Author Monica Valentinelli announced today she is withdrawing as Odyssey Con’s Literary/Game Designer GoH, just two weeks before the con takes place, due to a specific individual’s continued presence on the concom and her concern for her safety.
I was invited to be a guest of honor in 2016. At the time, a known harasser was working at the con. I, personally, had several uncomfortable interactions with this individual and I did not feel safe around him. At first, this individual was my guest liaison, and I had considered pulling out of the convention as a result. Thankfully, my point of contact was changed and I never had to speak with this individual again. I assumed that he was no longer working at the convention following this act.
Although the person was not named in her blog post, he was subsequently identified as Odyssey Con’s guest liaison Jim Frenkel, a former Tor editor banned from WisCon (permanently).
Yesterday, I found out that I was scheduled to be on programming with him and he was still part of the concom. I also learned that peers and friends were uncomfortable with his role at the show, and they had decided to avoid the convention altogether. His involvement with the con meant that I would have to interact with him, especially as a guest of honor, and I do not feel safe around him nor would I want to put any of my friends, peers, or fans in that situation either.
Yesterday, Valentinelli wrote to the concom.
To resolve this, I sent the concom an e-mail. I told them that I, personally, had several problematic experiences with him, and that if he was still working the convention that I would have to withdraw. The response I received was incredibly dismissive of not only me, but of past reports as well. The e-mail went on to say how this individual was a long-time close friend of the concom, and I should judge his behavior for myself.
I have judged his behavior for myself, and I do not feel safe being in the same room with him let alone the same hotel. This blatant disregard of my concerns also worries me that should any new harassment complaints arise, that they would not be dealt with appropriately. I am extremely disappointed that a member of the concom would be more valued that an invited guest, and though I recognize the invitation is an honor I cannot and do not find this resolution acceptable.
Program participant Patrick S. Tomlinson followed her out the door.
I have withdrawn from appearing at this year's Odyssey Con. Ignoring the legitimate concerns of your female guests and attendees is a no go. https://t.co/THNrJ4preF
— Patrick S. Tomlinson (@stealthygeek) April 11, 2017
Tomlinson added, “If they change their mind, I’ve offered to attend. But not with him participating in any capacity”.
And Catherine Lundoff said:
https://twitter.com/clundoff/status/851837037028265988
On Twitter, dozens of writers have lined up to support Valentinelli’s decision.
Odyssey Con is an annual Madison, WI event founded in 2001. Frenkel, who also lives in Madison, has a number of friends among its organizers and works on the concom. The President of the convention’s executive board (OCSI) is Richard S. Russell. Russell, after having worked every WisCon since its founding, was ousted from the WisCon committee in 2014, in part for his continuing expression of his views in committee channels about WisCon’s People of Color Safe Space and the Jim Frenkel harassment complaint.
Odyssey Con’s program organizer, Greg Rihn, is another longtime Frenkel acquaintance. His answer to Valentinelli’s email was the first from someone on the concommittee and said in part —
I have known Jim personally for more than thirty years. Although there have been unfortunate events in the past, I do not now believe, nor have I ever, that Jim is dangerous to any one, in any way. I believe that the lamentably widely disseminated idea that he is, is exaggerated and grows from a lack of knowledge of the facts in his case. His reputation since the WisCon incident has been spotless.
I will, if you wish, take Jim off any panel that presently features both of you, which I hope you would find a reasonable compromise. Banning Jim entirely would be unfair to him, and, in refusing to attend if he is working the con at all, you are being unfair to yourself. Why let other people make your decisions for you? Come and see the man for yourself. You will see that he is a decent man, and not a monster.
Subsequently, Rihn regretted his answer and he has written on Facebook:
I take complete and personal responsibility for my stupid response to Monica’s e-mail. I believed the matter urgent and wrote with too much haste and too little thought. Hospitality is a sacred obligation. I would defend a guest against my brother, let alone a supposed friend (who would cease to be a friend the moment he offered harm to a guest).
Co-chair Janet Lewis posted the entire email correspondence between Valentinelli and the committee on the con’s Facebook page but those posts have since been deleted. Gone with them is OSCI President Richard S. Russell’s public response to Valentinelli:
There has been much discussion regarding Monica Valentinelli’s announcement that she has withdrawn from the Gaming Guest of Honor position at our convention. Much is being said in social media, so we would like to take a moment to make the following statement.
