Pixel Scroll 5/7/16 All True Scrollaroos Meeting At Worldcon Hinder Pixelman Agenda

(1) HOPEFULLY INCURABLE. Rhianna Pratchett reacted to the news item that also inspired #12 in yesterday’s Scroll (“Nailsworth teacher claims Harry Potter books cause mental illness”):

(2) CRAZY EX RATED. On NPR’s Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me, “Not My Job: Actress Rachel Bloom Gets Quizzed On Crazy Ex-Boyfriends”.

Since she’s the expert on crazy ex-girlfriends we’ve decided to ask her three questions about some well-known crazy ex-boyfriends in a game called “No! Really! This time I’ll change!”

She mentions Ray Bradbury, subject of her 2011 Hugo-nominated song.

Rachel Bloom meets Ray Bradbury in 2010. Photo by John King Tarpinian.

Rachel Bloom meets Ray Bradbury in 2010. Photo by John King Tarpinian.

(3) GO AHEAD AND JUMP. David K.M. Klaus predicts, “Someday some Harry Potter fan is going to invent a practical personal jet pack or anti-gravity belt, just so he or she can play Quidditch.” ‘Til then we’ll make do with these skydiving Quidditch players from a Colombian phone commercial.

(4) PARTLY IMMORTAL. Fantasy Faction reposts “Foundations of Fantasy: The Epic of Gilgamesh”.

More than any other genre, fantasy tends to examine ancient epics. Whether it’s the study of archetypes and ectypes, or a historical understanding of narrative itself, or simply a desire to experience myths and legends that have lived for ages, these books remain alive to us. This series of posts will be about some of the more important mythic texts in history, and how they relate to modern fantasy.

The Story Behind the Story

The Epic of Gilgamesh is one of the earliest books we have on record. Original stories regarding the character date back as early as the eighteenth century BCE. The primary text was written between the 13th and tenth century BCE, in cuneiform on stone tablets. Then, it was lost for thousands of years, until it was rediscovered in 1850 in the excavation of Nineveh. Even then, it took decades to be translated into English.

Translations are tricky when dealing with situations like these. The poet Rainer Maria Rilke was one of the first people to read it translated. John Gardner (who also wrote the fantastic novel Grendel, a retelling of Beowulf from the monster’s point of view, and The Art of Fiction: Notes on the Craft for Young Authors) made a much more accurate, yet difficult to read translation, making certain to note each place the actual text was missing. Penguin Classics put out a two-volume translation by Andrew George which has received considerable acclaim. For a more poetic, if less rigorous version, Stephen Mitchell’s translation is quite readable, and uses inferences and the aforementioned earlier stories of Gilgamesh to fill in the missing gaps….

(5) GOOD STUFF. See Rachel Swirsky’s recommendation, “Friday read! ‘Hwang’s Billion Brilliant Daughters’ by Alice Sola Kim”.

One man watches the world evolve as he passes, sleep by sleep, into the future, trailing after his generations of descendants….

Hwang’s Bilion Brilliant Daughters” by Alice Sola Kim…

(6) THE MARQUIS OF TENTACLE RULES. Is the beer as good as the label? Octopus Wants To Fight IPA from Great Lakes Beer.

Octopus-Wants-to-Fight_can_label

It pours a beautiful burnt gold edging into a dull orange, like a orange creamsicle complete with a tight white head. As you can imagine, lots of tropical fruits abound from the glass with the first whiffs, followed by a walk in the woods as pine, evergreen and some herbaceous notes are picked up. The first sip provides some sweetness, some dank grass combined with pine needles and then onto “juicy fruit”.  Soft body with some middle mouthfeel bitterness that tastes like another.

The Story “Our pet octopus is a bit of a jerk. He’s that guy who has a couple then either tells you how much he loves you or threatens to fight you. So we brewed this IPA, with 8 varieties of hops and 8 types of malt. We targeted 88 IBU and 8.8% to appease him. Sadly, when he found out that we’d fabricated all of the above info, it only made him more volatile. We are starting to realize that Octopus was a poor choice for a pet.”

Food pairing recommendations

Calamari…

(7) DRAGONSCALE. Mark Yon has a fine review of Joe Hill’s The Fireman at SFFWorld.

The arrival of the latest book by Joe Hill has generally been seen as one of the highlights of the publishing year, and has been much anticipated here at SFFWorld.

Joe has said that The Fireman is his take on his father’s masterwork The Stand. I can see what he means, though the end-results are clearly different. Whereas The Stand begins with the spread of a killer flu germ (‘Captain Trips’), The Fireman begins with the dispersal of a 21st century equivalent – a spore named Dragonscale, of unknown origin, possibly weaponised, that has spread to the general public. The symptoms occur suddenly and are quite striking – a strange dark tattoo, interlaced with gold, appears on the body,  often followed by spontaneous combustion of the person infected….

(8) FELLOW ARTISTS. Rudy Rucker blogs about recent visits to SF MOMA and other cultural events, accompanied by plenty of photos and wry commentary.

I was happy to see they have Arneson’s “California Artist” on display, wearing shades whose lenses are holes revealing, oho, that he has an empty head, California artist that he is. I first saw this sculpture when we moved to California in 1986, and I was, like, yeah, I’m a California artist too. I just didn’t realize that before. It’s high time I got here. Solidarität!

