WisCon 40 Chairs Resign

WisCon 40 co-chairs Andrea Horbinski and s.e. smith both resigned October 6.

Andrea Horbinski gave this explanation:

I’m sorry to say that my co-chair s.e. smith and I have resigned as Wiscon 40 chairs and as members of the Wiscon concom, effective immediately. This is a really unfortunate decision to have had to make, and we very much regret placing the con in this position. That said, it seems clear that we are a poor culture fit for the concom, and we feel the need to prioritize self-care rather than further risk our own mental health and well-being. Another reason we are leaving now rather than later is that at this juncture there is still potentially time to find replacement chairs to bring Wiscon 40 to fruition. We really appreciated the opportunity to work on Wiscon, and we wish the convention all the best.

WisCon’s official announcement expressed appreciation for the work the two had done:

In their months as Concom chairs, Andrea and s.e. were enacting exciting ideas for WisCon 40, starting with inviting back a previous guest of honor as a special guest.  They also showed great commitment to placing the concom on firm, sustainable ground by pushing forward an internal documentation initiative proposed by the outgoing WisCon 39 chairs.

Andrea and s.e. stepped up as chairs during a very transitional time for the Concom and the Concom and Board are deeply grateful for their work over the past year.

We are sorry to lose Andrea and s.e. as chairs and from the Concom and we wish them nothing but all the success in their future endeavors.

Interim Chair for WisCon 40 will be Jackie Lee, SF3 Board President.

[Thanks to Darrah Chavey for the links.]

66 thoughts on “WisCon 40 Chairs Resign

  1. That said, it seems clear that we are a poor culture fit for the concom, and we feel the need to prioritize self-care rather than further risk our own mental health and well-being.

    Whatever happened to resignation speeches along the lines of “I want to devote more time to my family” or “I will be unable to perform my duties while serving my sentence in a federal prison?”

  2. @Laura those resignation announcements wouldn’t signal to people “I’m upset and need attention” or start the Internet rumor mill going as well. They are just too bland for today’s savvy social media users.

    I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about what happened behind the scenes over the next few weeks. I’m wondering if this has to do with “how to handle harassers” as they were talking about education and redemption in the report on this past WiscCon.

  3. O good–I thought I was being mean and cynical when my first take was along the lines of ‘ This is really passive-aggressive. It sounds like they’re saying ‘this con isn’t going the way we think it should and people disagreed with us and being the delicate flowers we are, we resign.’ While singing Kumbaya.

    But then my role models tend to be Ouiser from ‘Steel Magnolias’ and Diana from “Waiting for God”.

  4. OTOH, my mental translation of it was more along the lines of “there is not enough money in the universe to convince me to keep working with these arseholes”.

    Time will tell, hopefully. Fandom’s dirty laundry needs airing; failure to do so is what got Wiscon into the mess it’s in.

  5. Laura Resnick: Whatever happened to resignation speeches along the lines of “I want to devote more time to my family” or “I will be unable to perform my duties while serving my sentence in a federal prison?”

    I strongly suspect this may be the end result of how this year’s harassment reports were handled.

    Whatever the cause is, it will undoubtedly come out at some point. People don’t make a statement like that unless they have a grievance that they want aired in public. If this wasn’t the case, the chair’s announcement would have been as bland and pleasant as Wiscon’s.

  6. “OTOH, my mental translation of it was more along the lines of “there is not enough money in the universe to convince me to keep working with these arseholes”.”

    According to FailFandom-Anon, it seems the ones going are the arseholes. Or are at least, known to be arseholes.

    Wiscon is an endless font of wank. Why does it have to be this waty?

  7. @Ann Somerville: Checking fail-fandomanon it seems to be a permanent forum for griefing and malicious gossip. I wouldn’t trust anything said there myself.

    Speaking only for myself, I have no idea on what has happened, but I do know that any attempt to change an established culture in a specific direction is very hard to do, even if the change doesn’t threaten the established structures. I can easily see a situation where Wiscon asked the new chairs to fix problem X, while the chairs knew that fixing X would require Y and Z to be fixed as well, but Wiscon didn’t want Y or Z to be changed.

    TLDR: I simply know too little to place any blame or causes, so would prefer to keep unfounded or malicious speculation away.

  8. Karl-Johan Norén: Checking fail-fandomanon it seems to be a permanent forum for griefing and malicious gossip. I wouldn’t trust anything said there myself.