Yesterday, April 10th, Monica contacted our convention through various email addresses expressing her concern and problems with our convention with Jim Frenkel as a part of the event. Last night one of the members of our committee contacted her to try to address her concerns. Unfortunately the position and words were his own, but did appear to be an official statement from the convention. It wasn’t, and he sent a further communication to Ms. Valentinelli to help clarify that.
Up until yesterday we had no knowledge of any problems Ms. Valentinelli had with Mr. Frenkel at Odyssey Con – both had been at Odyssey Conn previously, and both had been on panels together during that time. So we were surprised to hear there had been a problem. Here are the facts as we know them to be:
1) No claims of harassment against Jim Frenkel have ever been made at Odyssey Con that current ConCom members are aware of. We have a firm anti-harassment policy and all charges are treated seriously.
2) We have never made a secret of the fact that Jim works at the con. The assumption that Ms. Valentinelli made to the contrary was an unfortunate failure of communication.
3) Jim Frenkel has volunteered to step down from any official capacity with Odyssey Con to help the organization involved to move forward with a successful event.
Before making any updates and changes on the website and social media, we have been working to verify everyone’s position before making the appropriate changes. These changes do take a little time. Please keep in mind these issues were brought to us less than 24 hours ago.
The official statement from the president of Odyssey Con Society, Inc.:
Odyssey Con has immense appreciation for Monica Valentinelli and her work. We admire, respect, and honor them both, and were fully prepared to do so publicly at our upcoming convention, before Ms. Valentinelli withdrew as one of our three guests of honor.
But Odyssey Con is now, always has been, and always will be, open and welcoming to all. We do not allow anyone, not even a guest of honor, to dictate that someone else must be excluded from it.
Odyssey Con is also a safe environment. We have policies in place ( http://odysseycon.org/policies.html ) strictly forbidding harassment and a designated ombudsperson to whom any such complaints may be directed. Anything beyond harassment, of course, is a police matter and would be promptly dealt with as such. No such allegations have been made with regard to anyone expected to attend this year’s convention, and therefore Odyssey Con has no basis for excluding anybody.
We sincerely regret that we will not be able to provide our members with the full experience we had advertised and will, of course, refund the membership fee of those who feel that they must now cancel their attendance.
Richard S. Russell, President, OCSI
Other people are weighing in outside of Twitter:
Jim C. Hines – “Odyssey Con, Frenkel, and Harassment”
As is the nature of these things, there’s a lot more that isn’t written about publicly. I’ve spoken with other people harassed by Frenkel who chose not to post about it online, or to file complaints. Given the way we tend to treat victims of harassment and assault — demanding details and proof, blaming them, excusing the harassment, telling them why they’re wrong or overreacting, and so on — I can’t and won’t blame anyone for making that choice.
Even so, knowledge of Frenkel’s history is widespread in the SF/F field. He lost his job with Tor Books shortly after the 2013 incident. He was banned for life from Wiscon. Hell, some of this stuff is on his freaking Wikipedia page.
In other words, there’s no way Odyssey Con was unaware of this history. But they still chose to allow Frenkel to serve as their Guest Liaison.
That’s their right. It’s their convention, and if they want to put a known repeat harasser on staff, they can do so. But that choice has consequences. Consequences like their Guest of Honor withdrawing from the convention. Or having other guests withdraw because the con prioritized a harasser over the safety of their guests.
Kelly McCullough – “On The Matter of Jim Frenkel”.
I don’t remember ever seeing Jim make unwelcome advances or any of the other reported behaviors that have given him his reputation as a serial harasser, but I don’t have to witness a behavior myself to condemn it. All I have to do is believe the accounts of the women who were affected, and I do. It’s that simple. So, though it gives me no pleasure to say this about a man who advanced my career and who I thought of as a friend, I will repeat myself.
Jim has no business being a guest liaison for any convention.
K. Tempest Bradford – OdysseyCon and Why Serial Harassers Are Safe In Our Community.
I’ve seen a bunch of people commenting on this wondering how it is that Jim Frenkel is in any way involved with any convention at this point in time given everything that’s happened. Well. This. This is why. It’s multiple people (see how many folks are listed on this concom who know Jim and are real sure he didn’t ever do anything wrong, despite those third hard reports from the Internet (who trusts that?? Pish) continuing to allow him to be in official roles because we wouldn’t want to lose all his knowledge and experience.
This is how fandom has worked for decades.