(9) FREE WEIRD. From Europa SF I learned about the English-language magazine Finnish Weird:

Finnish Weird is a free magazine published by the Helsinki Science Fiction Society. It introduces the concept of “Finnish Weird”, showcases a few writers and also includes short stories by Johanna Sinisalo, Anne Leinonen, Helena Waris, Leena Likitalo and Magdalena Hai. The printed version will be available on select occasions (come and look for the Finnish party at Worldcon!), but you can also read the zine online or get an electronic version, either as a pdf or an ebook (epub).

(8) TODAY IN HISTORY.

  • May 7, 2010 — The Marvel Cinematic Universe gets its first sequel in Iron Man 2.

(9) LET IT RAIN. The Kickstarter for Quench seeks $20,312 to fund the creation of a computer game that allows players to control the weather and help herds of animals restore their home. Coming to PC & Mac in 2016.

Controlling the Weather

Using your divine powers over the weather, you will provide for your herds, help them as they take up their great pilgrimage, and ultimately restore the world.

Summon rain to bring life to withered plants, quench fires and calm enraged spirits.

Create gusts of wind to hurry your animals along, confuse attackers, and shift great dunes of sand.

Quake the earth to break open chasms and fountains, stun smokebeasts, and clear boulders blocking the way.

Strike lightning to start fires, revive fallen animals and obliterate foes. But don’t forget to take a moment to appreciate the beauty of nature!

There’s also an option for people to vote yes to greenlight the game on Steam.

(10) MORE ABOUT BLACK GATE. Rich Horton’s thoughts about the impact on fiction categories comes before this excerpt in his Black Gate post The Hugo Nominations, 2016; or, Sigh …”.

Of course Black Gate was nominated as Best Fanzine last year, due to Rabid Puppies support, and John O’Neill quite rightly withdrew its nomination. This year we again were (unwillingly) on the Rabid slate, and again John has decided to withdraw.

We discussed what to do – though the choice was always John’s – and there was a definite split. Many of us – myself included – at first inclined to the notion that perhaps we should stay on the ballot. I had four reasons for this: 1) I am certain that Black Gate got a good amount of support from non-Rabid nominators (but we have no way, for now, of knowing how much); 2) I though perhaps the point had been made last year; 3) I felt that withdrawing was ceding even more influence to Vox Day, and also was to an extent disenfranchising the non-Rabid nominators; and 4) I really do think Black Gate is a worthy choice.

But John made two very strong arguments in favor of withdrawing, arguments that now have swayed me so that I believe his decision is correct. First, and most important, by withdrawing it is guaranteed that there will be an entry on the Final Ballot not chosen by Vox Day. Second, in John’s estimation, it is likely that Black Gate wouldn’t have won anyway. I don’t think that’s nearly as important – but it’s probably true. (Alas, the very possible win for whoever replace Black Gate will be somewhat tainted as well if it’s perceived that it won as a default choice.)

(11) CAUSES ME TO TINGLE. Rachel Swirsky said if her Patreon reached $100 by the end of May she would write and send “If You Were a Butt, My Butt” to everyone who subscribes. Well, soon after this tweet, it did, and donations are still coming in. The funds will be given to Lyon-Martin health services.

(12) OF TWO MINDS. Damien G. Walter’s vlog, titled “Why is writing hard?”, never mentions Chuck Tingle, missing a golden opportunity. He previews the actual topic on his blog —

“Damien gets passionate about writing, and talks about the thing that makes it hard, the clash of two very different sides of our personality, the conscious mind and the subconscious imagination. OR. The crazy old hippy VS the corporate middle manager in all of us.”

 

(13) THREE GOLDEN MINUTES. Kendall turned us on to the amazing 2012 short film “The Device.”

[Thanks to Sunhawk, JJ, David K.M. Klaus, ULTRAGOTHA, Kendall, and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Hampus Eckerman.]

245 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 5/7/16 All True Scrollaroos Meeting At Worldcon Hinder Pixelman Agenda

  1. @Mike – psst you used 8 and 9 twice :X

    And thanks so much for sharing Quench, it’s a project that a friend of mine has been working on with a lot of great artists and programmer types and I’m really proud of how far they’ve taken the game. I always like animal social narratives, this game hits the same sweet spot for me that watching nature documentaries with Sir Attenborough’s narration does, plus there’s always something so nice about solving puzzles that results in fixing nature even if that nature is of a fictional hexel variety lol

  2. Regarding the issue of visible security making people feel unwelcome, would it help to split up the task? I’m not sure this makes sense but I was thinking you can have one group of people who wear bright shirts/vests, they are not actually security but act as a beacon for those who want help with harassment or other issues. Once a bright “flag person” has been sought, they can communicate with an actual security person who would be dressed more discreetly or otherwise instructed to fade into the background but still be available/as vigilant as their duties require. Or would that just complicate things?

  3. JJ on May 8, 2016 at 4:21 pm said:
    ULTRAGOTHA: Here is a photo of Julie McGalliard’s badge with ribbons from Sasquan (no, I don’t know who that is, I found it on an image search).

    That’s our own filer McJulie!

    Woot!

  4. Okay, I have a question that will open up a very large can of worms:

    MidAmeriCon II, the 2016 Worldcon, has a posted Code of Conduct, which reads in part, “Harassment of any kind is not tolerated.”

    MAC2 also administers and awards the 2016 Hugo Awards.

    Hence: Does that obligate MAC2 to remove harassers from the Hugo Award ballot, and are they within their rights to do so? Say, a publisher that announces his plans to doxx people who give his books negative reviews?

    Or does the CoC only apply to attendees?

