Reports circulated Friday that Dave McCarty had been refused admission to the UK Eastercon being held this weekend. McCarty had posted a flight itinerary to the UK on his Facebook page on March 27.
File 770 contacted the Levitation (UK Eastercon 2024) committee asking if they could confirm the story or put it to rest. Today Farah Mendlesohn, Chair, Levitation 2024 issued the following statement:
On Thursday the Levitation (Eastercon 2024) executive committee was informed that a person, whose presence we believed would cause significant interference with the operations of the convention, was intending to join on the door.
The Levitation (Eastercon 2024) executive committee took the decision to refuse membership to this person.
An email was sent explaining our decision and referencing our code of conduct which states that we may revoke or refuse membership under these circumstances.
When this person then chose to enter the convention the next day, we told them that they would not be allowed to buy a membership and asked them to leave the site. They repeatedly refused to do so. We explained that if they did not leave we would ask site security to escort them out. They did not leave, and security did therefore escort them from the premises.
A second person of concern who purchased a membership in 2022 was permitted to remain under specified conditions, and has abided by those conditions.
Farah Mendlesohn
Chair, Levitation 2024
N.B. Levitation is an unincorporated members’ society under UK law, and may refuse membership for any reason other than a person belonging to a protected group.
The “second person of concern” is believed to be Ben Yalow, who is present at the convention.
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People get barred from private events in the U.K. every single day/night of the week (“Sorry mate, your name’s not on the list”, “Sorry mate, you can’t come in looking like that”, “Sorry mate, Big Ed says if he sees you in here again he’s gonna lamp you one …”). I’m pretty sure the Con Exec Comm took the decision they did because they had good grounds to suspect his presence would cause a public disturbance that could put the safety of not only their volunteers but other participants at risk.
And the fact that Mr McCarty flew over planning to buy membership at the door suggests to me that this was an act of deliberate provocation on his part.
@BrianZ
Sure, as soon as he says 50 times aloud in front of me “I was wrong, Nepal is not Tibet”
@Jonnypants–
I agree that Ben needs to resign, and should have done so quite a while ago. However, he hasn’t abused and insulted people about this, and has a much greater past store of goodwill. That makes many people reluctant, at least, to be public about pushing to resign.
I’m not saying this is a good thing. It does, however, demonstrate how much of McCarty’s current situation is due to him taking a bad situation and actively making it worse for himself.
Now that I think of it, I do know of folks banned from individual conventions, Readercon and Arisia if I remember correctly, for violating their respective Codes of Conduct. So yes, you’re correct I should have remembered. I did not know if such things were automatic, baked into the registration system, and which personally identifiable information was used for preemptive flagging.
RedWombat, that’s just appalling.
Dave and Co. were protecting finalists who might encounter issues in China.
Should we protect supporters of politically unpopular Worldcon bids? Make sure they don’t walk into someone’s fist in Seattle.
Who wants to go next?
@LisCarey
He didn’t directly insult anyone, but covering all of this up isn’t a small thing, it’s a big thing, and he’s still doing it. While staying on the board, where he’s responsible for maintaining the integrity of the award. It just seems unbelievable to let him fall back on the goodwill he’s built up before he’s even been honest about what happened and his role in it.
Puzzling. Who was the second? Who is they? Ben Yalow? Looks like McCarthy copied himself out of the meeting centre.
Prove it.
Dave cited safety in his email to Jones and Lacey, who ran with it. And it’s no justification for what the Chengdu Hugo admins did. Or what you are supporting.
@Jonnypants–Yes, I agree Yalow needs to step down. I’m very unhappy that he hasn’t been required to step down from his positions. (He is off all existing Worldcon committees and, I believe, Worldcon bid committees.)
But the fact that he doesn’t insult and abuse people, and consequently isn’t an ongoing spark for confrontation in fannish settings, means that unlike McCarty, as long as he commits to obeying the Code of Conduct and then does so, he’s not going to cause a fight that could endanger himself and others, cause major problems for the convention, including, if police needed to be called, some seriously bad publicity for the con, and for fandom generally.
McCarty is exactly that sort of problem. Refusing to commit to the Code of Conduct for the con, while also refusing to leave when asked, shows that he was a major risk that Eastercon doesn’t have enough people to actively police and control.
Conventions absolutely do have the right to protect their members who, intentionally or not, are only going to be trouble.
@LisCarey
Yeah, that’s a fair point.
I’m curious as to what conventions are planning to do about folks (e.g. Dave) who purchase memberships in advance, or what happens if this is done at the last minute (e.g. after somebody is already en route) with no change in circumstances.