    On the several occasions when I’ve been gullible enough to click on links to that forum, it has without exception proven to be a thread full of malicious gossip and vicious backbiting. I am unsurprised to see that this one is just more of the same.

    It reminds me of junior high school — a bunch of people who seem to have gotten stuck around the age of 12 and haven’t ever grown up. Or, if you’ve ever seen the movie Mean Girls, it’s the same mentality. In fact, it reminds me a lot of the Puppy blogs.

  9. I wish they’d bring back Jeanne Gomoll as conchair, but of course that’s not going to happen.

  10. As a from the start FFAer, I’d say mostly *accurate* gossip, but eh, every place isn’t going to suit everyone.

  11. Maybe when someone asserts they need to back away from something to protect their mental health and well-being we should just take them at their word instead of painting them as passive-aggressive assholes.

    Could be it was a bad space for them, for reasons not our business, and they…need to step away for the sake of their own mental health and well-being.

  12. strongly suspect this may be the end result of how this year’s harassment reports were handled.

    That’s what I was thinking of.

    @B R Sanders as others have said they should have gone with something blander than it seems clear that we are a poor culture fit for the concom if they didn’t want us speculating.

  13. Given what’s been happening over the past five years with WisCon, I can believe there’s been a “culture fit” problem in general. It’s why Jeanne Gomoll, Jim Hudson and many others quit the WisCon concom last year. But you’d think that the two chairs who just resigned would have already been full members of the current hive mind. Maybe there’s another WisCon schism that’s taken place.

  14. Fannish politics can be frustrating whether you are the chair or one of the committee. I’ve been personally involved with disagreements over things like choice of who benefits from the charity auction, whether a book donation box is tied to the wrong organization, or unfounded claims of sabatoge of a nasfic bid. Sometimes it all comes out in the open and other times it is only talked about in whispers, but unfortunately it never seems to end.

  15. tavella: As a from the start FFAer, I’d say mostly *accurate* gossip, but eh, every place isn’t going to suit everyone.

    I’m asking this genuinely: given that you’re someone who feels that FFA has been of real value to you, does it not bother you to see the commenting there devolve into the sort of vicious, childish malice on rampant display in that thread? It reads like a lot of the comments by RH/BS which I’ve seen documented.

    It’s hard for me to imagine any decent adult human being reading that thread and thinking that it’s acceptable behavior, or wanting anything to do with participating in it.

  16. ’re someone who feels that FFA has been of real value to you, does it not bother you to see the commenting there devolve into the sort of vicious, childish malice on rampant display in that thread? It reads like a lot of the comments by RH/BS which I’ve seen documented.

    It didn’t seem any more vicious than the one on display here, to me. It is clear that the previous round of decapitations of Wiscon concom left a lot of people with a bad taste in their mouths. Me, and I speak as somebody who once thought of Wiscon as hime, I am not thinking of setting foot there again in the near future.

  17. Anna Feruglio Dal Dan: It didn’t seem any more vicious than the one on display here, to me.

    Seriously? People repeatedly make fun of someone’s gender identification and of their name, not to mention just general character assassination. I don’t see that sort of thing going on here.

  18. It’s wank all the way down.

    I was never particularly interested in Wiscon, and my interest has reached such negative numbers you could have superconductivity.

    I read that FFA thread, and am a titch sympathetic to the “What’s with the non-capitalization and wanting an exclusive pronoun?” POV. But that depends on the person, I’d say. I will go to a lot of detail along those lines if the person is not an asshole and does not get unreasonably angry when someone makes an honest mistake, but corrects gently. Of course, if the same person makes the mistake over and over after being corrected, anger is reasonable. But perhaps the person in question is an asshole, and therefore does not get benefit of the doubt.

    But it is the least that can be done to, at minimum, not use “she”.

    Or maybe FFA is just bad behavior all the way down. I, too, will wait on further details from a source with much less vitriol.

    I would say that grad school and transitioning is enough stress without a fractious concom on your ass too. Being a conchair is exhausting even when everyone gets along and nobody’s heard of you. So I wouldn’t blame them for saying “screw you guys, we’re going home, fix your own wank.”

  19. The people who said ‘she’ were corrected immediately, and the whole subthread was then frozen. One may think that the larger thread is rather mean, but given that JJ was specifically concerned about people questioning smith’s gender identity, it’s worth saying that that is actually something the mods come down on quite severely.

  20. I was thinking that maybe someone is pushing back on their anti-abuse policies. Listing capitalism with the other evils of cissexism, colonialism and patriarchy does give vendors something to consider.

