Two-time Hugo nominated fanwriter Mark Oshiro (Mark Watches Star Trek), ConQuesT’s Fan Guest of Honor in 2015, has publicly aired on Facebook his grievances about the racism, sexual harassment, and abuse he experienced at the con after working within the con’s complaint process produced no action.
In light of what I’ll reveal at the end, I find it more important than ever to talk about the persistent and pervasive racial and sexual abuse/harassment I was the victim of at ConQuesT because I did everything I was told to do in the event that I was harassed. I reported most of the events you’ll see described below, and I did not do so anonymously. I stuck my name on every incident report, partly because I was not afraid, but mostly because I wanted things to change. If putting my name on a report ensured that a better community could be built from my actions, then I felt it was worth it.
Alas, that does not seem to be the case.
ConQuesT is held annually over Memorial Day Weekend in Kansas City. The three-paragraph Behavior policy in effect at last year’s con began with clear expectations:
Behavior
ConQuesT is committed to offering a convention experience as free from harassment as we can make it for our members, regardless of characteristics such as gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, age, race, religion, nationality, or social class. We do not tolerate harassment of convention participants in any form. ConQuesT attendees violating these rules may be sanctioned or expelled from the convention without a refund, at the discretion of the convention organizers.
Before suffering any violations of the con’s behavior policy, Oshiro’s weekend as ConQuesT 46 Fan Guest of Honor got off to a rocky start because of poor hospitality. He was due a comp room but had to use his own card to register ‘til the committee straightened that out. The room was in the hotel’s secondary tower. He and his friend (now partner) were driven to a restaurant for the guest of honor dinner, but were not seated at the chairperson’s table with the rest of the GoH’s (George R.R. Martin, Nene Thomas, Brandon Sanderson, and Toastmaster Selina Rosen). At the end of the meal they were asked to pay, another mistake that had to be fixed. Oshiro says there were added reasons for his sensitivity about these problems.
As a brief aside, I wanted to provide some emotional context to this. Baize and I were the only people of color in this entire group, and both of us are gay. I’ve struggled my whole life with reading situations to see if I’m actually being discriminated against, and the fear that that had happened to us was particularly strong that whole dinner. We are both part of marginalized communities that had very little representation in this group, and it became impossible not to consider the possibility that we were treated differently because of it.
At Oshiro’s first program item he was sexually harassed – by the con’s toastmaster.
I was moderating a panel titled, “Are Fans More Open Minded?” The panel progressed wonderfully for about ten minutes before it was derailed and then never made it back to normal. Early into the panel, someone in the audience made a joke about the panelist Selina Rosen, who sat next to me on my left and was ALSO a Guest of Honor at the convention. They called her a princess, and in response, she stood up and pulled her pants down to her ankles. For the next few minutes, Selina, wearing nothing but men’s boxers, proceeded to periodically rub her bare leg against mine. At first, I thought she was merely bumping me, but she kept doing it, over and over, and if I looked at her while she was doing it, she would make a face at me.
I texted Keri O’Brien, the Vice Chair for the convention, and told her that Selina had taken off her pants again. (She had done so at ConQuesT 45.) Within a few minutes, Selina had pulled her pants back up and Keri arrived and pulled Selina out of the room. Selina returned, and she made the bulk of the remainder of the panel about how fandom was NOT open-minded because someone had reported her for removing her pants. Multiple things happened in response to this. In a strange sign of solidarity, another panelist, Robin Wayne Bailey, removed his OWN shirt and kept talking about his nice body and his big muscles. Selina tried to grill multiple members of the audience to determine if they had been the ones to report her, even going so far as to yell at anyone who chose to leave the room, accusing them of being a “rat.”
(Tiffany Robbins saw Rosen’s act in 2014 and wrote in ConQuesT 45: 10 Things I Learned From Selina Rosen – “8. Sometimes, it’s okay to pull your pants down to your ankles in a public setting.”)
Then Oshiro described how, later that night at a room party in the main hotel, his partner Baize was sexually and racially harassed. (The full text of Oshiro’s post appears below, following the jump.)
On Sunday he was the moderator on a panel titled, “Erasure is Not Equality” and had this experience:
This panel was specifically about the erasure of people of color in historical fiction, fantasy, and other genres. I was the only person on the panel who was not white. Furthermore, not one person on the panel seemed to understand the point of the panel, which was to talk about erasure. Instead, the conversation teetered between self-righteous back-patting and flat-out racism. Within the first five minutes of the start of the panel, I brought up a topic for us to discuss: how “historical accuracy” is often poorly used as a defense of the erasure of people of color. One panelist, Chris Gerrib, then began to talk about how people misunderstood history. The “Indian” people in Central America were already busy “killing each other” by the time the Spaniards arrived. When I asked for clarification, Gerrib confirmed that he believed that the Spaniards were “unfairly blamed” for the genocide of the indigenous cultures in Central America. I was so horrified by his continued talk of this ahistorical point that, after very little conversation, I asked that we change topic.
This set a tone for the remainder of the panel, which was easily the worst panel I have ever been a part of. All three of the white panelists confidently stated things that were simply not true; each of them kept saying “Indian” when they actually meant Native American or indigenous; every few minutes, more than half the audience was viscerally horrified by what the other panelists said. At one point, Jan Gephardt derailed the panel into talking about women instead of race and said that she was “happy to see any sort of women, like black or white or green.” Gerrib then chimed in with, “Or purple.” She also responded to a lengthy point that myself and an audience member made about the physical and emotional injury that can come from experiencing racism by reminding us that “racism is not real” because race “is just a social construct.” During a different conversation about how many authors mistakenly blur the line between different cultural groups, Chris Gerrib jokingly said, “Did you know that the Japanese aren’t the same as the Chinese?” Jan’s response? The Japanese and Chinese just think they’re different in their heads. She heavily implied that they were mistaken in this belief.
Oshiro told about several other disturbing comments on the panel. And he outlined another harassing experience he had at a fireworks viewing party. That night, he reported all of these incidents to committee members Keri O’Brien and Jesi Pershing.
They were both incredibly professional and sympathetic to myself and Baize, and I have nothing negative to say about that specific experience. They did exactly as they should: they made the two of us feel better, and they were very thorough in getting details about all of the above experiences. I was asked what I wanted done. I did not recommend that anyone get kicked out or un-invited for future years. I simply wanted two things:
1) That those I reported not be allowed on programming that triggered such a terrible response in them. (That was mostly in regards to the “Erasure is Not Equality” panel. A panel about race should not have one lone person of color on it.)
2) That someone tell these people that there’d been a report made about their behavior and that they should not behave in a way to make people feel so upset and unwanted.
I was realistic about what I wanted. You can’t make everything a teaching moment, and some people might not want to learn. But I needed someone to tell each of these people that their actions made someone else feel terribly unwelcome at the convention. I just wanted the conversation to be started.
Oshiro completed about seven incident reports and signed them.
I was told that the concom would discuss them, and that, at the very least, some action would be taken, either a notification about their behavior and a warning, OR people would not be invited back for programming in the future.
Months went by. Jesi Pershing, in her official capacity as part of the concom, would give me periodic updates. Sometimes, if I saw her at another con, I would ask her what the status of my reports were. She had recommended specific courses of action in response to my incident reports, and [convention chair Kristina Hiner] seemed to agree to them. But last month, she finally told me that, nearly eight months after I’d reported multiple people, ConQuesT and Kristina Hiner had done absolutely nothing with my reports.
In contrast, at another convention where he experienced a problem, the committee immediately resolved his complaint:
Harassment is unfortunately a part of my experience at SF/F conventions. Not at all of them, but at most of them, something happens to me. I’m an outspoken queer Latinx, and it’s inevitable. However, since ConQuesT, every con staff that I’ve had to make a report to has dealt with my report quickly and fairly. At ConFusion this year, the concom dealt with my incident report in two hours. Meaning they spoke to the person and that person apologized to my face within two hours.
Oshiro recognized that ConQuesT was not going to take action, and decided it was time to go public.
And a month ago, after she told Oshiro about the committee’s inaction, Jesi Pershing left the committee, as she explained today on Facebook:
Shortly after the ConQuesT 2015 ended, I typed up the incident reports I had taken, along with my recommended follow-up for each incident, and passed them along to the chair. My understanding was that she agreed with the actions I recommended, and that the Board did as well. The actions I recommended either needed to come from the Chair or Board, or required certain decisions to be made by the Chair or Board before I could enact them. This is where things stalled out. I heard that the Chair and Board agreed with what I had recommended…and then I basically heard nothing.
I inquired several times, both in email and in person, over the next several months, as to where things stood, whether anything had been done, what the hold up was. At one point, it was expressed to me that the Chair was wondering, since we hadn’t done anything by now (I believe this was about four months after the con), should we even bother at this point? To which I gave an emphatic “YES” and was once again under the impression that action would be taken. It never was.
As Mark relates in his post, he was asking me for updates during this time. I let him know that a course of action had been agreed upon on (early on in the process when I thought that action being agreed upon meant action would be taken), and then, as time went on, I would have to tell him that, no, to my knowledge, nothing had been done. Still nothing. Still nothing.
In January, I had a sudden lightning bolt epiphany that, if nothing had happened up to this point, nothing was going to happen. I let Mark know that, in my opinion, the con was never going to take action on his reports, and that I was stepping down from the committee.
