WriterCon: *fail edition

[rm]

WriterCon has two types of programming: programming that is planned and panelists chosen by Con Programming, and programming organized by attendees and included on the official con schedule but not really endorsed or not by WriterCon. This, as you might imagine, can make things a little murky. I do like that both types of programming exist at the con, but I thought it needed more clarification in places. I explain this because it's necessary to some of the *fail issues I'm about to address.

I also want to note, in what I will go into in a separate post, that there were many, many things I loved about this con: including the focus on transformative works craft, the multi-fandom attendees and the really fantastic efforts of accommodation the Con Staff made towards folks with special needs, including dietary. I have never, ever felt like a con staff cared more about each of its attendees on an individual basis.

Which is why when fail came, I was like "woah, what the fuck?!"

Sadly, I think much of the fail is a product of the fact that people have become defensive. People are scared of these discussions, and I have to say while they are often unfun and heartbreaking (who wants to be the target of this stuff? who wants to realize they've hurt people or a community they care about no matter how inadvertently?) -- jeez they are not going to kill you, and they certainly aren't a reason to fail more.

Like most SF/F and fandom cons, only about 5% of the attendees were PoC. Honestly, this was more than I was expecting, and it was nice to see that these people were part of programming and not just on RaceFail-related topics. Also a plus -- lots of fliers for the Carl Brandon Society.

However, at more than one panel more than one person noticed folks avoiding calling on PoC attendees and had to step in and make sure those people got heard. FUCKED UP.

Of the official programming there was a single panel entitled "Evil in Our Midst: Dealing with racism, sexism and homophobia in fandom." Because of my flight schedule, I was only able to attend half of it. I have to assume it was placed towards the end of the con so that if it went badly, it wouldn't affect the mood of the whole con, but these issues can't be afterthoughts, and scheduling things in such a way to make sure the issue isn't infused throughout the con and prevents people from attending is really problematic. On the plus side, the attendance was pretty damn good anyway!

The panel was made up of a fantastically diverse group and was so able to encompass a lot of perspectives. However, the panel was moderated by a straight, white woman, and I couldn't figure that out. Did the PoC and queer folks need translation? Could they not speak for themselves? This was uncomfortable to me at the time, and has become increasingly more upsetting to me in my head (yes, there's the sexism angle, but because the con was more than 95% female, a white, straight woman in this case is totally a part of the dominant group and appointing her to the position of power was sort of creepy - no slight on her (ETA: who has subsequently posted some great stuff, linked to later in all this, about privilege -- so I get why she was chosen, but the impression is delivered sadly doesn't stop being problematic and I have to believe that other people on the panel would have been equally capable of moderating), I'm just not sure this was thought out super-well.

The panel was necessarily very 101-level although some really interesting stuff came up, including a discussion of Bollywood as a fandom (what does it mean when we fan an entire culture? are you wearing a saree because you like the aesthetic or because you're cosplaying? do you get how that impacts actual South Asian people?) and the usual vaguely derail-y things ("should our goal be not to offend anyone?").

Then I had to leave to catch my flight.

And then apparently other things happened that people who were there and people who were on the panel will address at more length and more accurately than me, but the phone call I got at the airport included the report that someone got up and said they felt marginalized for being straight and that they felt marginalized for being in a fandom and having a child, and I can't not address this. (ETA: I have subsequently learned that in small post-panel discussions the woman's point was actually about age-ism in fandom, which is a very real and legitimate problem, but hopefully those discussions also highlighted how incredibly fail-y and rude it was to say "am I not fucked up enough to be in fandom?" -- I'm not fucked up for being queer and my friends aren't fucked up for being transfolk or PoC: further insight into events here: http://community.livejournal.com/writercon/228157.html / http://rahirah.livejournal.com/411832.html (same post, different comments)).

I am queer every day. And every once in a while I get to hang out in a queer space, such that I don't have to worry if I'm dressing femininely enough to get through airport security or if kissing my girlfriend on my street corner at 11:30 at night is really the best fucking idea in the world.

And I get that feeling marginalized even for a minute is weird and can be heartrending. I get this specifically as it applies to fandom: a lot of us were outcasts growing up, a lot of us don't have face-to-face fannish communities to be a part of where we live, and when we go to a con, we want everyone to be just like us. We don't want to be outcasts -- not still, not again.

