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

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

Word.

It's annoying to have to do, but every time one of these situations comes up we have to make a decision between choosing to teach and choosing to express our own anger and desire to have our feelings heard. And I feel that most times we have a responsibility to teach, otherwise we risk doing so much damage with an individual who was probably on the cusp of really understanding. Besides, personally I find the teaching so much more rewarding and pleasant than something that inevitably descends into an argument.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

One of the things that led to what my sister said was a "miraculous" change in my skills in communicating when angry was the realization that, although sometimes you need volume to be heard (when it's necessary to convince someone that what you're saying is important enough to stop and listen), most of the time, yelling loudly only makes people feel attacked and get defensive -- and that ends your chance to actually have your feelings heard, in the sense of listened to and thought about and, at least some of the time, understood.

When someone not only has my words fall on their eardrums, but echo in their mind, so they see some part of the world differently, that is when I feel most strongly that my feelings were heard.

And you're right. It is rewarding.

Though it is much harder to do than merely making the doors and windows rattle!

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

I've come to realise it's also important to remember we are all coming at these problems from very different background communities. A style of approach that may be entirely appropriate in one community would be wildly destructive in another and vice-versa. I know how to negotiate my own individuality in my own community, but when I come to LJ and meet people from so many different backgrounds, with different experiences and expectations to draw on, my style is very much in a minority. And while I know that if a lot of the activists on LJ ever came to my community and started using the approach they use here - well I would run them out of town on a rail myself because they would do harm in ten minutes that would take ten years to put right. But here? Well this place is very different, and who knows, maybe their style is appropriate and useful here.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

Oh, very true.

And LJ isn't just one place. Each separate journal is a separate place, with its own community. The host sets the tone, to a significant degree, even if they don't avail themselves of screening comments and other such community-management tools.

Of course, the various LJ journals' communities do overlap, to a greater or lesser degree.

[lilachigh.livejournal.com]

this is so true, but I was at the panel and I think most of them said they were not there to educate anyone, they were weary of educating people, people should work it out for themselves, do the hard graft in order to understand. I think I had the same problem with my chemistry teacher!

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

By telling you that injustice happens in our communities and that you have a responsibility to educate yourself about it, they were educating you.

[lian-li.livejournal.com]

wait, are you seriously saying that people have a duty to sacrifice their time and effort in order to further your education and understanding? Yes, it is a failure in a *paid professional*, like your chemistry teacher. Anyone not a paid professional? Doesn't owe you a thing. This comparison is hair-raising.

I'm sorry for being so confrontational, but -- it's *your* work, you're doing it for yourself. There are seriously enough ressources out there. If I misunderstood you (which is entirely possible!), I'm sorry, but I'm not sure if your realize how horribly entitled you come across :(

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

An individual person in an individual setting OF COURSE has the right to decide if they want to teach or not.

However, if I'm in a situation where someone has asked me what it's like to be queer, I'm not thinking about whether I owe it to the person asking, or not primarily so. I'm thinking about whether talking to this person might keep one gay child from being rejected by their family, whether talking to this person might change a vote -- in other words, whether talking to this person might make the world better for me and for my community. I'm thinking that I didn't have money to send to the local LGBT center, but perhaps I have time to give to the cause.

[lian-li.livejournal.com]

See, it's not that I don't get that there are so many reasons for being an educator, for trying to further the cause. I'm actually with you there. It's just that getting that answer, that explanation, is often such a very strong expectation, as if it was the duty of the person to explain. Refusing to do so often engenders responses like, "but why would you refuse? I was just asking!" implying, "You're not helping the cause here!" ...On to, "You're weird./You're rude." etc. pp. And I just, I really want that expectation to go to hell, you know? The burden should be on me, the asker. So what if I don't get an answer? I need to respect that and move on, and not make an issue of my hurt feelings.

So it's this *expectation* that other people should be my educators that bugs the hell out of me, especially in a situation where the power balance is so uneven. That's privilege, in a nutshell, isn't it? I'm sure I'm failing to bring across the nuances here -- what exactly it is that disturbs me. To go back to your first sentence, sure, it's my choice, but what kind of choice is it really if refusing to speak only nets me negative reactions?

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

Regarding your response to lilachigh. As I understand it, Lilachigh was speaking of people on a panel at a convention, a convention Lilachigh and others had paid good money to so they could attend programming items such as this panel.

At that moment in time, the panelists were not simply private individuals living their private lives. Whether or not they were paid to be on the panel (often cons reimburse panelists' membership fees), they had agreed to speak on that topic during the panel. And every member of the audience had paid to hear them speak.