Combating harassment in our community is an issue that is very important to me – I’ve worked on writing and implementing Codes of Conduct at multiple conventions. When I take on a role like this at a convention, I feel that I am making a promise – a promise that complaints will be taken seriously and that, if warranted, action will be taken. I cannot work for a con that has made me break that promise, which is why I stepped down from the committee.
Keri O’Brien, who has stayed on as the 2016 ConQuesT chairperson, made this comment on Oshiro’s Facebook post:
I have never felt comfortable talking from the perspective of a whole group of people. That is not something I think I can easily do here. I am also the current chair of ConQuesT in Kansas City. A good friend of mine, Mark Oshiro, told his story today. This needed to happen I feel. There were some horrible things that happened last year and they did not get the attention they deserved. This post is part apology. Mark Oshiro and Baize Latif White should not have found out 9 months later that nothing had happened. This was a mistake, a terrible one. Caused by a series of miscommunications over the course of those months. The reasons are not as important as the hurt the mistake and miscommunication caused. ConQuesT is a very old convention but has only very very recently instated any sort of behavior policy. ConQuesT 46 was one of the first years that formal reports were taken in under this system. It was not handled well, at all. But this does not mean that it cannot learn from those mistakes. As chair for this year, it is my responsibility to ensure that any reports taken at con are dealt with in ways that respect our membership and our policies. Thank you for taking the time to read this, Keri O’Brien
O’Brien is just one of hundreds of fans who left comments on Oshiro’s Facebook page. Among them was Chris Gerrib who set out to apologize, only getting it right on the second try after Oshiro answered his first attempt, “I don’t se an apology here.” Gerrib wrote in his initial comment:
Since I was mentioned by name in the original post, I feel I should respond. I want to apologize. What I *intended* to say was that the Inca and Aztec empires were unpopular with other native tribes, and that the Spanish used that unpopularity to form an army with themselves at the head. I did not communicate that correctly, and I’m sorry. I don’t recall saying that the Spanish were unfairly blamed for anything, but if I said or implied otherwise I was wrong. Much of the current issues with Central and South America can be traced to bad Spanish decisions and/or conduct.
Then he followed up:
I am sorry you were miserable on the panel, and I’m sorry what I said caused that. My statement at the time was in error.
(Gerrib also discussed this at File 770 and in a similar comment on Vox Day’s post about Oshiro’s revelation.)
Other notable responses include K. Tempest Bradford’s “Expect More From Your Regional Convention”:
Kansas City fans have pointed out that it is the very essence of a local con. Most folks running it and putting people on panels know each other well and know the panelists. Robin Wayne Bailey is a local and, from what I can gather, a regular at that con. Selina Rosen, who pulled down her pants, is apparently a serial pants taker off-er at that very con. Yes, this is a small local con. That means it’s probably even easier for programming volunteers to know that they’ve staffed a panel about diversity and erasure with one person of color and a bunch of problematic white folks who are prone to undressing at the slightest provocation.
And Rachel Caine is calling upon audiences not to let things slide, in “Dear Regional SFF Conventions: Enough Already”
But you know what? It’s not necessarily the fault of the volunteers throwing conventions. Audiences and panelists must hold each other accountable if fandom is going to continue as it began. ConComs are not gods. They can’t vet moderators, they can’t interview panelists about every panel topic to see if they’re qualified. They are organizers of a show for which they don’t get paid, and while they do shoulder the burden for responding to bad behavior, WE are responsible for responding immediately to the bad behavior in the first place. (I have been guilty of letting things slide, of trying to play “can’t we all get along,” of not pushing myself hard enough to be articulate and responsible. And I’m sorry. If you see me falling short or saying dumbass things, stand up and say so. I will learn and grow as a person from that discussion.)
Surprisingly, Oshiro says he’s still going to the Worldcon in Kansas City this year.
¶
Mark Oshiro gave general permission to share his Facebook post; the full text follows the jump.
TRIGGER WARNING: For extended, detailed talk of racism, sexual harassment, abuse
This has not been an easy post for me to write. I’m keeping the introduction of it relatively short because I’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Over the past nine months or so, the events of my weekend at ConQuesT 46 have haunted me, and recent events inspired me to finally talk about my experience. I have spoken to nearly fifteen people, most of whom are a part of the SF/F community, about what happened to me so that I could get some insight. Was what I experienced wrong? Was I imagining the intensity of the weekend? Is it wrong for me to publicly talk about it?
In light of what I’ll reveal at the end, I find it more important than ever to talk about the persistent and pervasive racial and sexual abuse/harassment I was the victim of at ConQuesT because I did everything I was told to do in the event that I was harassed. I reported most of the events you’ll see described below, and I did not do so anonymously. I stuck my name on every incident report, partly because I was not afraid, but mostly because I wanted things to change. If putting my name on a report ensured that a better community could be built from my actions, then I felt it was worth it.
Alas, that does not seem to be the case.
*
I was invited to be the Fan Guest of Honor at ConQuesT 46. (From here on out, GoH will stand for Guest of Honor.) I was thrilled to take part in it, not just because I’d attended ConQuesT 45, but because George R.R. Martin and Brandon Sanderson would be guests alongside me. Hey, for my first GoH gig, that’s a pretty spectacular line-up! I arrived to Kansas City on the Wednesday before the convention, and my friend at the time (now partner) Baize was my guest. We headed to the con hotel and, upon check-in, discovered that we were placed in the secondary tower of the hotel, not the main one; the room was also not paid for, so I had to put my own card down. This was fixed by the time dinner was over, but it was a disconcerting start to a bad weekend. On Thursday evening, I was driven to Jack Stack BBQ for the guest of honor dinner, which Baize and I were quite excited about. We are both fans of the Song of Ice and Fire books and the show, so it felt like a very special occasion. We were ten minutes or so late due to going to the wrong location first. When we arrived, all of the guests of honor were present with their own guests, and they were all seated at the table. There were two open spots next to George R.R. Martin, so I gestured to them as I arrived, and Baize and I moved to sit in them.
The con chair, Kristina Hiner, stopped us. She told us the seats were for her and her husband. She then gestured behind us to an empty table two tables away from the main one, and told us we could sit there. By ourselves. I am certain she saw the glare of anger on my face and the confusion on my guest’s. We were so shocked that we couldn’t even say anything. She then quickly suggested that we sit at the table with the staff members, and we took the only two spots left at said table. They were literally the farthest point away from the Guest of Honor table. If it were not for our friend Jesi and two other staff members who briefly greeted us, not one person at that table would have ever said a word to us. We were ignored and segregated from the main table the entire time. (As a brief aside, I wanted to provide some emotional context to this. Baize and I were the only people of color in this entire group, and both of us are gay. I’ve struggled my whole life with reading situations to see if I’m actually being discriminated against, and the fear that that had happened to us was particularly strong that whole dinner. We are both part of marginalized communities that had very little representation in this group, and it became impossible not to consider the possibility that we were treated differently because of it.)
At the end of the meal, I was asked to pay for mine and my guest’s meal, unlike the entire guest of honor table. This was rectified after I told the server to please tell Kristina to include us on the main bill, which had nearly been paid for without us on it. After the meal, Kristina finally spoke to me after our initial confrontation, and I told her that we were in the wrong hotel, that my room had not been paid for, and that I felt weird about the evening. She assured me that everything would be taken care of and that my guest and I would be treated well.
I’m including this at the start of this because I want everyone to have context. While I didn’t make a report about this or opening ceremonies, I thought it relevant to include it here. It is necessary to help explain the atmosphere of this convention. When it wasn’t outright hostile to Baize and I, we were utterly invisible. Mistakes happen at cons, and by no means do I think that ConQuesT or ANY convention should never have anything go wrong ever. However, this was the start of an unnerving pattern.
By the time I got to programming on Friday afternoon, I felt deeply uncomfortable about my experience at ConQuesT thus far. I had two panels that I was on prior to Opening Ceremonies. I was moderating a panel titled, “Are Fans More Open Minded?” The panel progressed wonderfully for about ten minutes before it was derailed and then never made it back to normal. Early into the panel, someone in the audience made a joke about the panelist Selina Rosen, who sat next to me on my left and was ALSO a Guest of Honor at the convention. They called her a princess, and in response, she stood up and pulled her pants down to her ankles. For the next few minutes, Selina, wearing nothing but men’s boxers, proceeded to periodically rub her bare leg against mine. At first, I thought she was merely bumping me, but she kept doing it, over and over, and if I looked at her while she was doing it, she would make a face at me.
I texted Keri O’Brien, the Vice Chair for the convention, and told her that Selina had taken off her pants again. (She had done so at ConQuesT 45.) Within a few minutes, Selina had pulled her pants back up and Keri arrived and pulled Selina out of the room. Selina returned, and she made the bulk of the remainder of the panel about how fandom was NOT open-minded because someone had reported her for removing her pants. Multiple things happened in response to this. In a strange sign of solidarity, another panelist, Robin Wayne Bailey, removed his OWN shirt and kept talking about his nice body and his big muscles. Selina tried to grill multiple members of the audience to determine if they had been the ones to report her, even going so far as to yell at anyone who chose to leave the room, accusing them of being a “rat.” Near the end of the panel, an audience member asked the panel if fandom could be considered open-minded when it clung to so many of its own racist/sexist/homophobic heroes uncritically. Specifically, I addressed this in the context of the World Fantasy Award and brought up the fact that many people do not think we should criticize H.P. Lovecraft. Robin Bailey then responded by saying that anyone who spoke about Lovecraft’s racism should be considered “human garbage,” and said that Lovecraft was just a product of his time.
