so out of nowhere, this guy stands up, he takes the empty bottle of Bacardi, hits the kid on the
head with it and screams at him, "get the f*ck back!"... at the end of October, I went to the
Polyglot Conference. it's an annual conference held in a different city every year, and it's been
to Europe, Asia, and this year it came back to the Americas, specifically Cholula, Mexico. this
is the first time I went to the conference and I had a hell of a time. I enjoyed myself so much,
I made some new friends, and you can watch my vlog about that. but that's not what I want to
talk about in this video. quick disclaimer-- this video is NOT a critique to any of the organizers
of the event, I think it was a wonderful event and everybody could see that you know Richard, Anya,
and everybody else poured their hearts into it. I just want to talk about my personal experience.
I want to talk about something I experienced and something I witnessed, and I want to talk
about some solutions of what could go better next year.. in Singapore! now, for full disclosure,
I already briefly talked about this back in October on Twitter, and Richard reached out to me
through the Polyglot Conference account. we've had a, you know, brief email discussion about this,
so I'm not bypassing or blindsiding anybody. this isn't, like, a shocking, exposing video
or anything like that. this is now the fully appropriate time to talk about things, so let's
talk about it. so first, I want to talk about how I was subjected to sexual harassment at the
Polyglot Conference. and it is really regrettable, because being at a conference surrounded by,
you know, people that love all the same things that you do, your guard is down. because you're
just trying to have a good time, so it was very shocking and not fun. so the conference is split
up into a couple different days, right? and at the end of each conference day, after all the
talks and the workshops and events, it was kind of just like an unspoken custom that people would
hang out in the parking lot and you know, exchange numbers, chit-chat, take photos, you know just
have fun. whatever. so you can see why my alarms didn't go up when I was hanging outside one of
the conference halls. I was waiting for my friend Valeria, and this guy comes up to me-- I'm a very
extroverted, gregarious person. I love to chat, I love to talk to strangers and new people, so like,
that's my thing. I'm not going to say his name or anything, even though I know that everybody at the
conference got to know his name because word got out very quickly he was being a skeez not to just
me, but to other women as well, so I'm not gonna give names. but he was a tall Mexican guy, güero,
and he had a jersey on, okay? just to paint you a picture. so we're having a small conversation,
just making small talk about travel, languages, Spanish, specifically Mexican Spanish,
it was cool. but at the end of the conversation, he goes, "Me caes bien." like in Spanish. he says,
I like you. you know? so I didn't think anything of that, because like I said, Mexicans are very
open and everybody at the conference, like, the environment was just very open and friendly. so
first day, no red flags. but then we get to the second day, and this is the day that I started to
feel uncomfortable around him. so I don't want to be dramatic, okay? it's not like he was following
me or anything, but whenever we did end up at the same event, the same talk, the same workshop,
whatever-- he would always sit next to me. and I'm not just talking about like, sit next to me,
because that would have been normal, you know? at the conference you make friends,
you hang out with people, it's completely normal to sit by people that you know, right? but when I
say "sit next to me", I mean like on my shoulder, like, way too close for my personal bubble,
to the point where I could hear his breath.. and smell it.. and he was kind of hovering over
me because when I would write notes, like, just private notes to myself or like, you know, taking
notes on what I found interesting, he would always crane over my shoulder to see what I was writing.
and he would always tap me and make a comment about it after the speaker gave their answer.
he would always whisper some kind of follow-up to me. it was just kind of annoying? you know
that wasn't really like explicitly harassment, it was just f*cking annoying. and that kind of stuff
suppresses my desire to participate, because if I feel like somebody is like, micro-focusing on all
my movements, what I write and everything, it just makes me feel like, watched.. and I don't want to
feel like that. ideally I would like to blend in, and I do not like being the center of attention..
