Why telling a staff member won't fix the problem of harassment

Many times when the issue of harassment comes up, an exasperated convention staffer exclaims "GUYS, if someone gives you trouble just TELL A STAFF MEMBER!" That say it as though we wouldn't have this problem if we just told staffers about it when it happened, it would be a non-issue. Just tell the staff . . . problem solved?

Nope.

In a perfect world, if someone was harassed, they would report the incident. They'd feel comfortable and confident calmly telling someone what happened, and the staff would hunt the jerkwad down and subject them to effective disciplinary action, probably taking away their badge. This would teach the harasser a valuable lesson and they'd never do it again, and even take the time to educate their peers so others don't do it either.

But that doesn't happen.

I'll get to that later though. The fact is, even if reporting an incident had a happy ending, by the time someone needs to report harassment, it's too late. Something bad has already happened, the damage has been done. Even if justice is served, it won't undo anything, nor will it prevent others from doing it. Those concerned about the problem want to see a geek culure where harassment is very rare, and we know it's not a scattered series of unrelated events, but that harassment is a trend, and a result of problematic attitudes toward women at conventions.

Part of the problem is that douchebags think anything goes at conventions, and thus it's okay to be their true douchebag selves. To be sure, a lot of harassers are cock waffles. But let's look at the other reason why this keeps happening. In geek media - anime, comic books, video games, science fiction, etc. - women are objectified. That's not news. They're usually drawn to be attractive to the male protagonist and presumably male audience. They're often sexual and romantic partners for the male protagonist. They're there for the protagonists, and rather than subjects who act, they are objects who are acted upon. When one consumes a lot of this media, media made - again - for male audiences, they often internalize two messages: 1) that this stuff isn't for girls, and 2) girls in nerdy spaces exist for the men in those spaces, specifically as potential sexual or romantic partners. I mean, it's not like those girls could possibly be "real" fans, right?*

When it comes to cosplay, these messages usually translate to problematic discussions. If these characters are drawn to turn men on, one may then assume that women dressing as these characters for the same reason: to be sexy. We often use the term "self-objectification," which implies that they're turning themselves into objects, thus it's okay to treat them like objects. Or that they wouldn't dress like that if they didn't want sexual attention.*

This is why we have the CONsent project, or the "Cosplay =/= Consent" campaign, to try to drill home the idea that just because someone's wearing a costume doesn't mean you can treat them like an object. It's a great idea, but I'm not sure it does anything. I have yet to hear from someone who's been "turned around" by seeing the campaign. In fact, I've even met a so-called supporter of the CONsent project who saw nothing wrong with harassment. He felt that it came with the territory and wasn't such a bad thing, and that we should only focus on physical assaults at conventions.

In any case, because the issue is so widespread and caused by attitudes that run deep in our subculture, reporting the issue and punishing the harassers is a band-aid solution to the problem.

And we're not confident it'll do anything.

I'll preface this by saying I've never reported harassment at a convention. I'm lucky that I've never had to. But if I was in the situation, I wouldn't want to. Staffers have so much to deal with, and on top of that now they gotta go hunt down this guy? It's a big convention with so many people, what are the chances of finding him? Do they have the time and energy for it? Is it worth it? What would they do if they caught him? They have zero evidence that anything actually happened, it's my word against his, can you really confiscate a $50 badge without evidence? No, that's not logical. Whether he denies it, defends his actions ("I just did X, come on are you really gonna ban me for that?") or show enough remorse that the average staffer would probably let him off with a warning. Either way, I don't see any real action taken unless someone actually sees someone doing something really bad.

If he is kicked out, the only thing he'll learn is that the convention is run by a bunch of tyrants. He'll probably just go to other conventions and do the same thing.

Convention staff, if you feel that you can handle a report of harassment well and effectively handle the situation, hats off to you! If staffers can actually do something, that's great. But no matter how good you guys are at handling situations that occur, you need to understand that your actions alone are not going to remedy the problem. The only way to stop convention harassment is a radical change in cultural attitudes.

*I'm not saying that ALL geeks feel this way, or that all men feel this way, just that it's a common way of thinking and is usually a result of so much exposure to media that caters to the male gaze.

My Reaction To "The Greak Geek Sexism Debate" (Part 2)

Okay, now that I've had something to eat, it's time for Part 2! In the second incident in The Great Geek Sexism Debate roundup, we have a feminist skeptic that was harassed for her feminist beliefs at The Amazing Meeting, a big skeptic conference. She was then harassed online after the conference, and her address was posted online.

