Carrie Cuinn Straightens Out Sasquan

Sasquan did consult Carrie Cuinn about Lou Antonelli’s online statements about her and the threats she received as a result (Cuinn’s account was quoted here yesterday), however, the convention subsequently represented her answer as a request not to ban him —

Cuinn has repudiated that interpretation in a series of tweets.

https://twitter.com/CarrieCuinn/status/631267133096374272

https://twitter.com/CarrieCuinn/status/631267979884396544

https://twitter.com/CarrieCuinn/status/631271457490927616

Cuinn elaborated in a Facebook post that it was only her interaction with Antonelli she was evaluating, not the larger question whether he should be banned which was never posed to her:

The Sasquan Con Committee has asked if I want Lou Antonelli investigated for his recent statements about me and the ensuing harassment. I have told them no: I don’t believe he specifically asked anyone to attack me. However, I also don’t believe he didn’t have any idea what his statements could cause, and I don’t believe his apology. In short, he shouldn’t be banned from Sasquan because of me, as I don’t think he personally did anything criminal. He’s just a jerk.

ETA because the con committee had issued comments which are factually incorrect: I did not ask for Antonelli not to be banned. I was not asked if he should be banned. Not banning him had nothing to do with “respecting my wishes”. I was only asked about his interaction with me, and since I’m not attending, I felt it didn’t meet their harassment guidelines. That’s all we discussed.

112 thoughts on “Carrie Cuinn Straightens Out Sasquan

  1. @Laura:

    You have to be genuinely penitent to be forgiven by God, according to Catholic teaching. This has nothing to do with whether or not human beings should forgive each other. (SPOILER: they should.)

  2. CPaca, I am sympathetic to the argument, and I have my own linguistic bête noir — fellowship is not a verb, one does does not gather after a religious service for “coffee and fellowshipping,” one gathers for “coffee and fellowship” — but that really seemed like a disproportionate amount of rage.

  3. CPaca said:

    “Nope. We’re talking about an extremely useful word being degraded to the point of uselessness by people’s sheer laziness. There are many words you can use to show emphasis – there is *no* other word that conveys the meaning of “literally”

    You realize that the word has literally been used to mean “to be taken in the strongest admissible sense” since at least the 1680s, right? (That’s literally before you were born.) And you realize that literally nobody ever confuses the two meanings, save to do so deliberately to be literally antagonistic and rude to people who are using a word in a perfectly correct and easily understandable meaning, right? And you realize that people’s feelings, when you insult them over the use or even the misuse of a word, are literally more important than the word itself, right?

    You should literally never do this again. Because not only is it hostile, mean-spirited pedantry, it’s incorrect hostile, mean-spirited pedantry.

  4. @Iain Coleman: If human beings *should* forgive each other (and I’d like to know why you think so), that forgiveness is (or SHOULD be, I think) in the power of the victim, in terms of choice and timeline and results. Too often people (often women) are pressured to “forgive” men because of the group’s demands or the individual man’s demands — without in fact anything changing. See the link I gave above to problems in the evangelical community (and it’s not the only one).

    I’ve alsy read some amazing posts by friends whose parents were abusive about the pressures within families for them to forgive abuse parents (or other relatives).

    And maybe forgiveness isn’t all its cracked up to be.

  5. but that really seemed like a disproportionate amount of rage.

    Again, nope. That was theatrics – when I’m angry with someone online, it’s quite noticeable. Cf Tank Marmot.

  6. Then your theatrics are sometimes indistinguishable from rage to the casual observer. Is that what you want, or is it an unfortunate side effect?

  7. The internet is phenomenological. If you do a letter-perfect impression of an enraged brute, that’s what you are.

  8. I’m a little unclear on something, and hope someone can clarify: Sasquan, once they know that their Code of Conduct has been violated, may take action – specifically “disciplinary action may include a verbal warning or even expulsion from the event.”

    I know Lou Antonelli was not expelled. Was a formal warning issued though? I can’t seem to find any indication on the initial FB posting.

  9. To paraphrase, “What we have had heah…are failures to communicate.”

    (And doesn’t an argument over word usage distract attention from the original post and the continued problem it poses? There are reasons for posting topicality.)

  10. There’s a pre-Yom-Kippur prayer in which the penitent declares that he forgives everyone who has sinned against him, except for (a) people from whom he can collect damages in a court of law, and (b) people who thought “I know I can get away with sinning against so-and-so, because he’s going to forgive me.”

  11. @Laertes:

    The internet is phenomenological. If you do a letter-perfect impression of an enraged brute, that’s what you are.