Bouncing Dave (who didn’t have a membership in hand) seems to have been easy enough, but if Dave had already had a membership this feels like it could become a complete mess from a few perspectives (pulling his badge after he was en route having purchased it well in advance sounds like room for a messy shouting match about having been led to blow money on a flight, etc.).
@Brian Z: Care to explain how discarding many/most of the Chinese votes protected anybody? Or what danger the disqualified Sandman episode posed to anybody?
That dog won’t hunt.
@Gray
Conventions have been dealing with problem fans for as long as I can remember. Usually, it’s done when they become a problem. Occasionally they’re a problem before the con opens. Pulling the badge is the only way to stop the problem. It’s kind of up to the fan how much of a problem pulling the badge is.
@Gray–Memberships can be and have been refunded, when someone is banned or ejected when they already have a membership.
In this case, Yalow arrived with a membership he bought two years ago. He also, when he arrived and was addressed on this, committed to complying with the Code of Conduct, and then actually did so. But that worked with Yalow because he hasn’t been angry and confrontational about the entirely appropriate avalanche of criticism in the wake of Chengdu, and that’s consistent with his history. I’m angry about all the ways he’s responsible for the Chengdu problems, but I wouldn’t worry about him being a focus of trouble at a convention he’s merely attending.
McCarty, on the other hand, has been a problem for other cons because he does make himself a focus of conflict.
Yes, banning someone can cause a confrontation. But sometimes it’s necessary, to prevent more and worse.
That is… a radical interpretation of the text.
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He also said those were the correct nomination numbers, so you’ll forgive me, I’m sure, for not believing a word he says. But if you find some actual proof, not just “Well, Dave SAID…” I’ll be glad to entertain it.
As for what I’m supporting—yes, you got me, I absolutely support the right of cons to say “we aren’t able to deal with this safely.” Guilty as charged. I’ll go quietly.
@P J Evans:
Hence the question of “If there’s been no change in circumstances”. If somebody is a known pain in the rear, kicking them the day before the con if they already have a badge but haven’t done anything “lately” is what seems odd…but I’m wondering what they would have done if Dave had already had his badge in hand from before.
I’m wondering if McCarty already has a Glasgow 2024 membership, and whether that committee is going to make a decision about admitting him.
Mike Glyer: I’m wondering if McCarty already has a Glasgow 2024 membership, and whether that committee is going to make a decision about admitting him.
Given that he flew to Seattle a couple of months ago on a weekend they had a concom meeting, I suspect he was originally planned to be their Hugo Admin before the chit hit the fans.
The Glasgow website lists McCarty as an attending member on their membership page.
JJ: Dave’s trip to Seattle was 100% personal and had zero to do with the Seattle Worldcon.
The rest of my opinions on this situation have largely been covered by Redwombat.
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I obviously have no idea whether it’s McCarty’s usual habit to buy memberships at the very last moment, but if it isn’t – and frankly, even if it is, because he’s torn up his former relationship with fandom and he should know that – then this seems to me a blatant attempt to leverage the natural dislike of the possibility of A Scene to force entry, which is itself very bad behaviour indeed. Especially since, well, he seems to have caused one.
Not, in my opinion, a particularly auspicious way to demonstrate you’ve understood the true scope of the upset and anger you’ve caused, or a good start on rehabilitating the image you thoroughly damaged, nor a way to show honest engagement with the possibility of restorative or rehabilitative justice. It’s choosing to be disruptive in an ongoing sort of way instead.
If he wants to be part of fandom, a community he’s deeply wronged, this is a funny way of showing it.
I can understand, if a friend of his, being upset on his behalf – but surely it ought to be clear that the person you need to talk to and get on board with the Rehabilitation of Dave McCarty project is… Dave McCarty. It can’t work without his buy-in and sincere efforts, and this was a mighty set-back.
I am shocked to see even the suggestion that ejecting McCarty from Eastercon was not 100% the right thing to do. Even leaving aside the fact that the convention team had both the right and the responsibility to remove that kind of disturbance from their convention, it seems to me that some people in this thread have not fully grasped the crisis that his actions represent, and the necessity of a visible and uncompromising response to them.
The behavior of the 2023 Hugo team has dragged the reputation of the award – and the Worldcon, and the fandom that revolves around it and which has significant overlap with Eastercon fandom – through the mud. We are on the verge of the entire endeavor being seen as a joke. A cliquish affair whose laurels are handed out according to vibes and who you know, and where bad behavior by connected SMOFs is brushed aside, while the people who produce the actual work that’s supposedly being celebrated are treated like dirt. The current Hugo team, through no fault of their own, is having to work overtime to project reliability and transparency in order to make the award look even quasi-respectable, and even that isn’t 100% successful. In case it had slipped some people’s attention, on the very day McCarty was ejected from Eastercon, we learned that a 2024 Hugo nominee declined a spot on the ballot because they could no longer trust the award after 2023’s shenanigans.
