This post originally appeared on the Geek Feminism blog and is reposted here for posterity.
The Linux.conf.au 2012 proposal deadline is in a few hours, which gives you plenty of time to cut and paste the following into your speaker proposal:
I believe conferences should provide a safe, harassment-free environment for everyone. I ask $CONFERENCE to officially adopt and enforce a code of conduct or policy for attendee behavior that specifically forbids known problem behaviors such as pornography in public spaces, sexual harassment, and bullying.
If $CONFERENCE does not have a policy in place by the speaker notification deadline, I must regretfully decline any invitation to speak.
For more information, see:
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-harassment_policy_resources
http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents
Conferences value their speakers’ opinions greatly and listen when they speak. Donna Benjamin showed this when she organized a demonstration of support for a code of conduct at OSCON 2011; at least nine speakers in favor of the proposal edited their official OSCON speaker biographies to include a statement of support.
An alternative, especially where the conference delegates talk selections to a subcommittee who may not have the power to make decisions about a policy, or who may not have heard anything about them, would be to submit normally, and separately mail the core organisers, or possibly the parent body. (This happens to be linux.conf.au’s model exactly: Linux Australia is the parent body, they delegate the conference to a conference committee each year, who in turn delegate speaker selection to a subcommittee.)
I’m not comfortable putting that statement in my talk proposal, but I did send an email to speakers@lcaunderthestars.org.au and Cc’d president@linux.org.au:
And, just got this back from them: