Will Shetterly reports he has been banned from Minneapolis’ annual 4th Street Fantasy Convention.
In 2017, a 4th Street board member recruited Shetterly to help with a writing workshop, however, after seeing the info appear on the con’s website, 4th Street’s Safety Coordinator raised concerns. The board overruled the selection and Shetterly was dropped. Shetterly exchanged emails with people to find out what those concerns were and why the decision was made. Today he published that correspondence because the board has notified him he is banned from 4th Street Fantasy, due to his having raised the spectre of legal action when dropped from the 2017 workshop, and also for his public criticism of the convention.
Shetterly quotes the board’s notice about the ban in section three of his post “Positively Fourth Street, or On being banned for … vague reasons about nearly indescribable things?”
- I was done with 4th Street, but 4th Street was not done with me
After deciding I was done with Fourth Street, I rarely thought about it. When I did, I remembered it like Minneapolis’s Uptown neighborhood, a place that was fun that has been gentrified. It never occurred to me that Fourth Street was not done with me, but the convention is like a lover I ghosted—she felt obliged to tell me the relationship is over. On March 8, I woke to find this email:
Dear Will:
On April 27, 2017, as part of an email conversation regarding your removal from a programming item at the 2017 4th Street Fantasy Convention, you wrote “Someone has suggested this decision to imply I’m unsafe in public might be actionable.”
We cannot disregard this implied threat of legal action, particularly combined with your lengthy and detailed public criticism of the convention on multiple platforms. Despite your reassurance in correspondence dated April 30, 2017 that “I just want to reassure everyone that Emma and I have less than zero intention of suing anyone”, the Board of Directors has decided that we are unwilling to open ourselves to liability through further association with you.
We are therefore banning you from Fourth Street Fantasy.
We would like to resolve this privately. These are the practical steps we have taken:
• As stated above, you are banned from Fourth Street Fantasy. You will not be allowed to register for the convention or attend convention events. Please do not come to the Doubletree Hotel during the weekend of the convention.
Thank you for your service as a founder, programming participant, and long-time attendee. We wish you well in your further writing career.
Sincerely Yours,
The Fourth Street Fantasy Board of Directors
Brad Roberts
Scott Lynch
Alex Haist
Arkady Martine
Max Gladstone
Shetterly says he was “done with 4th Street” already (partly for the reasons covered last year in “Steven Brust’s Fourth Street Fantasy Remarks Generate Heat”, which Shetterly commented on extensively.) However, he believes a public statement is needed to clear the air, lest people assume he has been banned for the kind of behavior that has gotten other men banned from conventions.
Soon afterward, I realized these things:
1. The only substance in the Board’s letter is the fact that I’m banned because they’re concerned I might sue them for implying I’m unsafe. Their logic is odd. If I was the sort of person who liked using the law, banning me would make me more likely to sue them. By banning me, they are giving me the only reason I might have to sue them—in earlier times, no one would have been banned for polite disagreement, so people will quite reasonably assume there must be more to the charge.
2. Their letter says I criticize the convention without citing examples because there are none. I’ve always supported the convention. I’ve only criticized its current administrators who speak as if they are the convention—L’Etat, c’est moi is the motto of all petty people who fail to see they are only caretakers.
3. The letter says the Board “would like to resolve this privately”, but a ban means nothing if no one knows about it, the idea that five members of this community could keep anything private is hilarious, and there’s nothing offered to resolve: the Board isn’t dangling any hope of rescinding the ban if I promise to keep from criticizing them in the future. Their “privately” may mean they want to keep the story in the realm of gossip instead of making a press release, but the game of telephone began the moment a Board member told a friend I’d been banned or answered an inquiry about whether I’ll be at this year’s 4th Street.
So the Board has given me three choices:
- Do nothing, thereby validating the implication that I’m banned for the same reason other men in our community have been banned.
- Sue the Board to make them admit that the implications of their ban are false.
- Make the historical record public so people may draw their own conclusions.
Shetterly says he has chosen the last option, thus his post.
[Thanks to Mark Hepworth for the story.]
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Will Shetterly wants to argue that “someone has suggested this decision to imply I’m unsafe in public might be actionable” is not an actual threat to sue.
That’s a somewhat reasonable interpretation, but it’s not really up to him. The recipient of a threat decides how serious it is.
As a web publisher, any time someone start talking about a lawsuit I told them we couldn’t talk any more, so any further comment on their part should be sent by a lawyer.
Green Man Reviev has been threatened several times over the content of a review from the folks who created the content, once when our reviewer who was a baker tried the recipies in a work and found they didn’t actually work.