And the potential for today’s developments has existed for some time. Sigrid Ellis wrote an open letter to Odyssey Con a year ago criticizing the use of Frenkel and Russell on program.
[Thanks to Rose Embolism, ULTRAGOTHA, and Cat Rambo for the story.]
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Some more responses:
http://tempest.fluidartist.com/odysseycon-and-why-serial-harassers-are-safe-in-our-community/
http://maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/mary-takes-off-gloves-discusses-odysseycon-fuck/
Thanks for putting this together, Mike. This is hard stuff to deal with. I was on the WisCon concom that (eventually) banned Jim Frenkel. It wasn’t easy, and we screwed up on the way. But it is really important to get it right.
“We never heard of any problems because we put our fingers in our ears and went LA LA LA really loud.” And then to straight-up lie about the emails from the GoH and ignore everything that happened in their own damn CITY.
MRK so rarely cusses in print that you knew it was a Big Deal from the title of her post.
I’d want to know the names of every con staff member before I ever attended a con in Wisconsin at this point.
The key word here is “see”. Sure you will *SEE* a decent man and you won’t *SEE* a monster – which is exactly the problem with appearances. It’s not like SF hasn’t been examining this concept since the 19th century or anything.
I’ll take your word for it. Most of the time when I look at her blog it’s to get her take on some controversy, and I would have said she cusses plenty. My sample may not be statistically valid…
Honestly, the longer this goes on, the angrier I get.
It’s not that they weren’t paying attention to the last few years in dealing with harassment in fandom, it’s that they actively reject that the lessons apply to them.
More specifically, they are essentially calling every women who came forward about Frenkel a liar. Obviously to them they’re isn’t any problem, except a rumor campaign against their friends. And after a certain point, denial that a harasser is a problem, is just facilitating them.
I think at this point the only thing they are going to do is dig in deeper. This is going to get a lot messier.
The convention has deleted all of the posts that they made, including their official statement and all of the posts of Ms. Valentinelli’s e-mails. It’s too little, too late for them, though. Much like the action they failed to take. I’m seeing screencaps and discussion everywhere.
I hope that the extremely public nature of this – and the attention it’s getting – will lead to more conventions taking harassment complaints seriously, even when they are against long-standing members of the community. But my cynical side tells me that this will be like the WisCon situation all over again – big news at the time, followed by everyone forgetting about it. Until it happens again at another con a few years later.
I am a fan of SF, but I am not a con-going fan.
Still, earlier today I saw a PNH tweet saying “you can find the name of the concom liason in question at the con website”, and when I clicked it, I was Frenkel??
Tor FIRED HIM FOR THIS SHIT!! It took WAY, WAY too long for Tor to fire him. How the fuck could any SF con com not know that?
What really cheesed me off was the convention’s reaction to Monica in parallel with their polite and simple reaction to Patrick Tomlinson’s followed-up withdrawal. The fact that they decided to try put all of the crap they did (publishing private emails? REALLY?!) down a memory hole is the special sauce on the crap burger of their response.
I have less than zero desire to go to Odyssey Con, or to any con whose concom would act in this way.
Sigrid Ellis wrote to the OddCon concom a year ago about Frenkel (and Russell):
https://sigridellis.wordpress.com/2016/04/07/the-letter-i-just-sent-to-odyssey-con/
Huh. If only there was some sort of systemic way for information about serial harassers to be collected, cataloged, and disseminated among conventions.
I haven’t been to an SF convention for years, and news like this makes me happy to extend that streak.
ETA: Oh, please Aaron. Frenkel was (eventually, with great reluctance and much heel-dragging) banned from Wiscon–I don’t believe that the Odyssey con staff didn’t know this. No information system will make them *care*.
Compiling a central resource like that would be a good way to get sued. A lot of these people haven’t been charged with a crime. When I was a newspaper reporter we were on safe ground legally when covering an arrest or indictment. Accusing people of serious wrongdoing absent either of those was hard to get past the editors and lawyers.
In the late ’80s, another reporter wrote a great story on an employer accused of sexual harassment with multiple victimized employees going on the record. The newspaper, a major big city daily, wouldn’t run it.
‘Given the way we tend to treat victims of harassment and assault — demanding details and proof, blaming them, excusing the harassment, telling them why they’re wrong or overreacting, and so on’
Good lord that link back to the WisCon story certainly had comments evident of this.