when I don't want to be. I love being the center of attention, don't get me wrong, I'm an Aries,
but unwanted attention is just that: unwanted. and at the end of the second day, the last event
that I was at, it was an introduction to ladino by Dr. Lopez, thank you Carlos. so at the end of this
workshop, the guy who's already sitting right next to me, he taps me on the shoulder. I turn around,
and I was making some conversation, but then he starts flooding me with
compliments. and I mean physical compliments. he was saying, "you have such beautiful hair,
you have such beautiful eyes, your eyes match your hair," and you know, all these things,
and I know that some men consider compliments to be in general, like, a nice gesture,
but it can be very very uncomfortable if you're getting flooded with them and you don't feel that
way towards somebody. and especially if you're in a professional environment, which I was: a
conference. like, that's not what I came here for. to find some type of romantic spark or whatever,
or to get physical compliments, it was just super uncomfortable. and keep in mind, I'm not the kind
of person to just like hold my silence to not start a conflict. like, if somebody's making me
uncomfortable, I'm going to make it known to that person that they're making me uncomfortable, and
they need to stop. so I said to him in a pretty bitchy tone, I'd say, like I was not joking or
being friendly or anything, I think it was pretty clear that I didn't like this. so I said like,
hey man, you know, if you give people that many compliments it can make them uncomfortable,
so I don't I think you should do that. and he just said like, oh okay, está bien, because
mind you we're having this whole conversation in Spanish, but yeah. and so I just left my you know,
bitchy statement, and I bitchily walked off, and I thought that was the end of it. but
you know Mexican men, you know it. they will stop at nothing. on the third day,
okay, I was doing the same thing at the end of the third day that I was doing at the end of
the first day. I was just kind of like, you know, pisteando in the parking lot just doing nothing,
socializing and whatnot. and I see this guy come up to me AGAIN. instant knot in the bottom of my
stomach, because I don't know what he's gonna come up with, okay? and he comes up to me,
he offers me some other like throwaway physical comment, and he says to me,
and I'm going to say it to you in Spanish because it was just so cringe, and I needed to maintain
its original cringe: I know we're going pretty fast, but I do want to go out with you. WHO IS WE?
I'm not in this, bro! you are talking to yourself in this, like, echo chamber! because he had the
gumption to just ignore everything that I had said and done up to that point. like, my body language
was not open, I was not soliciting conversation with him, anything. like, if I tell you one day
that I don't want compliments from you, why, like.. where do you get the idea the next day
to ask me out on a date? I do not like you. and plus, he was ugly. that just makes it worse..
always the ugly guys who think they can just do whatever they want. why is it always the ugly guys
that have the most balls? and that's when I blew up on him. it literally just had me in a fury, I
was telling him, like, I'm not here for that, this is a professional environment, and I was basically
just scolding him, like, don't talk to me again. you're bothering me. my point is: a conference
denotes a professional environment, you know? it just like, enrages me that I should have to
go through that when I came there to meet people, to get educated, to get inspired, and instead I
just get harassed. so before I get too riled up, let's talk about some solutions. because how can
we combat something like that? now, the Polygot Conference already has a policy against sexual
harassment, and like, some rules surrounding it, but it's only listed on the website. and I wasn't
even aware for it until I went looking for it. like, there was no.. it's not obvious, and they
put no emphasis on mentioning that policy. but I also think that they shouldn't have to like,
explicitly mention it because it's kind of just common sense, like, hey don't make unwanted
romantic or sexual advances at a conference, which, again, denotes a professional environment,
but I digress. so an example of something they could do next year to help combat this, I think,
is to include some kind of informational thing in the welcome tote. like, whether that's a little
informational card or a pamphlet, you know, something along the lines of like: "making
friends and networking professionally is great, we encourage that, but romantic or sexual harassment
of any kind will not be tolerated." you know, just something simple like that. another thing
I think they could do is at the opening ceremony, because there's an opening ceremony every year,
they should remind people of the policies of the event, or at least, you know, like if that's too
forward, you could at least remind people to review the contents of the welcome tote,
especially the informational card or the pamphlet or whatever. I think there just needs to be more
awareness on the expectations of the event and the kind of environment that they're trying to
create. because obviously what I experienced, I don't think that's what they're trying to go for.
so the second thing that I want to talk about in this video is a violent incident that I witnessed,
it wasn't directed towards me, but I was sitting right there when it happened. it was at a
restaurant on the last day of the conference after the closing ceremony, and I wanted to talk about
this because the person that started this violent encounter is a very well-known person in the
language community. I'm not gonna name names, but he's a grown man who chose to act like a child.