    Heh. Paging Bruce Baugh, white quotesy phone.

  12. @Petra, https://file770.com/?p=24343&cpage=1#comment-316957

    “In short, he shouldn’t be banned from Sasquan because of me,”

    Given what she did say, I can see how the Sasquan committee got to:

    “The woman in question has asked us not to ban him. We have chosen to respect her wishes.”

    You are not alone.

    But to continue the theme from the previous comment… Apparently ‘straigthtens out’ means ‘backpedals on’ in File 770’s Newspeak.

  13. Le sigh…

    I meant:
    To continue the theme from MY previous comment… Apparently ‘straigthtens out’ means ‘backpedals on’ in File 770’s Newspeak.

  14. @Seth Gordon: that reminds me of my favorite Nicholas van Rijn quote (more or less – I don’t recall which story it’s from): “…my enemies, whom I may forgive though God cannot.”

  15. That’s the risk if the concom automatically ignores the wishes of the victim. And if the concom automatically defers to the wishes of the victim, then victims who do report can be under pressure to forgive (as others have pointed out in this forum).

    Call me Legalist, but actually, at the point were the complaint is made, the wishes of the victim should be pretty much irrelevant.

    I think one of the big problems with conventions is that they don’t quite realize the purpose of having a harassment policy. It’s not to make victims feel better, it’s not to enact punishment, or reform people or anything like that. The who point of a harassment policy is to a) enforce the policies f the convention, and b) make the convention safe and welcoming, and appear to be safe and welcoming for the guests.

    Even if the victim forgives the harasser, even if there’s an apology, even if the harasser promises to reform, the real issue is the well-being and comfort of the people of the convention. And if that involves expelling a harasser despite the wishes f any victims, so be it.

  16. Apparently ‘straigthtens out’ means ‘backpedals on’ in File 770’s Newspeak.

    Can somebody translate from Tuomas-speak to something more comprehensible? But not if it’s any trouble, I’m just curious, though not curious enough to reread the thread.

  17. Rose Embolism: You’re right about antiharassment policies being a tool to increase safety, and it should not be overlooked how often the adoption of a policy requires a culture change within the committee itself to be able to say, “This is the kind of convention we’re now running. Safety for attendees means _this_.” Getting a complete buy-in can be a struggle, too — think about Context last year.

  18. Apparently ‘straigthtens out’ means ‘backpedals on’ in File 770’s Newspeak.

    CPACA! NO! HE’S NOT WORTH IT!

  19. @ Nigel:
    I was thinking anyway about a suitable Third-Policeman-related interjection, à la “God Stalk”! from Henley and others, perhaps to be deployed in response to particular puppish/BrianZish obtuseness. While I had considered referring them to the works of DeSelby, the reference to backpedaling has swung me back in favour of the simple, and classic,

    Is it about a bicycle?

  20. @brightglance – I am at this very moment wrestling with the latest draft of an MG novel, where a Family Fun And Historical Cycle is beset by banshees. On bicycles. My hero’s name is Brian Nolan. I heartily applaud and endorse this suggestion. It is, you might say, your only man.

  21. Seems to me that they are desperate not to exclude puppies or their nominees, probably because of all the wailing and whining that would ensue, because it’s important to remember that these hateful clowns are always the victim.

  22. If people have been using “literally” as a figurative intensifier since the 17th century, then, well, they were wrong to do it in the 17th century, too. Harrumph.

    ObSF: James Morrow’s City of Truth, where characters say things like “Fuck you figuratively”.

  23. My take on Antonelli’s being allowed to attend Sasquan is that while he certainly did violate the Code of Conduct by writing the Spokane PD about his facetious safety concerns regarding Gerrold, the subsequent apology and follow-up letter to the Spokane PD from Antonelli means that the safety of Sasquan attendees is reasonably assured with respect to Antonelli’s initial act. Antonelli’s fortunate to have been granted the opportunity to make amends to Gerrold and Sasquan, and hopefully has learned a lesson.

  24. David W, the problem with your take on Sasquan and LA’s apologia is that you assume LA is like most people: genuinely sorry about a genuine error of judgement. That’s seriously contradicted by his own history, and his own words, as well as his continuing behavior. He is not genuinely sorry about his behavior, only about being caught in it. He’s also not sorry about his behavior towards Aaron, for example, nor towards Carrie Cuinn — again, he’s sorry only for getting caught pointing his followers at her. This is the pattern of a serial abuser, one who repeatedly gets away with his inappropriate behavior because he apologizes prettily when he’s caught. He blames the drink, he blames his heritage, he blames other people, but he never ever takes responsibility for his own behaviors, and he never changes.