Sort of hard to believe that when the GoH says she’s speaking about the guy from personal experience and the concom replies that he’s a friend, disputes prior claims and says she just needs to get to know the guy. I mean damn.
Frenkel was (eventually, with great reluctance and much heel-dragging) banned from Wiscon
Frenkel wasn’t the only problem here. Plus, the response the con gave to Valentinelli amounted to “we don’t know what he did elsewhere, and he’s behaved here, so suck it up”.
Compiling a central resource like that would be a good way to get sued. A lot of these people haven’t been charged with a crime.
This is the knee-jerk response everyone throws out, and I just don’t buy it. It is just another example of conventions trying to evade responsibility. No one would be accusing anyone of a crime – just that there had been an incident at a convention. Having such a record would certainly help alleviate the problem victims of harassment face of con staff “— demanding details and proof, blaming them, excusing the harassment, telling them why they’re wrong or overreacting, and so on“. Somehow professional organizations are able to keep track of things like this without getting sued.
All of this hand-wringing from people is just so much bullshit as long as no one is willing to actually work to come up with a comprehensive solution that deals with the actual problem of identifying and excluding serial harassers. Until that starts to happen, all of this consternation is just a masturbatory exercise.
Aaron, thank you for your comments on this. I’d love it, as a sometimes attendee and never-times whispernet beneficiary to be able to look at a single website that cross referenced names of previous incidents against concom and convention guest lists. A good tool for both conventions trying to do better and fans trying to decide what cons to visit.
Their concom page has been temporarily removed and redirects to first page:
http://www.odysseycon.org/concom.html
The idea of a common information database crashed and burned here when we say how fans (including filers) reacted to information actually being shared:
https://file770.com/?p=31173&cpage=1#comments
I do not buy for one tiny moment that they were unaware of Frenkle’s past harassment. They just chose to believe him over dozens of women.
This one time, some people didn’t like an idea, so we can never discuss anything in any way similar ever again?
Information actually being shared happens all the time, just not publicly. Which means only the people with the most and best contacts in the community get it. Will everything be perfect on rollout? No. Heck, probably never. Will it be better than what we currently have? For me, absolutely.
They were absolutely not unaware of Frenkle’s past. Russell did indeed defend Frenkle at the time.
Information actually being shared happens all the time, just not publicly.
That’s one thing I find almost amazing. Right now, information is shared, via rumor, word of mouth, and back channels. Much of it is public, who knows how much of it is actually true, and it is unevenly disseminated. I fail to see how this is a superior situation to having an official means of communication that operates according to a public set of rules.
I do not buy for one tiny moment that they were unaware of Frenkle’s past harassment.
But they were able to feign ignorance of his poor behavior by claiming they’d never seen it personally and had never seen reports about it.
Much of it is public,
I meant to say “Much of it is nonpublic”.
I am glad that Monica Valentinelli was ultimately able to make the right decision for herself.
But IMO it seems that this situation could have been completely avoided had she addressed these same concerns back in June or July of 2016 when she was asked to be a Guest Of Honor at Odyssey Con. She should have made a decision at that time, as it appears that Jim Frenkel was a staff member of the convention at the time that she accepted the convention’s invitation.
In this specific situation I do think that it is some what unprofessional of Ms. Valentinelli to wait this long and then drop this ultimatum on the concom just two and a half weeks before the convention.
“I told them that I, personally, had several problematic experiences with him, and that if he was still working the convention that I would have to withdraw.”
She could have and IMO should have done this sometime in 2016, not two and half weeks before the convention.
She could have and IMO should have done this sometime in 2016, not two and half weeks before the convention.
Did you miss this part of her post?
She thought the situation had been resolved. It was only when she learned that she had been put on a panel with him that she realized this was not the case, whereupon she immediately informed the concom of her concerns, which were dismissed in a perfunctory and insulting manner.
Sean Kirk: She could have and IMO should have done this sometime in 2016, not two and half weeks before the convention.
If you read her entire piece, she says that she brought it up with them quite some time ago, and they gave her someone else to work with as Guest Liaison, so she thought that Frenkel had been removed from the position (which you would think, wouldn’t you, given Frenkel’s years-long, well-documented history of harassment — because what sort of convention would keep Frenkel in that position, or any position involving con attendees???).
“We oppose harassment, but nothing our friends do fits our own personal definition of the word.