Following this panel, I went to opening ceremonies, where I once again felt invisible when Selina Rosen skipped introducing me. It was not until people in the audience yelled this out that they came back to me.
On Friday night, at a room party in the main hotel, my partner Baize was sexually and racially harassed by someone attending the same dance party: Liz Gooch. At multiple points during the evening, she gestured behind him as if she were going to grab his butt. She kept referring to it as his “juicy booty.” She danced around him and told me to “not let this sweet piece of chocolate go.” Despite that our body language clearly showed discomfort, Liz would not stop harassing either of us. We had to move to another side of the room, and we eventually told the person running the party what she was doing. We both considered that perhaps she had been so forward and gross because she was drunk, but I had multiple interactions with Liz Gooch when she was sober following that night. The next morning, she was leaving an elevator as I was getting in a different one. She turned around and made a number of sexual gestures while pointing at Baize, which including kissing faces, winks, and licking her lips in an exaggerated manner.
On Sunday afternoon, I was the moderator on a panel titled, “Erasure is Not Equality.” This panel was specifically about the erasure of people of color in historical fiction, fantasy, and other genres. I was the only person on the panel who was not white. Furthermore, not one person on the panel seemed to understand the point of the panel, which was to talk about erasure. Instead, the conversation teetered between self-righteous back-patting and flat-out racism. Within the first five minutes of the start of the panel, I brought up a topic for us to discuss: how “historical accuracy” is often poorly used as a defense of the erasure of people of color. One panelist, Chris Gerrib, then began to talk about how people misunderstood history. The “Indian” people in Central America were already busy “killing each other” by the time the Spaniards arrived. When I asked for clarification, Gerrib confirmed that he believed that the Spaniards were “unfairly blamed” for the genocide of the indigenous cultures in Central America. I was so horrified by his continued talk of this ahistorical point that, after very little conversation, I asked that we change topic.
This set a tone for the remainder of the panel, which was easily the worst panel I have ever been a part of. All three of the white panelists confidently stated things that were simply not true; each of them kept saying “Indian” when they actually meant Native American or indigenous; every few minutes, more than half the audience was viscerally horrified by what the other panelists said. At one point, Jan Gephardt derailed the panel into talking about women instead of race and said that she was “happy to see any sort of women, like black or white or green.” Gerrib then chimed in with, “Or purple.” She also responded to a lengthy point that myself and an audience member made about the physical and emotional injury that can come from experiencing racism by reminding us that “racism is not real” because race “is just a social construct.” During a different conversation about how many authors mistakenly blur the line between different cultural groups, Chris Gerrib jokingly said, “Did you know that the Japanese aren’t the same as the Chinese?” Jan’s response? The Japanese and Chinese just think they’re different in their heads. She heavily implied that they were mistaken in this belief.
Holly Messinger, a ConQuesT staff member, was also on the panel. She spent a great deal of time talking only about her own work, repeating the message that she had read “five books on Indians” and that she had written her first black character, who kept the white character “sane.” She stated at one point that she was “terrified” about the response her book would get because people would get “mad” about her writing an “Indian” character. When I asked for clarification – specifically, was she worried about getting representation wrong? – she told the room that she had no concern about that. She’d read five books about “Indians.” She was concerned that people of color would misinterpret her.
There were many more incidents on this panel, and I could not recount them all here. The panel ended on a sour note, too. Baize spoke up and pointed out that part of the problem with erasure was that there was only one person of color on a panel about race. Holly Messinger shot back, “Well, we’re in the Midwest.” I left the panel feeling drained and numb. If you were at ConQuesT that weekend and you wondered why Closing Ceremonies started late, it’s my fault. I dashed up to my hotel room to cry because I felt so triggered, rejected, and alone. I’ve been on uncomfortable panels, but this was unique. The entire panel was argumentative; my questions as moderator were constantly avoided or ignored; anything I tried to state was fought or dismissed or contradicted. It was exhausting.
Sunday night, at the viewing party for the fireworks display, someone accidentally sat on a remote and turned off the live news broadcast. A man behind Baize and I yelled out, “Cocksucker!” at whomever made the TV go off. We were both holding hands at the time, and while we didn’t think the expletive was directed at us, we still turned around and glared at the man. After the fireworks, I left the room quickly because… well, I’d heard so much nonsense all weekend that I needed to get out of that space before I lost my temper. The man sent his friend after us – some young woman whose name I did not get – who then harassed us for nearly a minute by repeatedly telling us that her friend was sorry and that we “needed” to know that he was a nice person and not a bigot. When I told her that I didn’t care, she actually said, “But I need you to know he’s a really nice guy.” It took me telling her, “Please leave me alone right now” for her to leave the hallway.
That night, I reported all of these incidents in one long session with Keri O’Brien and Jesi Pershing. They were both incredibly professional and sympathetic to myself and Baize, and I have nothing negative to say about that specific experience. They did exactly as they should: they made the two of us feel better, and they were very thorough in getting details about all of the above experiences. I was asked what I wanted done. I did not recommend that anyone get kicked out or un-invited for future years. I simply wanted two things:
1) That those I reported not be allowed on programming that triggered such a terrible response in them. (That was mostly in regards to the “Erasure is Not Equality” panel. A panel about race should not have one lone person of color on it.)
2) That someone tell these people that there’d been a report made about their behavior and that they should not behave in a way to make people feel so upset and unwanted.
I was realistic about what I wanted. You can’t make everything a teaching moment, and some people might not want to learn. But I needed someone to tell each of these people that their actions made someone else feel terribly unwelcome at the convention. I just wanted the conversation to be started.
*
I moved on. It’s now been nearly nine months since this happened. Why did I wait so long? Why didn’t I say anything earlier? Initially, it’s because I believed the process would work. I completed about seven incident reports total, as far as I can recall. I put my name on them, and I signed them. I was told that the concom would discuss them, and that, at the very least, some action would be taken, either a notification about their behavior and a warning, OR people would not be invited back for programming in the future. Months went by. Jesi Pershing, in her official capacity as part of the concom, would give me periodic updates. Sometimes, if I saw her at another con, I would ask her what the status of my reports were. She had recommended specific courses of action in response to my incident reports, and Kristina seemed to agree to them. But last month, she finally told me that, nearly eight months after I’d reported multiple people, ConQuesT and Kristina Hiner had done absolutely nothing with my reports.
I’ll reiterate that. No one was contacted. No one was spoken to. As far as I know, none of these people even know that they harassed me or my partner. Neither Kristina Hiner nor any of the Board ever took the steps to make any sort of follow-up happen. When Jesi realized that there was not going to be any movement whatsoever on this, she decided to step down from ConQuesT as a staff member. She could not, in good conscious, continue to work for an organizing that refuses to take action.
Harassment is unfortunately a part of my experience at SF/F conventions. Not at all of them, but at most of them, something happens to me. I’m an outspoken queer Latinx, and it’s inevitable. However, since ConQuesT, every con staff that I’ve had to make a report to has dealt with my report quickly and fairly. At ConFusion this year, the concom dealt with my incident report in two hours. Meaning they spoke to the person and that person apologized to my face within two hours. At that point, it almost seemed comical that over half a year had passed, and both ConQuesT and Kristina Hiner did nothing at all.
That’s why I’m talking. I did what I was supposed to. I kept quiet, I trusted the system in place, and it completely failed me. I will not be attending ConQuesT this year or for the foreseeable future. (I’m going to WisCon for the first time instead!) I don’t feel safe there, and ultimately, that’s why this bothers me so much. There are people who are part of that community who were actively hostile to me, and when I reported them, the message was sent loud and clear:
We don’t care about you. At all.
You have my permission to share this post on your own pages or outside Facebook.
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@ Paula–
You’re right! I had totally forgotten.
Gosh, those ConQuest strippers are following in a grand tradition….
@Curt Phillips
On the Internet never assume anything is separate.
I’ve seen your name elsewhere. I have a number of real and legal names (hey marriage, divorce, marriage, pen name) so you may have seen me over the last 20+ years I’ve been online.
Are you familiar with the term lurker? A lurker is someone who reads a forum/blog/email group but doesn’t participate in discussions. Most of the people who read file770 never comment. This means we may have shared lots of online spaces and you wouldn’t know me from dear sweet Alice.
The topic you brought up is almost always brought up by straight white men (SWM). It’s always have you thought of, just a point, I’m not telling anyone what to do. Except the language used and the inability to listen to the numerous explanations of why it’s not just a difference of opinion but someone’s life at risk or actually we do have ways to know is frustrating. And each of you bring it up like we’ve never heard it before and your the first to bring it up.
I’ve been having this discussion for 20 years now. I feel old. I’m tired of still having this discussion with SWM. It’s like I’m living in the movie Groundhog Day except the other side keeps saying the same thing over and over again. (Inside joke: Mike Glyer a drink to World Peace)
I’m sorry Breen was before your time sometimes my I was hit by a truck memory gets me in trouble. Oops.