  5. Glenn Hauman: These policies are to enhance the safety of people at the convention. They are not a wild card to be played in place of taking real world legal action against law violators.

    Does a name appearing on a Hugo ballot risk the safety of a convention attendee?

    In additon, the Worldcon committee is obligated to run the con under the rules of the WSFS Constitution. Those rules don’t provide for kicking people off the Hugo ballot for reasons other than ineligibility. (And that is the reason we’re expending millions of words trying to figure out if there’s a rules change that will filter out the effect of slates.)

  6. Lydy Nickerson by the time the convention has been involved in a complaint about harassment, it’s almost never an emergency. It might have been one, but usually we don’t know about it, then.

    I’m a bit puzzled by this. If I’m reporting my harassment at the con just after it happened I’d say it’s a crisis/emergency. At least in my mind it is.

    Yes, many don’t report some kinds of harassment until long after the event. One reason being how few conventions we’ve seen/heard about who take complaints seriously.

    Harassment policies when working are not just to deal with the harassed and the harasser but protect other congoers. They are to either help the harasser know what they did wrong so they don’t repeat it at the current and future convention(s) if it’s a small issue or to keep the harasser from harming anyone else at the current and future convention(s) if it’s a big issue. In the case of unauthorized pictures/video they need to be erased/destroyed as quickly as possible to prevent uploading to the Internet and removal from Internet and backups.

    Not all harassment is sexual. Some harassment is easier to report immediately than others. If targets of harassment start seeing the SFF community and ConComs are serious about implementing and enforcing reasonable CoCs they are more likely to come forward and do so earlier.

  7. @Mike Glyer Does a name appearing on a Hugo ballot risk the safety of a convention attendee?

    If the author is a known serial harasser, rapist, or pedophile and would attend the convention I do think the convention should refuse attending membership. If the person advocates violence against groups of members/types of people who attend I think it would be appropriate to refuse attending membership. To my knowledge we have not done so in the past in the case of serial harassers or those advocating violence.

  8. I’m thinking at this point, WSFS needs to bite the bullet, use a chunk of the PAF bucket and hire a lawyer or two to draft a comprehensive CoC that would pass muster in Federal Court (which would probably have to include report chains and required training) and write it into the By-Laws.

    Yeah I know how *easy* that all will be.

    But clearly nothing else seems to be enough.

  9. On behalf of MidAmeriCon II, thank you all for the feedback on our Code of Conduct. (Note this is not my department, but I’m known to comment on File 770 from time to time, so I’ve been asked to respond here.) MidAmeriCon II conducted harassment awareness training and a presentation on our incident response process & procedures for our staff at a meeting earlier this month. We are polishing up those procedures based on questions and feedback we have received from our staff and expect to have them available on the website soon. We are committed to ensuring there is clear communication to all members before and at the convention about how and to whom to report an incident.

    Our weapons policy is in the final stages of review and will be posted as soon as possible. Completion was delayed by the need to coordinate our policy with venue and city policies.

  10. James Davis Nicoll on May 9, 2016 at 1:09 pmsaid:

    Whose federal court, he asked innocently

    Almost as innocent as my suggestion…

  11. @Jim Henley: “I still cannot see a firetruck without thinking, “It starts with F- and ends with -UCK!””

    Are you a Turtle? 🙂

    @Jack Lint: “What’s all this talk of Call of Cthulhu (CoC)?”

    My copy of the Seventh Edition core rules came in about a week ago. The slipcase is big and weighty and imposing. Now to see how compatible my Achtung! Cthulhu and Cthulhu Britannica: London supplements are; I think they were built for CoC6…

    @JJ: “And how is someone who is shaken up and frightened from a harassment incident supposed to know who these people are and where to find them?”

    One of the cons I’m usually staff at keeps a stash of distinctive staff-only lanyards – a bright color with the con’s name on them. If you see that lanyard, you have a reasonable expectation that they can either help you directly or get you to someone who can. (Similarly, wearing an old staff lanyard or one from a different con is a decent way to be a low-key “auxiliary” volunteer.) The lanyard info is typically in the packet you get when you pick up your badge, so it’s available to newbies and old hands alike.

    @Petréa Mitchell: “And you’re going to justify the tiny text necessary to cram all that onto the back of the badge to your accessibility coordinator how?”

    I count half a dozen numbers, but let’s round up to a dozen just to be safe. I attend a couple of cons that use “name tag” sized badges, but this is their final year, so I drop them out of consideration. The rest use pretty big badges; two columns of six does not require “tiny text” for any value I would understand as “tiny.” In addition, many venues have a business office or a copier on site. If an attendee has trouble reading a quick-reference that is printed at a generally-legible size, that gives them the option of paying the hotel a quarter to make a big copy just for them. This is a solvable problem. (Perfect, enemy of good, etc.)

    That’s not to say there are no complications with the idea. I’m seeing several cons use back-of-badge as a place to put their guests’ panel schedules, so a guest can easily find out where they’re expected to be next. Then there are the people who use badge holders and slip their IDs behind their badges to make “gimme a beer” a smoother process at the consuite…

    @Lydy: “although there are concom badges which identify people’s concom functions, they look almost identical to regular member badges, and so don’t really function as a way to identify people that might be helpful.”

    Two really easy ways to do that are by changing the size (bigger!) and the color (bright not-white!). Staff lanyards, as mentioned above, also come in handy.

    @Tasha: “If I’m reporting my harassment at the con just after it happened I’d say it’s a crisis/emergency. At least in my mind it is.”

