Between the ReaderCon fuckery and following Pharyangula and the Atheist community's fuckery around similar topics, I am feeling weirdly enthusiastic about the fact that so much of nerd & geek cultures are having these fights. Maybe they aren't going as smoothly and intelligently as I'd prefer, but the fights/conversations are at least happening, and the usual shitty defenses are being eliminated, one lousy justification at a time.
Is it weird to be heartened that these fights are at least happening now, and not being summarily dismissed out of hand?
My problem remains this feels like an internet age version of the fuckwittery I witnessed in Student Politics in the 1980s, where groups would rip themselves to pieces mostly for the amusement of others rather than actually doing anything useful. So it starts with people feeling that things are being done, and, at least in the case of the left wing in British politics by the 1990s, the entire system falling apart in internal internecine fighting.
I'd like the situation to be BETTER without being PERFECT. At least not instantly.
Because I think we can make things better, but we'll tear ourselves apart and fail at perfection.
Plus I'm not even sure I know what the perfect solution to this unholy mess actually is. I can think of lots of ways in which things can be improved though and so can lots of other people.
As I said I'm tainted by dangerous student union politics of th 1980s where faction in fighting ensured that little actually was done about anything.
*nods* So it's not that you wouldn't like things to be perfect (and honestly, a perfect situation implies people that can handle it, because it's not as if "an environment with people that do not commit and belittle sexual harassment" equates to "an environment without people"), it's that you think it's too dangerous to try for?
The '80s were twenty-thirty years ago. Luck with working through the damage. :s
I think that's too strong, I would rather say that sadly an environment without harassment, sexual or otherwise, is the perfect ideal and utterly unobtainable. I don't think we can makes cons 100% safe either. I think reaching for perfection when there are attainable imperfect things we can achieve will obscure the goal.
Yes the 80s we're a long time ago, but the results of those battles still resonate today in the UK and the US.
...so IYHO efforts to provide a sexual harassment-free zone will naturally result in incidents of harassment being ignored? And those incidents would not be ignored if there was only an effort to provide a sexual harassment-free zone for pretty sympathetic people who had men to speak up for them (a much more obtainable but imperfect goal)?
To quote John Trent, "forgive me if this sounds a little bit like bullshit to me."
...so IYHO efforts to provide a sexual harassment-free zone will naturally result in incidents of harassment being ignored?
First off, my opinion is just that. It's not humble, it's just an opinion.
Second, no, that's not what I'm saying, I must be putting myself across unclearly.
I am saying that providing a sexual harassment-free zone is impossible. Ain't going to happen, cannot be done. Good luck trying and all that. I am minded of the sign at the entrance to the town next to where I grew up where it proudly proclaimed that Harlow was a 'nuclear free zone'... for irony sake, the first building you passed was a hospital.
I am all for efforts towards sexual harassment free conventions, and, frankly, I'd kinda like a sexual harassment free world too. The efforts should include incidents of harassment NOT being ignored under any circumstances and dealt with appropriately at every occasion.
Perfection is no sexual harassment of any kind. Good is not letting people get away with it in the first place.
Let's aim for something we can actually achieve before we change the world shall we?
Not letting anyone get away with it--an environment where there are no excusers, no panderers, no threats, no reason for a target to fear the consequences of coming forward--is also an unobtainable state. "Ain't going happen, cannot be done."
I decline to aim for less.
Please explain how declining to aim for less will obscure this goal?
As an addendum. A lot of the blood letting in British student politics of the late 1980s and early 1990s was focused on internecine fights between different variations of left wing political groups. All of which had idealized versions of what they wanted, most of which was unobtainable.
However, in the face of actual concerted government action to take away a lot of things that had made life amazing for an entire generation of students (free university education for those qualified to get it, student grants etc...) the different student political groups ended up fighting over what they wanted as the outcome (peace, liberty, justice etc...) and ignored actually addressing the attack on students.
This culminated in the Student Leaders of the day, Stephen Twigg and Lorna Fitzsimmons, who oversaw this mess and the inadequate response, being elected to parliament as MPs in 1997 and voting to do away with the things that they had apparently tried to fight for a decade before. The result in 2012. Students have to pay for university, and there are loans and not grants.
It's not a perfect analogy I'll grant you but the fights I'm seeing break out look awfully similar.
We're apparently viewing different fights. You're describing what sounds like a fight along the lines of "racism should stop!" "no, screw that, ablism should stop!" "don't you dare work for that when harrassment needs to stop!" while just beyond the reach of the campfires forces are at work specifically targeting the group having these arguments.
The fight I'm seeing is "okay, he did it, but so what; she wanted it/should have expected it/should have understood he didn't mean it/should be used to it" vs. "that attitude is not okay". There is also a distinct lack of deliberate action on the part of an external enemy, unless someone has a SSMOF discussion going about the business of passing actual legislation to ensure that (for example) by the act of entering a convention people waive their rights to object to harassment.