But I gotta tell you something -- and this isn't about bias and oppression and marginalization, it's just about life -- it's what I learned from fencing, from learning to fight: We all die alone. And we all fight alone. And we all live alone. On some level, we are always, always, always in a space where no one can know what we are feeling and how strange and terrible and lonely we are -- whether we're straight white guys or people of color or queer folks or a mom at a con.

And in being who I am -- someone who is melancholy and mournful, who views the solid presence of other people in my life as a one-in-a-billion craps shoot I can't believe I won -- you have all my compassion, all my love, all my sympathy and all my interest, because that is, innately, how I react to people who, like me, who know this nature of aloneness. You are beautiful to me.

But you need to step back. Because no, you are not marginalized or oppressed because you are part of the dominant group and people who are part of other groups are stepping up to say that we want some damn consideration. Nor are you marginalized or oppressed because you chose to have a kid. I spent most of the weekend with a woman who is second-generation fen and her baby; we wrote fic together, talked about slash and hung out with her wife. So no matter how different you may feel from what you perceive to be the majority of fandom, no one is being oppressed because they have a kid -- if someone's rude to you, that's actually something else -- the -ism's are something way beyond rudeness or you feeling awkward or out of place.

Look, I don't like being part of a marginalized group. It's not fun or romantic. Some of us -- both in these groups and outside of them -- have to learn this, just as many of us have to go through the thing where we learn there's nothing cool or fun about poverty or having to whore (as opposed to choosing to engage in sex work) to put food on the table or get the damn rent paid.

And that's about all I'm capable of saying without resorting to a great deal of obscenity, so I'm going to stop there on this particular part of the situation.

Moving on, I think no one is well-served by there just being one panel for the racism, homophobia and sexism conversations, as they are three very different things. Because transformative works fanishness is perceived as so female dominated (and probably is) the sexism discussion must largely be about internalized-sexism and that's a profoundly different conversation than the conversation about queer fetishization. And race issues are very different from that -- because I can look gender-conforming and straight going through airport security, while PoC don't suddenly get to be white when shopping, going through airport security or taking flack from asshole cosplayers who don't understand the idea of color-blind casting.

People who are family to me in the immediate sense (good friends and creative partners) and in the distant sense (fellow fen) are in pain over what happened, and so am I. It's upsetting, and as one of the panelists kept saying, we need to learn to listen harder and fail better.

The other case of (specific as opposed to atmospheric) *fail happened in a fan-led discussion that was about addressing slash how and whether it should take into consideration real, actual queer people. This panel also had much positive discussion, some of which started to get past a 101-level I thought, but the moderator had a clear agenda that, to me, felt like "those damn gays are meddling in our porn."

The discussion included a hand-out of potential discussion questions, many of which I found mind-blowingly offensive (I've made a deal with at least one other attendee that we're going to post them all with our answers on LJ over the next week or so), and the woman hosting the panel repeatedly snarked on our table (we were not the only queer people speaking up, but we could, rather legitimately, be perceived as a unified force, as it were) for being articulate and was particularly dismissive to the two PoC people at our table (and the combination of "articulate" and PoC is one of those very loaded, sneaky RaceFail things that happen sometimes and that was seriously, seriously sketchy).

I was shocked and appalled, and while some of this woman's viewpoint would have been potentially useful on a panel, to be an individual with an agenda on a sensitive issue with unvetted programming?!?!?! -- WOW. Not Okay.

Also, bisexuality is real. People not getting this came up all over the place -- in slash convos, in convos about internalized-sexism, in people chatting about Torchwood.

Finally, I want to return to the theme of defensiveness. We're now in a phase of this process, of talking about "the evil in our midst," wherein too many people are either bracing themselves for a fight because of the backlash the people speaking out are getting (I think of my table at the above-mentioned queer panel) -- which of course isn't necessarily constructive but something I think we have an unfortunate right to, or looking for a fight, because suddenly (like the straight person who said they felt marginalized in the first panel I talked about) they aren't part of the dominant group all the damn time.