    The way I read Lydy’s comment, “he’s getting away!” or “she’s turning blue!” is an emergency. Action is absolutely required right then, because seconds matter. There is substantial value in distinguishing those from less immediate situations. “There’s someone in my house” is a 911 call, but “I got home to discover that I’d been robbed” is not.

  12. @Tammy Coxen
    Thanks. Looking forward to updated policies.

    @Ed Green @James Davis Nicholl
    LOL

    If only there were an easy solution to this problem. If only we weren’t building on 60+ years of harassment at conventions being accepted unofficially so we didn’t have to have these discussions. Harlan and Frenkel are still on the convention circuit.

  13. @Rev Bob The way I read Lydy’s comment, “he’s getting away!” or “she’s turning blue!” is an emergency. Action is absolutely required right then, because seconds matter. There is substantial value in distinguishing those from less immediate situations. “There’s someone in my house” is a 911 call, but “I got home to discover that I’d been robbed” is not.

    Point. Good point.

  14. @ Rev. Bob: Thanks, Rev. Bob. That’s precisely what I meant. I worry that treating urgent situations as emergencies will lead to serious errors. In an actual emergency, doing something is almost always better than doing nothing. Doing a thing is more important than doing the exact right thing. However, in situations which high priority, slowing down and figuring out the exact right thing tends to be more effective, overall.

  15. @ Tasha: I agree that when someone reports a problem, they should expect that something will be done at the convention if at all possible. If it’s Friday night, there’s a lot of time for the staff to make a decision, locate the subject of the report, and implement the decision. But if the convention takes several hours to decide what to do, and then several more hours to locate the subject and implement the decision…that’s not an appropriate timeframe if its an emergency. Which is one of the reasons why talking about it as if it is an emergency worries me. It seems to make implied commitments to people who experience harassment that I am not going to be able to meet. I do not have the staff or a departmental structure which allows me to be a rapid response team. I suspect most other conventions with CoC staff are similarly constructed.

    I also worry that treating harassment as an emergency acts to press the target into a victim narrative, whether or not they want to be there. I have many problems with the victim narrative where harassment is concerned. It’s important not to evaluate reports based on how upset the reporter is, for instance; it’s important to evaluate reports based on how egregious the reported behavior is.

  16. Lydy Nickerson: It’s important not to evaluate reports based on how upset the reporter is, for instance; it’s important to evaluate reports based on how egregious the reported behavior is.

    Yes, that’s true. However, it’s also important to take the report details as soon as possible, because 1) memory fades and changes, even over a short period of time; 2) the person involved needs to be reassured that the con is being responsive to their reporting of an incident, and if they’re upset, a quick response and reassurance can make a huge difference in how well they deal personally with whatever happened.

    Saying “it’s not an emergency, and subsequent actions should be measured, and thought-through carefully” is fine; but saying “it’s not an emergency, we’ll get your report from you tomorrow” is, in my opinion, not an acceptable response.

  17. @Lydy, I don’t believe I was insulting or suggesting that you were phoning it in. However, if that was the impression you got, I certainly apologize for wording my thoughts so badly. I am frustrated with your friend’s (and others like him) attitude. They mean well, but they aren’t quite there yet.

    And I DO consider it at least a crisis that does need immediate action (We may only differ on terminology there). Someone’s traumatized, and that can lead to more long-lasting damage than an injury. The gal who I saw pass out at a con didn’t end up with PTSD, she was just mildly embarrassed and learned to keep fed and hydrated. Someone who’s groped can be much worse off, long-term. And the harasser needs to be told ASAP that they did something wrong, before they go off posting upskirt pics, or interrupting panels, or groping, whatever.

    At a minimum, the victim needs to be immediately validated and taken to a safe place, while a search for the malefactor needs to start. And they need to be kept apart for both of their sakes. If they’re generally disrupting the con itself, they need to be removed from the situation quickly, as in Hampus’ example.

    @Vicki: Yes, exactly. The people who respond to injuries are the same people who respond to any sort of harassment or general unpleasantness. At least around here they are, which I know because I’ve seen them in action. “Safety Squad” might be a good fannish name. This is a job for the Safety Squad!

    @Cheryl S: Security at cons is less noticeable and cop-like than at festivals. They’re members of the con like everyone else, not hired outside help. And they have off-duty hours during which they attend panels and parties just like the rest. They are literally geeks in t-shirts and sometimes vests on duty.

    ———————————–

    @Tammy, thanks for the report! I think it’s more we want to know some progress is being made than we need the full details right now. Could someone put up what you just said to the web page so that people might be more patient (yeah right) and see that the con is taking this seriously and that work’s being done?

    I wonder what are the venue and city policies regarding boomsticks. I suspect the venue has a stronger one than the city. A quick Google suggests the state laws are basically non-existent, which isn’t going to reassure people.

  18. Glenn Hauman on May 9, 2016 at 10:48 am said:

    Okay, I have a question that will open up a very large can of worms:

    MidAmeriCon II, the 2016 Worldcon, has a posted Code of Conduct, which reads in part, “Harassment of any kind is not tolerated.”

    MAC2 also administers and awards the 2016 Hugo Awards.

    Hence: Does that obligate MAC2 to remove harassers from the Hugo Award ballot, and are they within their rights to do so? Say, a publisher that announces his plans to doxx people who give his books negative reviews?

    This isn’t a new idea, and others before you in other venues have stated that the CoC gives the convention the right to unilaterally remove works from the Hugo Award ballot or more likely to disqualify individual members (and their votes).