I have. It’s amazing how many men don’t see the harassment happening in front of them. I’ve worked with guys what didn’t see the harassment around them… Or the harassment they did. I’ve corrected co-worker friends. I’ve grabbed co-workers & pointed to harassment & said see… that and then I’ve gone and dealt with the harasser who was convinced they hadn’t done anything wrong until I started doing the thing to them & they didn’t like it*.
You don’t think you are telling people what to do but the language you use and the way you bring up your point makes it very clear what you think and you are superior in your understanding to all of us who never thought of this before (Have heard it hundreds of times). Have you ever read John Scalzi on The Lowest Difficulty Setting?
I don’t know if this helped or not. Its certainly long.
*Don’t do this boys & girls HR hates it. Also harassing people is bad even if your just trying to show them what it’s like to have someone grab their butt ever time they walk by Like they were doing. It’s bad, very, very bad. I was young and stupid and it made sense at the time. Did I mention this is bad, bad, bad? Don’t do it.
@Lee
No it did not escape my attention. I have a different point of view here which you may not value or find interesting.
Firstly, I think the reason why a convention could not meet its own policies is very much worthy of discussion because it has been something that has been a struggle with other conventions that took trial and error before they got it right. Why this is so hard and what is missing is interesting to me. If it’s totally dependent on the composition of the board could bylaws be written to give future boards guidance ?
Secondly, the incidents involved involved different people at the *same* convention. The cumulative effect was to wreck what should have been a weekend to celebrate a GOH. I think the reason things were that bad was because there was no effective policing or feedback with the convention’s own mechanisms for reporting abuse possiblely for an extended period of time; though that is a supposition.
Thirdly, I think you are misconstruing my focus on the failure of convention policies for a lack sympathy for Mark and his partner. It’s only through policies that people know to enforced will people feel safe at a convention and secure that if they report something it will be taken seriously.
Fourthly, should the names individuals have behaved better? Judging only from this report I would say yes but the slights and harassment detailed vary wildly in scope and severity between all the people named. The true failure to me was the board’s inaction.
Lee on February 23, 2016 at 2:46 pm said: “Phantom: Now you’re just being a concern troll. Frankly, you don’t sound like a person with a disability to me;”
Wait, people with a disability have a special sound? Interesting. I did not know that.
I say I sympathize with the witch (BURN the witch!), because I’ve been dogpiled by assholes the odd time myself, and that means I’m “a predator who has figured out how to USE people with disabilities as human shields to game the system.”
Wait, there’s a system now?
You know what Lee, you run with that. Mention it to the next person you meet who’s got a physical or social disability, ok?
Oh, and tell them I said hi. We all know each other too, eh? It’s like Hydra, but for crips and freaks. Really cool secret handshake too.
Curt Phillips on February 23, 2016 at 3:54 pm said: “How do you know that “Phantom” is posting under a consistent identity-label? How do you know there haven’t been a dozen people using the name “Phantom”? You can’t – unless you happened to be “The Phantom” yourself, that is…”
Earlier in the thread I said I’ve been The Phantom on-line since the 1990s. That’s what we call a “consistent identity.” My current blog turned ten years old in 2015. Click my name and you can see what I’ve been doing since 2005. You can either take my word for it or not.
Indeed. I was chair of one national writers convention and was later pres of the BoD that supervised 2 more (and, for various reasons, I wound up with a very hands-on role in running both of those).
It wasn’t difficult to behave like a reasonable adult and professional throughout, and I don’t recall it ever being a problem or disappointment to expect everyone else involved to behaved like responsible adults and professionals, too.
I wouldn’t want to do any of it again because it was really, really long hours of work almost every week for months, all for free, and it involved a lot of anxiety about expense-v-income and scheduling and logistics (every conference seems to have last minute cancellations from speakers, last minute problems with the hotel, etc., etc.).
But behaving like professionals and adults? Never a problem, that I can recall. And one of the things I remember most clearly is how many attendees thanked me for all my hard work (some even got me thank-you gifts). Sure, there were attendees who criticized the venue or the program, but that was the extent of it–and their criticisms weren’t menacing.
Curt, you may not think this report is credible, given as it is as a comment on unknown SF author John Scalzi’s blog and who really knows who “Jan Dumas” is, but she says:
“When I attend my first convention in 1978 in New York City I was backed in to a corner by Isaac Asimov. He wanted to ‘check on the quality of my breasts.’ I almost escaped when two people grabbed, me, spun me around and held me in place while I was assaulted. I was told, it’s not personal he does it to everyone.”
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/08/09/an-incomplete-guide-to-not-creeping/#comment-348817
Read this part again: “two people grabbed me, spun me around and held me in place while I was assaulted.”
Other convention attendees held this woman down so that Isaac Asimov could sexually assault her. That goes beyond condoning and barrels straight into enabling.
So… you maybe wanna rethink that statement that fandom didn’t condone harassment?
Hampus Eckerman on February 23, 2016 at 7:50 pm AND 7:52pm said: “The Phantom: Actually, that only says that you are an anonymous troll that has been behaving as an asshole for over 10 years, still trying to avoid accountability by using your own name.”
A comment so nice he had to make it twice.
Hampus Eckerman is your real name? You poor b@st@rd!
Okay, that one really was trolling. Night all! Have fun with your witches, they’re better when they’re crrrrispy!
Lenora Rose wrote:
“Curt Philips, internet anonymity and pseudonymity have indeed been longstanding topics of great tension and aggravation, and you did indeed hiit a nerve. Although, someone else said, you’ve been there and done that for these discussions before and not learned, which may make this pointless, I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt and explaining a little further why.”
I appreciate that benefit of doubt and am astounded to learn that I’m known for bringing the topic up before elsewhere. I’m active in 10 or 12on-line fannish discussion groups and up till tonight I’ve been thinking of most of them are relatively separate groups. Now I see that there must be much more overlap than I’d realized.
I’ve read your very helpful posting in it’s entirety but will snip most of it here in the interest of expedience.
“…community cannot grow in anonymity.”
An excellent point. This is really the basis of fandom as we know it, I would think.
“Pure anonymity is discouraged virtually everywhere; what you see here is mostly pseudonymity, where people consistently use the same moniker (‘online-nick’ or nickname) regardless of whether it’s their legal name. The difference is crucial. Most people use the same name in most places, or at worst ones easy to connect (“RedWombat” is UrsulaV on livejournal and Ursula Vernon on her books and podcasts {I have never and would never concern myself with whether it’s what’s on her driver’s license} but if you click the link the connection isn’t secret….”
Fascinating. So fandom has evolved a fannish work-around to the pseudonym issue and has institutionalized it with generally accepted – well, mayby not rules as such, but *policies* (yes?), which *can* be passed along just as you are doing now. Up till now I thought that pure anonymity *was* widely practiced because, well, that’s what it looks like at first glance, and there’s nothing obvious that suggests there’s anything more to it.
“Pseudonyms can be confirmed numerous ways, besides usage elsenet; the Gravatars mentioned above, which are where people get the pictures by their names. Behind that is a whole ID set-up process.”
I had no idea that pseudonyms could be verified in any way. I thought it was all just a smoke screen. How do new people learn about this when they come along? Does someone just have to pull them aside and tell them, or is this a body of knowledge that one soaks up by – I dunno – playing lots of video games, or by visiting lots of on-line forums (other than the YaHoo Groups I hang out on, obviously), or is it something that younger fans learn from their culture? This information was never part of *my* culture as I grew up. I still don’t know how to use all the features on my iphone!
“There are also special Moderator powers: Mike can look at the sources of comments and compare IPs and other such things to confirm whether a given commentor is indeed consistently the same user, or whether multiple new commentors are the same person under different names (sock-puppetry). In the interests of viable and consistent conversation, moderators tend to discourage, and fix, Identity Confusions.”
“So.In short; solved problem. Long debated and discussed. Not quite a dead horse but it’s not too hard to see why some people can get short and bristly about it.”
I had no idea any of this existed. No one has ever explained this in any place I’ve read or any discussion group I’ve visited before. Does it surprise you to hear me say this? I promise that it’s true. I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to learn that this mechanism was invented since it’s the kind of thing that fandom has always done when faced with a challenge: invent new ways and methods. Trial them, apply them, and revise towards a state of optimum efficiency. Adapt and overcome. There’s still one flaw, though: this new social construct (new to me anyway) hasn’t yet been communicated throughout fandom. Is that an oversight, or by design? What I mean is, look; my base fandom is what we call “traditional fandom”. That’s the guys who follow the old ways. We collect pulp magazines, write for and publish fanzines – often on paper, and still participate in apas. (I just finished 4 years as the OE of FAPA – fandom’s oldest amateur press association, dating to 1937. My crowd includes First Fandom members (I’m an associate member) and although we’re on-line – at least some of us – we often don’t participate in some of the on-line activities that some here evidently do. (Many reasons for that, including not feeling particularly welcome sometimes…). I’ll bet that most of my cohort of “traditional fans” would be as surprised to read what you wrote as I am. As far as I know, no one has ever particularly tried to communicate this information to my cohort before. If so, no one ever told me. Is that area of fandom not particularly wanted in this new social construct?
Traditional fandom is now a subset – a very small subset – of overall fandom, and we’re getting smaller every year. But my friends are there, and it’s my fannish home. Yet I do want to keep on exploring all of fandom even if some of it looks pretty odd to me, and even if I inadvertently irritate some folks like Tasha with my ignorance of things she takes for granted. (Ignorance isn’t like stupidity, you know. Ignorance can always be improved with education.) So I greatly appreciate you writing this posting, Lenora Rose. You’ve given me much to think about.
