes of conduct and to provided a conduit for those who have been failed by their organizations or may be failed by them without applying external pressure to speak out and seek help. 

The concept behind openinclusivity.org is simple: 

1. It will be a repository of existing codes of conduct collected from hackerspaces and also the organizations in industry and academia they associate with. So when you're a space without a code, you can go here and easily see what other spaces are doing and adapt that information for your space. 

2. It will be a conduit for victims of harassment or discrimination to speak out in a safe space and to get support and help. We need to end the culture of shame, silencing and victim blaming but in order for victims to speak out safely, there should be some moderation. Much in the way http://everydaysexism.com/ operates.

3. Hopefully it can also lead to an accepted movement-wide code of conduct that will tie us all more closely together and promote greater cohesion in the movement. It would be great if it got us all talking more often and more about what our values, visions and goals are. It can also serve to build bridges between us and external organizations within academia and industry by making DIYbio and hacking a more trustworty and stable set of organizations. 

That's the aim for that. I welcome any and all criticism, input, offers of aid, etc. However! Please note that at the moment I am quite overwhelmed here in CPH with the current problem, that I am quite exhausted and have limited energy reserve, and that my mother's health has worsened so openinclusivity.org is somewhat on hold for right now. 

But if you are a good fit for the values and want to help out, it would be FANTASTIC if you wanted to take the reins while things are busy here for me and my Danish collaborators. We haven't really started outreach beyond these borders yet, but aim to as this is a global movement. 

This abominable mess here in Copenhagen has produced some real good both at home and, I hope, internationally. 

Best regards,

Jen Kotila

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