UPDATE AND CORRECTION. Chris Barkley has issued an apology for an error in an earlier version of this article.
To File 770 Readers,
I owe an apology to Leslie Varney and to you my editor Mike Glyer; I erroneously reported that Leslie Varney wrote her email to the Penguicon Board of Directors BEFORE the convention, when in fact, she clearly stated in her statement to me is was AFTER the convention here:
Varney: “I sent an email to the committee after this year’s convention, inquiring whether there would be a statement from Penguicon to provide clarification on the reasons for disinviting Mr. Tomlinson.”
In my haste to report on this story, I overlooked this essential fact in the editing process.
I offer this apology because the fault was mine and mine alone. I will strive to do better in my future endeavors…
[EDITOR’S NOTE: The article has been revised to reflect the correct order of events.]
By Chris M. Barkley: Yesterday afternoon, the Penguicon Board of Directors issued an email statement on safety at the convention. And I immediately thought I knew the reason. I had made inquiries into why Wisconsin-based sff writer Patrick Tomlinson was summarily barred from attending the annual convention this year, an action the directors allegedly took because of accusations in an email sent to them by Seattle-based literary agent Leslie Varney. Surely, I received an email blind carbon copy because I did that.
This statement comes in the wake of the convention’s annual board meeting, which was held on June 24, two months since the annual Penguicon convention held in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Penguicon markets itself as both a sf/open-source computer convention. But neither Tomlinson nor Varney are mentioned in the statement.
Jun 27, 2024, 12:28 PM
Penguicon Board of Director’s Statement
Greetings,
As an organization created for and by the community it serves, it’s our priority to create as safe a space as possible for all who join us at our events. We want to ensure attending members who are from minority groups that are generally under-represented in spaces like ours find a welcoming environment at Penguicon. To our deep regret and dismay, this year, we made decisions as an organization that played a role in those folks feeling unsafe at the convention, and we have to own that and do better in the future.
Due to how our convention has operated since inception and the desire to empower each year’s volunteers, the Board of Directors is intentionally not involved in day-to-day event planning operations. Thus, they may not be aware of issues before they present a problem. Every volunteer from the bottom to the top is an unpaid community member with outside responsibilities, not a professionally paid event organizer. Thus far, this has served our community-run convention well. We each learn and grow as we produce the event together and frequently change positions with others who step forward, including at the Board level. Sometimes, that dynamic interferes with passing along institutional memory and timely guidance, and we must find ways to work better as a team. We want to apologize to anyone impacted and hope those who decided not to attend Penguicon at the last minute this year will consider us again in the future.
It also must be said that over the years, we have occasionally removed people from our events or prevented people from attending when we think it’s appropriate to safeguard our community. This is one of the few actions we can take as an organization that has never hired security to police our attendees. We reserve the right to refuse entry, as listed in our code of conduct, because providing a minimum of care for our fellow attendees is essential.
However, we are not a court of law or professional investigators. We do not officially comment on conduct issues unless absolutely necessary to protect those who report conduct from retaliation.
Unfortunately, that does mean we have to allow people to present their case to the community without retort, even when the incidents, facts, people involved, and timing are entirely incorrect. We would rather our reputation suffer than to put others at risk, and we will not exploit our attendees for posturing, pride, or profit.
We must make choices based on the information we have as a small part-time volunteer organization. The Board wants to assure our community that we work hard with our Operations team to verify information that we take action on to the best of our abilities, to consider contradictory or maliciously presented information for its worth, and seek out multiple sources, witnesses, prior complaints, or points of evidence that point in the same direction.
We will always choose to inconvenience one person to provide safety to the whole. We would rather see the organization cease to exist than allow genuine harm to come to our fellow community members through our actions or inaction. We try to reflect that value in our decisions.
Penguicon is an incredible, unique, and diverse community full of talented, generous, kind people who build the con from the ground up every year. Our most important job as temporary stewards is to safeguard the community’s ability to share their knowledge, art, and joy with each other.
Sincerely,
The Penguicon Board of Directors
https://penguicon.org/news/penguicon-board-of-directors-statement/
When this statement was issued, the initial reactions on Penguicon’s Facebook page were mixed between bewilderment and confusion:
- “I’m not sure what I’m meant to take away from this statement.” Joe Saul
- “I agree. I don’t understand the point of putting out a statement that raises many more questions than it answers.” Dave Hogg
- “IYKYK. I don’t, but I support the board, staff, and volunteers of Penguicon.” Misha Tuesday
- “I’d love to know what any of this is about.” Grant Root
Jessica Smith, the Facebook page administrator, wrote in response to Joe Saul: ”Nothing other than to know this is a value statement that we needed to craft and felt we should share it with our community.”
Ms. Leslie Varney has stated that she sent an email to the Penguicon Convention Committee after this year’s convention, outlining various allegations against Mr. Tomlinson; actions, such as insulting women, minorities and intimidating writers at conventions. When asked for comment about the statement, she wrote in an email to me the following:
This reads to me as a very strong commitment to the safety of Penguicon’s attendees, and I absolutely cannot fault them for that, especially with their emphasis on historically marginalized communities. I strongly believe that convention safety should be the top consideration for every convention board. I also see this as a cautious acknowledgment of the limited scope of a board of this type, and the appropriate response, or lack thereof, they feel they can give. I appreciate their position on this and see it as an understandable one. This is a thoughtful, well-crafted statement, and I admire the board for the time they took and the care and contemplation that went into it.
Ms. Varney also wrote:
I want to establish that these are my thoughts alone and aren’t reflective of any other person, group, or other entity.
