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

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.

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

Boy do I know where you are right now. Firstly, I am so very sorry for your loss.

Next, if you ever want to talk, I know we don't know each other, but my email is amandr at gmail dot com.

Right now, there is no "supposed to be doing" for you. You need to concentrate on making it through the day. It sounds like your friends and family are there for you, so you just go ahead and keep moving, and that's all that you should expect from yourself.

Anyone who tells you that "time heals all wounds", though? Feel free to deck them. Give them a one-two from me, too.

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

Thank you, very much.

I have periods where I just totally lose it for three or four days, and basically spend all day crying, doing sudoku, and sleeping. I tell myself that it's okay to do that. I'm pretty sure it's true. I'm also meant to be studying for my doctoral comps; I lost a month and a half taking care of stuff (which is not yet taken care of, can I please just get the death certificates already? I want the paperwork OVER) and then just ...losing it.

He was the third person I've been involved with to die, the second while we were together. Issues...oh boy. I got 'em.

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

Oh Jesus, that blows.

I remember the first few months being like that. Just kind of letting the brain cycle on its own. Maybe it was defragging or running scandisk or something. I wasn't so bad with the paperwork (though there were a few frightening moments with healthcare because I was under his plan and I was pregnant), but I remember there being a lot of it. And settling accounts and arguing with credit card companies and the student loan people didn't help my mood. I think the only thing that gave me a modicum of satisfaction when they gave me trouble was my sick glee at being able to shout, "He's in the ground!" when they tried to argue about payment. Yeah, they let me go after that.

I'm sorry about the seeming pattern. You have bad luck, you know, it's not anything to do with you.

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

My diss supervisor says "Don't think of yourself as a black widow so much as a statistical outlier. It's highly unlikely that this will happen again, particularly if you stop engaging in risky behaviours like dating much older men." This is why I love him--and why most people seem to move heaven and earth not to have him be their adviser. But I like it.

I was surprised by the amount of paperwork. And by his family's attempts to take whatever life insurance there might be away from me before I even know if the policy was paid up, their attempts to control the disposition of the body while making me pay for everything, their attempts to kick me out of our house and take all our stuff...his sister actually asked me if his name had been on my car title, called his insurance company, some of the crap she's pulled has been really astonishing. Thank the gods we're no longer related. At least there's that.

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

Oh JESUS. Those people need to step off. I know there are families out there like that, but it never ceases to amaze me. Did you manage to get the money? I'm not sure what the property laws are in Canada, but 13 years here in the US would make you the inheritor.

Yeah, statistical outlier. That's...kind of neat in some ways, though not the way that you came to be that person.

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

I won't know about life insurance until the freaking death certificates come; the insurance company won't even talk to me beyond "We need the death certificate" until I can send it to them. It's starting to look like there is some insurance money, and I know I'm the sole beneficiary, so that should be all right since I'm not the executor of his estate.

When it came down to it, my lawyer advised that I thoroughly inform his family (we opted not to take it to court and go for common-law rights to the estate) of the responsibilities of dealing with his estate, and they abandoned it. I left the country (I'm just in Canada for school; my legal residence was our home in the States) before all that happened, which gives me a pretty good out if anything happens. We made the decision not to marry primarily because he was in vast amounts of debt, much of it incurred before he and I met, and none of it my responsibility, and I had reservations about marrying into that kind of debt, some of which would have become mine. His family hadn't realised he was in debt, and when they found out suddenly they couldn't jump back fast enough. His sister had initially intended--and told me so--to come with a truck and get all the computers, cameras, and instruments (I said, ahem, all the working computers, a couple of the cameras, and three of the instruments are MINE) and just leave the rest for me "to deal with".

I was amused by how quickly his family ran away when they realised that taking his stuff meant having to administer his estate for his creditors. I was not amused by what that meant for me and for the friends back home taking care of this stuff, but I take my amusement where I can get it these days.

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

No really, that's pretty good then, that you managed to get them to back off. I was lucky that even though we were married, we never had joint credit cards, but we had a joint bank acct. So I inherited all the money, but none of the debt. It was sheer laziness on our parts, really, but laziness FTW.

I am glad that you got to keep all his stuff. I still have all my husband's in the basement, some of them boxes he packed for our relocation move that I have never been able to unpack (I think they're full of chainmail and Transformers, anyway).

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

It could have turned out worse; I should be covered, and even if there's no life insurance at least I'm okay from a debt standpoint. I hate having to reduce it to those terms, but I'm young yet and I can't spend the rest of my life under his debt. And I know he didn't want that. I basically am only keeping the stuff that's mine (and I got rid of most of my stuff, I just don't have room) and a few things of his that have sentimental value. The rest got distributed in whatever way seemed best given that his legal next of kin refused to hold it for the creditors. It was really all that could be done.

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

Yeah, see, I don't think you should under any circumstances be responsible for his debt even if your were married. and as for stuff, you should do whatever you want with it. I gave most of his clothes to charity, and I have been giving his things away as I see fit for ages, to anyone who wants them. I can't help but think that he'd like that. and you're not even there, so that makes management doubly hard.

Do you find that the change in location was helpful all? I move in with my parents, and some times I think that was one of the saving graces for me.

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

If I hadn't had a mostly intact life in Vancouver to come back to, I don't think I would have lasted a month after he died.

It's still awful, but I have a support structure and ten months of a life here that didn't depend on him. I had experience making it on my own financially and logistically. I had a place to live that I can afford on my own. I had a city that everywhere I turned, I didn't find a new memory rendered horrific by his loss. I spent two weeks back in Kansas trying to get everything wrapped up, the house cleaned out, etc, and by the end I was frantic to get out because it hurt so much I couldn't breathe. Everywhere I went I felt his absence.

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

Then it's good that you're in Vancouver. And you have things to keep you busy, should you need them. But if you have days when you just kind of want to stare out the window and do sudoku, I heartily support that.

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

I don't mean to sound so dramatic; I apologise. I just, wow, it really helped to be able to get away.

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

Oh no! Not dramatic at all! I totes get that. It helped that we hadn't lived in the city I'm in for very long. If I had still be stuck in Orlando I would have probably gone batshit. Plus, you know, it's Orlando.

[noveldevice.livejournal.com]

Hahah, yes. When I moved out here, I was like "holy crap, how in the world did I live in Kansas for so long?"

Having gotten to the single word column, I think it's probably time for email. :/

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

lol yes.

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

[rm.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to say in the time of LJ not sending me comments, I just saw this today, and I am so sorry. I have several close friends whose families contain a lot of suicide, and it's a particularly unique form of tragedy in terms of what it leaves behind. You've always had my sympathies on this, now you just have my more specific ones.

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

[amand-r.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

It's actually kind of funny how suicide seems to run in some families. I've been through 2 and multiple others' attempts. Odd.