>Anything that harasses, bullies, or abuses an individual or group of people
This is incredibly ambiguous. I think it is important to specify what exactly harassment isn't, and explicitly permit that.
Most people claiming 'harassment' are simply using it as a tool to silence and persecute people who dare to hold opinions that differ from their own. For example, the Twitter harassment trial that just finished yesterday in Toronto. [1] Merely saying that one 'feels harassed' should not count for anything.
Furthermore there is a problem with labelling certain communities as being problematic, or whatever word they are searching for. This makes uncommon or novel viewpoints vulnerable to further marginalization if their opponents succeed in giving them that label.
- Behaviour which can be reasonably considered harassment will not be tolerated.
+ Behaviour which can be considered harassment against protected classes will not be tolerated.
That change sure seems a lot like it's saying "we're now okay with harassment as long as the person you're harassing isn't a member of a protected class". Isn't that then adding abuse-enabling language, not removing it?
Depends on if you mean objective, or subjective harassment. Offense could be described as the latter. The power comes from being able to provide the latter, and it being treated as the former.
> I'd rather hear from the people on the receiving end. If it's not welcome, then it should stop.
It seems kind of obvious that harassment of any kind isn't welcome by the recipient. That's given by definition of the word "harassment". I've definitely been on the receiving end for what it's worth.
> Shaming and shunning can easily be considered harassment in the right context
Shunning is never harassment. Shaming could be, but not on its own -- it would probably have to be either extraordinarily sustained/egregious and/or paired with credible threats to person or property.
Even emergent behavior that has the same effect as blatant harassment isn't harassment. I.e., sending one person 10K letters, some of which contain (even unspecific) threats, is CERTAINLY harassment. But if 10K people each send one letter, there are probably zero instances of harassment unless one of the letters is seriously egregious (e.g., contains specific and credible threats). And even then, the other 99,999 letters aren't instances of harassment.
Organized behavior might be. It depends on the amount of coordination. But probably the case is too difficult to take on.
Shaming and shunning is not harassment, harassment is harassment which requires additional components beyond just shaming and shunning; you have to take it to an excess or compound it with other behavior for shaming and/or shunning to reach anything even remotely resembling harassment.
So decidedly no; you are not granted a freedom from shaming and shunning for your opinion, not in American culture, not in Western or Eastern culture, not historically, not in any religion, nowhere has this concept been held up as a societal more. The concept literally does not exist, and yet here the NYT cites it as some cultural artifact like it's been a cornerstone of American society from the beginning.
And what's provable in a court of law is completely immaterial to this discussion, not sure why you'd bring that up. The NYT was not citing the First Amendment, and in fact directly says so later on in the editorial.
Harassment is defined as "aggressive pressure or intimidation." Can you help everyone here understand how occasional requests for donation for a free service you voluntarily use constitute harassment?
> Way to put all of the responsibility back on the people reporting the harassment.
This is the key point. Notice that the six bullets above are all demanding preventative measures from the victim. We do not need to provide victims with
> advice that targets the world as it actually is
but instead we need to provide all members of the community advice that targets how they can (and should) be preventing transgressions against others.
>IF I come and creep you out, stalk you, threaten harm to you and your family, maybe you should just change name and location, and go live in a different state.
Pre-empting the 'but this is internet, just stop looking at it', argument:
Essentially, how is it different from "if X group of people doesn't want to be harassed, they should just avoid their harassers, and not go to where they are". Replace the "X" with women, or persons of any race.
You yourself posted the Code of Conduct, in which it states not only that harassment is 'not appropriate' (same as sexual language), but also that "We do not tolerate harassment of conference participants in any form" - and naming and shaming on twitter is a form of harassment.
Please specify which components are necessary and where the difference lies.
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