I sent an email to the committee after this year’s convention, inquiring whether there would be a statement from Penguicon to provide clarification on the reasons for disinviting Mr. Tomlinson. In the email, I outlined my personal reasons for feeling unsafe attending events where Mr. Tomlinson is present and expressed my willingness to stand up for others who have felt pressured into silence.
To clarify further, a guest of honor decided not to attend the convention due to safety concerns, which ultimately led to Mr. Tomlinson being disinvited. Part of my communication with the board involved expressing empathy towards the guest of honor’s decision.
In the past year the level of disdain expressed by Ms Varney towards Mr. Tomlinson became acrimonious.
Mr. Tomlinson’s complaints against Penguicon and Ms. Varney are well known to File 770 readers in this story highlighted in the May 6th Pixel Scroll:
Since September 2018, Mr. Tomlinson and his family have been the victims of a constant barrage of harassment themselves which include dozens of false calls to their residence (known as ‘swatting”), death threats and vandalism of their home and property. This problem began when Mr. Tomlinson made an innocuous remark about comedian Norm Macdonald on September 11, 2018 stating:
“Hot take: I’ve never found Norm Macdonald funny and was pretty sure all my comedy friends who did were either nuts or screwing with me.”
The comment was made in the context of Macdonald defending fellow comedians Roseanne Barr and Louis C.K., whose careers had recently been curtailed by their unseemly public behavior and social missteps.
According to a February 19, 2024 report in the New York Post: “Patrick Tomlinson continues to be mercilessly swatted after McDonald diss”.
Macdonald never responded at the time to Tomlinson’s 2018 tweet targeting him.
Instead, the star waited till 2019, two years before his death, when someone paid him to record a Cameo to blast Tomlinson’s innocuous opinion of him.
“I want you to stop picking on your friend Pat,” Macdonald said in the clip, which lives on YouTube. “After all, his only crime was that he didn’t find Norm Macdonald funny.”
The comic then added, “Wait a minute here, I’m Norm Macdonald.
“Hah! And I am funny. Please continue insulting that fat loser,” he jokingly continued.
Around that time, the swatting against Tomlinson ramped up in earnest, the writer said.
Ms. Varney, when asked via email whether or not she believed Mr. Tomlinson and his family are victims of cyberstalkers, answered:
“I believe they were, and perhaps are, but I also believe there’s a lot more to the story than their say-so, and no one has looked past what they were told by Mr. Tomlinson in any reporting.”
Mr. Tomlinson was unaware the convention had issued yesterday’s statement. And after being presented with a copy by this reporter and asked to comment, he provided the following message:
It’s really disappointing after having two full months to conduct a review of the events surrounding my banning at this year’s convention to see the Penguicon board decide to double down on every mistake and poor decision they made in the first place. It seems that even with all the extra time, they failed to learn anything from the experience or do any reflection on what went wrong.
When asked directly whether or not the Penguicon statement had anything to do with the allegations against Mr. Tomlinson, Ms. Smith, a Board member and administrator for the Facebook group responded on Messenger Thursday evening:
“The statement you received is the only one we are going to be giving. It has nothing to do with Leslie. Our decision was in process prior to her email and did not have any bearing on our decision.”
In response to this statement, Mr. Tomlinson replied via email:
It’s disappointing the Penguicon Board continues to stonewall about mistakes made even now months after the facts are already known. Secrecy and censorship benefits no one and comes across as self-serving. If they are really interested in protecting our shared community from the same malicious actors who repeatedly fooled them, openness and dialogue is the only way forward. Keeping everyone in the dark serves only those who prefer to lurk in the shadows.
Ms. Varney was also asked what personal or professional consequences she has undergone from this ongoing issue with Mr. Tomlinson, she wrote:
“Professionally, I’m sure I’ve lost the confidence of some potential clients, which is unfortunate. Personally, my physical safety’s been threatened, and I’ve lost at least one friendship.”
“But I’ve also seen a lot of support coming from the SFFH community, and that’s been very encouraging. It’s not just me who’s been targeted, and one of the primary reasons I continue to protest Mr. Tomlinson’s actions is to represent those who feel unsafe coming forward. And I’ve seen some turn-around in what the community as a whole seems ready to believe about the danger Mr. Tomlinson continues to place us in, and that’s good progress.”
She also added this email message, directed to Mr. Tomlinson:
Mr. Tomlinson, I don’t believe this will be the last event to ask you not to attend, and I will continue to stress how unsafe your behavior, along with the behavior of other bad actors, makes innocent people. If you stop engaging in troll-baiting, taunting, and in all ways encouraging responses that endanger others, I’ll be happy to support your attendance at events. Here’s to hoping!
In turn, Mr. Tomlinson had this message for Ms. Varney:
Based on her own public statements and behavior over the last year, Leslie Varney is not only sympathetic to the criminal cult stalking and SWATTing my family, but actively pursues their company, shares their objectives, and minimizes and validates their crimes.
It is Ms. Varney’s contention that anonymous domestic terrorists should be endowed with the unassailable right to unilaterally decide who gets to participate in public life. By blaming the targets of cyberstalking for the actions of the criminals stalking them, and demanding that victims be the only ones to suffer consequences, she justifies and validates all manner of crimes based solely on the personal animosity she feels towards someone she has never met or spoken to.
Rewarding these criminal acts by demanding victims give up their public appearances, signings, panels, and networking opportunities just to appease terrorists makes no one safer. It only ensures these tactics will be repeated and expanded as new targets catch the stalkers’ ire. How will Ms. Varney feel when it’s one of her own clients under their eye, or Ms. Varney herself?
She not only negotiates with terrorists, but actively befriends them and supports their aims. She is as unsafe as she is unprofessional, and anyone who is considering working with her needs to carefully consider the company she keeps and the inherent risks that entails.
Updated 06/29/2024: Removed unverified quote.