The bitterness of a fight within a subculture may be similar; if that's what you're referring to, I understand. To me, the validity of the different sides of the argument, and presence or absence of other forces acting on the subculture, are important enough that the analogy is not useful in terms of describing anything but the unrest of an argument within a subculture.
Ok, I think we're seeing different fights I think. I'm concerned that we've already got through the fight over what did/didn't happen and into the first case you describe.
The external action in this case, in my opinion, isn't that people will push for policies to have people waive rights. But that the concerted effect of shouting and pointing at the smofs will make a lot of them reconsider their hobby. Now, that may be a good thing, assuming that other people step up and fill the void and move things forward. If not, then we'll have a slow meander into obscurity for this type of convention. And a lot of the stuff on other threads I'm seeing now is; well if the smofs don't fix this for me, I won't bother going...
Now, maybe that will be a good thing. I've certainly seen a local fan group I used to be a member of go through this in the 1990s and the result was a group that went from about 100 floating members meeting monthly, to about 15... the 15 were happier mind you.
Er, for the sake of clarity, this is what I'm hearing: "The argument over what rules should be in place to defend people from harassment may cause people who do the work at conventions to not want to bother. People dropping out from helping with conventions will substantially hurt the hobby. Therefore, for the good of the hobby, people need to stop arguing. And if that means there is nothing to protect people from harassment, that is just unfortunate."
Is that actually what you're saying, or am I reading you completely wrong?
I want policies to be put in place and acted upon. I don't think laughing at the people who are the ones who need to do it is going to smooth over communication, unless the people doing the pointing and staring are going to step up and take over from the old farts currently involved.
If they're not then I think the problem will be largely self correcting because there will be fewer cons with less people bothering to go them.
My issue is I want us to have stuff in place as quickly as possible so we can start to see what does and doesn't work. If we hang around looking for the perfect solution, we're going to be waiting far too long.
I still think laughing at people who need--but clearly don't want, and quite possibly don't intend--to make the changes is totally inappropriate. But I now do understand better where you're coming from, so thanks for the response!
Do you know of a good overview of what the fuck happened with the hot mess that is atheism/Atheism+? I pretty much tuned it out while it was happening...
Super-short version: A group of people was told they were acting in sexist ways. Most of them said "We were? Crap, we were! Sorry, we'll work on that". A small-but-vocal number said "SHUT YOUR FILTHY WHORE MOUTH. SEX-VENDING MACHINES THAT SPEAK ARE DEFECTIVE AND SHOULD BE RAPED" and have continued in that vein for months.
This is not directly related to "A+", except that some of the same people are involved.
Atheism+: A movement without a manifesto, aimed at organising for humanist and social justice purposes. Several of the originators are female, and it involves the concept of "being social" and the radical notion that women are people. Said vocal minority from before also hate it, for exactly that reason: it treats women as if they were very nearly human in many ways.
I think part of the problem, at least in the fan circles I'm part of, is that while the majority are sane in the sense that they do not act out themselves, they still tend toward excusing and defending other people who do, at the expense of those who have been hurt by it. So they're mostly good people who still let bad things happen, which is better than mostly bad people doing bad things but still needs work.
Exhibit N of many demonstrating why one should never assume an assembly of people "like you" will be universally supportive of your asshole behavior and opinions.
Forget the "OMG SHUT DOWN THE TUMBLR" messages from recently - go back to the first page. Can you seriously tell me that context IMPROVES those? That they aren't really the blind defenses of sexism and raging victim-blaming they look like?
(Keep in mind, of course, that several of the same people's previous public statements HAVE been raging victim-blaming, defenses of sexism, and threats of retaliation for reporting abuse.)
Or a bunch of the quotes that got posted today, for that matter. Though there are at least two (maybe three; I see one that could go either way depending on the context we don't have) that seem very sane from today's batch and are a nice counterbalance.
Oh hey, those are new. And yes, a bunch of those, I can't imagine a context that would improve those.
Unless the Tumblr person is ONLY quoting the parts of the post between "here is an example of something only a truly horrible person would say" and "and that was my example of something only a truly horrible person would say". That's a context that could improve it, I suppose.
Someone feel like telling us what this context-that-excuses might be?
Having been in a discussion with cogitationitis (the one issuing/assisting with the DMCA notices), I can say that she, personally, is ABSOLUTELY an apologist for truly horrible people -- including issuing not-terribly-veiled threats to blacklist people (author guests at cons) who were complaining about harassment.
I'm not involved in the Readercon mess and didn't know her from a hole in the ground before, but when I saw her name mentioned on that Tumblr, I absolutely believe that those quotes couldn't be improved by context.
