Believing Harassment Victims Makes Geek Spaces More Welcoming
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.