Up above you wrote: “Although, someone else said, you’ve been there and done that for these discussions before and not learned, which may make this pointless.”
No,it wasn’t pointless. I see and appreciate what you’ve told me tonight. Maybe the reason I’ve brought the topic up repeatedly is that I never before head an answer that works before. Yours works. Thank you.
@Ed Green Remind me again why anyone would want to be involved in running a Convention?
Different people do it for different reasons. One of the current problems is more fans are requiring individuals at conventions behave in a socially acceptable manner and conventions enforce that. A number of con runners are behind the curve on this. Running a con is a lot of work. One always has to evaluate whether it’s worth it. During transition times its harder. I’m an armchair critic due to my health. But I’m happy to point concoms at tons of resources that exists which would make much of the transition easier.
The really hard part is deciding whether to keep letting your friends and family harass congoers and chance being a scandal, making the tough changes and losing some friends, or letting someone new takeover who may not honor all of your traditions but prevents the scandal.
I had no idea any of this existed. No one has ever explained this in any place I’ve read or any discussion group I’ve visited before.
Some of your complaints seem almost as quaint as being amazed that one doesn’t have to have a phone operator put you through to the person on the other end of the line because there are telephone numbers available that you can dial yourself.
@ Tasha Turner – Having worked on and run numerous conventions, my comment was more a snark than a request for information.
But, that’s the problem with the internet. You couldn’t see my eyes rolling up in my head while I made that comment.
JJ on February 23, 2016 at 7:51 pm said:
Curt Phillips: I‘d suggest that you ask some female fans who were around in 1976 about that, because your statement doesn’t match my memories of that time.
“Well, as you are a straight white male, that’s hardly surprising, is it? So I don’t suppose you ever heard about all the ass-and-tit grabbing for which Asimov was famous, or the public joke about procuring women for him to fondle the year he was guest speaker for the Masquerade, or the way that Randall Garrett said to every woman he met, “Wanna fuck?”
No, I don’t suppose you really had any awareness of any of that.
Well, here you go.”
You’re talking about a different point than the one I was responding to. I was responding to the comment that “women (in fandom 40 years ago) kept their mouths shut”. Some women were talking, and as time went on, more joined in. So did some men. Not enough people were listening(then or now), but the conversation had started. Was sexual harassment happening 40 years ago? Yes, it was. Did fandom condone it? No, it didn’t. Did fandom know what to do about it? No, not really. That’s how the conversation *started*. Figuring out some answers took a while, and clearly fandom hasn’t figured them all out even today. That’s what this discussion on FILE 770 started over, isn’t it?
I hope you don’t really expect me to be able to answer for the shortcomings of the fandom of 1976, do you? I spent most of my time back then in the dealer’s room hunting for books and pulps…
@Curt Phillips
Looks like you’re one of todays Lucky 1000
Congrats.
ETA: “I hope you don’t really expect me to be able to answer for the shortcomings of the fandom of 1976, do you? ”
Inasmuch as you appear dismissive of it’s flaws when others bring it up, I think it’s a fair call for people to expect you to substantiate your dismissals.
Curt Phillips: I ‘d suggest that you ask some female fans who were around in 1976 about that, because your statement doesn’t match my memories of that time.
Will 1978 do? Because I was around then, and Tasha’s statement matches my memories pretty well. It wasn’t unique to fandom, of course; the dominant culture encouraged women to keep silent, not to complain about being groped or ogled or cat-called. I don’t mean to declare that your memories are faulty, either, though your perceptions might have been at least partly shaped by your gender (as everyone’s are); the thing is, lots of people, including me, had difficulty in recognizing sexual harassment as a concept back then (as in: “if it wasn’t actually rape, nothing happened”). That was a big part of the problem . . . then, and unfortunately too often now.
ETA: I’ve read your follow-up, and I still think that you may be underestimating how rare it was for a woman to speak up in the 1970s–or in the 1980s, for that matter. Difficult, too, for all sorts of reasons, but definitely rare. And to speak up and get listened to? Even rarer, in my experience. People just–didn’t, at conventions or elsewhere. The conversation may well have started then (and I’m glad it did), but it was definitely in whispers, at best . . .
@ Shambles:
I was wondering about that. When you see from the listing of ConQuest BoD members that one of them is the ConChair who told Mark as GoH to go sit at a different table during the GoH dinner, one of them is named in Mark’s account, and one of them is married to a person named in Mark’s account… It seems pretty clear that, without knowing those people (I do not) or making any assumptions about them, those people shouldn’t be tasked with reviewing Mark’s complaints. And what about the other three? Even without knowing anything else, we know they were in the position of fielding a complaint that had personal ramifications for fellow BoD members.
This is also not that unusual a conflict of interest for conventions. For example, as Jim Hines notes in his blog today, another small regional con, ConText imploded and dissolved last year over internal conflict when a longtime club member and con volunteer was the subject of a complaint.
I don’t know what the solution is to situations like this, bu since they’re bound to keep arising, it seems like one probably needs to be contemplated. Whether or not a complaint against people intimately involved with the con and/or actually on the team expected to field complaints is completely valid or sheer hogwash, it needs fair and impartial treatment.
@Curt Phillips
It’s not fandom that did this. It’s the large variety of people working and creating the pieces of the Internet. Geeks, women, men, POC, LGBTI, kids, grandparents, hackers, housewives, people together and separately. Get your head out of fandom and join the greater world.
People pick this stuff up by hanging around and getting to know a place before jumping in and talking. By lurking. The more parts of the Internet you use the more stuff you randomly pick up. Requires getting out more and just reading/listening not speaking/typing but it’s good for your brain. Research says variety keeps many age related mental disorders away.
@Ed Green But, that’s the problem with the internet. You couldn’t see my eyes rolling up in my head while I made that comment.
Emoticons or things like /sarcasm help 😉
Did fandom condone it? No, it didn’t.
Have you read any of the accounts being told and linked to here? Because they make quite clear that fandom of the time did condone harassment as a normal part of a con.
You need to look up the first rule of holes. Then you need to stop trying to explain to women what they experienced and actually listen to them.
Yeah…. about that. I really wasn’t feeling the sibling-love when in 2009 someone on SFC was sexually harassing me and everyone just sat on their hands and watched it happen until I finally quit the list, because heaven forfend a woman want to talk about the problem of fans not always being the good guys and fannish space not equating to safe space without having to play twenty rounds of “How Fannish Was My Rape.”
Also wasn’t feeling the sibling-love when dude at a long-running fannish fans’ con in 2012 waved a speculum at me.
The first thing my fellow fannish sibling did, without ever introducing himself or
ascertaining whether or not I had any interest in ancient or medieval or Edwardian medicine, was to pull out a copper speculum and start waving it at me, then telling me how fortunate I am because earlier models had *three* prongs, and he had another one back home that was hand-cranked and had a something-or-other…
I gotta say, after the words “speculum” and “hand-cranked” came out of his mouth, coupled with the concept that I was “lucky” he didn’t have such items on his person at that exact moment, I kind of zoned out.
He then started going on about some other medical implement and I was supposed to be impressed but really, SPECULUM, HAND-CRANKED, and my eyes glazed over and I just wanted to gnaw my leg off and get away.
I pulled my phone out of my pocket, pretended to look at it, then grabbed my husband’s arm and made our excuses. We got to the elevator and down to our floor before I exploded. WHAT THE HELL. SPECULUM, ANTIQUE, HAND-CRANKED. HI I DON’T KNOW YOUR NAME BUT MY KINK, LET ME SHOW U IT.
I went through channels, I reported it, and was brushed off as “Oh that’s just so-and-so, he’s harmless.” No. Just… no.
Yes, if you’re a straight white male, I suppose fandom IS one big happy-go-lucky place. If you’re queer or a woman or a POC (that’s “person of color,” in case you’re not up on all this newfangled terminology), not so much. Some of us want to make it better, but it feels like we’re fighting an uphill battle, and the “I’ve never seen it happen so clearly it’s not a problem” attitude is part of the difficulty.
Mike Glyer on February 23, 2016 at 7:39 pm said:
Curt Phillips: I don’t remember having done so here on FILE 770 before (or have I?),
“Yes, but it’s been awhile. Many subjects recur here without being exhausted.”
Thank you. I’d forgotten.
Was there another incident in 1976? Mike Glyer, do you know about this?
“I joined LASFS in 1970, and as I learned about fanhistory, the Breendoggle was one subject covered because Bruce Pelz was among those who had been an advocate of having Breen banned from the 1964 Worldcon. I’m not aware of a 1976 incident, or whether Breen attended the 1976 Worldcon. (I would not yet have recognized him on sight then anyway.) All I can say from personal experience is I saw him at a 1987 Westercon.”
She must have been thinking about Walter, then. Well, a difference of 12 years isn’t really that significant. Although the ways that fandom changed in *those* 12 years were nothing less than stunning in their impact, but I digress again…
Tasha wrote:
“You don’t think you are telling people what to do but the language you use and the way you bring up your point makes it very clear what you think and you are superior in your understanding to all of us who never thought of this before (Have heard it hundreds of times). Have you ever read John Scalzi on The Lowest Difficulty Setting?”
