I meant to write something funny, insightful and biting. But honestly, I’ve lost my sense of humor at the moment. So, here’s your trigger warning about discussing rape, statistics and slut-shaming if you want to stop reading now.<\/p>\n
What’s happened is that Noirin was sexually assaulted<\/a>. And then she named the person who assaulted her.<\/p>\n I’m lucky enough to have never been assaulted at a conference. I can barely imagine the hurt and frustration, because the people who attend the conferences I run or attend are my friends, people I trust, and the violation feels unforgivable. This thought brings me to tears because of the time and energy that I have put into the last six years as a volunteer: creating conferences, giving talks and loving being part of a global community of hackers. <\/p>\n Unfortunately, I know women who have been assaulted. With each day that passes since Noirin’s disclosure, I find out about more women who never told anyone about an assault. I’m very glad that Noirin went to the Atlanta police.<\/p>\n Some facts: <\/p>\n And why is it that people don’t report these crimes? <\/p>\n Well, there was a survey recently by the Haven group<\/a> that has some interesting, if disturbing conclusions. There’s been a lot of coverage of it — the BBC for example<\/a>.<\/p>\n One appalling quote: <\/p>\n The survey also found more than one in 10 people were unsure whether they would report being raped to the police…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And why won’t people report? <\/p>\n The main reasons were being too embarrassed or ashamed (55%), wanting to forget it had happened (41%) and not wanting to go to court (38%).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So, reader, what can we do about this? <\/p>\n If you encounter someone who has been assaulted, support them!<\/strong> You’re not the police, you’re not a court of law — it isn’t your job to put anyone on trial. What you can do is be understanding, and help the woman report the incident to police. <\/p>\n Also, publicly voice your support.<\/strong> You can simply thank someone like Noirin for their bravery in coming forward, and leave it at that. Valerie Aurora<\/a> wrote a supportive blog post with the headline “It’s not just Noirin.” You’re welcome to do that too.<\/p>\n There’s an undertow of disgust in the horrific comments I’ve read on Reddit, Norin’s own blog (and wow – I can’t say I’ll have the same bravery if the trolls ever come after me), and in private. It’s utterly painful to read, exhausting and terrifying. To be called a cunt for speaking about one’s experience<\/a>. Wow. What year is this?<\/p>\n I, for one, am so happy that Noirin had the strength to write so clearly about her experience, and to say what I believe: “It is everyone else\u2019s job to avoid assaulting me”. <\/p>\n One comment that sticks in my head<\/a> from Hacker News: <\/p>\n We as the technology community need to make sure it’s not a “dark alley” for anyone, for everyone’s sake.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And for the women who are assaulted: there is no fucking way that it is their fault.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I meant to write something funny, insightful and biting. But honestly, I’ve lost my sense of humor at the moment. So, here’s your trigger warning about discussing rape, statistics and slut-shaming if you want to stop reading now.<\/p>\n What’s happened is that Noirin was sexually assaulted<\/a>. And then she named the person who assaulted her. … Continue reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[371,369,372,370],"class_list":["post-2209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal","tag-anger","tag-assault","tag-itsnotjustnoirin","tag-noirin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2209"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2209\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2229,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2209\/revisions\/2229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chesnok.com\/daily\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n