When threatened, I send back a polite email saying that we will no longer speak to you and await a legal response. None never come.
I blocked WS after he “joked” about punching me in the face. Maybe he’s different in person, but I’ve never really understood the whole, “He’s an asshole online, but he’s a nice guy in real life” dichotomy. So I can totally understand people having concerns.
That said, it sounds like the board’s communication over all this leaves a lot to be desired…
Last time Shetterly was galloping around here, he said that he was proud to have people say “do not engage” about him. Not surprising then that a convention didn’t want to engage with him.
Seems kind of extreme to me. Met him and Emma at a Boskone once upon a time and they didn’t strike me as terribly dangerous.,
The Doubletree can tell him that he can’t come to the hotel that weekend, but unless they’ve booked the entire hotel for convention use, the board has no place in making that statement.
They aren’t really doing a very good job of covering themselves against possible litigation.
Sure didn’t come across as ironic at the time. Maybe the con punted him ironically?
Shetterly has so routinely, for so long, been so abusive online, that I have no trust left, and no fucks left to give if he’s unhappy.
I’m also not inclined to believe he has engaged in full disclosure about his interactions with Fourth Street over this. Not suggesting anything is faked; just that I wouldnt be surprised if there’s more, stuff that he’s decided is “not relevant,” but which Fourth Street might consider very relevant.
We only have his version, and I think if Fourth Street has any sense, it will probably stay that way, because nothing except Shetterly’s desire for an online fight is served by their attempting to discuss this publicly. But in ther absence of more information, his history is against him.
And it’s been a long time since Will and Emma came to Boskone, unless they snuck in sometime when I was very busy. 😉
It’s an interesting development that Cons are now banning specific individuals as a matter of course for just things they say. Will there soon be a list something like the No-Fly List for Cons?
I’ve never got the impression that Shetterly is dangerous – apart from a willingness to out people, which is a different sort of dangerous – but I do think he’s a bore who likes drama. I can’t say I think a social gathering online has ever been improved by his presence, although I’m not familiar with how he behaves at conventions. Maybe he’s a real charmer in meatspace, who knows, but I wouldn’t choose to hang out with him.
Without knowing the whole story I don’t know whether this was an over-reaction or just the culmination of a series of unfortunate clashes.
Well, we do know now, that the Seven Brust-post above was all about him – and he didn’t mention it with one word when he went full galloping sealion in the comment section.
So we can be fairly sure that he will not mention everything relevant.
I wouldn’t have said ‘dangerous’ either, but that part where he made clear that he JUST WOULD NOT STOP picking at it is him to a T. I’m not in love with the idea of people being different online, either.
c4c
once more with feeling…and clicking…
I remember vaguely how he went around here saying that he took some sketchy exam online that proved he wasn’t racist while vaguely implying that anyone who didn’t want to take the same exam online was. I’m pretty sure the con has a different view than he does about the reasons he was banned.
Cat, I’m in the process of a series on my blog about the pressures for positive reviews, the effects of political correctness and the expectations of content providers that reviews will be a marketing promotion. I’d be interested in hearing more about your experiences. It’s here if you’d like to check in with a comment or two.
Lis – that’s a really good point. Given the distortions in his blog post, and his history… I don’t think he’d lie about the contents of the messages he’s sharing, but it makes me wonder how selective he’s being, and how much context and history he’s omitting.
@Lis Carey. I’m not sure why you put it that way unless you’re trying to imply that I’m making it up. It was, I’m pretty sure, Boskone XXXI which was in 1994 when they were still held in Framingham
.
I have an autographed NESFA printing of Double Feature by Will and Emma as well as an autographed copy of Finder. So I’m pretty sure it wasn’t all in my head.
It has been sad to watch Will turn into a curmudgeon over the years, because I remember him fondly (if only vaguely) as a friend of friends several decades ago.
But about the “outing” business—that woman was not closeted in the first place, no matter what she said about it afterwards. Back in 2009 when Racefail was in full swing, I used to read the various blogs every few days, when I could snatch a little free time. On one occasion I had trouble finding hers because I couldn’t remember the name of the blog and hadn’t bookmarked it; but I did remember the personal name used by the blogger, because it was unusual. So I Googled it, and among the first things that came up were her Amazon wish list, and references to her published fiction, all with her full legal name. I had no idea who she was and certainly wasn’t trying to find anything except the blog, but there all the information was, for anyone to see. So when she started claiming that she had been outed by the people she disliked, my first reaction was bewilderment, and my second reaction was outrage at such a bold-faced lie. (And my third reaction was disgust at how many people fell for the lie.)
