
Rue Walker


You Must Be This Tall To Ride: Believing Harassment Victims Makes Geek Spaces More Welcoming, Not Less
We have to believe victims of harassment, even in conditions that we’ve been taught should excuse us from giving a damn: what the victim was wearing, what they’d done with the harasser previously, whether we even like the victim personally, and, perhaps most importantly, who the harasser is.
We want an excuse not to believe, because it would release us from the unpleasant matter of figuring out what to do next. This is an especially thorny problem online, where we act as if we only have two options: join the angry mob with pitchforks, hounding the guilty party out of our spaces and off the web (or out of the industry) entirely, or… do nothing.

The Poison’s In Us All: Mistreatment and Harassment in Geek Spaces
I’m not a perfect feminist. You’ve never met one; they don’t exist. Any feminist theory worth spit will tell you that we are all products of a misogynist, patriarchal society which has gotten its hooks into each of us in one way or another. As a friend of mine lyrically puts it “The poison’s in us all”. Everyone on Earth is a recovering sexist, classist, ableist racist, including you, and including me.
Given we’re all at risk of perpetuating patriarchy, it stands to reason that we ought to take a very serious look at the question of reform and rehabilitation. What do they look like, and how do they come about?