I understand the points you’re making and agree with some of it. This one I take exception to. You are making an assumption about what I think and you are wrong. I do not think that I am superior to anyone. There are things I know about and things I’m completely ignorant of, but I try to approach every idea I encounter with intellectual honesty. I don’t know any other way to learn anything. I suspect that you may be transferring some previous assumptions formed about the group of people you have evidently lumped me in with and are assuming that they must necessarily apply to me as an individual. That seems unfair to me.
I don’t read much by John Scalzi. And not the work you mentioned.
Curt Phillips: As far as I know, no one has ever particularly tried to communicate this information to my cohort before. If so, no one ever told me. Is that area of fandom not particularly wanted in this new social construct?
No one told me, either — and I’m apparently considerably younger than you and, as a software developer-database-geek-of-all-trades sort, more conversant with computers and the Internet.
You know how I found out? By paying attention. By tuning my setting to “Receive” rather than “Send”.
The first time I encountered a forum on the Internet in which I wanted to participate, instead of assuming that my years of experience with that subject made me smarter than everyone else there, I watched for a fair bit before I ever started commenting. I made myself familiar with the community and its standards by reading what other people said and thinking about it.
I made a note of how other people behaved. I paid attention when people got called out for bad behavior. I <shock, horror> Googled to find out about Internet etiquette. If there were things I didn’t understand, or I wasn’t sure about what was acceptable, I asked questions, instead of assuming that I was the expert.
And when I finally felt that I’d learned enough to be a good member of the community, I started posting and contributing. And when people called me out for doing something wrong, instead of doubling-down or making excuses, I apologized and learned from it.
Granted, choosing to be that sort of humble is difficult when you’ve been around for decades and spent a good portion of your life being the smartest person in the room. But it’s a choice you make — or don’t make.
@Curt Phillips
Some friendly modern fannish pieces of advice:
Read all the comments before responding. You’d see that I’d corrected myself on the Walter Breen thing. Reading everything since you last posted its a thing we do.
Responding to one item at a time without reading everything else waste time. Yours and everyone else’s because you’ll miss stuff you should have read before responding. To fit into today’s modern fannish online world give it a shot. We’re not an email group.
Read links. Seriously if someone post a link go read it. Ignoring links and peoples lived experiences ticks people off. It can turn an entire community against you.
Social media advice brought to you be Tasha Turner Coaching ($75-150/hr but free occasionally)
@Curt Phillips
You come off that way. It’s how a bunch of us perceived your post. I’m not mind reading I’m telling you how your writing sounds.
You might try Googling the Scalzi info I gave you. It’s online and free.
@JJ Granted, choosing to be that sort of humble is difficult when you’ve been around for decades and spent a good portion of your life being the smartest person in the room. But it’s a choice you make — or don’t make.
Snort.
JJ: Granted, choosing to be that sort of humble is difficult when you’ve been around for decades and spent a good portion of your life being the smartest person in the room. But it’s a choice you make — or don’t make.
And further to this point:
Over the past 10 months, it’s become very apparent to me that a great many of the people who comment here on File770 have spent most of their lives being the smartest person in the room. There are a couple of people here who still don’t get that, who still don’t realize that they’re not the expert on everything that they think they are. And there are issues from time to time because of that.
But most of the people here are not only smart, they are smart enough to recognize how smart the other people here are, too — and how much they themselves can still learn.
One of the things that I love most about File770 is that, like me, the people here derive great joy from learning new things. That’s why you’ll often see comments such as “Thank you for making me one of Today’s Lucky 10,000!”
Think before you post. Recognize that people here are sharing their own very real lived experiences, and that they are the expert on what has happened to them. Make sure that your post doesn’t consist of things like “I didn’t see it, so it must not be happening” and “Why didn’t anyone reach out and tell my cohort this, because we are so super special that other people need to make special efforts on our behalf”.
@Curt:
No, fandom certainly didn’t and you are wrong to say that it did. Did sexual harassment happen back then? I’m sure it did, but fandom did *not* condone it as you suggest. Sexual Harassment was just as wrong then as it is now and we knew it.
(from We Don’t Do That Anymore)
(comment on the above)
(comment on the above)
(a comment on “Connie Willis, Harlan Ellison, and the Inside Scoop”)
(from a comment on Jim Hines’s journal)
(Jacqueline Lichtenberg)
(Dave Kyle)
“… and women kept their mouths shut.”
I ‘d suggest that you ask some female fans who were around in 1976 about that, because your statement doesn’t match my memories of that time.
(from Why Women Are Silent)
(from Right Where Dr. A Pinched)
That’s just one author, and just what I could find in a quick whip around. I suggest you ask some female fans who were around in 1976 about that. I’m not sure you’ll find they necessarily corroborate your memories. The word around grapevine, from female fans who were there, is that it was rife, and because it was the authors, no one had a problem with it.
JJ: Holy crap, the COMMENTS on that link! Yes, I know, don’t ever read the comments, but in this case I would suggest that Curt do exactly that. He’ll see himself reflected therein, and not in a good way.
Hampus: Furthermore, he’s too cowardly (by his own standards) to own his words in a physical venue. He wants to be able to slag people online without ever suffering any meatspace consequences for it.
Tasha Turner wrote:
“@Curt Phillips
On the Internet never assume anything is separate.”
That strikes me as very good advice tonight.
“Are you familiar with the term lurker? A lurker is someone who reads a forum/blog/email group but doesn’t participate in discussions. Most of the people who read file770 never comment. This means we may have shared lots of online spaces and you wouldn’t know me from dear sweet Alice.”
I moderate a few fannish YaHoo Groups and oddly the thing happens there. Often it’s more than 90% of the members who never post a word. It baffles me as to why anyone would join a fannish group and then not participate at least a little, yet it happens on almost all of the groups I’m with. Fandom as a spectator sport? It never has made any sense to me.
“The topic you brought up is almost always brought up by straight white men (SWM). It’s always have you thought of, just a point, I’m not telling anyone what to do. Except the language used and the inability to listen to the numerous explanations of why it’s not just a difference of opinion but someone’s life at risk or actually we do have ways to know is frustrating. And each of you bring it up like we’ve never heard it before and your the first to bring it up.”
I’ll snip the rest of this as I’ve discussed it downstream (please see my response to Lauren Rose). I’m going to ask you to accept that I’m sincere in my belief that I wasn’t trying to aggravate you or anyone with this topic. If I’m guilty of anything it’s that I wrote about a topic that isn’t often in my thoughts and I obviously wrote too shallowly to take into account the sensitivities that I offended. Had I understood that I was giving offense, I certainly would have tried to avoid doing so. As for me falling into a stereotype of SWM behavior, well please understand that I’m as surprised as anyone about that. I try to meet any thought with honesty, and when I offend,I only do so out of ignorance and not from ill intent. Again.I apologize to you.
“I’m sorry Breen was before your time sometimes my I was hit by a truck memory gets me in trouble. Oops.”
I just wasn’t sure who you were talking about. It sounded like Breen but his incident was in 1964 and we’d been talking about 1976. Aside from that your point was taken.
I ‘d suggest that you ask some female fans who were around in 1976 about that, because your statement doesn’t match my memories of that time.
“I have. It’s amazing how many men don’t see the harassment happening in front of them. I’ve worked with guys what didn’t see the harassment around them… Or the harassment they did. I’ve corrected co-worker friends. I’ve grabbed co-workers & pointed to harassment & said see… that and then I’ve gone and dealt with the harasser who was convinced they hadn’t done anything wrong until I started doing the thing to them & they didn’t like it*.
No. no, I wasn’t denying that harassment did *occur* in the mid 70’s in fandom, I was only responding to the assertion that “women kept their mouths shut”. Some women *were* talking back then, and more and more joined in as time went on, and so did some men. Not enough people *listened* back then, just as not enough listen today, but the conversation had started. And we’re still talking.
“You don’t think you are telling people what to do but the language you use and the way you bring up your point makes it very clear what you think and you are superior in your understanding to all of us who never thought of this before… ”
I really don’t think that way about myself, but I’ll certainly be thinking now about why you think I do. Sometimes I figure things out. Maybe I’ll figure out this one.
Lee: Holy crap, the COMMENTS on that link! Yes, I know, don’t ever read the comments, but in this case I would suggest that Curt do exactly that. He’ll see himself reflected therein, and not in a good way.
But y’see, we got over all that harassment and sexism stuff decades ago, and it really doesn’t happen much anymore… 🙄
LauraH said:
“Curt, you may not think this report is credible, given as it is as a comment on unknown SF author John Scalzi’s blog and who really knows who “Jan Dumas” is, but she says:
“When I attend my first convention in 1978 in New York City I was backed in to a corner by Isaac Asimov. He wanted to ‘check on the quality of my breasts.’ I almost escaped when two people grabbed, me, spun me around and held me in place while I was assaulted. I was told, it’s not personal he does it to everyone.”
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/08/09/an-incomplete-guide-to-not-creeping/#comment-348817
Read this part again: “two people grabbed me, spun me around and held me in place while I was assaulted.”
Other convention attendees held this woman down so that Isaac Asimov could sexually assault her. That goes beyond condoning and barrels straight into enabling.
So… you maybe wanna rethink that statement that fandom didn’t condone harassment?”
I’d never heard of this before. Certainly it’s disturbing.