I strongly disagree with many of Will’s opinions, but for several years—specifically, between 2009 and 2014—I read his blog regularly because he seemed to be the only person willing to tell the truth about something important: namely, that very ugly things were being said and done in the name of social justice in SFF. Eventually, of course, the nastiness became so extreme that other people pointed it out as well, and Laura Mixon won a Hugo for going public with it. But for quite a while there, Will was the solitary, bratty kid complaining about the Emperor’s new clothes while everyone else politely pretended that all was well.
The pretext of banning Shetterly over a possible threat to sue is pretty flimsy to say the least. IMO, his banning is due to the fannish ill will that’s been growing against Shetterly for years, and more recently the fallout over the Brust speech at Fourth Street last year. Oh well, what the hell.
If either party wants to take this to court, I’d consider donating to both sides, just to find out what a judge would make of it. But in this case, there’s enough to make some judgements. The board was admirably open about their reasoning in both cases, so we can judge for ourselves what we think.
Here’s why they canceled his workshop last year:
And here’s why he’s permanently banned this year:
Is there something about either of those that’s unclear? Any reason to say they aren’t true? The board gave their reasons explicitly. I’m willing to believe them. (A rundown on the “lengthy and detailed public criticism of the convention” would be useful, but that piece is missing, so I guess assume the reasonable worst of it and go on.)
David W.: The pretext of banning Shetterly over a possible threat to sue is pretty flimsy to say the least. IMO, his banning is due to the fannish ill will that’s been growing against Shetterly for years, and more recently the fallout over the Brust speech at Fourth Street last year.
I suspect that this is much like the JDA case — where the real reasons for the banning can’t be given without painting huge targets on the backs of numerous people, so instead the public speculation and outrage is all about how they’ve been banned for something general and somewhat trivial (but which doesn’t make anyone a specific “culprit” for the banning).
And I’m quite sure that WS has, as usual, presented only the information which supports his narrative.
JJ, there’s no need to make assumptions about what supposedly really happened behind the scenes. There’s more than an open book out there to read about Shetterly and his history with interaction with other fans, dating back to Ye Olde Usenet, enough to amply demonstrate how and why there’s so much ill will out there about him. Nor is there any reason to assume the Fourth Street board is keeping something back. Occam’s Razor is your friend here.
It seems to me that WS could’ve just taken his lumps and gone on with his life. His decision to go public about all this is just trying to create drama over a non-situation. He’s done with them; they’re done with him. Nothing of substance has changed as far as I can tell.
The central component of online interactions with WS has been his burning desire to be the center of all attention, no matter how small or adverse it might be. The other, somewhat large factor, is his burning desire to be acknowledged as correct in every statement. He’s the one with all the answers, always, and at the center of all the drama. Even before Racefail, he was wearing out his welcome everywhere.
@estee: Less a kid pointing at the emperor than the boy who cried wolf. By the point you’re talking about, even a fairly marginal lurker like me had written Shetterly off as so toxic that I would abandon reading comment sections as soon as he showed up in them, and I certainly wasn’t reading his blog. If he was speaking out against RH and her ilk in a way that wasn’t utterly self-serving, well, good for him I guess, but this is the first I’ve heard it, and that’s a direct result of his own behavior.
Lis:
Rochrist:
I’d assume she’s just pointing out that it’s been a long time since then.
1994 was a long time ago. There are several years’ worth of people born after that con who can legally drink now.
So the fact that he didn’t strike you as one thing or another 24 years ago may not mean much, because there’s been a lot of time since then for things to change.
The part that baffles me is:
There’s a guy you think tends to pursue issues too far. This trait is so horrible you don’t want him representing your organization and, after begging for his help tell him you dont want his help. He must be a complete nightmare of a vindictive anal retentive dogged monomania.
Ok, then on only the flimisiest possible excuse, an Implication of the potential of a lawsuit, you decide to rattle his cage.
Who does that?
Really, there was no threat of lawsuit in his email, none. He both explicitly denies an interest and provides a reasonable explanation for why he brought it up
Why go out of your way to piss him off? Ive seen some people call him a drama queen but really, this crown was thrust upon him.
Litch:
You know, no one who was part of the decision has commented here. Perhaps if you sent your questions in a mail to 4th Street Fantasy Convention instead? Because they are the only ones that can answer them.
