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Aug. 28th, 2008 09:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rivkaI hang out with really intelligent, clueful people. Which is excellent.
The problem is that it distorts my sense of my wider social environment, and then threads like this one come as a nasty surprise.
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james_nicoll linked to the Con Anti-Harassment Project (Read their FAQ), which aims to encourage SF and media cons to develop clearly-articulated sexual harassment policies. And within, no kidding, three comments, we hit "lol, women who go to cons are too fat and ugly to harass."
And it goes on from there, although that's probably the pinnacle. The rest of the predictable responses just make me tired: cons will become a Kafkaesque nightmare in which anyone and anything can be threatened with punishment; aren't the poor defenseless accused the real victims; if women would only call the cops/respond with physical violence, there wouldn't be any problems and we wouldn't have to think about this stuff, so why have a con policy.
This is where I feel as though I should insert a brilliant incisive feminist rant that simultaneously heartens the embattled, illuminates the clueless, and crushes the assholes utterly. But you know what? I'm too tired and disgusted to manage it.
If a community is threatened by the very proposition that women's bodies are their own, and not to be infringed upon - if simply spelling out the right to be sexually left alone is seen as a dangerous impingment on community enjoyment - then what the fuck am I even doing there?
The problem is that it distorts my sense of my wider social environment, and then threads like this one come as a nasty surprise.
james_nicoll linked to the Con Anti-Harassment Project (Read their FAQ), which aims to encourage SF and media cons to develop clearly-articulated sexual harassment policies. And within, no kidding, three comments, we hit "lol, women who go to cons are too fat and ugly to harass." And it goes on from there, although that's probably the pinnacle. The rest of the predictable responses just make me tired: cons will become a Kafkaesque nightmare in which anyone and anything can be threatened with punishment; aren't the poor defenseless accused the real victims; if women would only call the cops/respond with physical violence, there wouldn't be any problems and we wouldn't have to think about this stuff, so why have a con policy.
This is where I feel as though I should insert a brilliant incisive feminist rant that simultaneously heartens the embattled, illuminates the clueless, and crushes the assholes utterly. But you know what? I'm too tired and disgusted to manage it.
If a community is threatened by the very proposition that women's bodies are their own, and not to be infringed upon - if simply spelling out the right to be sexually left alone is seen as a dangerous impingment on community enjoyment - then what the fuck am I even doing there?
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-29 03:03 am (UTC)I was pretty disappointed with the calibre of the discussion on that post, given that James's LJ usually attracts all sorts of thoughtful and interesting discussion. That particular set of comments demonstrates quite clearly to me exactly why anti-harassment policies (both for sexual harassment and the general-purpose sort) are needed at cons.
It's worth bearing in mind that it's not the whole community that's feeling threatend by this sort of thing, just the entitlement-queen assholes who feel that their god-given right to grope or insult anyone they want to might be at risk. And being entitlement-queen assholes, they're loud and obnoxious about it. But they're not the whole community, just a noxious subset of it. And if they get pissed off and go away, well, doesn't that count as a win? ;-)