If some guy we never heard of gropes you in front of the entire concom, live on CNN, and a lady cop, plus some feminazi lawyer, maybe we’ll do something.
But don’t count on that either, sweetie. Now run along and find your fainting couch. Don’t hurt the male fee-fees.”
@DMS has a point. The concoms won’t care until their ox is gored, and a database where repeat offenders are named with substantiated details will gore their ox if the average fan could consult it and then let a con know you weren’t coming because there are creepy sleazeballs running things.
Authors/guests of any gender could consult it and say “Thanks but no thanks for the panel/GoH invite, but I do not waste my valuable time and money going to places which shelter creepy sleazeballs. Contact me again when the basic rules of politeness are enforced.” Check the Tweets for pros who already aren’t going.
Cons will either be forced to tell people to keep their hands and unwanted sexual/racist/pestering remarks to themselves, or they’ll become sausage-fests of unreconstructed permanent adolescents with no guests of any note.
If you say “what about the MENZ” I will a) sic @tinytempest on you and b) tell you to ask David Gerrold about CUL, and PNH about L. Jagi; both of them are men secure enough in their position that they could afford to largely ignore it.
Women aren’t. Connie Willis is a Grand Master, has 11 goddamn Hugos, 7 Nebulas and still got groped in front of thousands of people and on video which still exists.
Hugo Finalist Natalie Luhrs has another take on it, with an animated GIF that made me LOL.
http://www.pretty-terrible.com/odyssey-con-fucks-up-but-good/
The dudebro who sent the particularly tone-deaf response (Greg) is the guy who whined at a panel at WisCon about “but the poor menz who are my buds got banninated from the con and removed from the concom!”
The conchair is the guy who was removed from WisCon.
Saying they didn’t know is basically saying they have no long-term memory. In which case they are either lying or should be under the care of a lot of specialist doctors, not trying to do something as complex as run a con.
Aaron, reagrding lawsuits:.
“This is the knee-jerk response everyone throws out, and I just don’t buy it. It is just another example of conventions trying to evade responsibility. No one would be accusing anyone of a crime – just that there had been an incident at a convention. ”
1) If the accusation is of a professional, the con/people making the report/etc. could be liable for being sued under the rubric of damage to that person’s professional reputation.
2) If the accusation isn’t, they could *still* be sued because of the damage to a person’s reputation, *period* — it’s just harder to win.
The result from a concom’s point of view is to make it harder to decide to ban someone — because of the risk of suit — and even harder to decide to just ‘make a report of an incident’, since at that point there is even greater reason to believe that the evidence is insufficient to support a full banning.
Adding to this the fact that many cons aren’t full-blown corporations, and that individual concom members can be named in suits.
To pick an example totally at non-random, I’m not sure I’m financially secure enough to withstand a lawsuit — even one I might win — just because of the cost to fight it. I’m not sure the con I am concom on could afford to fight a lawsuit.
You’re right; these aren’t crimes, which means we don’t have the law as a *defense*, either.
@ Aaron
“Did you miss this part of her post?”
No I have read it couple of times.
She states “At first, this individual was my guest liaison, and I had considered pulling out of the convention as a result. Thankfully, my point of contact was changed and I never had to speak with this individual again.”
She does not state that she had previously addressed her concerns with any staff member or member of the concom.
“Thankfully, my point of contact (Jim Frenkel) was changed and I never had to speak with this individual again.”
Was this change a direct result of a concern about Jim Frenkel that Monica Valentinelli addressed with a staff member or a member of the concom, or was it just a coincidental shifting of job responsibilities with staff members that often happens with a lot conventions, especially in the early planning stages?
This is were my opinion that I stated earlier originates
“I assumed that he was no longer working at the convention following this act.”
If I had had these kind of serious concerns that Monica Valentinelli has about Jim Frenkel, I would not have assumed anything, since it seems that for Ms. Valentinelli that attendance for her at this convention is not an option full stop, if Mr. Frenkel is involved with the convention in anyway shape or form. He does live in the convention’s hometown of Madison, Wisconsin. He appears to have been a past convention participant as well as a staff member. Those questions and concerns could have been asked and hopefully addressed by the concom back in 2016.
@ JJ
“she says that she brought it up with them quite some time ago, and they gave her someone else to work with”
I must have missed the part of the conversation where she spoke with someone on the concom, and they assigned her a new Guest Liaison. I will have to go back and reread this scroll as well as her blog post, because I read this part of her statement “Thankfully, my point of contact was changed and I never had to speak with this individual again.” as happy coincidence, and not a direct result of a complaint that she made with a member of the concom.