@Jim Hines: I know some people who present themselves very differently online and in-person, just as there are people who present themselves very different in different types of social environments. That said, for many of us in fandom, how we present ourselves online is the way that most other fen know us at all, and that causes obvious spillover, and can complicate social interaction all by itself.
(I have never met Will S, so have no idea how he is personally. And frankly, I have little reason to try to find out.)
@Lela Buis: Saying something is action: a lot of harassment is verbal, even in meatspace.
David W.: JJ, there’s no need to make assumptions about what supposedly really happened behind the scenes. There’s more than an open book out there to read about Shetterly and his history with interaction with other fans, dating back to Ye Olde Usenet, enough to amply demonstrate how and why there’s so much ill will out there about him. Nor is there any reason to assume the Fourth Street board is keeping something back.
Sorry, clearly I wasn’t blatantly obvious enough about the meaning of my comment. It is clear that 4th Street got a lot of complaints about Shetterly based on the history you mention — but they aren’t going to produce a list of who communicated those complaints to them. Of course they are holding something back — the specifics of the complaints they got, and the names of the people who made them — because publishing that would be violating the confidence of those people and painting big harassment targets on their backs.
Is that clear and obvious enough for you, or do I need to re-phrase it to be even more obvious?
Lela E. Buis: It’s an interesting development that Cons are now banning specific individuals as a matter of course for just things they say. Will there soon be a list something like the No-Fly List for Cons?
What’s your proposed solution for dealing with chronic, abusive harassers? Giving them a complimentary membership and an “Honored Guest” badge ribbon?
One advantage of taking this to court–which I’m increasingly hoping he’ll do as I watch you go all white cell group mind over the intruder, something I doubt you realize looks as ugly to outsiders at it does–would be an outside check on whether or not this is bullshit.
I think it sounds like bullshit. Once you wipe away the dust, what happened was that Shetterly and Brust disagree politically with identity populism. They take a traditional left-wing approach to ending oppression. That is not an acceptable political position to say out loud in America, so they got booted under pretexts.
(That’s clearly not what happened with whatsisname, who made publicly explicit his intentions to commit clear and unequivocal harassment.)
So I’d like to see a judge–or anybody who isn’t the buddy or antagonist of someone involved, though a judge can really rub your nose in it–say whether or not what what Shetterly is accused of is actually harassment. A word the board avoids using, though folks here have felt free to do so without knowing what the board knows.
That last is a rather delicious irony which only occurred to me as I typed it.
@John A Arkansawyer
I assume you are disappointed that Shetterley hasn’t turned up to explode the thread, and have decided to try to do it yourself instead?
@Mark: Assume whatever you want. It’s a common practice and I can’t stop you.
One of my assumptions is that this is not about harassment. I assume that because the board was explicit in what they said.
The bouncing from a panel–but not from the convention, as I assume it would be if he were harassing people–was about “mode of discourse and your pattern of pursuing conversation past the point of when the other party wants to disengage”. I read that as being about panel behavior, though I could be wrong.
The banning is explicitly said to be because they are worried about a lawsuit.
Neither is characterized as harassment by the board, which presumably knows more about the situation than anyone in this discussion. Yet two commenters had used the word harassment in varyingly indirect references three times, all after the comment where I quoted the board’s explicit statements.
I don’t like slippery slope arguments, because all of life is a slippery slope. Being on the the slippery slope of banning people for harassment is a righteous place to be. It’s made righteous by not by leaving the slope–since you can’t leave it–but by resisting going down it. So perhaps people could resist sliding from right to wrong on this one.
@ John A Arkansawyer
I think people are talking about harassment being a factor in the board’s decision because of this:
I suspect it was a lot closer to ‘do we really want to continue to deal with this guy publicly causing trouble for the convention?’ personally (although I’m not sure this was the best plan for that – or whether that’s justification for banning, so I need to do some thinking), but following people around the internet on different platforms has certainly been under more scrutiny of late, in part due to the actions of people like JDA and Gamergate. Whether it meets the legal definition of harassment, I don’t know, but it is a problem with the internet of today.
Lots of people manage to share Shetterly’s politics without being such a so-and-so that they crater their reputation.
I think it would be even more delicious irony if John was banned from conventions because he wanted them to spend all time and energy on ridiculous lawsuits instead of on arranging conventions.
I have said before that fandom really doesn’t deserve conventions, so much disregard they show to everyone who works for free. John is just another example of this.
@John A Arkansawyer
Thank you for your detailed description of why you disagree with people using the word “harassment” here. However, that was not really what I thought was likely to cause unnecessary heat. Instead, I’d point to things like “I watch you go all white cell group mind” and wishing for noses to be rubbed in it, aimed indiscriminately at everyone, as what I thought was likely to kick things off.
