Team Valkyrie FTW

ReaderCon — a convention in Cambridge, Massachusetts centered around readers and authors and how great books are — has recently found itself in the center of a bit of a storm involving harassment of one of its attendees. The results and their response are… disappointing, to say the least. Which I won’t. Say the least, that is. I’m going to say a fair bit.

So let’s start with a summary of what happened, in case this is the first you’ve heard about it.

ReaderCon has a stated Zero Tolerance policy when it comes to harassment:

Harassment

Readercon has always had a zero-tolerance harassment policy.

Harassment of any kind — including physical assault, battery, deliberate intimidation, stalking, or unwelcome physical attentions — will not be tolerated at Readercon and will result in permanent suspension of membership.

As always, Readercon reserves the right to strip membership at its discretion.

Ponder what zero-tolerance means. Keep it at the forefront of your thoughts.

The story first broke on Genevieve Valentine’s blog, when she wrote about what happened to her:

My boundaries were violated physically, verbally, and in terms of my right to feel personally secure. In addition, within minutes of meeting him, I was told to stop saying things, because it made him somehow unable to control his thoughts, which is bog-standard thought policing. And I was subjected to not one, not two, but THREE instances of the man in question hovering near me because he wanted to apologize, and he wasn’t going to stop until he had had his say.

At ReaderCon, Valentine felt threatened. This man subjected Valentine to not only the initial harassment (telling her to stop making him have “bad thoughts”?! ew), but then continued the harassment because he felt bad and it was important he be forgiven. His feelings about being heard and being forgiven mattered more than her feelings about wanting to be safe.

Hang on to that. That feelings thing. That’s a theme here.

In this instance, she was able to go to the ReaderCon board and lodge a formal complaint, with corroborating witnesses. This is a process she is not unfamiliar with. In 2008, Veronica Schanoes found herself in a similar situation, being harassed by another con-goer, and Valentine encouraged her to come forward and acted as a witness.

Schanoes’ situation was, from what I have read, well-handled. Investigation happend, witness statements taken, and in the face of undeniable evidence, the ReaderCon board ruled in a way that was in line with their policy. Aaron Agassi was banned from ReaderCon for life.

It’s later been mentioned that Agassi has some form of mental illness (I’ve heard several different illnesses described, and I’m not sure which might be true). He is also not particularly known in the fandom. I say these things because these things are important.

Return to present day. Valentine has lodged her complaint. Several witnesses have come forward. We have arrived at the point where there is incontrovertible proof that Valentine was being harassed by a man named Rene Walling. He is apparently a chair member of WorldCon, and is something of a BNF.

The ReaderCon board has banned Rene Walling. For two years.

How interesting. Aaron Agassi, unknown person and mentally ill, is banned for life. Rene Walling, secret master of fandom, gets a slap on the wrist.

I’m not saying, I’m just saying.

There’s a very obvious problem here, and it goes beyond what looks to be, on the surface, favoritism and politics as usual in the SFF fandom. It is that ReaderCon has gone on record claiming a zero-tolerance policy, and then have shown they cannot keep to their word. This means that anybody at the convention who once felt safe is no longer able to feel that way. This also means that if you have enough sway in fandom, you can get away with it.

The verdict drew a lot of ire from the Internet. I mean, a lot. To the point where the ReaderCon board finally felt the need to announce the decision on their own terms, and explain the reasoning behind it.

Hang on to your hats, folks.

During the course of our conversation with Rene it became immediately apparent that he realized what he had done and was sincerely regretful of his actions. It was that recognition and regret that influenced our decision, not his status in the community.

Remember that thing I said earlier? About feelings? About it being a theme?

Feelings matter, you see. Specifically, Walling’s feelings matter. Not Valentine’s, though. Well, a little, maybe. I mean, Walling is going to miss two years of ReaderCon. So her feelings matter enough for that.

Valentine feels threatened, unsafe. Walling feels sowwies. There is no question whether or not a crime happened: it did. The board has acknowledged it. But they have gone around their own stated policy and ignored the reality of what has happened because Walling feels bad.

So, hang on, I guess a couple things are happening here.

One: Walling’s feelings matter more than Valentine’s. This is a clear, unequivocal message the ReaderCon board is sending. An attacker’s feelings matter more than the victim’s. This means ReaderCon is no longer a safe space, and apparently never was.

Two: ReaderCon had a posted Zero-Tolerance policy on harassment that was kind of a shiny thing that a lot of people held up as an awesome example of how cons should handle harassment. Then they went and pulled this shit. Once again, no longer a safe space, never was to begin with.

Three: Men with power get away with crimes because reasons. This is a thing that happens, and fandom suffers from it too. Great job, guys.

Four: This is kind of Harasser 101 shit here. Walling was sorry? Of course he was sorry. But was he sorry for what he did, or sorry he was caught? Most harassers/attackers are able to express remorse, sincere or otherwise, and yet they continue to commit the same crimes. And when there is no real punishment, there is no incentive to change their behaviour.

Five: Okay some people out there are claiming that oh what if he’s Aspie and doesn’t know any better which is such bullshit and I’ll let Rose Lemberg tell you why because she nailed it.