(I think there seem to be some fantastic people on the Readercon concom, but she's a loose cannon, to say the least.)
I haven't been following that Tumblr and don't especially intend to start (I'm not a big fan of someone republishing ostensibly-private communications, even though I do think that more transparency on those ongoing conversations should exist -- this isn't the way to go about it, IMHO), but I am definitely in the camp that believes that there are some very loud SMOFish voices trying to shout down the idea that the fannish community needs to take some responsibility for protecting its members from harassment/etc. at conventions, among other things.
> Having been in a discussion with cogitationitis (the one issuing/assisting with the DMCA notices), I can say that she, personally, is ABSOLUTELY an apologist for truly horrible people -- including issuing not-terribly-veiled threats to blacklist people (author guests at cons) who were complaining about harassment.
Yeah, having seen all of that in the run-up to this, that she's the one issuing DMCA notices and saying equally nasty things elsewhere seems pretty believable to me.
Of course, now the SMOFslist Tumblr is apparently not reachable, leading me to think it's actually been taken down entirely by the site admin. I wonder where it'll pop back up?
When a particular quote is taken from an email which is a minority viewpoint (ie later emails show it's a minority viewpoint), then yes, the context of the whole email thread (as well as a particular point being responded to) is relevant.
There are also a couple there, IIRC, where the $QUOTE was taken from an email of the form "What, you think we should just say $QUOTE?" or "As if anyone would ever say $QUOTE", which is deliberately taking them out of context.
That's not to say there aren't some "blind defenses of sexism and raging victim-blaming" emails on the list (as with most segments of any demographic, some believe that) but it's not the majority viewpoint the tumblr seems to suggest it is.
I don't think the Tumblr account suggested it was a majority viewpoint, only a present one.
It's too bad the tumblr is down, because I'd like to know which ones actually were of the form "here is an example of something only a truly horrible person would say" [QUOTED BIT] "and that was my example of something only a truly horrible person would say".
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(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-12 11:47 pm (UTC)Is it weird to be heartened that these fights are at least happening now, and not being summarily dismissed out of hand?
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-13 12:14 am (UTC)(IOW: no.)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-13 12:59 am (UTC)It's just, the situation can be BETTER without being GOOD.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-13 01:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-13 02:54 am (UTC)I'd like the situation to be BETTER without being PERFECT. At least not instantly.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-14 03:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-14 05:19 am (UTC)Plus I'm not even sure I know what the perfect solution to this unholy mess actually is. I can think of lots of ways in which things can be improved though and so can lots of other people.
As I said I'm tainted by dangerous student union politics of th 1980s where faction in fighting ensured that little actually was done about anything.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-14 11:39 am (UTC)The '80s were twenty-thirty years ago. Luck with working through the damage. :s
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-14 02:47 pm (UTC)Yes the 80s we're a long time ago, but the results of those battles still resonate today in the UK and the US.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-14 03:01 pm (UTC)To quote John Trent, "forgive me if this sounds a little bit like bullshit to me."
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-14 04:01 pm (UTC)First off, my opinion is just that. It's not humble, it's just an opinion.
Second, no, that's not what I'm saying, I must be putting myself across unclearly.
I am saying that providing a sexual harassment-free zone is impossible. Ain't going to happen, cannot be done. Good luck trying and all that. I am minded of the sign at the entrance to the town next to where I grew up where it proudly proclaimed that Harlow was a 'nuclear free zone'... for irony sake, the first building you passed was a hospital.
I am all for efforts towards sexual harassment free conventions, and, frankly, I'd kinda like a sexual harassment free world too. The efforts should include incidents of harassment NOT being ignored under any circumstances and dealt with appropriately at every occasion.
Perfection is no sexual harassment of any kind. Good is not letting people get away with it in the first place.
Let's aim for something we can actually achieve before we change the world shall we?
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-14 05:10 pm (UTC)I decline to aim for less.
Please explain how declining to aim for less will obscure this goal?
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-14 04:09 pm (UTC)However, in the face of actual concerted government action to take away a lot of things that had made life amazing for an entire generation of students (free university education for those qualified to get it, student grants etc...) the different student political groups ended up fighting over what they wanted as the outcome (peace, liberty, justice etc...) and ignored actually addressing the attack on students.
This culminated in the Student Leaders of the day, Stephen Twigg and Lorna Fitzsimmons, who oversaw this mess and the inadequate response, being elected to parliament as MPs in 1997 and voting to do away with the things that they had apparently tried to fight for a decade before. The result in 2012. Students have to pay for university, and there are loans and not grants.
It's not a perfect analogy I'll grant you but the fights I'm seeing break out look awfully similar.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-14 05:21 pm (UTC)The fight I'm seeing is "okay, he did it, but so what; she wanted it/should have expected it/should have understood he didn't mean it/should be used to it" vs. "that attitude is not okay". There is also a distinct lack of deliberate action on the part of an external enemy, unless someone has a SSMOF discussion going about the business of passing actual legislation to ensure that (for example) by the act of entering a convention people waive their rights to object to harassment.