The one thing that will absolutely guarantee this reputation loss is permanent is for people to learn that McCarty et al are still members in good standing of the fandom. That barely three months after this debacle came to light, they are still hanging out at conventions, with people – presumably fellow SMOFs – who are willing to handwave their actions. It will confirm all the worst things that observers are assuming about this fandom and how we got to the state where a Hugo administrator with a history of bad actions was allowed to treat the award like his personal game of Madlibs. It will make everyone assume that all future Hugos are the same.
I’m sorry that McCarty did not realize this before getting on the plane to England. But then, I’m sorry he didn’t realize it before tossing out hundreds of valid votes, getting his team to compile political dossiers about nominees, and invalidating nominations based on specious political reasons, up to and including confusing Tibet and Nepal. But the fact that he genuinely seems not to have grasped the damage he’s done, and the work that needs to be done now to repair it, is all the more reason why he shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near a convention like Eastercon.
I will remind people, as several people in the comments already have tried to do, that there have been multiple credible accusations of sexual harassment raised against McCarty completely independent of the 2023 Hugo Awards and those trying to argue he should not have been excluded from the convention should remember this fact.
The Slippery Slope argument has entered the chat.
In many ways it’s unsurprising how long it takes for consequences to come to Missing Stairs, but surely there is some kind of Important Physics Discovery lurking in the ratio of the time it takes for consequences to happen* to the time it takes for the Slippery Slope to be raised as an objection to the fact that they happened at all. Perhaps someone could power something with it.
*on the extremely rare occasion when they DO happen
Yes, indeed.
I think we are seeing a number of Dave’s friends who perhaps should consider spending their effort into convincing Dave to rethink some of his choices rather than complaining about the rest of fandom wanting to stay well away from him.
I dont think Dave’s stalking the halls of Eastercon would have bothered most of my friends here, but it does sound like he was wanting to make a scene, unlike Ben who comes every year, and I hope can be allowed to continue his fannish life. I like tolerance
John Bray: Ben who comes every year, and I hope can be allowed to continue his fannish life.
I don’t object to Yalow being able to attend SFF conventions, but I do believe that he has brought a massive amount of disrepute to Worldcon and the Hugo Awards, and he has never shown the slightest bit of remorse nor made even a token apology. Ben Yalow needs to be removed from the MPC in August, and he should never be allowed to serve on a Worldcon or WSFS committee ever again.
Sure but it is also reasonable for people to ask Ben Yalow what the flip went on at Chengdu until he gives a substantial answer to that.
Already happened in 1965 when Mick Jagger’s offer to have the Rolling Stones perform at that year’s Worldcon was turned down.
Red Wombat says exactly what I was going to say.
It is likely that there are several people there, well liked in British fandom, who’ve had all their joy at Hugo nomination stickers from them, and a choice has to be made at who gets a nice con.
Let’s just note that Brian Z thinks that the Chinese government isn’t doing anything worse than banning a person from a Con -,which is quite enough to discredit anything he says.
I think that the EasterCon committee did the right thing with regard to McCarty. There would have been problems if he had been admitted. The way he tried to get entrance – and refused to take “no” for an answer proves it.
FTR, I had missed the allegations of sexual harassment – yes, I should’ve noticed them upthread, even if I have reasonably good health-ish reasons for having missed them previously – and those in and of themselves would be an excellent reason not to let someone through the door.
Eastercon has another reason to disallow Dave McCarty, if it was him, because it hosts the announcement of the Hugo finalists.
I’m just glad Eastercan had Farah Mendlesohn as their chair, since Farah has proven to be both highly principled and very astute in seeing personal problem boiling up.
Karl-Johan Norén: Farah has proven to be both highly principled
She also has a documented history of backing up her principles with her actions, which is something a lot of people in fandom fail to do.
If I’d been at Eastercon, having McCarty show up at panels and other events would have totally ruined it for me — it would be the equivalent of being psychologically slapped in the face by the clusterfuck that was the Chengdu Worldcon and the 2023 Hugo Awards, over and over and over again. I suspect that a lot of Eastercon attendees would feel that way as well.
The short answer is ‘yes, of course they do.’ I run a small non SFF conference and we have banned a couple of people, one for physical assault. Obviously we check the membership list, and we are in compliance with UK GDPR. I’d note that Eastercon has at least one senior member of the legal profession on hand.