    I do not think they can do so, and here’s why:

    1. What OGH Said: Rules established by the individual Worldcon committee are junior to the WSFS Constitution. Thus, any convention rule that tries to supersede the Constitution is void.

    2. Many of the nomination ballots were cast by people who were not members of MidAmeriCon II (because they are members of the previous or subsequent Worldcon) and therefore aren’t even covered by MACII’s policies.

    3. Even if the convention decided that the way a member’s ballot was cast entitled the convention to revoke the member’s membership (including a membership to a different convention!), I would argue that the ballot was already cast before the member’s membership was revoked, and therefore cannot be un-cast.

    Finally, beyond the above, philosophically I think it a Very Bad Idea to let the Worldcon Committee decide that individual natural persons who have met the requirements set by the WSFS Constitution should not be allowed to vote or should have their ballots retroactively cancelled. Doing so actually would actually confirm all of the worst conspiracy theories about how Worldcon works.

    Incidentally, the relative ease with which the Griefers could game the system should prove that it was not being done to any credible extent (cases like the Scientologists or the 1989 incident are outliers) in the past. The conspiracy wasn’t there, so to prove it, they became the conspiracy.

    James Davis Nicoll on May 9, 2016 at 1:09 pm said:

    Whose federal court, he asked innocently.

    An excellent point. Local Law of the Convention’s host country trumps the WSFS Constitution. This should be obvious, but probably is not. There appear to be cases (data transfer being one of them) where Worldcons are highly limited in following certain aspects of the WSFS Constitution because they’re constrained by local law. There is nothing wrong about that. Worldcon isn’t an American convention; it’s a world convention, and any particular instance of it has to play by the home team’s rules.

    (WSFS tasked the Mark Protection Committee, as part of its remit to protect the WSFS service marks in places that do not understand unincorporated associations, to create a legal entity for the purpose of doing so. The MPC did form a California public benefit (non-profit) tax-exempt corporation for this purpose, whose governing body is the WSFS Mark Protection Committee. That still doesn’t make Worldcon an American convention, even if the service marks within the EU are held by Worldcon Intellectual Property, a California corporation.)

  19. Let me say up front, CoCs are a good thing.

    But they aren’t this magic shield or karma balancing device.

    Other than kicking out someone out who violates the CoC or maybe trying to hold on to them until police arrive (assuming it is believed a serious crime has been committed), what more can a convention do?

    I support taking written reports. But, what does the convention do with that report after the convention? Do you forward it, or a whole file to another convention? How long do you maintain it? How to you insure the report is properly protected (important if HIPA issues are involved)?

    I keep bringing these kind of questions up because a convention has extremely limited legal powers in handling incidents.

    And I get the impression people want the convention to do a lot more than they can do in a situation of harassment.

  20. IIRC, the Scientologists paid for their memberships all at once, with sequential checks from the same bank account. Pretty easy to prove fraud there.

    Could, theoretically, someone who WAS a member of the con be removed from the ballot only? I doubt it, but it’s a narrower parsing.

    The conspiracy wasn’t there, so to prove it, they became the conspiracy.

    Heh. So true. Sounds like a line from a movie poster.

  21. @Ed Green: And I get the impression people want the convention to do a lot more than they can do in a situation of harassment.

    As a sixty year old woman who remembers the years when sexual harassment did not exist as a concept (it was just part of life, as Gloria Steinem said, along with marital rape and various other oppressions that the dominant group had the right to do without consequence), it seems to me that in this day and age, people want the convention to do what might be considered a basic minimum (along with, as just happened above, updating with some progress reports on a fairly regular basis).

    I remember when a con in Seattle nearly got charged with prostitution by the police for a “slave auction” featuring scantily clad young women to raise money for….something or other. I remember sitting up way later than I wanted in a room with a lot of fairly drunk men (several of whom I knew and trusted enough to share a room with, but then I was fat and queer and according to them intimidating as hell on page and in person) because they’d insisted on a young woman they met in the elevator coming back to the room with them, and I didn’t want to go away and leave her with them. I remember when a big name GOH barged into a hotel room (my roomie and I had left it on the latch because we were online and expecting to be joined by friends from down the hall soon), arms wide open, drunk as a skunk at 3:30 p.m., and jovially asking us if we wanted to PARTY with him. (And THAT last one was a fucking academic conference.)

    And a shitload of other stuff that was just life back in the day. Those examples are the fairly benign ones.

    No, CoCs aren’t perfect, but those cons that are working on doing what they can and improving them (hell, even the feminist sf con screwed up bigtime a few years back) are at least doing that. And it appears MAC is–they’re just too busy to communicate–which is something.

    There are problems that need to be solved, especially the issue of what can be done and what can be circulated. But perhaps because of my past circumstances and in part due to the tone of your recent remarks, your point seems to be it’s just too hard to do, or that somehow people here who probably share a lot more of my experiences than you do are just being unreasonable.

    I apologize up front if I am misreading you.

  22. lurkertype on May 9, 2016 at 5:51 pm said:

    IIRC, the Scientologists paid for their memberships all at once, with sequential checks from the same bank account. Pretty easy to prove fraud there.

    You are conflating two different Hugo Voting incidents. The consecutive money order incident is not the L Ron Hubbard incident.

    I don’t think that A) the scientologists paid for their memberships all at once and even if they did B) there was any evidence that fewer than one natural person per ballot nominated.

    Anyone could buy 1000 memberships with consecutive money orders and, provided 1000 different natural persons exercised the nominating and voting rights, that would be within the rules.