By “Fandom doesn’t condone” what I meant was that no group of fans ever met and took a vote and decided that fandom would hereafter approve of sexual assault. It was *not* the prevailing attitude of fandom in 1976 and never has been. There were certainly individuals who were guilty of it then as now and the general understanding of the problem was certainly inadequate then as now. But to say that “fandom condoned sexual assault” 40 years ago implies that an atmosphere of sexual assault was prevalent and universal, and that simply wasn’t the case. As far as I know, most of us in fandom at the time never assaulted anyone. Yes, one assault is one too many, but I and the fans I saw were there to collect books and talk with others about science fiction, and that’s what I did. So at least some of us were behaving ourselves in1976. And since I self identify as being part of fandom, the charge that “fandom condoned sexual harassment” rankles.
Obviously then, this isn’t a disagreement about hurt caused or damage done; this is a disagreement over terminology and a rejection by me of blanket condemnation of a group that I was a part of. Seen in that light, do we need to argue this point further?
Thinking about names, pseudonyms, and consistent identity: when I was on Usenet, one of the things that happened periodically was that someone would, in the course of an argument, accuse someone of not using their real name. By which they meant, the name on their government-issued ID.
The amusing thing was that it was always one of the same two people: Avedon Carol and Aahz, both of whom were using their legal names (though not the names their parents gave them). It never seems to have occurred to those people that “Vicki Rosenzweig” or “Anna Vargo” might be a pseudonym. (Anna had also changed her name, but to something that fits the average American’s idea of what a “real” name looks like.)
Aaron said:
Curt Phillips wrote: I had no idea any of this existed. No one has ever explained this in any place I’ve read or any discussion group I’ve visited before.
“Some of your complaints seem almost as quaint as being amazed that one doesn’t have to have a phone operator put you through to the person on the other end of the line because there are telephone numbers available that you can dial yourself.”
I suppose that’s so, but it’s true. Most of the customs and activities of the Internet community are foreign to me. And I just got my first smart phone 2 months ago.Still haven’t figured out how to read my e-mail on it.
Also, another good tip for participation in Internet forums is: Yes, read the entire thread before you respond to an individual post. But then, after you’ve spent several minutes, or a considerable amount of time, composing a response, save or c&p your post somewhere, hit “Refresh”, and read all the comments which appeared in the meantime before committing the comment you just wrote.
This is a really good way to avoid making yourself look bad (or worse, as the case may be).
snowcrash said:
“ETA: “I hope you don’t really expect me to be able to answer for the shortcomings of the fandom of 1976, do you? ”
“Inasmuch as you appear dismissive of it’s flaws when others bring it up, I think it’s a fair call for people to expect you to substantiate your dismissals.”
Folks sure do put a lot of stock in appearances here on-line…
I haven’t dismissed anything, but I can’t substantiate what I haven’t seen, can I? I don’t deny that sexual harassment happened in fandom in 1976 (not sure why we’ve decided to pick on 1976 exactly, but let it serve as a placeholder for “back then” at least) but those who were doing it had the sense to do it away from my field of view at the very least,and to not tell me about it at the time. Hell, I was a rank neofan back then. Nobody told me much of anything. It certainly isn’t for me to answer for what crimes were committed in 1976, that responsibility lies with those who committed the crimes in 1976. If you want to hear about the books I was finding in the dealer’s room back then while others were somewhere else assaulting people, just ask. Otherwise look elsewhere for those answers.
Mary Frances on February 23, 2016 at 8:30 pm said:
“Curt Phillips: I ‘d suggest that you ask some female fans who were around in 1976 about that, because your statement doesn’t match my memories of that time.
Will 1978 do? Because I was around then, and Tasha’s statement matches my memories pretty well. It wasn’t unique to fandom, of course; the dominant culture encouraged women to keep silent, not to complain about being groped or ogled or cat-called. I don’t mean to declare that your memories are faulty, either, though your perceptions might have been at least partly shaped by your gender (as everyone’s are); the thing is, lots of people, including me, had difficulty in recognizing sexual harassment as a concept back then (as in: “if it wasn’t actually rape, nothing happened”). That was a big part of the problem . . . then, and unfortunately too often now.
ETA: I’ve read your follow-up, and I still think that you may be underestimating how rare it was for a woman to speak up in the 1970s–or in the 1980s, for that matter. Difficult, too, for all sorts of reasons, but definitely rare. And to speak up and get listened to? Even rarer, in my experience. People just–didn’t, at conventions or elsewhere. The conversation may well have started then (and I’m glad it did), but it was definitely in whispers, at best . . .”
Yours is the best posting on this point that I’ve seen tonight. Thank you for writing it. You may well be right; I was young then and there were many things I didn’t know, see, or understand. I think it’s fair to say that in a conversation about these matters there will never be enough people talking about until all are talking about it, and listening.
Aaron on February 23, 2016 at 8:36 pm said:
Did fandom condone it? No, it didn’t.
“Have you read any of the accounts being told and linked to here? Because they make quite clear that fandom of the time did condone harassment as a normal part of a con.
You need to look up the first rule of holes. Then you need to stop trying to explain to women what they experienced and actually listen to them.”
As you’ll see downstream, we have different ideas about what “condones” means. Harassment was never condoned as a normal part of any convention I ever attended and I attended maybe 200 of them by the time I mostly stopped going around the year 1998. Happened, yes. Happened with the approval of the convention or the majority of those attending it, no. I may be an old guy, but there seems to be some redefining of terms at work here.
I don’t have a clue what “the first rule of holes” might mean. I’ve not been trying to tell anyone what *they* experienced, I’ve been trying to talk about what *I* experienced, and that’s all. Believe me, I’m ready to stop doing that since I’m being piled on.
@Curt Phillips
People are a spectator sport. Plus speaking up gets one harassed and every word one says checked, double checked, mansplained, straight splained, doxxed, rape threats, death threats. Silenced in some way. Sometimes just by someone asking for the hundredth time have you thought . Until you want to scream or murder someone because they can’t seem to get out of their heads thinking about themselves and the things they need to say to actually stop and listen.
Most lurkers lurk because participating is exhausting and if you aren’t SWM you may be targeted for all kinds of nasty harassment.
Also you can learn tons by lurking. How to behave on the internet. How to behave in real life. Conversations people have are fascinating and by lurking I’m safe and can feel like part of the group. It’s great.
I lurked on file770 for over 3 months before I made a single comment. I felt like part of the gang. I knew who the major commenters were. I knew the regular trolls. I knew what behavior was expected from me. I knew what kind of humor worked here and what didn’t. It made integrating as a regular fairly easy for me.
I’ve lurked on other groups and while I enjoyed reading I never commented because it didn’t seem like a good match. The few times I’ve not listened to the little voice saying don’t do it I’ve regretted getting involved with the community.
I believe you. You didn’t know us. You took no time to get to know us. You posted a favorite topic. You’ve taken no time over the last 20 years to do the research to learn what was spoon fed to you tonight in words you could understand. I totally believe you had no intention to aggravate, offend, hurt, insult, etc. You walked into the middle of an ongoing discussion and jumped in without thinking about what the thread was about or whether there was background between the people.
You’ve continued to ignore comments made in this thread to you which support what I said about women and cons. No you the white male know better than women of that time period based on your current memory. Go do some research on memory, confirmation bias, and sexual harassment specifically what men see. This will take you 3-12 months to read enough to have an intelligent conversation based on your comments tonight.
The way you see yourself doesn’t match the way we are reacting to you. I’m not even a little bit surprised. You only listen if people are talking to you just right. And even then you tell people their lived experiences aren’t real.
So what’s your opinion on the sexual harassment and racism Mark Oshiro writes about? What do you think the con should have done? What would you have done if you had been at either of the panels?
Curt: You’re active on “10 or 12 online fannish groups” and have never seen any nicks in common at all? I’m only involved in a few online communities and am relatively new here, but I recognize dozens of the people posting here from their nicks encountered in those other groups, in comments on blog posts, etc. A couple of them have mentioned elsewhere that they thought this must be me over here, despite the relative commonness of my nick, because it’s the same one I use in those other groups and it sounds like me.
this new social construct (new to me anyway) hasn’t yet been communicated throughout fandom
It may not have quite seeped down to the level of “people who do everything by physical mail and long-distance phone calls, and still think of e-mail as being exotic”, but I guarantee you that it has indeed been communicated throughout fandom. I’m in your age-cohort, and while I don’t pretend to have the level of understanding of the techies, I was certainly aware that it’s possible to track someone thru their account-signup info, or (with more difficulty) the IP address from which they post. (Unless they’re using proxies, but that’s really rare among people who don’t have the specific intention of griefing.) If I can figure it out, there’s nothing stopping you.
How did I learn? By hanging out on Usenet, and LiveJournal, and various blogs and online communities. There tend to be a lot of techies in fannish communities, and these things do come up and get discussed semi-regularly. I probably picked up most of my basic knowledge from discussions of online spammers back in the 90s and 00s.
BTW, I don’t entirely buy your claim to be completely unfamiliar with the idea of a persistent and identifiable nick. As evidence, I give you Filthy Pierre.
Straight White Male: the Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is. Be sure to read the two follow-ups (linked from the first piece) as well.
@Curt
It’s a little hard to read your comments, as it’s not particularly clear when and where you are quoting someone. WordPress has some basic tools to make this easier – you can refer to this guide.
