I just spent the past week in Las Vegas for my 15th DEFCON, I'm male.
The conference has so many different aspects, it really is better to break it into components, talks during the day, chill-out areas, CTF room, hardware/lockpicking villages, public/private night parties, hanging out at the bars all night, etc.
Here are some of my observations (for better or worse):
* If you're a woman, expect to get hit on dozens of times to varying degrees.
* Some people are drunk during the day, most people are drunk during the night.
* DEFCON attendees tend to be the personality types that make their own rules, and aren't well integrated socially.
* There are some (very few) attendees that seem to have mental problems, don't understand boundaries, and will do very inappropriate things; at least a few are usually banned or kicked out of the hotel or conference each year.
* I chatted with a cigarette girl in the Rio at one point, and asked her if she had been harassed a lot by DEFCON attendees, and she quantified it as, "Not really that badly (in comparison to other events)".
* Small private parties at night can get wildly inappropriate (these are not official DEFCON events, they are private parties hosted by attendees), you'll find naked people in pools at least a dozen times during the con, at least 2 or 3 instances of people engaging in some form of sexual intercourse, strippers, porn playing on a display in the corner, drugs, prostitutes (seemingly not having much success), etc.
This behavior is perpetrated by both male and female attendees, and in fact the average female attendee is worse than the average male attendee in my experience; although, women being in a great minority, you're much more likely to be on the receiving end of inappropriate behavior as a woman.
I had one girl tell me she comes to DEFCON just to meet guys, and said, "I get to have sex with any guy here I want".
This year alone I had female attendees I didn't know, or just met, slap me on the ass several times, had 2 drunk girls walk up and kiss my cheek, had my nipple tweaked once, had my crotch bumped/groped/etc. 3 times, and had a random assortment of other harassing behavior directed towards me (all of this was at night during the parties).
My friend was wearing a kilt, and at one point had a girl stop him to stick her head under the kilt so her friend could take a picture, and then followed it up by grabbing at his crotch while she was down there (in this instance the girls weren't DEFCON attendees, just random drunk women in a casino).
CONCLUSION?
* If you avoid the late night (especially unofficial) parties, bars, and drunken events in general, you are going to avoid most of the inappropriate (and worst) behavior.
* Female attendees will get hit on multiple times by lonely nerdy guys, I really don't know what to say about this, but if you stick to the actual convention, you probably won't endure much worse than bad pickup lines.
* DEFCON has the weirdest, smartest, oddly intense mixture of people I've ever met that mostly come to go completely insane and push boundaries of all kinds... It does have negatives, but the experience is something I look forward to all year long.
> * If you avoid the late night (especially unofficial) parties, bars, and drunken events in general, you are going to avoid most of the inappropriate (and worst) behavior.
> * Female attendees will get hit on multiple times by lonely nerdy guys, I really don't know what to say about this, but if you stick to the actual convention, you probably won't endure much worse than bad pickup lines.
Is this not the complaint - that you can't take part in your culture's events because of the behaviour of others? I would find it intolerable if all the other attendees went off to the last night parties and bars, and I couldn't because I was likely to be sexually assaulted.
Sure you can take part in them, but if you go to an invitation-only private party at 2 AM held at a separate hotel that less than 1% of the conference can actually get into and is thrown for the sole purpose of getting people drunk and doing inappropriate things, you shouldn't be surprised if there is some random inappropriate behavior, that's kind of the point.
And just to be clear, this is not gender specific harassment, as a male I would have preferred not to have experienced any of the following:
* Random drunk guy at a party suggesting that everyone sitting around a table playing black-jack instead play strip-poker, and being ignored until he tried to lean against a lamp and fell over with it.
* Naked people jumping into a pool, splashing me, and attempting to start a minor orgy.
* Walking into a room at a party where 2 guys and a girl were laying on a bed giggling at male/female pornography.
* Being groped by random men and women who half the time weren't actually trying to molest me, they were just too drunk to stand up straight.
* Having random women suggest that I should ask to see their breasts.
* etc.
But in the end, it doesn't really bother me, and I'm glad that those people had a chance to cut loose and get crazy. I've been to Las Vegas 20 to 30 times, and I've experienced far more inappropriate behavior outside of DEFCON than I have at the convention.
I was at a dozen or so different parties over 5 nights, and excepting a few of the small room parties, things were far tamer than standard Las Vegas fare.
I don't think I've met the author of the article, but if she stormed out of DEFCON 16, I'm curious to know why she was organizing the TCP/IP Drinking Game for DEFCON 18...
There is a lot of drama that goes on at DEFCON, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out there's quite a bit more going on here.
I feel like the underlying complaint here is more along the lines of: "Some people want to go to Las Vegas, get drunk, leer at strippers, and call themselves elite. I disapprove of this type of behavior, and I am going to assert that as a woman I feel excluded, and in being excluded I am somehow being blocked from some theoretical opportunity in life that is only available under these conditions that I don't want to find myself in, I'd also like to write an article misrepresenting the issue for my amusement, and the status I may also gain from said article..."
And honestly, as long as you don't get naked and jump into a pool, you're probably pretty safe from sexual assault (as a woman at least). Women at DEFCON can generally take care of themselves, and some random groper is likely to get a beat-down from his victim.
