Hi all,

I have a question about the Harassment Prevention Policy, available here:

A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Harassment Prevention Policy (final).pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 98932 bytes Desc: not available URL: http://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/attachments/20160729/c0fd5492/attachment-0006.pdf

The policy seems to conflate harassment and discrimination, specifically in this clause:

"Both the Company and U.S. law also prohibit unlawful workplace harassment. Unlawful harassment is unwelcome conduct, based on a Protected Characteristic, that is sufficiently severe and pervasive to alter the terms and conditions of employment or create an intimidating, offensive, or abusive working environment. Prohibited harassment can take many forms, including, but not limited to the following, when based on a Protected Characteristic: •Making or using derogatory comments, emails, letters, epithets, slurs, or explicit jokes. •Derogatory gestures, posters, photographs, cartoons, drawings, websites, emails, text messages, or other physical or electronic media. •Touching, assaulting, impeding, or blocking normal movements."

Earlier in the document, a "protected characteristic" is defined as:

"It is against U.S. law and strictly against our policy for any employee or non-employee to discriminate against or harass any Company employee, contractor or volunteer on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, ancestry, disability, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sex, gender, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, age, military or veteran status, or any other protected status (each a “Protected Characteristic”)..."

Anti-discrimination statutes and policies are commonly defined around "protected classes" or "protected characteristics," since discrimination based upon other characteristics is both clearly allowed and beneficial (performance, fitness for the advertised job opening, etc.), but harassment statues and policies typically don't include references to protected classes or characteristics, since harassment is always negative and thus characteristic agnostic.

Simply put: the plain language of the Tor Project's new policy would seem to allow harassment, provided that it is not *based upon* a protected characteristic. This would also seem to allow the harassment of anyone, including women, racial minorities, or other people whose rights such a policy would presumably be designed to protect, as long as that harassment is not "based upon" those characteristics.

I would strongly prefer if the Tor Project would separately define harassment and discrimination. If someone is turned down for a job on the basis of their race or veteran status, that is discrimination, but not harassment. If someone receives extensive unwanted communications from a co-worker, for example including persistent late night phone calls that are unrelated to work, or extensive unwanted visits from the co-worker at one's home, etc, then this would clearly constitute harassment, provided that the complainant made it clear that these communications/visits were unwanted. However, this behavior need not be based on a "protected characteristic" and it may not necessarily take the form of sexual harassment, either. This is why harassment is typically defined as a persistent, unwanted, pattern of behavior that would cause a reasonable person to experience fear or emotional distress.

Best,

stderr