How should we handle the inevitable intrusion of (cis) men into WWCDC events?

[csojinb]

Some have spoken up in favor of having some guidelines or policy around how meetup leaders should handle men showing up to our events, despite the fact that they are advertised as being for (trans and cis) women. We'd like to open the discussion up in a public space. Some points of consideration are:

• We need to clarify who exactly our events are open to. Trans and cis women definitely, that seems pretty well agreed upon. Do we also want to welcome trans men and/or genderqueer folks? (I am in favor of this, but perhaps others would prefer to stick to women-only.)
• Having a policy that requires meetup leaders to in some way evaluate the gender of attendees is highly fraught, since we definitely want to include trans women (and possibly also trans men and genderqueer people). Even making a spontaneous announcement that the meetup is for people in might make someone that we intended to welcome feel like the announcement was directed at them (e.g. because such an announcement would likely not get made if all attendees were very feminine-presenting women).
• The presence of men at meetups will likely make some of our attendees not want to come back. Even if they aren't displaying any outright problematic behaviors.

Would be great to hear from attendees about what would or would not make you feel comfortable coming to our meetups.

[csojinb]

I would say the easiest part of this would be to come up with guidelines for what to do if someone shows up and is displaying typically cishet-male problematic behaviors, e.g. mansplaining, monopolizing the conversational space, etc. Regardless of the gender identity of the person displaying such behaviors, I think we can agree that we don't want that sort of thing at our meetups. My suggestion here would be to 1) ask them to stop, and if they don't 2) ask them to leave. (And if we wanted to put this in writing, we could come up with a better list of problem behaviors to look out for.)

[emgrasmeder]

Thanks for bringing this up, @csojinb. Even though we are clear in our event descriptions as being trans inclusive, we haven't really figured out what to do if someone comes and presents as male.

We already have a nonbinary/genderqueer person on our leadership team that we'd like to avoid excluding in our writing or explicit/implicit actions. They present as female, but what about nonbinary folks who present androgynously, or transmasculine people?

Perhaps we should consider having a non-gendered code of conduct that gives us the space to ask people to leave for certain [i.e. manarchist] behavior regardless of sex or gender, even if we exercise that power only male-presenting people more often?

[csojinb]

@emmagras I like the code of conduct idea. I think if we implement one of those to give us the space to shut down problematic (and typically male) behavior, in addition to clearly stating at the top of every event description specifying who the event is for, that should be enough for most people?

[csojinb]

One thing that we could do is add an RSVP yes/no question that asks if you identify with ? I don't know if that would be scary to people who fall outside of the cis gender binary. Alternatively, maybe we could just add a reminder on the RSVP somehow that the event is intended for women, genderqueer, etc?

[emgrasmeder]

I feel negatively about RSVP message, but I could go for a you-cant-join-meetups-if-you're-not-a-member-and-you-have-to-answer-a-few-questions-to-join-the-meetup-group. And the question could be something like "What type of Woman Who Codes do you consider yourself? (A developer, a student, a data scientist, etc)..." Basically if it looked like a survey question and not as a filtering for men/women or an outing of trans people question.

[csojinb]

That makes sense. I meant to suggest a yes/no that asks if you identify with (any of whatever we decide is the list of groups we're including), but apparently GitHub interpreted my first attempt as an html tag and thus didn't show anything. My thinking was that that wouldn't "out" anyone as specifically identifying with any one of those identities. BUT I could still see that being scary. Just wanted to throw it out there in case that seemed like a reasonable approach.

[csojinb]

Your suggestion sounds better than mine. More subtle, but maybe still a reminder?

TBH, though, I suspect that any extra measures we take to try to enforce boundaries of inclusion to our events (beyond just stating up front who the event is for) are likely to end up scaring away people we meant to include. It seems like a natural byproduct of trying to include people who tend to act less entitled than the ones we're excluding. So... this brings me back to clear advertising + code of conduct

[emgrasmeder]

Good point!