Additionally, people need to stop dismissing conversations about these issues as wank. Wank is when we gossip about people's egos or get into flame wars about how someone behaved at a con or deal with things that make no sense to most of us: like Snape's Wives. Dealing with racism, sexism and homophobia = not wank.

So what good came out of all of this for me personally:
- I have even more love and respect for my friends, especially having watched ones who don't want to have to be the educators on these issues do it anyway.
- I met some really cool new people.
- I did see people have ah-hah! moments.
- I did learn that there are actually large swathes of fandom that missed the RaceFail thing entirely, and so were just sort of getting caught up on how big the problems are.
- I did see the larger community of the con close ranks against fail when it happened.
- I feel more confident in the value of my being willing to talk about this stuff. I don't like falling on this grenade over and over again, but since no one expects me to be "nice" or "non-threatening" or "look the other way" I have more latitude to say what needs to be said.
- I have new frameworks for the discussion.
- Hey, the Carl Brandon society totally deserves my money.

Comments

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

I should be braver.

My $.02 on bravery and out-ness.

[ophymirage.livejournal.com]

As bisexual women, we are in a position of peculiar privilege that I would argue no other (queer) orientation has.

Firstly, there is a sense of societal approval, skeezy/"can I watch"/"i kissed a girl"/"girls gone wild" though it may be. We don't get frowned on the way that lesbians, gays, trans, or bi men do, because we get owned by the male media gaze for entertainment. There's a WHOLE lot of layers to this, and I suspect I'll get lit into for being simplistic or pomo feminist or something, but it's true.

Second point of privilege: We have the option of 'hiding', 'pretending' to be straight. If I'm out with a boyfriend, or a bi male friend is out with his (female) long-term partner, we don't have to own the other half of our identity. We look heteronormative. As rm notes above, she has to be queer, or think about being queer, or think about its impact, every day. As a bisexual, I have a privilege and a safety she does not have.

Because of those two points of privilege, I feel that I also have a special responsibility to be out, and be vocal, about who and what I am.

I came out at Berkeley, at age 19, about the time that Queer Nation was doing a lot of kiss-in and visibility protests around the Bay Area. I did some activism work, but seriously, you're preaching to the converted around here. When I left for graduate school in Indiana, though, it was a VERY different story. I got involved with the GLB Speakers Bureau, whose job it was to set up discussion panels in various (usually undergrad) classes and go in and talk about what it means to be GLBT and be out. Audience can ask any question they want, and it's your job to respond reasonably, to debunk, clarify, narrate, or whatever's called for. We got a lot of sympathetic questions, but we also got a lot of flames. It can be hard to face, and I walked away from some of those panels ready to cry, or scream. But the best question I ever got asked came off one of those: "If you like guys AND girls, why don't you just pretend to be straight?"

My answer to this is that I owe it to the folks like rm, who cannot and should not have to 'pretend' to be straight. I owe it to the kids I was teaching, to demonstrate that not everyone is like them. and I owe it to society, to stand with my queer brothers and sisters, and not pretend or hide, but talk about my experiences, and my identity, and continue to confront the tough (and even the hate-filled) questions.

That answer isn't for everyone. But ask yourself why it's important for you not to pretend to be straight, why you identify, even if it's just for yourself. and maybe it'll help you find your answer, the next time you want to be brave. :D

Re: My $.02 on bravery and out-ness.

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

Wow. Okay.

On second thought, wait, no. That sounded rude.

I think what I'm not brave about is my willingness to engage about being bisexual. I don't think that I'm afraid of being...I don't have the word here...bothered? by people about being bisexual, but more that I don't talk about it at all, because I don't feel like I have the right to. That is probably me coming from an area in which I recognise that in a lot of ways I can disappear into the crowd and just roll on in life without standing out with little effort. I do a lot of listening and reading and watching. But I'm not brave enough to talk about it because really, I feel I have little to add to the discussion. Maybe I should talk about being bisexual, especially in a profession where one isn't encouraged to be outside of heteronorms. Add to that the fact that I was in a very happy straight marriage, and I often feel like I have less and less room to talk.

Anyway, that's what I meant. Garbled and lame as it was.

Re: My $.02 on bravery and out-ness.

[ophymirage.livejournal.com]

Ah. I was about to post a reply along the lines of "*headdesk* when will I learn to shut up and not preach to people..."