Look I did not know who Jim Frenkel was until today. He appears to be a pretty unsavory character, with a long checkered past, and probably not someone who I would want to chance having my eighteen year old daughter within a close proximity of. But, obviously leadership within Odyssey Con’s concom feel differently. That decision and the outcome of that choice is on them
With that said it appears to me that he has been a staff member and a program participant of Odyssey Con for sometime now, as well as being a resident of Madison, Wisconsin. So the chances of encountering him at this particular small regional convention appear to be pretty high. As opposed to WisCon where he has been officially perma banned.
I am not attempting to victimize the victim here. But I do see the lack of personal and professional responsibility on the part of Monica Valentinelli, by having just assumed “that he was no longer working at the convention following this act” and for not having clarified definitely whether or not Jim Frenkel was a staff member or a program participant of the 2017 convention with a member of the current concom, back in 2016. Had that happened she could have proactively stated her ultimatum and conditions of her attendance as a Guest Of Honor at that time, as opposed to what is happening right now. Which is a reactive response by all of the parties who are involved.
I am very glad that she made the right decision for herself. I do beleive that it is the correct decision. I just happen to think that it could have been made a lot sooner.
@Sean Kirk
I think you’re requiring some pretty powerful hindsight there.
Also, who has the higher level of responsibility here – the GoH to check the full con team for names, or the con to not have harassers on their team in the first place? If the GoH is required to do those checks, why not require the con to do the due diligence and maybe check whether their GoH had publicly posted about being harassed by a member of their team before inviting her?
Basically, for every opportunity you can find for Valentinelli to have acted a bit sooner, you can find a larger, easier, and more obvious opportunity for the con to have acted sooner.
em>I am not attempting to victimize the victim here
And yet, there we are, the next paragraph! How DO you do it?
Look, making anything the responsibility or fault of Monica Valentinelli is a massive derail, straight out of Derailing for Dummies. The bottom line is:
1. JIM FRENKEL SHOULD NOT BE WORKING AT THE CONVENTION.
2. THE CONVENTION SHOULD NOT BE DEFENDING JIM FRENKEL.
PERIOD. END OF STORY.
OK, to continue.
3. If the convention insists on retaining Frenkel, they need to replace their anti harassment policy with I dunno, a warning that the convention promotes and encourages harassment. At least they need to stop lying.
4. At this point Olympic Con have dug themselves so deep into their hole, that I really don’t see any way out short of mass ConCOm resignations.
Seriously, this is not Monica Valentinelli ‘s fault or responsibility. At all. It is not her job to fix the missing stair.
Monica Valentinelli does not deserve to be criticized. She said what she needed to say. She was a Guest of Honor. It was not her job to micromanage the concom. It was the committee’s job to make sure they fully understood her concerns and acted appropriately.
This thing is a train wreck with a lot of moving parts.
I think the central problem here once again–a problem we keep seeing over and over in these episodes–is that harassment complaints in sf/f cons and groups are typically handled by people who (a) have a personal relationship with the individual about whom the complaint is made and (b) act on the basis of that personal relationship rather than on the basis of an established procedure for handling such complaints and/or concerns.
“I know the individual you’re complaining about, and I think he’s a great guy who meant no harm” is not a procedural response to a complaint.
“I’m friends with the person who makes you uncomfortable, and I feel confident he’ll behave well at the event” is not a procedural response to someone expressing concern about harassment or anxiety that harassment will be repeated.
“Yeah, I know we’ve had some complaints, but this individual has been part of our group for years” or “has volunteered at our con for years” or “is married to our programming chair” or “in on the Board of Directors” or “just went through a bad break-up and isn’t quite him/herself lately,” etc., etc., is not a procedural way to introduce, discuss, or resolve a complaint about someone when reviewing it with your own concom or your co-chair.
Ignoring and/or stalling on a complaint because the individual is your friend, you co-chair’s spouse, your co-chair, a longtime volunteer, a longtime attendee, someone you personally like, etc., etc. is not a procedural way of handling a complaint.
All of those reactions continue to be how various groups and concoms keep reacting to complaints, concerns, protests, etc., i.e. on the basis that they know the person (possibly very well) about whom a complaint is made, rather than on the basis of a procedure they can follow.