If you’ve got a new-ish browser, the “Quote” button should be visible on the top of the comment box will do this for you automatically – just click it when starting a quote, and once again when ending it. For example:
I’m not sure about folk, but given that I can only go by what you say, I guess I do put a lot of stock in appearances, and like I said, given what you have written, you are coming off as being quite dismissive.
LauraH on February 23, 2016 at 8:36 pm said:
I’m used to a fandom that treats each other like brothers and sisters rather than like used inflatable sex-toys.
Yeah…. about that. I really wasn’t feeling the sibling-love when in 2009 someone on SFC was sexually harassing me and everyone just sat on their hands and watched it happen until I finally quit the list, because heaven forfend a woman want to talk about the problem of fans not always being the good guys and fannish space not equating to safe space without having to play twenty rounds of “How Fannish Was My Rape.”
LauraH, are you talking about the Southern Fandom Classic group? I’m horrified to hear of this. I own and moderate that group and did so in 2009. I’m sorry but I don’t remember your name or anything about this incident. Is there anything that can be done about it now? Would you like to talk to me about it now, privately? All the SFC postings are archived and can be searched, so if there’s anything that can be done to help make up for what happened I’ll gladly do it. Please contact me if you want to discuss this further, and I will certainly try to do the right thing – whatever that might be.
As I said, I don’t remember and don;t understand what happened in 2009, but whatever it was that hurt you, I offer my apology. The thought that someone did something on my group and I didn’t even notice it at the time disturbs me greatly and I;d very much like to understand what happened – if you’re willing to talk with me about it.
As evidence, I give you Filthy Pierre.
I’m in the same general age range, and I’ve heard of Filthy since the mid-1970s.
Curt Phillips:
It seems pretty apparent that you chose not to read and take on board the comment I made here and the comment I made here.
Seriously, you are making yourself look like a major jerk. Read what I wrote. And then spend some time thinking about it before you charge back into posting here and demonstrating your wilful ignorance.
Curt Phillips: I don’t have a clue what “the first rule of holes” might mean.
Surely you’re intelligent enough to use Google. Surely you are, right? Because if you’re so intellectually incompetent that you can’t master how to do that, perhaps you should reconsider whether the Internet is an appropriate place to spend your time.
Here, let me help you with that:
First Rule of Holes
Curt Phillips:
I don’t play games. I don’t have a smart phone. And nobody sat down and told me the rules. I don’t think most people need to be sat down and told the rules. And as someone said, they’re not fandom rules, they’re common across a lot (not all) of the internet, at least the places with moderated, intelligent comment threads or discussion boards. (Unmoderated discussions on news sites or Youtube, for instance, are mostly anonymous and troll-heavy. Wikipedia’s background discussions are often pseudonymous but not exactly moderated.)
Most of us learned “the rules” in something resembling the way I did, anywhere from years before to this year:
I first got on the internet in the early 90s as a high school kid. We experimented with using fake names on chat boards, found it dissatisfying, and moved on. Mostly at the time i didn’t see anything exciting, but as I understand it, fandom had a whole rash of exciting forums going on if you knew where to look. (Usenet?)
As the internet got more elaborate, a few years alter, in College, I used it to find about markets for attempting to sell some (truly terrible, but I didn’t know it at the time) short fiction. I discovered a giant message board called the Rumour Mill that had a specific section of threads dedicated to the subject of markets. I posted a timid question in the appropriate thread, and while I was there and once I got a useful response, I wandered the other topics to see what else was useful to a young writer. I read a bunch, then started posting, and started to realise I was seeing the same people over and over; a regular group. I got to know some of them exceedingly well. In those days most user names at least looked like feasible names, but they weren’t, necessarily (I remember feeling a certain amount of particular pride when I attached a pseudonym to someone’s offline identity.) But they were pretty consistent; same user, same name. And when I started to move from there to other places (Absolute Write, making Light, Livejournal) I kept seeing the same idea.
As time went on, user names got less like real names. People also, on some boards, got icons or other images they could use to represent themselves (usually called avatars). But again, it was always the same people with the same image and name – often over multiple sites or platforms – and sometimes you could tie it to a real world identity, sometimes not.
I don’t think I heard the difference between that and pure anonymity formally defined and described until the last decade, but the concept has been around from the start.
My mom used to occasionally do chat boards which were rooms of people you had almost never met before and would almost never meet again, in the times and days when these were NOT almost immediately eaten by trolls. I think she gave up on that within a few months, because the satisfaction was absent. I never saw the appeal, though I couldn’t have articulated why.
Me, then Tasha:
” I’m going to ask you to accept that I’m sincere in my belief that I wasn’t trying to aggravate you or anyone with this topic”
I believe you. You didn’t know us. You took no time to get to know us…
You see, this is fandom, so I *thought* I knew you. I thought all fans could still talk together with clarity. Tonight I’ve learned differently. Fandom has moved on and mayby I haven’t.
…You walked into the middle of an ongoing discussion and jumped in without thinking about what the thread was about or whether there was background between the people.
Well, not quite. The thread *was* about Mark Oshiro’s report. If you scroll all the way back to the beginning you’ll see that mine was the 12th posting. I haven’t tried to be dismissive to anyone – as I’ve been accused of, and I’m sorry that anything I’ve written came across like that to anyone. I guess I’m simply going to have to step away from this discussion as I seem to keep on offending others without trying to. My apologies,to all. Offense was never my intention.
Curt, when a thing happens, and happens a lot, and the majority of people in the place where it’s happening don’t notice or don’t care or treat it like a joke, that IS condoning it. Because every person who sees it and lets it slide, whether they themselves do it or not, is telling the person who does it that this is an acceptable thing to do in our community.
Condone: to disregard or overlook; to give tacit approval to. (emphasis mine)
Condoning does not require active, verbal agreement.
Also, the First Rule of Holes: When you’re in one, the first thing you need to do is stop digging.
Time-out, please folks. I can’t keep up with the postings and I have to be at work in a fw hours. I don’t mean to dismiss anyone and would like to try to answer everyone, but I just have to stop now. Lenora Rose, thank you for your comments. You have been polite and thoughtful and your advice has been very helpful to me. Tasha, thank you for understanding that my sins came from ignorance and not meaness.
I haven’t been able to read everything on this thread tonight and I apologize for that, but it’s more than I can deal with at present. I’m not going to get into this kind of discussion again, but I have learned some interesting things from some of you tonight. A couple of you were simply rude to me and there was no reason for it. Others made an effort to be polite and they communicated far better. (I’m not talking about you with that,Tasha. We got off to a rocky start but you made some points that surprised and informed me I wish we could talk further someday. I think I could learn much from you.)
Can I redirect this thread back to Mark Oshiro now? That matter is still a lot more important than what any of you think about me.
Best wishes,
Curt
I know a LOT of people older than Curt Phillips, and they’ve somehow managed to use this whole new-fangled intarweb contraption thingy. One of them’s well over 80 and has a smart phone, which I even don’t!
Perhaps it’s that they’re more intellectually curious? They’re not Luddites hiding in their little in-group? That they’re willing to listen first before jumping in to a situation they don’t understand and issuing proclamations? Maybe that many of them are women? The latter certainly explains why they know how much sexual harassment there has been in fandom and continues to be. Women don’t have the luxury of blissful ignorance.
And that you haven’t noticed any recurring pseudonyms across “10-12” fannish groups means your groups must be mighty small and overlapping. Have you noticed these things called “fannish names”? “Badge names”? Same idea. I’ve been running into the same people IRL and online in wildly varying discussions for decades. Someone I met at a con in the 80’s turned up in an ancient history board in the late 90’s. Someone I hung out with at a place online (and at one party) in the late 90’s turned up at a big SF site I frequented in the late 00’s.
I’ve got to admit my personal con memories don’t go back all the way to 1976; I didn’t attend one till 1977, but I don’t imagine things changed hugely in one year.
Old is not necessarily stupid, clueless, or know-it-all boorish, Curt; try not to reinforce that “old man lecturing these kids today” stereotype.
Rude? Frustrated yes. But not even close to rude. You should see us when we are rude.
Fandom may all be a family but it’s also made up of individuals. You need to start factoring in individuals and that groups that aren’t white male have very different experiences.
Again it’s your job to educate yourself. It’s not our job. I charge $75/$150 an hour for my time and I’m very picky about my clients. The less my clients know the more I charge per hour. They have to do homework before I’ll let them hire me to prove they are capable of learning from me. The testing includes using Google and other research methods as well as multiple social media platforms and showing me what they learned in their own words. I think my application is 3 pages long although it needs revamping as my last couple clients didn’t work out. I need to fix my testing method.
Yes I’m that egotistical to think I’m that good at what I do. I have no patience for people that want to be spoon fed and tone police. None. At. All.
@Bruce Arthurs & @Lenora Rose: I liked Shadowdance a lot back in the day; I almost fell over to realize there were GLBT folk in it. I recently “re-read” via the audiobook, which I recommend; it’s well done and, for me anyway, a great way to re-read the book. Some parts of the books were better/more interesting than I’d remembered; some weren’t as good; but on balance, I felt it held up quite well.
(This comment is not meant to condone any inappropriate words or action by the author, obviously.)
@Lurkertype Old is not necessarily stupid, clueless, or know-it-all boorish, Curt; try not to reinforce that “old man lecturing these kids today” stereotype.
Have I mentioned lately how much I like your way with words? Your very skilled.