Re: My $.02 on bravery and out-ness.

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

No, you were great. I feel badly. I feel like I should be doing more, but all I can do is be me. I don't talk about it, because I genuinely feel like I have nothing to contribute. I'm a bisexual white woman whose longest relationship was with a member of the opposite sex. Most of what I have to say feels inconsequential.

You were brilliant. :D

Re: My $.02 on bravery and out-ness.

[ophymirage.livejournal.com]

*blushes* thank you. I worry lots about my tendency to mouth off, especially in someone else's LJ.

Re marriage thing, if it helps: I've been bi-identified for 20 years. I have dated probably 20 men in that time, some longterm and some not, and been involved with 2 women. Been in love (in retrospect) with several more, though I didn't recognize that at the time.

Long self-analysis this year has led me to the conclusion that if I'm cut out for any long-term relationship, it's more likely to be with a woman, and I'm beginning to realize that physically I'm more and more likely to prefer women.

(Entering the dating scene as an older woman with that kind of history, who's interested in a lesbian relationship? I expect to be laughed out or completely discounted. but I am who I am, and I have to be confident enough with that.)

ETA: it's hard to feel like you have a right to talk. and honestly, you shouldn't feel a requirement to, or like it's some kind of incumbent duty or secret handshake to get in the club, or something. self-knowledge IS the most important first step, and you've come that far. :D

Re: My $.02 on bravery and out-ness.

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

No, I was afraid I'd committed fail! and that's is exactly the reason that I try to be quiet.

I think in the...shit, it's almost 20 years! that I've identified as bi, I've had two serious relationships. One wa with a man, and one a woman. My issue (at this point) is simply that I'm ruined for relationships for the forseeable future, and that has to do with my other identity. Widowism is pretty difficult to navigate too, though it's not as constant or essential as being LGBT. I actually meet up with more troubles dealing with people and that issue than the bisexuality one.

Long term analysis? I am not good for anyone right now, and I might not ever be again. It's not sad. It's more of a realisation, and I'm comfortable with it. It does put a damper on my identification issues sometimes.

As for your dating history and entering the scene? Fuck em, man. They don't know what they're missing.

Re: My $.02 on bravery and out-ness.

[graene.livejournal.com]

I couldn't see this, in a discussion that has echoed many of my thoughts over the years, and not say, I'm sorry for your loss.

Re: My $.02 on bravery and out-ness.

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

Re: My $.02 on bravery and out-ness.

[ophymirage.livejournal.com]

It's not sad. It's more of a realisation, and I'm comfortable with it. It does put a damper on my identification issues sometimes.

in keeping with marginalization theme, I won't go "I feel your pain, sister," because I can't. but may I be sad for your loss? and hope that eventually things will look up again?

I'm also curious enough to ask about widowism. Your own feelings of readiness/non-readiness aside, do you also feel that you're seeing some kind of cultural expectation/reflection about how long is 'right' to grieve? or that you should not be, er, active ever again post his passing?

(I apologize, I know rather a lot about victorian mourning cultural ideals, but nothign about modern ones, so my academic brain wants data. Please feel free to say "fuck right off," I will not be offended.)

Re: My $.02 on bravery and out-ness.

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

Oh boy, do I.

He's been dead for 3 years. He killed himself. I've gotten an array of things resulting from that (I sometimes get the occasional, "whatever did you do to him?"), but by far the most arresting one is when widowed isn't a box to check on forms (LIKE OMG FACEBOOK, WTF?). It's not that I'm demanding it be there, but being widowed is not like being divorced and it is not like being single, because you didn't voluntarily choose this (not that some people aren't surprised by divorce either. I'd like to be generous and say that I expect there are many divorced individuals who were surprised by their circumstances, like deserted spouses and the like), and if you had your way, you would still be married.

I have more of an issue now with the fact that I'm not ready, and I still don't feel like I will ever be ready, but that people sometimes...don't get that in the fact that I think they think it's time for me to get back out there. My mum and dad have been really good about that, actually. My mum just thinks I need to get laid. :D

But yeah, I feel like I'm young (I'm 33), so I should be out there. Three years feels like it SHOULD be long enough and that I should be dating. I've had a few friends mention that they could hook me up with someone they know, but I just don't feel inclined. So it might just be more of an internal thing on my part.