Unless I am completely mistaken and the P&P manual for Odd Con says, “When someone writes the concom to raise the issue of sexual harassment concerns or experiences with a concom member, an individual concom member shall respond in writing by replying, “He’s an old friend of mine, so just give him a chance?”
And of course my phone turned Odyssey to Olympic. How does IT manage to do that?
Someone on my FB wall just perfectly summed up Mr. Rihn’s letter to Monica:
“Speaking as a man who knows him, he’s never been sexist to me so I don’t believe it.”
Further to my post above, I think the path to getting out of this repetitious maze of incident after incident after incident where concoms and groups mishandle harassment problems is for every committee or BoD to sit down and work out what their procedure will be when the con chair’s best friend, the program director’s spouse, the person who has run the hospitality room for 20 years, or the most popular and beloved member of the club is the subject of a harassment or conduct complaint.
Confront how to handle that, and determine what your intentions are as a group. What procedure will you implement in those instances, and how will you go about it? Or, alternately, are you unwilling to seriously consider pursuing and resolving a complaint against any of those people?
In the latter case, then it is time to eliminate your harassment policy, or to announce that you will not have one, because there are multiple individuals you know will be present at the con who can harass people with impunity because your organization is unwilling to design or implement policy to deal with complaints made about people you know, like, care about, rely on, trust, or don’t want to offend.
A database about “known offenders” won’t change anything, and likely will make things worse.
The issue isn’t not knowing, it’s not wanting to know, or protecting one’s buddies, or trying to paper things over and keep things hobbling along until the situation becomes unsustainable.
Another perspective, that I sometimes feel is missing, is that handling code of conduct and harassment issues is fundamentally a safety issue. (I think it was Alexandra Erin who opened my eyes to that.) Public blow-ups are fundamentally unsafe for everyone involved. Thus there should be a priority on avoiding public blow-ups and de-escalating them if they happen. Far too often, concoms have been escalating the situations instead.
And I would say the current incident is a clear example of that. There is no realistic possibility that the Odyssey concom is unaware of Jim Frenkel’s history.
We have seen similar dynamics in other incidents, too.
The supposition that a database would improve matters seems to me to be based in the same fallacy that ensures so many stumbles between policy and procedure with regard to harassment: it’s the idea that the harasser will be a stranger, an unknown quantity, an outsider, an unfamiliar face, etc.
But actually, as we have seen over and over, the repetitious problem is that harassers are often well known–even integral–members of the communities where a complaint is made or an incident occurs. Often, as we keep seeing in these incidents, the problem has been known or recognized for some time, but not confronted–and in some instances, also enabled, excused, covered up, justified, ignored, or dismissed.
I think this is the problem. Not lack of a database or information, but rather confusion about how to apply policy to friends & acquaintances that one only expected to apply to strangers.
@ Mark
” think you’re requiring some pretty powerful hindsight there.”
I do not see it that away.
The convention announced her as one of its Guests Of Honor back in July 2016.
In this specific instance, Jim Frenkel was the convention’s Guest Liason at the time that she accepted the invitation.
Would that not have set off some alarms then?
Or should I just assume that Frenkel somehow magically disappears sometime in the next 10 months, and if that does not somehow come to fruition I always have the nuclear option of tossing a hand grenade ultimatum right into the concom’s laps two weeks before the convention is supposed to take place. And almost everyone on the internet will support my decision to back out at this late date because you know its Frenkel!
“Also, who has the higher level of responsibility here – the GoH to check the full con team for names, or the con to not have harassers on their team in the first place?”
Both have the same amount of responsibility IMO.
Any professionals in any industry who is asked to be a GOH or panelist at a convention or a trade show should always perform some due diligence, and know who exactly they are who they are getting into bed with and associating themselves with.
“or the con to not have harassers on their team in the first place?”
Every convention should be performing their own due diligence when it comes to the histories of their staff and board members. I have no doubt that this convention knows quite a bit about Mr. Frenkel’s past actions. Unfortunately they have chosen to ignore and or disregard those actions.
But the concom’s ongoing choice to remain ignorant and blind does not automatically make the lack of her personnel responsibility right.
In the future it could go a little something like this or along these lines.
Dear ODD ConCom
Thank you for your invitation to be one of your Guests Of Honor at next years convention. It is a tremendous honor for me to have been asked.