So yes, for that hour or two the panelists DID owe the people attending the panel their attention and time and knowledge and expertise, in much the same way a chemistry teacher owes the students who paid the school so they could take the class.

Certainly it is fair for part of that teaching to be that in a normal day-to-day setting, people should not simply demand someone's time, that it is very rude to do so.

But it IS fair to assume that if someone has agreed to speak, even if only for an hour, then they do have an obligation to teach during that hour. Especially if you paid money to hear them.

[lilachigh.livejournal.com]

If these had been people sitting talking privately, then yes, they are quite entitled to say they don't have to explain things to me. But these were on a panel offered to people attending a conference! A panel I was attending to learn and educate myself as to their experiences and points of view.

Admittedly I mistakenly thought we were going to be talking about how to deal with those problems when writing fiction, but once I realised they were tackling things from a different aspect, I was still keen to listen because it was interesting and I was learning things I hadn't known before.

Do they have a "duty" to sacrifice their time and effort to educate me? No, of course not. But on the other hand do I have a "duty" to sacrifice my time and effort to listen to them talking about the horrendous difficulties they have experienced in their lives? No, of course I don't. A road doesn't just run from A to B, it goes from B to A as well.

[lian-li.livejournal.com]

Okay, so you are telling me that your willingness to learn only goes as far as their willigness to teach you? That is a very poor idea of learning.

And, to answer your question:

"But on the other hand do I have a "duty" to sacrifice my time and effort to listen to them talking about the horrendous difficulties they have experienced in their lives?"

Yes, you do. You really, really do. Why? I can't say it better than the already-linked Peggy McIntosh (http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html). We may be in disagreement here, but the idea of walking away, of ignoring hese issues, because I *can*, isn't really my idea of being a decent human being. [to be clear here, I am not a decent human being most of the time. I walk away a lot. But I'm not pretending anyone made me. It's simply because my privilege allows me too.]

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

OK, so these people had agreed to be on a panel to discuss this topic, for a bunch of strangers that had paid good money for the right to hear them talk, and who took an hour or two of their time to listen to the panelists.

Um, I do panels at conventions.

When you agree to be on a panel, you agree, at a minimum, to spending that hour or two hours on the topic of the panel, sharing your experiences, wisdom, or hard-earned knowledge with the people sitting in the chairs in front of you. Many panelists prepare ahead of time, doing research, preparing presentations, and the like in addition to that hour or two.

If you are unwilling to spend that hour educating people on the topic, you have no business agreeing to be on the panel! Those people paid money to hear you!

[lilachigh.livejournal.com]

Thank you! You have put my point of view on this part of the problem far more clearly than I could!

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. I expanded on this a bit to one of the people who commented to you.

(Although I don't know if they have the background to understand the dynamics of being a panelist at a con; not everyone on LJ goes to cons.)

[lian-li.livejournal.com]

I hear you, and that is pretty much as I had framed the situation. But as rusty_halo said above: "By telling you that injustice happens in our communities and that you have a responsibility to educate yourself about it, they were educating you."

I mean, this is quite cearly a case of divergent expectations. What is the responsibility of the panelists? What is the responsibility of the listeners? Obviously, these ideas clashed. But when one party is walking away disgruntled, feeling that they had not been catered to enough -- when that is the outcome of every single discussion on oppression, you may forgive me if it pings my radar and tells me that maybe those panelists may have had a point. If your willingness to learn goes only as far as my ability/willingness to teach...well. My position is that this is a problem with your attitude rather than mine, really, *even regardless of this particular situation*.

And hey. It may be that I am parsing this all wrong -- I wasn't there. But I have seen this underlying pattern so often that it really jumped out at me here. I'm afraid I didn't do a good job of trying to make these issues visible to you. I do hope you will find the other voices in this conversation (much more eloquent than mine) more illuminating.

[wyld-dandelyon.livejournal.com]

I have already stated that making the point that it is rude to expect or demand an individual to answer just because you asked was a valid point for the panelists to make.

If the quote "I'm not up here to teach about that" is accurate, I don't think that was a valid position to take in that limited circumstance.

You see, I do think that the particular situation is very important to understanding things here. SF fans DO make a very strong distinction between the etiquette of going up to a panelist, let's say a Hugo-winning author in the hallway or at a party and asking questions and asking the same person questions that are within the topic of a panel that the author is sitting on. If the author is on a panel about writing, and refuses to try to educate the audience about writing, that IS seen as a lack of courtesy and as irresponsible behavior by the author. If the author doesn't want to talk about writing at a party, it is the fan's responsibility to be courteous when the author says so. And the etiquette is the same if it's a fan who agreed to be on a panel about something like, say "found filk". Fans' expectations of whether they are owed a response to a question are not created by the power differential; they are created by the situation.