I feel like, sometimes, that there really is no place for someone who is abandoned by death in this way. A lot of widow boards and things On the internet are dedicated to older widows, but there are a few young widow sites. It's almost as if we're such an anomaly, a rarity, that we fall by the wayside. I don't think I would call that marginalised, because I think that is a shit world people use too often for the wrong things, but I feel like we're invisible, because we are uncomfortable.

Incoherent post is incoherent.

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

A friend linked me to this.

I'm your age, and my partner of nearly thirteen years died this summer. I just wanted to say that I can really relate to some of this. I'm lucky in that more people in my immediate circles of various ages have had partners die and so are really kind and understanding and supportive than is probably the norm. And my friends in general have been really great. But I also have been really shocked by how dismissive some people are.

I am really confused a lot of the time. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing or feeling anymore. It's difficult to find my way with my life amputated like this. I'm sure it will get better one way or another--my partner, who worked in medicine for about a third of his working life, used to say "All bleeding stops eventually"--but right now I just don't see how.

Re: My $.02 on bravery and out-ness.

[ophymirage.livejournal.com]

But I'm not brave enough to talk about it because really, I feel I have little to add to the discussion. Maybe I should talk about being bisexual, especially in a profession where one isn't encouraged to be outside of heteronorms. Add to that the fact that I was in a very happy straight marriage, and I often feel like I have less and less room to talk.

my personal thing is about challenging assumptions that people make. it's hard, it really is, to stand up and wave your queer flag every time someone goes "do you have a boyfriend?" and sometimes that can come across as confrontational or preachy (she said, eyeing her post above in a jaundiced manner.) But every time you do it, you're also reminding someone that they shouldn't make assumptions, that they're reinforcing a norm that may not be there, etc.

but yeah, for years I also felt like I didn't have the right to talk, because I didn't suffer the same discrimination, as my friends who id'ed as "full" queer. (See someone else's comments below about not being homosexual "enough" - that attitude was a lot more common when I started being an activist than I think it is now, though.)

If I were recruiting you for speakers' bureau, I'd tell you that your experience of ID'ing even within a straight marriage, is valuable because it helps someone else extrapolate from their experience to yours, and forms common ground. :D The thing that makes me happiest about the generation coming up is that this tactic has REALLY worked long-term: once people started living with out neighbors, teachers, community members, and their kids saw them in the media and in the neighborhood, they realized that NO, these people are normal too, and this other shit REALLY doesn't matter a damn.

One more generation, and NO one except some seriously backwards morons will give a shit. And then we can have the polyamory fight instead. :D

Re: My $.02 on bravery and out-ness.

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

Heh. I know what you mean, and really, I mean it when I say that the whole thing doesn't come up for me. I'm a widow, and people generally don't expect me to have a sexuality anyway. I NEVER get questions about my love life, and in the past when I have I've kind of done the "No I don't have a boy/girl friend line" because it's just good practice to remind people that not everyone is straight. I don't know if that's wrong of me to do, but I do it.

I have a daughter (she's 2 1/2) and I want her to know what she is what she is. I want to be completely open to whatever she is (and who knows what that is when you're 2. If she knows, she hasn't told me.), so when people say that I'll have problems with boyfriends in the future (which is kind of lame of them to say, but I sense I will have issues with future boy/girl friends. I'm a single mom trying to raise a daughter in our crazy oversexed world), I remind them she could have a girlfriend too (or both! woo!). Who really cares? I want her to be herself, and never be ashamed or afraid of that.

Re: My $.02 on bravery and out-ness.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Just in the "for the record-y" department, I'm bi (not, necessarily a word that entirely thrills me, because of how man trans and intersexed peopel I know that I also find attractive) and was in a (oftne non-monogamous) relationship with a man for about seven years, and that was a period of time wherein I spent a lot of time trying to look non-queer, because one of the pressures of that relationship and our social circle was that my gender reflected on him and while he never pressured me about it (and recently said it even made him uncomfortable that I tried to conform so hard -- not like he stopped me then!) I knew that being gender-conforming was a way for hi to receive positive reinforcement of his relationship with me form his male peers, and since the relationship was always fraught, that had an obvious benefit to me. On the other hand -- I've been called sir repeatedly when wearing a dress, having long hair and wearing makeup, so my sense of being detectably other always felt very real to me, although it was much less palpable then than now.