The bitterness of a fight within a subculture may be similar; if that's what you're referring to, I understand. To me, the validity of the different sides of the argument, and presence or absence of other forces acting on the subculture, are important enough that the analogy is not useful in terms of describing anything but the unrest of an argument within a subculture.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-14 05:59 pm (UTC)The external action in this case, in my opinion, isn't that people will push for policies to have people waive rights. But that the concerted effect of shouting and pointing at the smofs will make a lot of them reconsider their hobby. Now, that may be a good thing, assuming that other people step up and fill the void and move things forward. If not, then we'll have a slow meander into obscurity for this type of convention. And a lot of the stuff on other threads I'm seeing now is; well if the smofs don't fix this for me, I won't bother going...
Now, maybe that will be a good thing. I've certainly seen a local fan group I used to be a member of go through this in the 1990s and the result was a group that went from about 100 floating members meeting monthly, to about 15... the 15 were happier mind you.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-14 09:29 pm (UTC)Is that actually what you're saying, or am I reading you completely wrong?
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-14 10:36 pm (UTC)I want policies to be put in place and acted upon. I don't think laughing at the people who are the ones who need to do it is going to smooth over communication, unless the people doing the pointing and staring are going to step up and take over from the old farts currently involved.
If they're not then I think the problem will be largely self correcting because there will be fewer cons with less people bothering to go them.
My issue is I want us to have stuff in place as quickly as possible so we can start to see what does and doesn't work. If we hang around looking for the perfect solution, we're going to be waiting far too long.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-14 11:28 pm (UTC)I still think laughing at people who need--but clearly don't want, and quite possibly don't intend--to make the changes is totally inappropriate. But I now do understand better where you're coming from, so thanks for the response!
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-14 11:30 pm (UTC)As in, I "don't think" I need to proof my writing.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-13 07:21 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-13 01:02 pm (UTC)This is not directly related to "A+", except that some of the same people are involved.
Atheism+: A movement without a manifesto, aimed at organising for humanist and social justice purposes. Several of the originators are female, and it involves the concept of "being social" and the radical notion that women are people. Said vocal minority from before also hate it, for exactly that reason: it treats women as if they were very nearly human in many ways.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-13 08:26 pm (UTC)GET. OUT.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-13 12:07 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-13 04:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-13 12:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-13 02:12 pm (UTC)Pretty despicable behaviour, really.
Prk (One of many who run conventions as a hobby)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-13 02:25 pm (UTC)(Keep in mind, of course, that several of the same people's previous public statements HAVE been raging victim-blaming, defenses of sexism, and threats of retaliation for reporting abuse.)
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-13 04:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-13 05:07 pm (UTC)Unless the Tumblr person is ONLY quoting the parts of the post between "here is an example of something only a truly horrible person would say" and "and that was my example of something only a truly horrible person would say". That's a context that could improve it, I suppose.
Someone feel like telling us what this context-that-excuses might be?
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-17 02:00 am (UTC)I'm not involved in the Readercon mess and didn't know her from a hole in the ground before, but when I saw her name mentioned on that Tumblr, I absolutely believe that those quotes couldn't be improved by context.
(I think there seem to be some fantastic people on the Readercon concom, but she's a loose cannon, to say the least.)
I haven't been following that Tumblr and don't especially intend to start (I'm not a big fan of someone republishing ostensibly-private communications, even though I do think that more transparency on those ongoing conversations should exist -- this isn't the way to go about it, IMHO), but I am definitely in the camp that believes that there are some very loud SMOFish voices trying to shout down the idea that the fannish community needs to take some responsibility for protecting its members from harassment/etc. at conventions, among other things.
-- A <3
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-17 07:28 pm (UTC)Yeah, having seen all of that in the run-up to this, that she's the one issuing DMCA notices and saying equally nasty things elsewhere seems pretty believable to me.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-17 07:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-14 03:34 am (UTC)There are also a couple there, IIRC, where the $QUOTE was taken from an email of the form "What, you think we should just say $QUOTE?" or "As if anyone would ever say $QUOTE", which is deliberately taking them out of context.
That's not to say there aren't some "blind defenses of sexism and raging victim-blaming" emails on the list (as with most segments of any demographic, some believe that) but it's not the majority viewpoint the tumblr seems to suggest it is.
prk.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-09-17 07:42 pm (UTC)I don't think the Tumblr account suggested it was a majority viewpoint, only a present one.
It's too bad the tumblr is down, because I'd like to know which ones actually were of the form "here is an example of something only a truly horrible person would say" [QUOTED BIT] "and that was my example of something only a truly horrible person would say".