Would it not be better that root cause are addressed; honest to goodness cases and their psychological fall out are dealt with so that whole conferences don't need to duck and run for cover every time a car backfires.
I highly doubt that. There seems to be a great deal of deliberation behind these attacks always involving some self declared champion of 'rights' that is flexing their muscle in an underhanded game of power.
Do I sound bitter? Perhaps I sound bitter. I was going for savage sarcasm, but maybe I've overshot and landed in bitter. I've seen this dynamic play out to completion once, with homosexuals like myself in the role of foil. Now I'm seeing it play out again, this time on the backs of people whose uniting characteristic is having gone through hell at the hands of others, in many cases at the hands of people whom they should have been safely able to trust. Now they get to be used all over again, at the hands of people claiming to want to help - indeed claiming, implicitly or otherwise, to be the only ones who can effectively help, a classic abuser's trick in itself. In the face of such enormities, perhaps I may be forgiven a bitter moment here and there, shameful though they nonetheless be.
I rationalize it as becoming more active in human rights issues after realizing their importance first hand but based on my externally observable behaviour the PTSD explanation could be considered just as valid... and to at least some degree also rings true to me.
So I would say that there is indeed a good chance that a lot of these are caused by PTSD related to previous 'similar' workplace incidents and that indeed preventing those original events will go a long way towards calming the current storm of outrage. Not that I have the slightest clue as to how to do that though...
The initial shots were fired over twitter and included a threat of a boycott unless the 'offending' party was removed from the roster.
That a mere comment about a personal experience with this dynamic manages to garner a bunch of downvotes is all the more indication that awareness about such dynamics is sorely lacking in large parts of the IT community... which of course only reinforces those exact same dynamics.
It could be the downvotes are because you're off topic, not because of any other links. It's quite hard to assign reasons to downvotes without commentors explaining their vote reasons.
great deal of deliberation
Then start following the money. Who pays for this? There would not be this "great deal of deliberation" if there wasn't something in it for the organisers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systematic_desensitization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy
that root cause are addressed
That's all you need to know to understand the root cause.