All becase she dared to be a feminist in a space that largely regarded feminism as irrelevant at best and bullshit at worst.

I choose "bullshit" because one of the most famous atheists, at least in mainstream culture, is Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller. He also says "feminist" the way Draco Malfoy says "mudblood." He's not a fan. I don't actually know if they did an episode of Bullshit about feminism, and quite honestly I'd rather not know if they did. No really, please don't tell me. Athesists and skeptics have notoriously bad attitudes toward feminism. What's sad is that a lot of these atheist public figures, mostly men, have great things to say about other topics. I'll watch their videos and agree enthusiastically with almost everything they say. Then they bring up feminism and there's an old-school, cliche record scratch in my head. This often turns me off from these figures completely, or almost completely, but that's because I am a feminist. The non-feminist viewers will follow these anti-feminist viewpoints as "religiously" as they follow everything else these men have to say. They'll insist that they think women should be equal, but come on, this guy makes some good points . . .

Not what you'd expect, huh? Especially when you think of how many women must stray from religion and become atheists and skeptics to escape sexism.

That's why feminism is so relevant to the skeptic community. Just like it's relevant to the nerd community. It's not directly relevant to the subject matter, but it's necessary because the community breeds anti-feminism and misogyny, making the community hostile toward women in general, especially women who vocally challenge the status quo. Like the woman who complained about the man who propositioned her in an elevator at 4am at an atheist conference, only to have Richard Dawkins sarcastically compare her frivolous problem to women in Africa having their genitals mutilated. Because if women are experiencing really bad oppression, we're never allowed to talk about our own problems regarding harassment and microaggressions.

I'm not saying that a conference focusing on pseudoscience should have programming with regards to women in the community, at least not on par with their relevant programming. But aside from a better approach to convention harassment, the community in general should have a place for people to talk about this issue. Maybe host an after-hours roundtable discussion, or host a separate conference for the issue. Either way, since this issue is plaguing the skeptic community, feminism is absolutely relevant.

My Reaction To "The Greak Geek Sexism Debate" (Part 1)

I'm sorta kicking myself for not seeing this article when it first came out, or maybe I did but didn't read it because I was at work. Not sure, either way, I just read it today. It's a roundup of three women's experiences at conventions, all nerd-related. It summarizes the incidents and aftermath pretty wekk, I think the piece speaks for itself, but I do have some commentary to add.

You can find the original article here.

This ended up being a little long so I'll write this in three parts, each entry dealing with a different incident in the article.

The first incident deals with a woman at Readercon, a literary convention in Burlington, MA. A convention volunteer followed her around, making sexual comments, and her attempts to walk away and shake him passively didn't work. At an evening event, things got physical as he pressed against her in front of a lot of people, and she loudly told him to cut it out. Even then, he continued to follow her around for the rest of the convention. She filed a complaint, but despite the convention's zero-tolerance policy, the volunteer wasn't banned because he was "sincerely regretful." At least not at first. Eventually the whole board of directors resigned and the volunteer was permanently banned.

I see the problem here. See, volunteers are extremely valuable to conventions. Most of the conventions are run by nonprofit organizations that can't pay for a huge staff of people, so running these cons is a labor of love for all involved, and I have a lot of respect for volunteers. They sacrifice their time, energy, and sanity to make sure things run as smoothly as possible, and dealing with their fair share of entitled douchecanoes in the process. So when someone willing to do this breaks the rules of the convention, not only do people find it hard to believe that one of their own could do something so distasteful, but the decision-makers are reluctant to let go of someone who - in their eyes - is an otherwise valuable asset to the convention. It's not like they have people lining up to take his place. No convention has a surplus of volunteers.

I don't mean to justify his behavior, of course! He still did a bad thing and should have gotten the banhammer right away. Fact is, as a volunteer he is representing the convention and needs to act as such. How can someone feel safe at a convention and trust the staff to act on incidents of harassment when even the volunteers are guilty of it?

Also, the entire board resigning was a little hasty. Yes, they made a bad decision, but I'd rather see them release an apology and then proactively work toward preventing this in the future, learning from their mistake. The problem with a changing of the guard with regard to conventions is that it never really works. They have experience planning the convention, and they've built a relationship with veteran attendees, and completely replacing the entire board may have negaive consequences for the overall convention.

So, where IS our Wonder Woman movie?

I began writing this when I was somewhat agitated, and it turned into more than just an angry rant, but I will warn that some writing may not be the most perfect, tactful, intelligent feminist writing on the internet. In fact there may be some snark in this piece. I am not apoloizing for how I feel about this issue, but you have been warned.