[lphelps5808]

I am also relatively new to the group, but wanted to add that I don't see an issue with including men in some events. I was excited about joining WWC to connect with inspiring women, learn and get involved in the tech world. However, because there are more men in tech right now, I actually think it's helpful to be exposed and inspired by both men and women as long as we're all focused on creating an environment that's best for everyone.

Plus, don't we all benefit longterm if more men are exposed to right way in collaborating with women so they can contribute to a supportive environment in their own workplaces?

On Fri, May 1, 2015 at 12:50 PM, Joni Halabi notifications@github.com wrote:

I'm going to preface this by saying that I'm a relative newbie to the group; I've only been to 1 (maybe 2) events.

Personally, I do not see an issue with including men in (some?) events as long as the group is clear about the fact that it is one for women who are / want to be / have an interest in being developers. (I view men joining the group as a separate topic.)

If men who are interested in an event are aware of the context of the group and still interested in participating, why not let them? I am a little bothered by the potential of someone wanting to leave the group just because a guy happens to attend an event. As long as that guy shares the same spirit of the group, what is wrong with that? I understand the idea of women coders coming together in the same space, but if someone is so against men joining not the group, but an event, especially if we make sure those men are supportive of the core group, then there are other issues there.

I apologize if this all sounded a little ranty. Don't mean to be, but I just don't feel right about blanket exclusions.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/womenwhocodedc/organization/issues/26#issuecomment-98176229 .

[csojinb]

Perhaps relevant context that I should have included is that there have been a few recent instances of men coming to the meetups and being mansplain-y or otherwise displaying problematic behaviors.

I can understand you not feeling right about blanket exclusions. Being exclusionary is usually the wrong thing to do. Here's why I think it's okay to have a clear rule that states that our events are only for women^*: mainstream tech spaces are welcoming of men in a way that they are not always welcoming of women. Because of this, it's reasonable that the presence of men, even ones who are being good allies, can be uncomfortable for some. For example, some attendees might not feel safe or comfortable sharing experiences of bias they've experienced in the software industry while a man is present. And if women can't feel safe sharing those experiences with other women at Women Who Code, where can we do so?

In any case, a number of our attendees have expressed that they would attend our meetups less often if men became a regular presence. And since our group is for women, I think that we should accommodate and prioritize those feelings over those of the men who might wish to attend. There are plenty of other meetups that those men can go to -- including several women-oriented ones (e.g. RailsGirls DC explicitly welcomes men to all of their meetups, and PyLadies allows men at their shorter classes and hack nights).

Anyway, that's my two cents.

^*Most of them anyway -- we may want to have some events that are open to everyone, in which case we'd mark that on the event description.

[emgrasmeder]

Thanks for contributing, you two. I don't know if I've met you personally at any meetups but I hope to someday!
I'll out myself right now as one of the people who will probably not show up as frequently if men become frequent parts of WWC meetups, and then I'll swiftly move on to clarify this point: I don't think anyone is really considering making 100% of WWC events always closed off to men. For my part, I had a pleasant time talking with males at the WWCDC One Year celebration, and I always enjoy meeting our event hosts, male or female (or otherwise!).

[helenvholmes]

I think it's worth mentioning that because Women Who Code is a nonprofit organization we cannot exclude anyone from meetups. @jonihalabi makes some good points and I believe that by excluding people, we lose some of the spirit of the organization that anyone can learn to code.

I do believe however that a Code of Conduct that you direct all new members to would be immensely beneficial. (And existing members, if they haven't had the chance to read it.)

[creativeblockusername]

Hi, I know this is at least three months old, and I wouldn't want to highjack your topic but I have a question out of personal reasons. I came across your thread while trying to find a meetup that fit my interests. I'm assuming, perhaps too much, that you at least know of some meetups that are geared toward men only. After all you wouldn't start your own if you didn't feel like it was really necessary. So my unrelatedly-related question is, do you know of any Chicago based non-mra meetups that target cis male interests only. Hopefully somewhere we can talk about stuff where we wouldn't be misinterpreted or offend someone. Again not a group where men would talk bad about women and non-cis people, but a place where they can talk honestly among themselves without having to let non-cis males and women join. Hopefully a non profit.