There are issues with this, although I have a lot of sympathy with it. A friend was accused of rape, not in a SFF context, and was unable to attend events for 5 years, before his accuser fully retracted her allegations. There is a case for banning until the person is proven innocent but it’s problematic, especially given the relatively small number of SA cases which don’t get to court. I don’t want to derail this thread with this particular issue – I’d be happier to see someone go into the actual legal case for banning.
Liz Williams writes:
I’m assuming a rogue Not has crept in here. The number of sexual assault actually prosecuted in this country is tiny. Agree that a single accusation needs to be treated with caution. A pattern of them is suggestive.
@John Bray to be fair to Dave, he also has come to Eastercon most years for the last twenty. I don’t think it is fair to assume he would have made a scene. But it is certainly true that there are people here whose Hugo finalist experience last year was irredeemably sullied by Dave’s actions, who are angry about that, and who deserve to have an Eastercon without him.
Yes, you are quite correct – my apologies. I’ll figure out how to edit it (I blame the clocks going forwards and typing earlier than it should be!)
Agree with @AlisonScott that it doesn’t matter if he would have caused a scene. He ruined the experience for everyone who participated and caused a ton of grief for the people who won and the people he disqualified for no reason. He cheated everyone that paid to vote. His presence is the trouble regardless of how under the radar he intends to be.
It takes some gall to rig and corrupt the most prestigious award for the genre and still expect to be welcome at other events. Hopefully Glasgow sets him straight about that.
No sympathy here. He flew to the UK without a membership. Apparently thinking that they wouldn’t refuse him if he was actually there. They emailed him the day before not to come. He came anyway. They repeatedly ask him to leave. He doesn’t. They tell him they will have security remove him. He still doesn’t leave, and security has to escort him out. Seems like he thought he could just bully his way into making them relent. Amply showing they made the right call.
This is the where the Hugo finalists were about to be announced at the conclusion of the Opening Ceremony. Some of those finalists unsurprisingly turned out to be people he wrongfully excluded from last year’s ballot. Not to mention that anyone with any interest in the Hugo Awards has reason to be angry with him.
He should probably rethink plans he may have for another UK trip this summer. Imagine him attending the Business Meeting where many of the new proposals will be all about preventing what he did from ever happening again. Or attending the Hugo Ceremony where someone might be sorely tempted to make a pointed gesture with their newly acquired trophy.
Laura: He should probably rethink plans he may have for another UK trip this summer. Imagine him attending the Business Meeting where many of the new proposals will be all about preventing what he did from ever happening again.
… and Censuring him publicly, on record, in the WSFS Business Meeting’s proceedings and Minutes.
On the other hand, I’d get a lot schadenfreude out of seeing him escorted out by the Sergeant-at-Arms when he throws a tantrum about that Censure, which is going to pass.
“They/them” in the first paragraph refers to “this person” in order to avoid specifying whether “this person” is “he/him” or “she/her”. Presumably McCarty. The second is presumably Yalow.
First of all, we don’t use $$$ over here. We use ££. There was also no way to refund him because he had not bought a membership, as far as I know. MEMBERSHIP. Eastercon is not a “ticketed event”.
Secondly, Eastercon is going very well and what it does not need is somebody who has had ample opportunity to “tell his side of the story” muscle in and make it all about him.
Thirdly, read the room, man. People are not going to be as welcoming, or as polite, as they were at a celebration of fan’s life.
Fourthly, nobody wanted the situation to end up with the intruder at the end of a fist, the police shutting down the venue and a fan being done for GBH.
Fiftly, no matter what his side of the story is, this man presided over the worst disaster in Hugo history; the damage to the reputation and trust of the Hugo was demolished under his stewardship. If he didn’t want to shoulder the responsibility for it, he should have resigned.
@Liz Williams: the “all accusations of sexual misconduct are just because women are lying bitches and won’t someone please think of the poor innocent men” routine is not only extremely stale, it does not pass the smell test when there are multiple credible allegations from multiple women dating back years whose accusations are congruent with each other and consistent with multiple instances of observable boundary-transgressive behaviors that count upon social pressure to induce people to go along and not make a fuss. Such as the way flying to the UK to attend a con without a membership and counting on “but nobody will stop me from registering at the door because I came all this way” is a deliberate boundary-transgressive behavior relying on social pressure to induce people to go along and not make a fuss.
“Won’t someone think of the victims of those poor lying bitches” is a tedious bit of rape apologia and you should be ashamed of yourself for raising it.
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