The art of amateur radio is a globe spanning activity, held together by radio waves and the promise of a community with a shared uncommon interest. The strength of a community depends entirely on the members of that community. Without the efforts of each individual amateur, our worldwide license to experiment is doomed. You might ask yourself what part you have to play in this? Consider what would happen if a group of amateurs decided to transmit on an unlicensed frequency, or purposefully interfered with other legal users. It's obvious that the regulatory response to such illegal activities would be swift and left unchecked, it would spark the end of our hobby. What prevents that from happening is our common purpose, our common interests, our willingness to address such behaviour, or said in another way, our community standards. It's the thing that keeps us talking, sharing, learning, experimenting and having fun along the way. I've been told many times that I shouldn't expect all amateurs to be friends, but consider for a moment the sheer diversity of our community. For starters we're scattered around the planet. We have different cultural and political sensibilities, we have different religions and expectations. We don't even speak the same language, even if you forget that the Japanese station you just had a QSO with was using phonetics not even close to their native language. Those differences are mostly attributes of geography, but they don't end there. We have differences in our households and family structures, our work life and finances, our play time and our interests. We also differ in age, skin colour, gender and even our sexuality, orientation and gender identity. Even among all those differences, we are still radio amateurs together with our personal preferences for Icom, Yaesu, Kenwood or some other brand, our desire to use QRP or kilowatts, our need to use a Morse key, our voice, or a computer. We choose to use a repeater, or not, choose HF or not, like to chat, or not, build antennas, or not. So it's with all those differences in mind that I'm distressed to report that yet another amateur has been bullied out of our community. An amateur who joyfully participated in this community, who made videos, wrote software, learnt and shared. Like others I know, she was bullied in our community because she was different and it's not the first time I've witnessed this behaviour and it's not the first time I've called out this unacceptable conduct by so-called members of our community. Different, how you ask? Does it really matter, or are you asking to determine if there was a valid reason for making her feel uncomfortable? To be clear, our community is a welcoming environment, filled with hope and joy, but there is a small rotten element in our midst that we need to rip out root and branch, much like we would if it was deliberate HF interference. You might think that given that this abuse exists on reddit, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, QRZ, email, telephone, letterbox, in clubs and on-air, that it's a majority experience. That's not the case. The same individuals harass fellow amateurs across multiple platforms as entertainment causing untold harm to their victims. The Standard You Walk Past Is The Standard You Accept. It's not just up to victims of bullying and harassment in a community to speak out. As members of our community, we amateurs have a responsibility to speak out also. Anyone who doesn't is part of the problem. Our community is so diverse as to never be one single thing. A bully is a bully, no matter which words are used to sugar coat it. I'd like to invite you to consider any bullying you accepted in silence, either personally, as a witness, directly, or indirectly. This community is strong, it's resilient, it's resourceful, it's you and I and it's our duty to stand tall and speak out, loud and proud, about any victimisation. Even if you've never considered that this is happening in your community, look around and notice people leaving the hobby unexpectedly and examine why that might be the case. You might ask what it is that you can do to help. For starters, calling it out at every occurrence is part of communicating to the victim that they're not alone. It tells the community that they are part of the solution. It tells the bully that what they're doing is unacceptable. I host a weekly net where we talk about amateur radio and discuss issues like this as and when they occur. We've done so in the past and will continue to offer a safe space for members of this community. I have and continue to offer my email address, cq@vk6flab.com, for anyone who is struggling with this to discuss any bullying that they are dealing with. I have experienced some of what this amateur has gone through at the hands of this community and I will not stand for it any longer and neither should you. Keeping quiet and changing frequency is not the solution as time after time experience has proven. Calling out a bully and any bullying behaviour is calling out a vicious minuscule minority with a peanut brain who needs to be read the riot act. They are not welcome in this community. They are few and far between and we really don't need or want them in our midst. In my opinion, the community must take ownership of this problem and address it directly, rather than sit on the fence and leave a victim wondering why they're on their own. If you are a victim of bullying in this community, I stand with you and if you are a bully, I'll do everything I can to call you out. I'm Onno VK6FLAB
Hi Onno and Thanks for your post. One, I would disagree with your assertion that the presence of a few bad actors/bullies equals to the doom of our hobby. That's no more true than saying because there's bad drivers on the road exceeding the speed limits - then the government will surely be soon to just close all the roads. And two .... Calling Out The Bullies as you suggest ..... the Bullies Don't Care. Because they're Bullies. Most of them play the Radio Bad Actor to draw attention to their weakness and to troll you back. They want you to call them out so they can crank it up another few notches. I share your disdain for this conduct - but in most typical circumstances there really isn't anything you can do but spin the dial and go where the bad actors aren't.