I would love to accept, but I noticed that Person X is one of the convention’s regular staff members and who also happens to currently be the convention’s Guest Services Liason. In the past I, personally, had several uncomfortable interactions with this individual and I do not feel safe around him. It is also well know throughout the fannish community that Person X has done Y and Z at Convention W in the past and has been permanently banned from Convention W for life.
Unfortunately, as long as Person X maintains a staff position with the convention or if Person X is granted the right to purchase an attending membership and allowed to be in attendance at next years convention, I will have to decline the convention’s invitation to be a Guest Of Honor, as I would not feel safe.
Sincerely
Writer V
Oh, ok.
Look the main thing here is the failure of Sean Kirk to properly screen all cons and warn their guest of honour about problematic people. ‘Wait!’ You may say, ‘that’s absurd!’ Yeah but I’ve decided that I do not see it that way. I’ve decided, for no particularly good reason that moral responsibility no longer sits with the most obvious place (the person placed in a position of authority), nor with the person who feels in danger (which would be absurd on the face of it) but with Sean Kirk. By doing so we can neatly look at a situation and see how the problems that arose were due to a failure by Sean Kirk to act proactively to stop the problems arising. Now sure, Sean Kirk wouldn’t actually know about the problems, doesn’t have an easy way of finding out about the problems and probably doesn’ have any obvious connection with the random situation I have mind but I don’t see it that way. For example, just imagine how much better things would have been if Sean Kirk had adequately assessed the mortgage default risks amid sub-prime mortgage lenders in the USA in the early 2000’s. If Sean Kirk had evaluated that risk correctly and had convinced the appropriate authorities to take action PRIOR to the Global Financial Crisis then lots of people wouldn’t have lost their homes and we’d probably be in a better geopolitical situation worldwide. Yes, yes, on the face of it that is ridiculous but I do not see it that way. They key thing is to pass blame from the organisers of an event to the people who are not the organisers of the event and Sean Kirk was not the organiser of the event and ergo, to blame somehow and surely not the people who created the problem in the first place.
Sean Kirk:
So you think a GoH – with no power to decide what roles serial harassers should have in working for the con – has the same responsibility as the chair of the con who decided that a serial harasser was the perfect person to set as a liason for the GoH?
Do you really think so? For realsies?
Hampus
“So you think a GoH – with no power to decide what roles serial harassers should have in working for the con – has the same responsibility as the chair of the con who decided that a serial harasser was the perfect person to set as a liason for the GoH?”
The GOH had the power to decline the invitation of the convention, and should have at the time that the invitation was offered or shortly thereafter if the concom was unwilling to address the fact or were unwilling to recognize that they had a serial harasser as a part of their staff. That person had been on staff in the past, was on staff at the time that the author accepted the convention’s invitation, and remained on staff until what the last 24 hours. If the concom chooses to keep a serial harraser on staff, that is on them.
But the author was not powerless. We all have choices.
The GoH did not have a serial harasser as a liaison until recently. When the GoH found at that she had a serial harasser as a liaison, she complained. And when the con thought it was totally acceptable that the GoH had a serial harasser as a liaison, she resigned.
Now tell me – is it the GoH that was responsible for getting a serial harasser as a liaison? If not, why would you hold the GoH responsible for something that is not her decision?
Do you believe that all volunteers helping at Oddcon also are as responsible as those that make the decisions, i.e the chair and the board? Does that go for the visitors too? If so, wouldn’t it be better if there was no chair and board if they hold no more responsibility for their decisions than anyone else who does not make decisions?
I’m just going to write “ditto” against what Camestros said and leave it there.
It is very easy. If a chair or a board of a convention needs a GoH to tell them that it is a bad idea to employ serial harassers as panelists or liaisons, then they shouldn’t be a chair or on a board in the first place.
Hampus
“Now tell me – is it the GoH that was responsible for getting a serial harasser as a liaison? If not, why would you hold the GoH responsible for something that is not her decision?”
Co-chair Janet Lewis said:
“Up until yesterday we had no knowledge of any problems Ms. Valentinelli had with Mr. Frenkel at Odyssey Con – both had been at Odyssey Conn previously, and both had been on panels together during that time. So we were surprised to hear there had been a problem.”
According to the Co-chair yesterday was the first time that they received a complaint from Ms. Valentinelli regarding the presence of Jim Frenkel. Am I to be expected to believe that the concom is conspiring to deceive everyone in order to save face?