  23. @ robinareid

    I did state CoCs were good and important.

    My core question is, legally, other than kicking someone out, what more can a convention committee do? It has no law enforcement powers, no judiciary powers.

    I just hate seeing/hearing people expecting more than what a convention can deliver.

  24. Ed, ongoing conventions such as ReaderCon, WisCon or Arisia, etc. can refuse to sell memberships to the person in perpetuity. The person can never return to that convention.

    Moveable cons , such as WesterCon or WorldCon can only tell the next con committee what they did and why. Sasquan cannot ban someone from MACII. MACII cannot ban someone from WorldCon 75. They can, however, kick the person out of their own convention and tell future committees who and why.

  25. ULTRAGOTHA: Ed, ongoing conventions such as ReaderCon, WisCon or Arisia, etc. can refuse to sell memberships to the person in perpetuity. The person can never return to that convention.

    Moveable cons , such as WesterCon or WorldCon can only tell the next con committee what they did and why. Sasquan cannot ban someone from MACII. MACII cannot ban someone from WorldCon 75. They can, however, kick the person out of their own convention and tell future committees who and why.

    And… enforcement sends a message to other people who’ve been engaging in (or thinking about engaging in) the same behavior.

    Given that we are trying to change a culture in which people knew that they were likely to get away with behaving this way, it’s important for potential CoC violators to see that there is not going to be any more “looking the other way and letting it slide”.

  26. @Ed Green on May 9, 2016 at 5:48 pm said:
    I support taking written reports. But, what does the convention do with that report after the convention? Do you forward it, or a whole file to another convention? How long do you maintain it? How to you insure the report is properly protected (important if HIPA issues are involved)?

    A number of regional cons are working on ways to pass reports from one year to the next. Most are moving to databse with password protection. Keep it forever as it helps in learning how things came to be and how your process was developed. By keeping it forever/until person dies you can track repeat offenders. HIPA – have anyone with access to databse sign confidentiality agreements.

    I believe in cases like Worldcon all the reports from previous years should be passed on to the future conventions. Future Worldcon’s should have enough information to decide whether to ban members kicked out in previous years.

    I’d also like to see more conventions ban people when enough information comes to light that someone is a repeat offender and it’s made public. See my mention of Harlan and Frenkel previously. Does it do any good to have a (or can attendees have confidence in) CoC if you are inviting known offenders to your con?

    Nothing is a magic bullet. But there are steps we can take to make things better than they’ve been.

  27. Rev. Bob said:

    @Petréa Mitchell: “And you’re going to justify the tiny text necessary to cram all that onto the back of the badge to your accessibility coordinator how?”

    I count half a dozen numbers, but let’s round up to a dozen just to be safe. I attend a couple of cons that use “name tag” sized badges, but this is their final year, so I drop them out of consideration. The rest use pretty big badges; two columns of six does not require “tiny text” for any value I would understand as “tiny.”

    Numbers plus labels to indicate what the numbers are, so it’s still one column of twelve, unless it’s a really wide badge.

    By “name tag size”, I presume you mean about 4″ by 3″? Those are the standard at most cons.

    Anyway, it’s not about what you consider too small, any more than access for the mobility-impaired is about what you or I consider a reasonable number of stairs. A quick check of accessibility guidelines available online is providing suggestions of 16-24 point type plus extra spacing between lines.

    (Also, your normally-sighted members may appreciate large print if the emergency happens under less than perfect lighting conditions.)

    In addition, many venues have a business office or a copier on site. If an attendee has trouble reading a quick-reference that is printed at a generally-legible size, that gives them the option of paying the hotel a quarter to make a big copy just for them.

    Charging anybody even a token amount for accessibility is going to look really bad.

    On the other hand, the info desk is available to everyone and can give out the information for free to anyone to transcribe onto their personal notepad or electronic device, record on their electronic device, memorize, etc…

  28. lurkertype said:

    “I do not feel safer in the presence of any sort of law enforcement personnel.”

    Which is valid,

    Best to stop there.

    except here we’re talking about unarmed geeks in t-shirts. Not cops or even security guards.

    Some people (not necessarily the one you’re replying to, but just as a for-instance) don’t feel comfortable around law enforcement because their experience of it is that it doesn’t do a very good job of enforcing the law or protecting citizens. It is likely that pointing out your security force has even less training will not make them feel any more comfortable.

  29. @Petréa Mitchell – the issue may not be so much about a lack of training but that the training either supports or just doesn’t actively counteract a social narrative that gives members of many law enforcement agencies a sense of superiority and a workforce culture that is historically oppressive on more than one axis (gender, sexuality, race, etc). I think the sad thing is that many of the cops that have shot innocent people have done with with either excellent records or considered to be quintessential cops with whatever skills expected of a cop.

    So I get the idea of distancing the con security by suggesting they are not part of that particular toxic masculine culture. Unfortunately, it doesn’t mean they might not be a part of a different but equally toxic masculine-identity culture where the sense of socially-enforced superiority is essentially the same. This is almost a perfect example of how misogyny can be allowed to flourish in geek/nerd spaces, because some consider sexism to be the mindset of only macho sports-loving dude types.