@Mark
Yuuup.
@Mark: That’s fair. I would say it’s only aimed at the people who’d spoken before I had. But they do have reason to be irritated with me, just as I had reason to say it.
@Meridith: I get why people would equate that with harassment. I don’t because it wasn’t used as grounds to ban him, just to bounce him from a panel. I feel solid on that, because it’s the board’s own words and context. I speculate that it refers to panel behavior, but I could be wrong.
@Hampus Eckerman: You need to ban my kid and my kid’s mom, too, if you want to be really safe. They share some of my terrible ideas and, unlike me, go to cons.
I’ve said what I have to say, and repeated myself to Meredith, so unless someone else has something else unpleasant to say about me personally, I think I’m done.
@John A Arkansawyer
I don’t think whether it was or wasn’t used to ban someone is the defining characteristic of harassment, personally, but it’s fair to question whether it was the reason (or a reason) for banning or not. It seems reasonable for people to think that it would be a contributing factor since it was part of the exchange so early.
Lela E. Buis saysCat, I’m in the process of a series on my blog about the pressures for positive reviews, the effects of political correctness and the expectations of content providers that reviews will be a marketing promotion. I’d be interested in hearing more about your experiences. It’s here if you’d like to check in with a comment or two.
Lela, I’ll answer you here. If we do a review that says ritical things about a work, we’re very, very careful to make sure that 5he reviews about the work and not the creator. We’ve both spiked reviews that implied things about the creator of a given work and actually removed several staffers who couldn’t understand that was not allowed.
(One of such staffers got a well-known children’s writer very upset at us. The review was spiked as it did attavk that writer and the staffer was removed.)
Your premise at your blog is frankly bullshit from my viewpoint. If a book written by a POC gets a critical review by us, it means the reviewer thought the book just deserved such a commentary. And if a book by that same hypothetical POC gets s rave review, it was deserved. We certainly don’t go light on POCS et al in reviews
Much of the time, particularly with newer authors, a reviewer does nothing about them beyond a short bio in the book though galleys may even lack that. And some have no obvious gender such as KB Wagers did when I started reading her.
That said, staffers I’ve had over the past almost twenty years at Green Man Review are universally leftist . That’s fine as we very rarely get anything from the Puppy side of genre publishing.
John A Arkansawyer:
Nah, it is you who are playing the internet troll. Do not sink to the level of using your family as shields for your lousy arguments.
“Objection Your Honor – Plaintiff is assuming facts not in evidence.”
“Sustained.”
David W. on March 16, 2018 at 6:45 am said:
Only applies in a trial. Which isn’t happening.
And I take it you haven’t heard about what happens to women who publicly talk about being harassed or mistreated.
I don’t see that as an accurate description of what occurred here. These people were associated with each other for a long time through a convention. Because of personal conflicts, they don’t want to be associated any more. That’s a pretty common circumstance and one that isn’t about curtailing free speech.
If I have a business partner and it goes sour, we aren’t punishing speech by getting the hell away from each other.
Nope, it isn’t, certainly not in this case. I’m making a point about things being assumed by JJ that need not be given the fannish common knowledge about the person involved in this kerfluffle, and how that’s more than enough to go on. He’s being banned not so much because of the hypothetical threat to litigate but because of the history of ill will that many Fourth Street attendees harbor towards him. Chickens coming home to roost and all that.
@Hampus Eckerman: You are right. I should have said what was actually on my mind. So I’ll say it now: Take your personal attack on me and shove it.
@Meredith: Since I’m here, I’ll say it again: The board did not make any claim of harassment whatsoever. Harassment entered the discussion here, when people did exactly what Shetterly predicted they’d do: Decide something happened that was super terrible and double secret. And so entered harassment, from thin air.
He was bounced from a panel for…harassment? Why wouldn’t he be bounced from the con for that? Isn’t it much likelier such a limited sanction involved a more limited reading of the board’s words: “your mode of discourse and your pattern of pursuing conversation past the point of when the other party wants to disengage”?
That’s the best I can phrase it, but I’m still repeating myself. I’m sorry for that.
@David W.
From the source:
My guess is that he’s not banned because of ill will at all, but because of the time and energy the convention is forced to spend because of him.
Organizers do things because it is fun. When planning stops being fun because of all trouble around a person and you can’t feel that same joy around making visitors happy because of worry around that person, then you have to make a decision.
In this case they choose to boot the person involved. To save themselves time, energy and worry.