Re: My $.02 on bravery and out-ness.

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

I have a confession to make that's kind of creepy. One of the reasons I love TW is because it taught me the word omnisexual. Sure it's a flawed term, but sometimes I feel like there more out there than two sexual identities (? is that the word I want?) that I find attractive, etc...

I dunno. I try not to have fandom conversations that make it seemlike I'm one of those people who wonder what it feels like to be "beamed up".

(Although I do wonder what it feels like to be beamed up.)

Re: My $.02 on bravery and out-ness.

[tacky-tramp.livejournal.com]

I like the word "pansexual" as well. Gender is a spectrum, and while "bisexual" is readily understood, it reinforces the two-gender dichotomy, IMO. Ah, labels. Fun times.

Re: My $.02 on bravery and out-ness.

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

There. Pan is better, I think. Polysexual? Omni means all, and that might just be a little too broad for me.

More is more! Yay!

Re: My $.02 on bravery and out-ness.

[tacky-tramp.livejournal.com]

Polysexual is rather like polyamorous, which might muddy the affectional-orientation waters even more. :)

Re: My $.02 on bravery and out-ness.

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I figured that was why people didn't use it. (I like it, though. ;D)

Re: My $.02 on bravery and out-ness.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

I also like pansexual, except that a lot of people hear overtones in both pansexual and omnisexual that equate to "makes it with anyone", which is definitely NOT true. It's just that it's not gender that gets someone put on the "definitely not with you" list.

In talking with a number of bisexuals, my impression is that about half of bi people are particularly attracted to one gender for one set of reasons, and to the other for a different set of reasons; the rest are attracted to people for who they are, regardless of "plumbing". I'm definitely in the latter category.

As to using bisexual about myself, instead of pansexual...as much as I like to talk (and write), there's limits to how much time I want to spend reclaiming particular words from unfortunate assumptions others make. Bisexual is not inaccurate. And using it doesn't make me feel invisible.

Re: My $.02 on bravery and out-ness.

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

That's a very valid thought! I wish I was more coherent.

I think the reason I kind of like pansexual is because of the spectrum of gender...movement. But that's not to say that I'm not comfortable being called a bisexual. Sometimes I like to err on the side of flexibility. But I'm not about to go on a campaign for pansexuality.

Re: My $.02 on bravery and out-ness.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

(-:

My comment wasn't to say I thought you were on a campaign, it was because there's so few people who I suspect would empathize with my joy in that word.

In an ideal world, I wouldn't have to explain pansexual, which to me has not only the freedom and accuracy of not connecting my sexuality to the gender of the other person at all, but also to an image of Pan, to a sense that there is value in honoring pleasure as a good and healthy thing in its own right, that, in the right circumstances and taking reasonable care that no one gets hurt, throwing oneself into the process with wild abandon can also be sacred.

Also thank you re: coherence in my writing. I work at it.

I have some fiction on my LJ, if you're interested, and some songs. Not a lot of thoughts about sexuality, or Paganism, though, since I'm both trying to grow an audience for my writing (and so my journal is find-able) AND looking for a mundane job. (Most people can handle someone writing stories and songs, even weird ones, these days. If they don't want to hire me because I write speculative fiction, I figure it would be a bad fit in any case.)

*shakes head wryly and looks shamefaced*

[ophymirage.livejournal.com]

You know, when I stopped off at Whole Paycheck this evening, I thought I was craving their sinful macaroni and cheese. Apparently, what I was clearly craving much more was the taste of my own toes. :(

Please accept my profuse apologies for assigning you an inaccurate category based on assumption, rather than, you know, asking or something. Since that was one of the largest points of this whole post. I am quite ashamed of myself.

Re: *shakes head wryly and looks shamefaced*

[rm.livejournal.com]

Totally okay. I've not been involved with a man for ages, and besides, I always joke (but it's sort of true) that my relationships are, in my head anyway, always queer, regardless of plumbing. My experience has been women are more okay with the fact that I'm not always a woman, than men are. Hardly universally true, no doubt, but now that I've got Patty, it's all rather moot.