    Ed Green, you asked what can the CoC do about harassment and why bother with these policies if they can’t be 100% effective. Well, at the bare minimum, they can help signal publically and clearly that a convention admin team is aware of the power imbalances in question regarding gender/sexuality/etc and that they ARE actively trying to dismantle how that hegemonic imbalance can allow individuals to get away with some pretty sickening behavior. And then, after the bare minimum is met, the logical next step to figure out ways to more effectively root out behaviors and mindsets that lead to harassment in the first place. In my mind, and especially given our discussion about distrust of any police force being useful or even wanted in harassment situations, I’d much rather we prevent these incidents before they even start, but that’s a much more complicated discussion with more abstracts and ideas that will make people uncomfortable as they confront their own privileges. It can be very tempting to retreat into saying things like “well that’s a problem for the police” or “what more can the con do, they can’t arrest people” but really, it’s about dismantling a culture of entitlement that uses that entitlement as an excuse to dehumanize others, to reduce others to sexual objects or wank fodder. Geek culture has a lot of stuff that feeds into that, just as much as any other part of life.

    (And I haven’t even touched the accessibility issues, I think that’s been covered by people way more educated on the subject and have said what needs to be said)

  30. Sunhawk said:

    Ed Green asked “…why bother with these policies if they can’t be 100% effective.

    Except I didn’t say that at any point in this thread.

    I’ll assume you just misunderstood pretty much everything I said.

  31. Note that HIPAA (note spelling) by and large ONLY applies to healthcare providers and other healthcare-related entities (insurance companies, etc.) If your friend or a concom member learns your private medical information in some ordinary way (like, they overhear the paramedics saying it’s alcohol poisoning, or whatever), that friend or concom member is NOT legally restricted from passing on that information to whomever the fuck they want. It may make them a douchebag, but it doesn’t make them subject to penalties under HIPAA. Saying that it would is just spreading FUD.
    (If they write it down or store it electronically, they may be subject to various other laws relating to secure data storage, etc.)
    (IANAL but i used to work in the health insurance industry)

  32. Ed Green:

    “My core question is, legally, other than kicking someone out, what more can a convention committee do? It has no law enforcement powers, no judiciary powers.”

    I’m not sure that is the issue? What people usually find most important is:

    1) To know what the convention finds as non-acceptable behaviour.
    2) That they take it seriously.
    3) Possible short and long term effect of the behaviour.
    4) That the convention will try do something about the behaviour as soon as possible.
    5) Who they should talk to in case of trouble and how to find them.

    Doesn’t have to be kicking out or holding for police. Might sometimes only be to talk to a person and give them a warning. What people want to know is that it is done.

    I don’t find that unreasonable. But I do find the tone a bit harsh sometimes and as you, I sometimes worry that people will stop organizing stuff when they always get negative feedback and rarely positive. I know that I haven’t organized anything for 6 months because of that (before that, it was at least once a month).

  33. @Hampus Eckerman, a ways back on this busy thread: Thanks for the link to “Eugene” – great video! Funny that it’s brought to us by W Hotels. I’m not sure I want to stay in that hotel. 😉

  34. @lurkertype: Crisis, immediate action? Probably, by the time the CoC staff has been involved the incident is over, the target has gotten the hell away from their harasser and the location where they were harassed, and the target has also probably spent some time debating with themselves and possibly a friend about whether or not it’s appropriate to call the CoC in the first place. At this point, there isn’t really anything resembling an emergency. Very probably, the reporter is already in a safe space, and with a supportive individual. If they need help getting those things, that definitely ups the urgency. “Hello, I’m afraid to leave this party because there’s a guy following me,” is in the emergent category. But “Hi, there’s this guy that been following me, and I got away and I need to talk to you about it” isn’t.

    It is possible that their problem person is, even as we speak, doing that same shitty thing to someone else. But unless we’re talking about things that are actually assault, the convention really does need to take some time to understand the situation, investigate if necessary, and make a considered decision about exactly what intervention we want to use. And the chance that there’s no time gap between the incident provoking the report and the convention receiving the report is pretty unlikely.

    Most of what we are going to be doing is not addressing ongoing situations but rather intervening in such a way that such a problem doesn’t recur. And the more serious the intervention, the more time it’s going to take to be certain that this is the correct action — again barring really egregious behavior bordering on illegal. However, part of evaluating a report has to be evaluating what the likelihood that the problem behavior is, even as we speak, still going on.

    Actually bouncing a member is a big deal, and should definitely be reviewed by someone in addition to the person who takes the report. Preferably more than one person. I think bouncing problem people should be done more often than it is, but I do think that you need to get it right. Getting it right can take time.

  35. @JJ: You said

    Yes, that’s true. However, it’s also important to take the report details as soon as possible, because 1) memory fades and changes, even over a short period of time; 2) the person involved needs to be reassured that the con is being responsive to their reporting of an incident, and if they’re upset, a quick response and reassurance can make a huge difference in how well they deal personally with whatever happened.

    Saying “it’s not an emergency, and subsequent actions should be measured, and thought-through carefully” is fine; but saying “it’s not an emergency, we’ll get your report from you tomorrow” is, in my opinion, not an acceptable response.

    I believe your first point is, in fact, mistaken. There’s been a bunch of work done around testimony given to the police, and the reliability of eye witnesses. Much of this suggests that people will give a more accurate and complete report if they have been given time to process and think. Descriptions immediately after an incident are less reliable than those descriptions given after the witness has been given a chance to calm down, think things through, and integrate the experience.

