Eroding bad behavior, one small step at a time

Sometimes I find myself wondering what is wrong with the world. Today's case is one of KC (@KdotCdot) - not KC herself, but the reaction to her "Creeper Cards".

I haven't had any experiences with being a target of any meaningful harassment at tech conferences, but that's not terribly surprising; I'm a straight male. I haven't knowingly been the cause of any, either. But the way I phrased that outlines part of the problem: I don't know. Given the number of socially awkward (and socially oblivious) people in the tech community, both male and female, not knowing is at least part of the problem.

I have to imagine that the vast majority of harassment at conferences are fairly minor things; things that are inappropriate, annoying, and frustrating, but at the same time, things that the targets choose to try to ignore. These still contribute to a culture that is hostile and pushes people away.  These are also the things that most anti-harassment policies will only have a minor effect on, because they are, essentially, the cost of trying to be part of the community.

This sucks.

The "Creeper Cards" seemed to be, from my point of view, a great way to non-confrontationally say, "WTF dude" and begin to push back on the culture of bad behaviors by calling it out and making it clear that something went wrong there.

Anti-harassment policies seem to attack the problem from the other end of the spectrum, in dealing with the things that are reported, and by making it more apparent which conferences have organizers that have at least some understanding of the issues in this space. Not everything will be reported; it's well known that throughout society these things are vastly under-reported for various reasons.

So I can't figure out why something so simple as a card that you can use to point out when someone is being an ass, and maybe, just maybe, trigger some rethinking and a change in behavior, would be a bad thing.