And having been on panels, and attended similar panels, I can also say that there's a granting of privilege for that hour to the people at the front of the room. I've had authors much more published than I am raise their hands and wait politely to ask me a question, for instance.

I have also been on panels as a writer (a privileged class at a SF convention), and as a fan in various capacities, talking about topics ranging from gaming to religion. Regardless of which category I was in at the time, the people attending the panel accorded me both respect and the expectation that I was there to share whatever knowledge I had regarding the topic of the panel. (Or regarding a related topic, in cases where the panelists and audience all wandered off-topic together.)

Not having been at this particular panel, I can't analyze the particulars of what went wrong in that instance.

However, I can see there's lots of possible reasons for misunderstanding, starting with, but not limited to, cultural assumptions of who had privilege in that moment and what obligations people had voluntarily taken on both in agreeing to be on the panel and in attending the panel.

[spiralleds.livejournal.com]

this is quite clearly a case of divergent expectations.

Definitely. There must have been a bit of a disconnect between what the panelists meant by saying they weren't there to teach/educate and how some folks heard that.

I'm getting the sense that to some the phrasing "we aren't here to teach/educate" was heard somewhere on a continuum of meaning they weren't going to learn (yet not teaching and not learning are two different things) to abdicating their responsibility to giving the audience the verbal equivalent of the bird, etc. But that was not my take on it at all.

For me, what I heard was an understandable humility from the panelists. None of them were speaking of behalf all people in the group(s) she or he was a member of. None of them were professional educators in the issues of racism, sexism, or homophobia. There was 90 minutes. They clearly could not be comprehensive on the topic. Within that timeframe they could only begin to open the conversation. To say they were not there to teach/educate was to try to set reasonable expectations about what they could do, which was share personal experience and opinion.

But that isn't to say it wasn't a good environment for learning. Overall, it was. Even (or perhaps especially) the uncomfortable parts were ripe for learning. I found what the panelists shared as well as the conversation helpful. There were things talked about that were good refreshers for me, there were other things that were good food for thought.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

What is our responsibility as students in these situations when we are not members of the marginalized group?

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

I'd say pretty much the same as the responsibilities of the marginalised group - do everything you can to foster a polite conversation. So listen as much as you talk or ask questions, take the time to calm down if you get angry or walk away if you can't. But don't think you have nothing to contribute either, a dialogue requires input from both sides and if you aren't marginalised you probably know more about what causes the prejudice in the first place, and hence have ideas about how to fight it. If we're actually going to solve the problems (as opposed to just venting about our own woes, which is a different thing) we need to hear that information.

At the moment on LJ the biggest problem seems to be that what should be a discussion has become a territorial fight over who gets to talk at all and what they are allowed to say. That is making matters worse not better. So someone like yourself who is influential enough to attract the attention of Metafandom when you speak has something of a responsibility to try to think of ways to break the deadlock. At the moment there are a lot of people being excluded from the conversation because they are scared or upset or quite frankly came to LJ to get away from their problems not have another fight about them. This is true of both marginalised and unmarginalised folk. IMO what needs to happen is for the conversation to be reset to a gentler, more inclusive dialogue instead of people trying to impose their opinions on others and getting cross when they inevitably fail. I don't have the people skills to know exactly how that should be done, but if the movers and shakers amongst the social justice activists don't get together and work out a way to do it then I can't see us getting past the current semi-continuous wank for a very long time. And that, I'm sure you will agree, will be a great shame.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Anyone can appear in metafandom by submitting links to the newsletter. It's not a status marker.

I don't think we have sufficient grounds of agreement for discussion.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

That's ok - I long since washed my hands of the discussion as it commonly occurs on LJ, I don't really want to discuss it under the current conditions at all, but you asked so I answered.

[http://users.livejournal.com/peasant_/]

You may, providing you don't do it in such a way that complete strangers turn up in my LJ and start yelling at me. :)

[goseaward.livejournal.com]

So someone like yourself who is influential enough to attract the attention of Metafandom when you speak has something of a responsibility to try to think of ways to break the deadlock.

Kind of hilariously, I'm here from metafandom. :D But getting on metafandom, as coffeeandink said above, has nothing to do with notability; I've been on there several times, and who the fuck am I?

As to the education debate above...as others have said, more eloquently, it sounds like this panel *was* educational. It just wasn't Discussing *Isms 101. There's a place for both kinds of discussion, and suppressing the higher levels because not everybody in the room understands them isn't the way to make progress. And after eight months of just this particular iteration of fail, I think it's reasonable to expect that the people attending this panel have the basic tools in hand already. I don't really know, because I wasn't there, but that's what it seems like to me.