The biggest insult you can give bullies, road ragers etc. is to simply ignore them. Don't remind them that their headquarters is where their hindquarters should be.
I also share the disdain for bullying, and I would include hate speech and personal attacks in my disdain. Regardless of a person's politics, religion, sexual orientation, nasty disposition, etc., we don't have to agree with them, but we can still respect them and not bully them or attack them for what they believe. One of the things I love most about our hobby is the goodwill expressed by the vast majority of operators. The problem is what to do about the "offenders" ( those who do engage in bullying, hate-speech, or personal attacks ). I think responding in kind is the worst thing we can do. Not working them and spinning the dial to avoid them is easy enough. But what if they are part of a group, say a well-organized SSB net with 10,000+ members, where the vast majority of members do not engage in such conduct. What if we bring the issue before the officers and board of directors. They could ban the individual. They could encourage net controls to block Netlogger AIM comments from repeat bullying or hate-speech offenders ( using the AIM Group Ignore feature ). But what if they choose to do nothing. Do we then tolerate such behavior? Or do we walk away. Many may disagree with me, but I believe that if we tolerate bullying or hate-speech or personal attacks, then we are also encouraging and facilitating such behavior. And I won't do that. I will simply spin the dial and walk away. And did.
I agree with the above "Goodwill expressed by the vast majority of operators." Bad actors/bullies are just part of life. You can't be shielded from everything and everyone. Just learn to ignore them and laugh at their ignorance, that should be taught to everyone, but is not much any more. You can't slap all the mosquitoes in the swamp! I think we all need to toughen up .... .. Don't let them bug you and don't get in the crap QSOs on 7.200 in North America
As a life long victim of bullying, i can tell you that there are ways to fight back. But in an online community its often impossible. With amateur radio we expose who we are by regulation of broadcasting our call signs. For the most part we can self police our members but unless we as a group step up in defense against bullying behavior, it does little good for a single person to admonish them. Moderators often helps but they have to be notified ,hence the report buttons. But as a moderator and admin on other forums i know well how difficult it can be. But i also know that often times a little light hearted bantering or teasing can be easily misread and escalate matters worse. Yes we do need to thicken our skin a little, but we also need to adhere and enforce rigid behavior standards as well so we cant just sit back and ignore escalation and instigation, this just encourages the troll behavior. This is not going to be easy in an international community. I openly admit i am athiest, But i am not a militant one. I have also studied many beliefs and cultures. I am far more tolerant of the differences than most people. My only intolerance is for beligerant ignorance. People can be lacking in knowledge primarily because the have not been exposed to different topics. If they are curious enough they will take the effort to learn. On average though most bullies are afraid to admit their lack of knowledge and will try to get the upper hand in the situation out of some misguided sense of superiority. In spite of being called a know-it-all, a dweeb, a spaz, a nerd, and many other somewhat unmentional names, I will tell you. I don't know it all! If I did would I be human or a god (For the religious type)?