    Change of subject: currently reading the latest Django Wexler and enjoying it, as I’ve misplaced my copies of God Stalk.

  25. Seth Gordon said:

    “If people have been using “literally” as a figurative intensifier since the 17th century, then, well, they were wrong to do it in the 17th century, too. Harrumph.”

    At that point, your argument has become, “People don’t behave the way I expect them to in my head.” Which is one I deeply sympathize with, but have never had significant luck in getting people to accept. 🙂

  26. In Orthodoxy, forgiveness and reconciliation go hand in hand. Prodigal Son and whatnot. Though expecting that the forgiven party would do X, Y, or Z is a sort of selfishness—we can’t demand that someone comply with our expectations.

    At any rate, I said yesterday that being barred from Worldcon would be the best thing that ever happened to Antonelli, and I wasn’t (just) joking. As we have seen, this is a man who gets very upset in response to minute stimuli, and makes repeated appeals to authority—bosses, Congress, the police—when he is upset. This is a prima facie declaration of his own feelings of powerless; he’s always hunting for a harsh father to protect him from a harsher world.

    And now, with a week to go after a long season of contention, Lou is The News at Worldcon. What kind of time can he possibly have at the convention? I’m sure he’ll be cringing and fuming and stammering excuses and keeping track of all the black eyes and feathers in his cap constantly. If he has a brain cell left in his head, he’ll take a cab to the nearby National Lentil Festival instead and have a fun weekend instead of subjecting himself to days of self-cooked misery with its apex being a humiliating point-and-laugh ha-ha-you-suck-old-man defeat at the Hugo Awards, with that insane homosexual provocateur David “Who He?” Gerrold playing Master of Ceremonies.

  27. The National Lentil Festival is in Pullman, WA, 75 miles from Spokane, a bit far for a cab ride. Renting a car would probably be a cheaper solution.

  28. The thought of a lentil festival was very exciting until I looked at the website. I was hoping for all the many tasty varieties of lentils and all I see is Coca Cola. Bah.

  29. I think most people do not understand what forgiveness entails. It doesn’t mean that you pretend that something didn’t happen. You don’t have to hang around and allow people to repeat the offense. Forgiveness is something that you do for yourself – you let go of the weight of the hatred and anger.

    As far as repentance goes, it is only the first step. It is not true repentance unless there is the hard, continuous effort to reform. Jesus said “Go and sin no more” not “you’re forgiven because you’re sorry now.”

    Whether or not the victim forgives the harasser should have no bearing on how the anti-harassment policy is enforced. Forgiveness is a personal matter; policy enforcement is a public stand that some behavior is unacceptable and will not be allowed to stand.

  30. Incidentally, I’d also like people to pay more attention to the difference between “falsely” and “wrongly” — a difference I’ve seen many people ignoring. For instance, the earlier statement that

    WisCon falsely claimed that Elise Matthews had asked them not to ban Jim Frenkel

    “False” implies that the representative of WisCon knew that the statement was inaccurate. That implication requires telepathy, or an omniscient narrator.

    WisCon wrongly claimed that.

    When you apply the adjective “false” to a statement or message, you are implying an intent to deceive. You are implying a willful lie. This can lead to unnecessary hostility and/or bad feelings.

  31. @Danny Sichel: I may be misunderstanding the situation, and if so I apologize in advance, but surely in that instance “falsely” was correctly applied? I mean, I can’t see any set of circumstances under which WisCon representatives wouldn’t know what they were told by someone else–if they reported it differently than what they were told, it would be a false statement and not an inaccurate one unless I’m missing something fundamental here.

  32. Mike Glyer: I agree that effective policies require a change in culture and attitudes, not only in how harassment is defined, but How it fits into and affects the community.

    I think of many convention strides and policies almost as an extension of the Geek Fallacies: “We are all fans here, we’re a community of friends, so let’s sooth hurt feelings, reform the offender, and put everything behind us so we can go back to having fun.” Which doesn’t actually work to solve the problem, as WisCon showed.

    Other communities, like rpg.net simply want to avoid arguments and fuss, so certain actions, like personal or group attacks are banned, not because of the damage they do, but because of the fuss they create. There’s a reason I call the place rpg.singapore- all kinds of subtle dogwhistles are tolerated as long as people are quiet about it.

  33. @ Rose: “I think one of the big problems with conventions is that they don’t quite realize the purpose of having a harassment policy.”