In fact, the mysterious perpetrator at the bar disappearing into the crowd seems a little conveniently vague... and if it did indeed happen, and was at one of the Casino bars, there's a good chance it was done by a random tourist, since people see oddly dressed DEFCON attendees and think it's okay to grab their ass, etc.
In fact, the only sexual assault I saw this year was by drunk female tourists who decided it was okay to randomly grope men and women because they were wearing a kilt, had a mohawk, etc.
> as long as you don't get naked and jump into a pool, you're probably pretty safe from sexual assault (as a woman at least). Women at DEFCON can generally take care of themselves, and some random groper is likely to get a beat-down from his victim.
I'd be more concerned about the woman giggling on the bed than about the naked women jumping in the pool - assault is more common in the form of "we're already flirting and alone; I'll just take it" than in the form of "I'm going to plot how to get this stranger into a dark corner without anyone noticing." You might find it interesting to look up statistics about acquaintance rape and check out this article: http://jezebel.com/5929544/rapists-explain-themselves-on-red... (if you haven't already).
I'm a DEFCON woman who can generally take care of myself, but there's something weird that can happen in response to a lewd comment, an unwanted touch, or worse: a paralyzing wave of confusion, fear, disbelief. Even if you instantly overcome this and tell him to fuck off or punch him, you still just got a shock that can ruin your day/week/etc. Nobody should have to be subjected to this, male or female.
> I feel like the underlying complaint here is more along the lines of: "Some people want to go to Las Vegas, get drunk, leer at strippers, and call themselves elite. I disapprove of this type of behavior, and I am going to assert that as a woman I feel excluded, and in being excluded I am somehow being blocked from some theoretical opportunity in life that is only available under these conditions that I don't want to find myself in, I'd also like to write an article misrepresenting the issue for my amusement, and the status I may also gain from said article..."
I don't think anyone is complaining that guys at DEFCON get drunk and leer at strippers - if they stuck to doing that, I doubt anyone would mind. The complaints are about a pattern of disrespect toward women attendees - not just a handful of serious assaults, but a lot of small papercuts as well. Some examples from my experience:
* Men introducing themselves to a man but not the female coworker standing next to him, since they assume she's just his girlfriend. This happens repeatedly.
* A guy insisting that women are biologically unsuited to be great hackers and not listening to a woman acquaintance who is dissecting his assertions.
* Two guys attempting to practice seduction skills in the chillout lounge on a woman attendee who simply asked if they'd seen her friend.
It shouldn't be unsafe or annoying to be a woman at DEFCON. And the nice thing is that as we learn as a community to treat women attendees better, this knowledge should also help us learn to treat men attendees better - it shouldn't be unsafe or annoying to be a man at DEFCON either. Not zero sum.
The conference has so many different aspects, it really is better to break it into components, talks during the day, chill-out areas, CTF room, hardware/lockpicking villages, public/private night parties, hanging out at the bars all night, etc.
Here are some of my observations (for better or worse):
* If you're a woman, expect to get hit on dozens of times to varying degrees.
* Some people are drunk during the day, most people are drunk during the night.
* DEFCON attendees tend to be the personality types that make their own rules, and aren't well integrated socially.
* There are some (very few) attendees that seem to have mental problems, don't understand boundaries, and will do very inappropriate things; at least a few are usually banned or kicked out of the hotel or conference each year.
* I chatted with a cigarette girl in the Rio at one point, and asked her if she had been harassed a lot by DEFCON attendees, and she quantified it as, "Not really that badly (in comparison to other events)".
* Small private parties at night can get wildly inappropriate (these are not official DEFCON events, they are private parties hosted by attendees), you'll find naked people in pools at least a dozen times during the con, at least 2 or 3 instances of people engaging in some form of sexual intercourse, strippers, porn playing on a display in the corner, drugs, prostitutes (seemingly not having much success), etc.
This behavior is perpetrated by both male and female attendees, and in fact the average female attendee is worse than the average male attendee in my experience; although, women being in a great minority, you're much more likely to be on the receiving end of inappropriate behavior as a woman.
I had one girl tell me she comes to DEFCON just to meet guys, and said, "I get to have sex with any guy here I want".
This year alone I had female attendees I didn't know, or just met, slap me on the ass several times, had 2 drunk girls walk up and kiss my cheek, had my nipple tweaked once, had my crotch bumped/groped/etc. 3 times, and had a random assortment of other harassing behavior directed towards me (all of this was at night during the parties).
My friend was wearing a kilt, and at one point had a girl stop him to stick her head under the kilt so her friend could take a picture, and then followed it up by grabbing at his crotch while she was down there (in this instance the girls weren't DEFCON attendees, just random drunk women in a casino).
CONCLUSION?
* If you avoid the late night (especially unofficial) parties, bars, and drunken events in general, you are going to avoid most of the inappropriate (and worst) behavior.
* Female attendees will get hit on multiple times by lonely nerdy guys, I really don't know what to say about this, but if you stick to the actual convention, you probably won't endure much worse than bad pickup lines.
* DEFCON has the weirdest, smartest, oddly intense mixture of people I've ever met that mostly come to go completely insane and push boundaries of all kinds... It does have negatives, but the experience is something I look forward to all year long.