A fix I believe is necessary is a change in Amateur radio licensing. That won't be sufficient to get more licensed Amateurs on the same page but I believe it is required. We have a bifurcation of Amateur radio with half of those licensed staying above 30MHz and the other half staying below. How do we get people to upgrade? To bridge this divide? What the ARRL proposed was to grant more privileges to those with a Technician license. That's likely to only make the animosity worse since there appears a culture of Technician as a second class citizen, a culture that is a holdover from when Technician was in fact a second class citizen in the view of the FCC. The claim would be of Technician license holders not being tested sufficiently to be granted the privileges the license allows. And by some measures that would likely be proven true. Expanding privileges would only make maters worse. We have a licensing system that is built up from a time when Morse code was the primary means of communication, something that hasn't been true for some time. Trying to change the privileges of the current licenses to something that matches the current needs of Amateur radio is impossible without upsetting a lot of people on privileges gained or lost. It would be best to reboot the system as much as we can without disrupting the continuity of those already licensed. I propose the USA create a license structure much like Canada has. They have two license classes, Basic and Advanced. Since we have a top level license already called Extra and a grandfathered license called Advanced the first deviation from what Canada has is calling our licenses Basic and Extra. Canada divides Basic into two much like the USA did with Technician, someone with a Basic license and passes a Morse code test gets "Basic Plus" privileges, access to frequencies below 30MHz. Unlike what we had in the USA another way to get Basic Plus is to pass the written test "with honors", that is pass with an 80% score rather than the minimum of 70%. I propose we simply have our version of Basic have access to frequencies below 30MHz for a passing score. Canada's test for Basic is a 100 question test, and I believe that is something we should copy as well. This would hopefully keep to a minimum complaints of newcomers not being properly tested. There would have a be a few more deviations from Canada's licensing to avoid having people losing privileges from upgrading from Technician. If this is not a concern then we could do a copy/paste of what Canada has and anyone not wanting to lose privileges from an upgrade from Technician should plan to go straight to Extra. If losing privileges from going from Technician to Basic is not desirable then some adjustment is needed. One is on power, in Canada they have a complex means of describing output power and they limit power to below what Technician already allows above 30MHz. To simplify this and avoid a loss of privileges we could say Basic is permitted 1500 watts above 30 MHz and 200 watts below 30 MHz, except where some other rule places further restrictions. Canada's Basic does not permit use of same band repeaters, while Technician in USA does, so we could not copy over that restriction as well. Canada allows for a Morse code endorsement on their licenses and we could copy that in the USA. This is so people desiring this endorsement on their license for reciprocity agreements in another country can have it. I understand that there are non-government organizations that have authority under IARP and CEPT reciprocity agreements to issue these endorsements but an endorsement from the FCC would be universally recognized. I presented this idea before as a resolution to problems of divisions in Amateur radio and it was not received well. The usual complaint being that "it ain't broke, so don't fix it". Well, we had the ARRL present a survey showing plenty believe something is broke, and plenty of people believing their fix is also broke. Any change in licensing isn't going to resolve the bifurcation seen in Amateur radio overnight, but it will not ever get resolved until the licensing changes. I've heard of plenty of people bullied out of the community because of a differing opinion on what defines Amateur radio. Part of that definition is in the licensing. We have licensing that has been patched over since the 1950s, and it is well overdue for a "reboot". There's not going to be one best answer for what needs to change in licensing but what I proposed is at least a good start to making an improvement.
A friend asked me about the Liberty Net which I had never heard of. Supposedly full of bullies, so I tuned to their announced frequencies on a couple of nights, only to hear...nothing at all. No net, no bullies, nothing. I checked 7200 and it was active with cacophony. Maybe as hams move toward digital, and diehards like me stay on CW, that bad behavior will moderate. The baddies want to be heard, that's the whole point. CW is too slow and digi is too mechanized.
How about we stick to the original topic? We cannot just ignore it and leave it to the moderators. The original post is addressing bullying behavior. We are supposed to police our own ranks. But is it being done? Its too easy to start bickering trying to prove a point, but its also too easy to derail a post by going off topic.