So I heard the new Superman movie was good. I'm actually pretty happy about that, but it got me thinking. We have a SuperMAN movie, and a SuperMAN TV show. We have a huge BatMAN franchise, and the Avengers movie (featuring a total of one female superhero) was great, and tangentially related are the movies about the men of the Avengers. We're even seeing sequels to Iron MAN, Captain America, and Thor. Great movies of course, but it would be nice if Natasha had her own movie rather than just appear in movies that center around the men of the Avengers.

But we really haven't seen any movies about female superheroes since the early 2000's, and we haven't really seen any good movies about female superheroes since . . . ever. We've heard murmurings about Joss Whedon directing a Wonder Woman movie, but then Marvel scooped him up and they're never letting him go, so there goes that dream. Yes, she had a brief TV show in the 70's, but that's about it. The attempt at a more modern show on the CW recently failed.

So we're clear, I get that she appears in some animated TV shows that almost no normal person over the age of 10 watches. I know she's going to be in the Justice League movie that may or may not happen - that should be a given, she's one of the most iconic comic book characters in history.

But all that is not enough. You can bring it up to make me feel better all you want, you can condescend to me and tell me again and again that she appears here or there or she'll be in this or that movie about someone else or that centers around a male dominated group of superheroes, but it's not enough. We need a Wonder Woman movie aleady!

Why her? Well, a movie about any female superhero would be great. A Zatanna movie would be awesome, and a Black Widow movie would be a great addition to the Avengers franchise, but Wonder Woman is, as I've said, one of the most iconic superheroes we have, and probably the most popular female superhero out there. Go to the comic book section of Barnes and Noble - yeah yeah I know, I'm not gonna make you buy anything, but I do want you to get a sense of what's popular. Look for the books about female superheroes. Ignore the Avengers and Justice League books, they have women in them but that's not the same as being about women. You probably see Wonder Woman books, one or two Batgirl books and . . . well if you can find books about any other woman you're lucky, because like I mentioned months ago, I could only find books about those two ladies. I loved both of them, but I that's not the point, I wanted more options. More choices. More variety. But even that's not the point here, I'm trying to illustrate that if there's one woman that's even remotely comparable to Superman or Batman in terms of popularity, it's Wonder Woman.

And it's time. She's been around since WWII, the fact that there are zero movies about her, let alone good movies, is not okay.

Don't tell me it won't sell tickets. The myth that movies about women won't have a wide appeal has been debunked thanks in large part to The Hunger Games, Bridesmaids, Brave, and if you wanna get nerdy, ALL the Hayo Miyazaki films. They do still need to be good, of course. Do we hold movies about female superheroes, or women in general, to a higher standard? Yes, absolutely. People are quick to bring up the fact that pretty much all movies about female superheroes have sucked. And that's true. But there have been just as many movies about male superheroes that have sucked, but we can ignore them, and not use them to dismiss all male superhero movies, because there have been so many good ones as well. The Batman movies, at least Michael Uslan's movies, are pretty much all great, especially the last trilogy (last as in the last made, not final). The Iron Man movies have been wonderful (or at least the first and third). Thor was good and Captain America is one of my favorites. So we can easily forget about awful Green Lantern Green Hornet movies, or the mediocre Spider Man trilogy.

We wouldn't feel the need to hold female characters, and movies about women, to a higher standard if we had more of them. But since there are so few out there, we expect the ones that do exist to work extra hard.

These movies being good goes beyond the mere fact that they're about men, but the fact that they're about men did play a part in their success. People believed these movies would do well, so the best of the best were willing to work on it, and the powers that be were willing to pay for the talent to make these movies successful. They were also willing to invest in quality special effects and the time to make the movie awesome. I don't think the same time, money, or effort has gone into any movie about a female superhero, and that's one of the reasons why those movies had so much tits and ass - sex sells, but it's a cheap sell. It's what producers rely on when they want lots of men to see and appreciate their movie without really trying to make the movie actually good.

So I will acknowledge that a Wonder Woman movie would need to be spectacular, and a disappointment may be better than no movie at all. But enough people have taken the risk with Superman, Batman, Spider Man, and almost all of the male Avengers, and while in hindsight not all of those movies were amazing, someone took the risk and they all had a great turnout at the box office. I have complete faith that we would see the same success with a Wonder Woman movie, we just need someone to take the plunge.

And again, I'd rather people not take it upon themselves to tell me where Wonder Woman does show up on TV and/or film. I know people do it to make me feel better, but don't. I don't think it's greedy to want a movie about her specifically when we have so many movies about her many male counterparts.