  21. Andrew M:

    The people who said ‘she’ were corrected immediately, and the whole subthread was then frozen. One may think that the larger thread is rather mean, but given that JJ was specifically concerned about people questioning smith’s gender identity, it’s worth saying that that is actually something the mods come down on quite severely.

    That’s as may be, but when I went this afternoon and looked at the thread, it was literally just about the only thing I saw in ten or fifteen minutes of threadsampling. Basically nothing but making fun of this person’s gender and pronouns. If there was anything substantive there, I certainly didn’t spot it.

  22. Maybe when someone asserts they need to back away from something to protect their mental health and well-being we should just take them at their word instead of painting them as passive-aggressive assholes.

    Could be it was a bad space for them, for reasons not our business, and they…need to step away for the sake of their own mental health and well-being. THIS.

  23. Given how many people there were actively pissy about smith’s gender identification and choice not to capitalize (paging bell hooks, bell hooks to the courtesy phone please… or if ms. hooks is unavailable, paging danah boyd) I have little interest in reading the thread closely enough to try to dig out any specific accusations of actual failings. What I read of it seemed to be personally-focused and petty.

  24. @Harold Osler: good point. One can have useful, mutually-beneficial capitalism (if properly supervised).

    Not so much with the beneficial aspects of colonialism and patriarchy. Those are all bad.

    As someone who rather enjoys purchasing goods and services, that’d put me off too — and I don’t even sell things for a living. I’m not sure how they’re planning to run a convention without capitalism.

  25. I think part of it is shadenfreunde. The previous chairs were ousted because, it was felt, they were not Perfect. Well, it turns out running a convention is hard work and the previous concom had experience and knowledge that helped them.

  26. Anna Feruglio Dal Dan: I think part of it is shadenfreunde. The previous chairs were ousted because, it was felt, they were not Perfect. Well, it turns out running a convention is hard work and the previous concom had experience and knowledge that helped them.

    Yeah, you know, if that’s the case, then perhaps they could find some legitimate and meaningful comments to make, instead of behaving like a bunch of spiteful, petty children. Because that thread makes it really clear who the assholes are — and it’s not the Wiscon chairs who’ve just resigned.

  27. “What I read of it seemed to be personally-focused and petty.”

    Yeah, most con wank is. I make no judgement as to the validity of the assessments, but there is clearly a lot of resentment in some quarters against the two people leaving, and I dropped the link to demonstrate that.

    I obviously didn’t consider that certain people would choose to wank about their superiority complexes with regards to a forum they personally don’t frequent, instead. Because obviously File770 is always troll free and wank free and only engages in the highest forms of discourse.

  28. Ann Somerville: I obviously didn’t consider that certain people would choose to wank about their superiority complexes with regards to a forum they personally don’t frequent, instead. Because obviously File770 is always troll free and wank free and only engages in the highest forms of discourse think a bunch of people behaving like children would reflect badly on those people, instead of the resigning chairpeople I was trying to indict.

    There, fixed that for you.

  29. JJ on October 8, 2015 at 11:11 pm said:
    Ann Somerville: […]

    There, fixed that for you.

    That was really out of line.

  30. @Ann Somerville: Lately you wrote:

    “I make no judgement as to the validity of the assessments, but there is clearly a lot of resentment in some quarters against the two people leaving, and I dropped the link to demonstrate that.”

    But originally you wrote here:

    “According to FailFandom-Anon, it seems the ones going are the arseholes. Or are at least, known to be arseholes.”

    It’s true that the FFA link demonstrates resentment, but you did refer it as a source for saying that smith and Horbinski “are the arseholes”.

  31. To be clearer, what I saw – and I read the thread at FFA several times because I thought I had missed something, was some mocking of special snowflakness, some grumbling about one person’s choice of pronouns, not as they related to their gender identity but because they were felt to be precious, which was frozen by the mods, and some people making the same observation I made above. The whole seemed snarky but not hateful.
    There was also some discussion of other reasons one particular person was disliked, which included criticism of shelfies and bucket challenge.
    There are plenty of other people FFA seems in a sort of consensus about disliking and some of them I like quite a bit, and there is indeed snark but there is also always somebody who will call out the snark – as was in this case, indeed.

  32. Ann Somerville:

    I obviously didn’t consider that certain people would choose to wank about their superiority complexes with regards to a forum they personally don’t frequent

    How would anybody know?