uh, he's a CEO of a very well-known language app, he's loaded, and he acted like a f*cking douche,
and he is one. anyways, so I ended up sitting next to him just by chance after the closing ceremony,
everybody just kind of broke up into separate groups and went to different restaurants. so
this man was drinking very excessively the entire night. like, even before we ordered appetizers,
even before we ordered anything, he pulled out like multiple bottles of Bacardi from his coat
pockets, and he just started like serving himself shots. and I guess this didn't really set off any
alarms, because like, we're not at the conference? we're at like an after party or an after event,
and people drink at those all the time, like it's not a big deal. and also, I had just met this guy,
so I really don't know what his alcohol limit is. maybe it's completely normal for him to drink two
bottles of Bacardi by himself. who am I to judge? so we've been there for like an hour and a half,
the food is taking super long, and I guess people are starting to get really hungry. there was
another person in our group who was a literal kid. he was 17 years old. the encounter, it originally
happened because there was a confusion over whose food was whose. there was a group of maybe three
or four people at the end of the table-- keep in mind this is a really long table, so there's
a group of three or four people at the end of the table-- and they order like a big platter of food,
just for them all to share amongst themselves. and in this group there is a 17 year old kid,
okay? remember that. so it just so happens that the guy who's sitting next to me, he ordered
the same thing. like, this big platter just for himself. so there's two orders at the same table
of the same big platter. so after a while, the waitress comes back up and she has one of these
platters. so this is where it starts. the 17 year old kid from the first group, he comes up to the
guy who, you know, he just got served this platter instead of them, and he says jokingly, like, "hey,
that's our food, we ordered first!" and the guy's like, oh no, I assure you this is mine,
whatever" and they they're kind of just like, playfully bantering about it. and the kid,
he kind of keeps nudging him and saying like, oh this is ours, and he jokingly, you know,
grabs the plate like he's gonna take it away. and to me it kind of just looks like playful banter,
I'm off to the side, like, talking to Valeria, talking to other people, so this was kind of just
background noise. I wasn't really focused what was going on, what they were saying. but keep in mind,
this guy's been drinking the entire night. so I don't think he realized it was a joke,
or I don't know, maybe he just got very agitated out of nowhere, but the older guy who's got the
plate already, he kind of keeps telling the kid like, no, get back, get back, this is my food,
but it still sounds mostly playful. but keep in mind, this guy has been drinking the entire
night. so out of nowhere, he suddenly becomes very agitated. so out of nowhere this guy stands up,
he takes the empty bottle of Bacardi, hits the kid on the head with it and screams at him, get
the f*ck back! I was soooo shook, because it just instantly like, shattered the vibe. and I'm just
like, what is going on.. so he's screaming at the kid, saying like, I'm a boss, get the f*ck back,
I'm a CEO, and then he picks up a chair and tries to throw it at him. that's when everybody, like,
sprung into action. there were other guys in the group that were like, holding him back, like,
grabbing the chair before he threw it. it was insane, and it just instantly ruined everybody's
good time that we were trying to have. and he eventually did calm down, he even apologized
to the kid, he said like, you were just kind of like pushing my boundaries, and when I say stop,
stop. in retrospect, also, yes I think the kid shouldn't have pushed him that. he should have
just respected that that was his food, but you know, it was just kind of misunderstood playful
banter. but it was just a disgusting response, it was disgusting behavior, and honestly like that
man, I think he's almost 50 years old, and he chose to act like a f*cking child. like,
that's not how you handle things at all. and again, I don't think that this is the fault
of the conference, I don't think that this is the organizers' fault, because there's not much that
they can do to prevent people's consumption of alcohol or you know, what happens at after events,
after parties. but there still is one thing that I think they could do to avoid things like this,
and in this case, it's not allowing people under 18 to attend the conference. and I know that's a
controversial take, because of course there are so many language learners that are under 18 and
they should be able to enjoy something like a conference, but it's a conference. it's not
a convention, you know? like I said before, a conference denotes a professional environment,
and for many people under 18, they've never been in that kind of environment,
so I think it's a bit naive to expect that you can put a 17 year old and an almost 50 year old
in the same room and expect everything to go smoothly. I don't know, that's just my take,
I think that the whole situation could be boiled down on to just age and maturity and really big
gaps in age and maturity, I don't know, and that's about all I have to say about that. that's all I
have to say about the sexual harassment I experienced, and the really weird violent
encounter that happened at the restaurant. this year the conference is going to be in Singapore,
so I'm very excited for that and I hope that, you know, these kind of things are also smoothed
out as well. so thank you for listening to my perspective, if you were also at the event and you
noticed any of these same things, or you have any more ideas about what could go smoother next year,
solutions, things like that, don't hesitate to leave the comments down below. hopefully I'll
see some of you guys at the Polyglot Conference this year in Singapore, that's so far.. I don't
know if I'll actually go. but it would be cool, right? take care, see you soon, bye. [Music]