    I think that it needs to be stressed that I want to hear from the reporter when the reporter is comfortable talking to me. If they feel it’s really urgent, and want to talk Right Fucking Now, I totally want to be there and listen RFN. However, if they’re shaken and want some time to calm down, I want them to understand that I still really want to hear from them, and if they really need to wait for an hour, or until after they’ve had time to have dinner, or whatever, that’s also ok with me. Their desire for a delay does not in any way lessen my interest in their report, or make the problem they need to talk about less of a problem. I think it’s important to ask the question “What do you need right now?” and also “Is there something going on, right now, that I need to intervene with.” But the answer to the second is usually no.

    Quick response is not the same as emergency response. My goal is to have a hotline answered for 18 to 20 hours a day, and for it to also take voice mail and text, and voice mail and text to be responded to promptly. The situations do need to be triaged on an emergency basis. As soon as a problem is identified, the convention does need to decide “Is this an emergency?.” But what I’m arguing is that harassment does not equate with emergency. I do agree that the most urgent thing is usually after care. The target is, by definition, upset; otherwise they wouldn’t be contacting us. They may need any number of things, and we should try to find out what they are, and insofar as is reasonable, provide them. But I don’t think that a targeted person is best served by trying to move them back into crisis-mode if they’ve moved out of it. Just as I don’t want the convention to decide that someone needs to be more or less upset about an incident. It’s their neurology, they should be free to feel whatever they feel.

    Damn, this stuff is actually hard to talk about. I feel like there are a lot of weirdly precise edges that I’m trying to describe, and that I’m doing a bad job of it, and making it sound like what I really want to do is minimize the problem. I want pretty much exactly the opposite of that. But I keep on sounding like I’m trying to take it down a notch. What I think I’m trying to do is find useful and proportionate responses. On the list of possible ways to fail is to seem so rigid or draconian that people are afraid to talk to the convention because they fear the convention will over-react. Balancing that against people who are afraid to make a report because they won’t be listened to or their experience minimized is one of the many difficult things about this conversation.

  36. Lydy, thank you for your thoughtful post. I’d written a response to it, and I don’t know if it got eaten by the spam filter, or just disappeared into la-la-land, but I don’t have the energy to reproduce it right now. I’ll try to do so later. 🙁

  37. @Ed Green – My apologies for my mischaracterization of your point. MY point was that you were asking a lot of questions that to me seemed to be more about the law and technical policy as it relates with how to treat (repeat or otherwise) problem con-goers (which could be applied to any sort of troublemaker, not just those who harass) and to me the more important issue is how people running conventions dismantle their own prejudices and assumptions about harassment and how misogyny/homophobia/racism/etc play out in convention spaces when dealing with incidents. If a convention has a solid informed plan for dealing with abuse AND this plan is being executed by people educated on the power dynamics at play who can handle dealing with such social politics with the careful touch it needs, I’m not sure it would be necessary to keep a file about someone that was passed from convention to convention, or that sort of thing. I do get that it would be better to keep people away if there’s a good statistical chance they are going to cause trouble, but without psychic powers that is getting into pre-crime type guessing, which is a whole other grey area.

  38. @JJ: If you can reconstruct your response, I’d really like to see it. You’ve often said things that really helped clarify or focus or bring to light issues I needed to think more about. I like that.

  39. @Sunhawk: One reason for keeping and passing along files is patterns. Consider a possible InformedCon, which has the clued-in people you’re talking about, and Well-meaningCon, which doesn’t, but would like to protect people from harassment. Someone at InformedCon harasses a fellow member, who complains. The con warns tells that his behavior is inappropriate, and he agrees to stay away from the person who complained about him, and not do the complained-about thing to anyone else. So far, so good.

    Three months later, the person who harassed someone at InformedCon harasses someone else at Well-meaningCon. She complains. The harasser says something like “I was just being friendly, how was I supposed to know?” That’s a dubious defense anyhow, but less likely to work if the answer is “we know you know better, because the people at InformedCon explained why you shouldn’t do this, and you agreed to stop.”

  40. Lydy Nickerson on May 10, 2016 at 2:00 am said:
    @lurkertype: Crisis, immediate action? Probably, by the time the CoC staff has been involved the incident is over, the target has gotten the hell away from their harasser and the location where they were harassed, and the target has also probably spent some time debating with themselves and possibly a friend about whether or not it’s appropriate to call the CoC in the first place. At this point, there isn’t really anything resembling an emergency.

    A convention I was at did have an emergency, in that a member was making very credible threats of ending their own life (and indeed, sadly, did so eventually). Not covered by the CoC, but a pickle none the less. Among other things, this person had stated their intention of killing themselves at the con well in advance, so the con had to decide whether to allow them to come and put measures in place to safeguard the member’s wellbeing, or ban them and cut them off from an important source of support.

    For that matter, British fans will no doubt remember the convention where one member had a real honest-to-God psychotic breakdown, at the same time as most of the concom was off having a combined stag-and-hen party for two prominent fans. Emergency services were involved, but IIRC it was a fan who managed to talk the member out from the bathroom where they had barricaded themselves.

    So yeah, emergencies do happen, sometimes on the borderline between code of conduct and medical emergency.

  41. Tasha Turner on May 9, 2016 at 8:33 am said:

    Sorry for the high level of snark yesterday. Google is available and I often wonder why people don’t availe themselves of it before making assumptions and looking foolish online.

    Well, jeez, thanks for that apology, I guess.

    I had not been aware that in order to not look foolish on File 770, one has to research in depth each topic of discussion before contributing. I was merely making a good-faith suggestion, ignorant though it was.

    Other people are also discussing the matter of Codes of Conduct in this thread, seemingly without reference to the model CoCs available online. Are they also foolish?

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