    What’s more, isn’t FFA designed to be a consequence-free site for stuff people aren’t willing to attach their names or handles to? Therefore FFA participants themselves EXPECT this kind of pushback.

  33. Anna Feruglio Dal Dan: That was really out of line.

    I don’t think it was. The FFA thread was linked with the comment “According to FailFandom-Anon, it seems the [chairs resigning] are the arseholes. Or are at least, known to be arseholes.” The intention with that post was pretty clearly an indictment of the resigning chairs.

    How in hell a bunch of people behaving childishly and nastily was considered “positive” supporting documentation for that position is utterly beyond me.

  34. “Therefore FFA participants themselves EXPECT this kind of pushback.”

    I have no idea whether they do or don’t. I’m not defending or even talking about FFA – I’m talking about the faux superiority from individuals about *their* personal choices as to how to discuss matters, trivial or serious, while spitting on other people’s choices. Half the people here don’t use their real names – I don’t – and the lack of a handle attached to a comment doesn’t immediately render it useless. (Please note that I fundamentally disagree with Mamatas’s rules of internet commenting, being that I am not a white guy where using my real name is considered a good idea.)

    If people don’t like a particular forum, fine. But, Mike you were pretty upset that FFA disdained some of the participants here – why is it okay for the disdain to flow the other way? Would it be acceptable if every time Kyra posted her brackets, someone popped up to say how much they despised brackets and competitions of that type?

    FFA has its wankers and trolls, and people talking about trans individuals tends to bring stupidity wherever it happens. To write off a forum which has done some damn good work for fandom – and yes, even your part of fandom – over the last year and more on the strength of a discussion about two passive aggressive departers from a notoriously troubled and wank generating com, is a bit much.

    If you don’t like something, don’t read it, eat it or vote for it. “Learn to scroll” as they say.

  35. Ann Somerville, what you call “the faux superiority from individuals about *their* personal choices as to how to discuss matters, trivial or serious, while spitting on other people’s choices”

    I call “being adult enough to recognize when behavior is childish and petty versus a genuine airing of grievances with supporting statements worded in a rational, adult manner”.

    If you want to complain that that is “tone policing” you go effing right ahead and complain. I call it “expecting adults to use their reasoning and logic capabilities to express themselves like adults, rather than engaging in irrational character assassination like pathetic, petty children”.
     

    Ann Somerville: If you don’t like something, don’t read it, eat it or vote for it. “Learn to scroll” as they say.

    Oh, so now you’re dictating to other people when they are, or are not, allowed to comment on others’ behavior. How incredibly “comment policing” of you.

  36. JJ on October 8, 2015 at 11:29 pm said:
    Anna Feruglio Dal Dan: That was really out of line.

    I don’t think it was

    I don’t mean the substance. That is up to you, i can disagree but not impugne your right to say it. But the “there fixed it for you” routine I would reserve for amicable banter between people who mostly agree, otherwise it sounds a little childish and certainly spiteful.

  37. What’s more, isn’t FFA designed to be a consequence-free site for stuff people aren’t willing to attach their names or handles to? Therefore FFA participants themselves EXPECT this kind of pushback

    No, the fact that there are no names attached to posts means that attacks at nominen are not posdible – but people are expected to police themselves and their fellow nonnies and they do.

  38. Anna Feruglio Dal Dan: I don’t mean the substance. That is up to you, i can disagree but not impugne your right to say it. But the “there fixed it for you” routine I would reserve for amicable banter between people who mostly agree, otherwise it sounds a little childish and certainly spiteful.

    Gotcha. Thanks for providing your thoughts on this; I appreciate the rational, adult manner in which you did so. I will certainly take this on board for my future interactions. 🙂

  39. If people don’t like a particular forum, fine. But, Mike you were pretty upset that FFA disdained some of the participants here – why is it okay for the disdain to flow the other way? Would it be acceptable if every time Kyra posted her brackets, someone popped up to say how much they despised brackets and competitions of that type?

    Actually, much as I like brackets, they do tend to kill the conversation and it would be better for me if they had their own thread.

    FFA has its wankers and trolls, and people talking about trans individuals tends to bring stupidity wherever it happens. To write off a forum which has done some damn good work for fandom – and yes, even your part of fandom – over the last year and more on the strength of a discussion about two passive aggressive departers from a notoriously troubled and wank generating com, is a bit much.

    You have perfectly articulated my position.

  40. Also, I admit that in this case my own complicated feelings about Wiscon come into play. It used to be a very good con and I am sure it still is, despite its difficulties and troubles.

