In May 2016, Stormy Peters (at the time of writing, VP of Developer Relations at Cloud Foundry) published an article on medium.com (archived copy) entitled "Events are not cesspools of harassment", suggesting that harassment at technical conferences can be avoided if women change their behavior.
This article exemplifies victim-blaming and erases the experience of many women who have been sexually assaulted at technical conferences, suggesting these women could have avoided the harassment if they had behaved differently.
Cloud Foundry CEO Sam Ramji defended Peters' article, saying "[Peters] is sharing her experience-based viewpoint. Why do you choose to oversimplify it and slam @cloudfoundry?" [1], in an attempt to re-center the conversation on supposed harm done to Cloud Foundry rather than the harm Peters did by gaslighting women.
Responses
- "imagine if your reporting chain at work included a VP who published an article telling women to announce their husbands to avoid harassment" -- Kelsey Innis on Twitter
- "you're putting the onus on women to change behavior, giving harassers a checklist to use to claim victims warrant that status" -- Jenn Schiffer on Twitter
- "The only thing that keeps people from 'feeling' like they've been harassed is a lack of harassment. Period." -- Lindsey Bieda on Twitter
- "I see you’re in a fairly lofty position at your company. Are you a supervisor of some kind? While I know I’m wildly outside your area of expertise, I would not ever consider working for you. And I know for a fact that right now, you are alienating many women who do actually work in your industry with these posts of yours generally taking the useless middle road." -- Holly Wood on Medium