    I agree. I also think conventions still tend to be ambivalent about the notion that it’s reasonable to impose consequences for violating a harassment policy or code-of-conduct, and still tend to believe that that being expelled or banned from a convention is an extreme measure or harsh punishment, rather than a reasonable consequence for breaking the rules of the event. Not all rules violations merit expulsion, obviously; but sf/f conventions really seem to struggle with the notion that there are violations for which expulsion or banning are reasonable consequences.

    @ Danny Sichel

    Sure, if “wrongly” accused is the better phrase, I’ve no objection. I’m not looking to assign intent. Rather, my point is that misstatements and missteps like these are among the problems likely to occur, as we have seen with both WisCon and Sasquan, when a committees try to make the aggrieved parties responsible for determining the consequences of harassment incidents.

    @ snowcrash

    Sasquan said things in its FB thread along the lines of Lou Antonelli knows he will be under scrutiny and has promised to be on best behavior, etc. I suppose that implies he received a formal verbal warning, though I don’t think I’ve seen this explicitly stated.

  34. @ Mike

    Yep, ConText has come to mind this week. Not the specifics (they were confusing, and I read multiple different versions of those events), but the way that concom imploded.

    I think the stress points keep getting tested at cons because they still tend to think of themselves as a group of friends throwing a big party for more of their friends. Whereas, actually, most cons these days are nonprofit-corporations or limited-liability-companies with annual five-figure or six-figure budgets, with committees of dozens or hundreds of people, and with hundreds or thousands of attendees from increasingly different walks of life, most of whom don’t know each other and some of whom won’t get along well.

    The latter reality is not similar to the former, but a lot of committees still tend to think of their con as the former, at least in tone or culture (“my people,” “my tribe,” “the family, ” etc.), as well as having a horror of “ostracism.” And that head cannon isn’t very compatible with recognizing code of conduct violations, let alone applying harassment policy and implementing consequences.

    The latter/current reality also isn’t a scenario in which attendees are all going to shrug and say when being harassed, “Oh, well, that’s just John Doe being John Doe, and (a) he doesn’t really mean anything by it, and that’s just the way John is, or (b) we’ve all learned to put with it, even if it’s annoying, because he’s one of us, or (c) he’s having personal problems, so let’s just let it go, or (d) someone get Mrs. Doe and ask her to take charge of John,” etc., etc.

    The above IS how cons functioned socially for decades, and I think there are a lot of people (including those on various concoms) who are still in that head space, or in the process of trying to move on from that established expectation of how such problems are handled at a con, or who vehemently believe that is STILL how things should work at a con.

    But that’s an increasingly impractical solution for cons in the 21st century with hundreds or thousands of people who’ve paid to attend, many of whom do NOT expect to be told to just put up with bad behavior from other attendees intruding on or ruining their experience. Just as there are different beliefs about what qualifies as “intruding on” or “ruining” your con experience, or “harassing” you. So that (back to ConText) one person’s notion of harmless remarks is someone else’s notion of harassment, and a committee lacking a clear path of P&P for managing that… implodes.

  35. What, the Lentil Festival is in PULLMAN???? But But But But…I was assured that Moscow, Idaho, my birthtown, was the Pea and Lentil capital of the world when we did that special pea and lentil project for 4H…..*the RAGE*

    Although admittedly that was mumble mumble decades ago, and I mostly remember it only because after fleeing Idaho as soon as I could, I have spent years correcting the potato-based stereotypes of Everybody Else in the U.S. (after I assure them that yes, being born in Moscow did not mean I was a Russian speaker that there are eight Moscows in the world blah blah blah). Plus, I hate both split pea soup and most lentil dishes I have had (too many earnest vegarians who are late converts and poor college students I am sure–no insult to the people who cook brilliantly with lentils intended).

    (The fact that Pullman and Moscow are within eight miles, across the state line, and both have universities meant that the only major football contest was the game they had with each other……at least during my life there…..heavens knows if the Lentil Festival is in Pullman what may have happened to the Palouse Rivalry!).

  36. (The fact that Pullman and Moscow are within eight miles, across the state line, and both have universities meant that the only major football contest was the game they had with each other……at least during my life there…..heavens knows if the Lentil Festival is in Pullman what may have happened to the Palouse Rivalry!).

    Maybe the football game decides who gets to hold the festival that year.

  37. @ Laertes: The internet is phenomenological. If you do a letter-perfect impression of an enraged brute, that’s what you are.

    BRILLIANT point!