  41. Gotcha. Thanks for providing your thoughts on this; I appreciate the rational, adult manner in which you did so. I will certainly take this on board for my future interactions. 🙂

    🙂

  42. Ann Somerville: To write off a forum which has done some damn good work for fandom – and yes, even your part of fandom – over the last year and more on the strength of a discussion about two passive aggressive departers from a notoriously troubled and wank generating com, is a bit much.

    If you want to showcase the strengths and positive attributes of that forum, by all means, do so. I would be delighted to be shown a side of FFA which is wise, and thoughtful, and rational. I have never yet seen that side.

    Linking to the worst side of a forum is not the way to do that; and if you do link to the worst side of a forum, you should not be surprised if that is how people judge that forum.

  43. @Anna Feruglio Dal Dan–
    There was also some discussion of other reasons one particular person was disliked, which included criticism of shelfies and bucket challenge.

    I did check out the shelfies writing because I thought it was a misspelling but after reading the article I could see where a continuous exposure would get on your nerves and lead to a range of responses from ‘pretentious’ to an indulgent grandmother’s ‘she’s young’. this line made me roll my eyes and think “well, she’s young.”
    Owning large quantities of books, being familiar with them, frequently referring to them, working in an industry where books are valued, these are all markers of upper middle class status, reflecting education, purchasing power, and social privilege
    Add in the lower case name–which I still think only e e cummings should be allowed–and the archane pronoun “ou” and yeah, you’re gonna get thought pretentious.

  44. Harold Osler: Add in the lower case name – which I still think only e e cummings should be allowed – and the archane pronoun “ou” and yeah, you’re gonna get thought pretentious.

    Yeah, you know, FFA supposedly prides itself on being progressive, and feminist, and supportive of minority viewpoints.

    Well, you don’t get to claim being “progressive, and feminist, and supportive of minority viewpoints” when it’s only the progress, and the feminism, and the minority viewpoints, of which you approve.

    There are people here, and elsewhere on the internets, who I perceive to be pretentious, egotistical assholes.

    The difference is that if I am going to call them out for it, I’m going to do it in a rational, logical manner, backed up by quotes and citations and logic.

    If someone wants to call someone else out for being “pretentious”, they aren’t going to (successfully) do it by behaving like a child.

    Would it be okay for me to ridicule you for your first name, Harold? My grandpa’s name was Harold. He was an abusive asshole who physically abused his wife and children, for many years. He was a toxic, horrendous personality who damaged a lot of lives. Should I judge you because you have the same name as him?

    Why would it be okay for anyone else to ridicule someone for their name?

    Ridicule them for their bad behavior, sure. But for their name? No.

  45. Regarding FFA, I didn’t find any further information there about why the two WisCon 40 conchairs quit, just a lot of chatter. Meh.

  46. Ann Somerville:

    To write off a forum which has done some damn good work for fandom – and yes, even your part of fandom – over the last year and more on the strength of a discussion about two passive aggressive departers from a notoriously troubled and wank generating com, is a bit much.

    Look, you linked to it saying how people thought the two chairs were assholes, presumably using the link as evidence of what people thought. I followed your link. Your link led to a lot of folks making fun of the people in question (whom I not only don’t know, but had never heard of, so had no prior opinion about) for their gender, their pronouns, and their capitalization choices. I kept opening subthreads, and that’s what I kept seeing. What you link did not lead to, at least while I still had patience for reading it, was any actual evidence of real assholery on the part of the chairs in question.
    It was your choice to link to that thread. It was your choice to link to that part of the thread. And what you linked to looked a lot to my eyes like a bunch of people being assholes about the Wiscon chairs, and little to no evidence of the chairs being assholes to anybody else.
    Maybe they are assholes. I don’t know. Like I said, I’ve never knowingly met them nor heard of them before. But based on the evidence you presented, all I know is that a bunch of assholes seem to think they are assholes, which is, if anything, a pencil mark on the positive side of the ledger for them.
    As for “writing off the forum”, well, if that’s the face of the forum that you wish to showcase, I don’t think it would be be a good fit for my forum-reading time.

  47. As a not native english speaker, I got extremely confused about the conversation. While I know the progressive vocabulary in swedish, I have no idea how it is supposed to be in english.

    The only thing I know is that you accept the genderpronoun a person wants you to use and do not start a conversation ridiculing it. Then you are an arsehole.

    So could anyone now explain to me how the words are supposed to be used in english?

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