On Bravery, and Public Service

[netmouse]

A lot of people saw twistpeach's original post about an harassment incident at Arisia. I doubt as many have seen her followup. Please take a minute to check it out if you are interested in these issues and our community response.

(TL/DR version: It is important that the main response on this, especially for people who didn't know the perpetrator, is not to focus on shaming him or banning him but to focus on working within your organizations to wipe out institutionalized tolerance of bad behavior.)

Comments

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's a lot easier to say, "this is the walk we need to walk" than to actually do it. At Eastercon I tried to have a talk with an old friend about why he was creeping me out and pushing my boundaries and I REALLY don't know if what I said made any sense to him. I later saw him talking to another woman whom I believe he is also friends with; he had his arm around her waist and from that point up she was leaning about 45 degrees away from him, which I interpreted as being what she found comfortable as far as distance between their faces, since one of my observations was that he was tending to lean in and speak to me from a face-to-face distance I'm not always comfortable having with lovers, much less *him*. So I doubt my comments sensitized him in any general way. *sigh*

I wish cons seemed like a fun, non-stress place for you to be.

[the-leewit.livejournal.com]

Oh, no! I'm just trying not to stress other people out by being there.

I'm just super-sensitive to boundary violation, and someone did, probably unwittingly and with the best of intentions. Now that someone is deeply hurt, and for some reason, I can't unruffle my feathers. And that someone has seniority. So, I'm off the con circuit in the upper midwest for the foreseeable future. May go to my local one in October, though... if my kids start ponying up their share of the rent. Sigh. Can't win for forfeiting, here.