    @Laura Resnick: Excellent points about the shift(s) in con culture and the larger culture! The second con I went to had a slave auction in the lobby of the hotel to raise funding for who knows what about the con…..a few years later, I heard that a con with a similar slave auction–which “sold” only young women–was shut down when the potential charges of prostitution were raised by the Seattle police.

    But now to the important stuff? How many kittehs? We are down to four (our youngest, seven months, just came back from the vet’s after having an unexplained fever and lack of appetite — the tests came back negative for leukemia, etc., and the exam showed no problems–she got some antibiotics, steroid, and anti-nausea meds plus fluids, and came home under observation because she was refusing to eat)–so that’s four litter boxes I keep up (down from the halcyon days of 13 indoor cats–oh, sure we’ll FOSTER them till we find a home, HAH–and, um, eleven litter boxes in I forget how many rooms).

    I’d rather scoop that read the current stuff being extruded by the Puppies….

  38. @Aaron: Maybe the football game decides who gets to hold the festival that year. Huh! Maybe!~ (But is it the winner or loser, she asks cunningly). (I really dislike split peas and lentils.)

    I was a bit pissed years later when MosCon was created — when I was growing up, the only sf readers I knew were my Dad and me (one friend read some fantasy but gave it up after junior high because it was too “childish”).

  39. rrede: 13? Wow. We’ve got five and I can barely keep up (although to be honest, the problem isn’t food or litter so much as the big cats roughhousing until the little cats find someplace to hide and don’t come out). I think my family would go nuts if I brought home another.

    (I still totally want to bring home another.)

  40. I’m not sure how we survived!

    There were just two of us, and we were both volunteers for the local animal rescue group which formed a few decades earlier in response to the horrific problems in small-town Texas, i.e. “animal control” meaning the police were sent out to shoot a dog if there were complaints from white people. The group was small and struggling, and so had to foster rescue animals….and one thing led to another, including unfortunately the fact that I bond like glue with any cat in the immediate vicinity…..hitting 13 was a reality call–and we put the brakes on. We were much younger then–there were also four outdoor dogs, all dumped or abandoned–even after we cut connections with the group, we kept finding abandoned animals, most of which we found homes for or got to no-kill shelters in the area or breed rescue groups.

    I do not recommend it: what was lucky is that the majority of them were not inclined to fight or bully others; they were all so happy to be rescued, and some became very close with the others. There was one muted tortie (who was thrust on us by a woman at PetSmart representing a kitten rescue group who had 80 kittens in her house, and Eloise was nearly aged out of kittenhood) who did try to “attack” others. But Eloise was about five pounds at her top weight, and the others (mostly larger males) just ignored her (leading on occasion to the sight of Eloise being sort of dragged through the house while hanging on to another cat until she got tired and let go.) She eventually moved to the top of the mantlepiece for most of her life and glared/hissed at anybody who looked at her except us.

  41. David W. on August 13, 2015 at 6:50 am said:
    My take on Antonelli’s being allowed to attend Sasquan is that while he certainly did violate the Code of Conduct by writing the Spokane PD about his facetious safety concerns regarding Gerrold, the subsequent apology and follow-up letter to the Spokane PD from Antonelli means that the safety of Sasquan attendees is reasonably assured with respect to Antonelli’s initial act. Antonelli’s fortunate to have been granted the opportunity to make amends to Gerrold and Sasquan, and hopefully has learned a lesson.

    How safe are the attendees of Sasquan supposed to feel if someone with a temper that bad, so bad he brags about it, with such bad judgement that he would actually do such a rash and stupid action as write the local police in incendiary terms, is permitted to attend the convention just because he said he was sorry and the man he attacked forgave him?

    Oh, goody, the impulsive and ill-tempered man with terrible judgement is attending.

  42. Rose Embolism on August 13, 2015 at 10:55 am said:
    Mike Glyer: I agree that effective policies require a change in culture and attitudes, not only in how harassment is defined, but How it fits into and affects the community.

    I think of many convention strides and policies almost as an extension of the Geek Fallacies: “We are all fans here, we’re a community of friends, so let’s sooth hurt feelings, reform the offender, and put everything behind us so we can go back to having fun.” Which doesn’t actually work to solve the problem, as WisCon showed.

    Did I miss somehing about WisCon?

    I already knew that policy was catastrophically misguided because of the horror that was Walter Breen and Marion Zimmer Bradley.

    Forced jollification and constant forgiveness of abusers in the name of a facade of pretend harmony only covers up the rot in the community and misery of the victims.

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