This all… I just…

It’s kind of disgusting, what happened here. Women were harassed. The harassment was found to be a real and valid thing. And yet, the perpetrator gets away with it, with just a slap on the wrist, circumventing stated zero-tolerance policies. Making that zero-tolerance policy worth less than the paper it was printed on. And I don’t know that anybody ever printed it out.

I’ve never been to ReaderCon, but I’d heard stories of how great it is, and I figured it was a fun and happy place worth going to. Apparently not. Unless something changes, I’m likely to never go to ReaderCon. And many others have stated the same.

Honestly, I don’t even know what action the ReaderCon board can take at this point to make it all right. There is currently a letter/petition to the ReaderCon board suggesting corrective action, written by Schanoes and undersigned by many others. But, I don’t know, reverting their decision and perma-banning Walling feels like that same tune of bowing to pressure; instead of pressure from a BNF’s reputation and his fauxpology, now it’s pressure from the Internet. If ReaderCon were to take these corrective steps, would it be true change, or would it simply be second verse, same as the first? Would they understand what they had done, or would they simply be sowwies? I’m not sure.

Regardless, ReaderCon has fucked up pretty badly. Let’s see if they can recover. I feel like they will have a hard time with it.

ETA: It appears that Rene Walling’s name is being removed from the Kansas City World Con bid comittee.

ETA 2, The Editing

The entire board is stepping down, and the perpetrator has been banned. I must say, I’m incredibly surprised, and impressed with this response. It is an even and unequivocal apology for what has happened. Read the official ReaderCon statement here.

So we’re still talking about having characters of color be featured on book covers. Still. You’d think by now we’d be past this. I mean, with all that noise around Liar and Magic Under Glass we might have learned a little something. We might have grown as an industry. Right?

Nope.

For the unfamiliar, in recent YA publishing history, there have been two (of several) kerfuffles where a book about a character of color featured a white girl on its cover. Both Larbalestier’s Liar and Dolamore’s Magic Under Glass both suffered from what we call “whitewashing.” In both cases we have a happy-ish ending, because after a fuss was raised, the covers were fixed to accurately reflect the contents of the book. But the fact that we even had to go there kind of sucks.

And the discussion still isn’t over. Ellen Oh has noticed that, if you hit the YA section of the bookstore, if there’s a girl on the cover, she’s a pretty, thin, white girl, ninety-nine times out of one hundred. (There’s a bonus problem Oh doesn’t mention, where a lot of these girls are also passively post and/or dead, but that’s a rant of a different color.) She refers to the Best YA Book Covers List on Goodreads as evidence of this.

Putting pretty white girls on all your book covers is the book equivalent of what all our fashion magazines do. An idealization of beauty that is unrealistic and dangerous to our youth.

The problem isn’t one instance, the problem is the norm. One single book cover isn’t a sin. But a wall of book covers that all look near-identical is. Idealizing a specific image of beauty at the expense of others is not healthy, ever. Not seeing representations of yourself in media, ever, has this slow and subtle buildup, worse for some than for others.

What really kills me is the excuse I often hear touted about. “Black covers don’t sell.” I’ve heard this only anecdotally, but so many times, from so many sources, both within and outside of YA. This is a problem that exists in all publishing, it seems. I suggest you read NK Jeminsin’s post Don’t Put My Book in the African-American Section.

So basically, books with people of color on them rarely exist because they “don’t sell.” Even when the person inside the book is a person of color, the cover can’t reflect that. And when the book is about people of color, and the person on the cover is a person of color, they get shuffled off to the various ethnic-book sections, because white people don’t buy black books, and the majority of people who buy books are white.

People. It’s twenty-fucking-twelve. Can we please at least pretend we’ve matured as a society?

I see a lot of advice about writing women. Some of it is out-and-out sexist, basically saying women are solely comprised of tears and feelings which you have to slough through in order to get to the bit you want to fuck (usually written by men). Some of it is right on the money, or damn near it (usually written by women). But the bulk of what I see lands in some in-between area, where it’s clear the author means well, on some level, but is simply clueless (usually written by men). I’m going to talk about that third category.

The anatomy of these posts tends to be quite similar. They expound upon how women are under-represented in fiction. They might do things like quote the Smurfette principle, or the Madonna/whore complex, or something else they saw on TVTropes. They will state that women are people too, because we need reminding. Often there will be a list of statements which are “true” about female characters. “This is how you write REAL women” they tell you, nodding sagely.

And all the while, they speak of women as one monolithic group, with which they have had naught but fleeting contact.

Here’s the thing: If you have to break from your typical mold for creating characters to create a character who is also a woman, you’re probably not off to the greatest of starts. If you need advice about writing women, and you’re reading posts about how dudes write women, you’re not helping the situation.

I wish that every time one of these people is tempted to write about how they write a certain demographic to which they do not belong, they instead refer to the work of people who are in that demographic. I would never write an essay on how to write persons of color, or disabled people, gay people, or trans people, because I am not of those demographics, and I would rather hear their better-educated opinions on the matter.

But as a woman, I might have something worthwhile to say on the matter of writing women. So here goes. You want to know how you learn to write women? How to learn about writing female characters, and have women in your stories, both as secondary and as primary characters? To write authentically, to capture a real, honest experience of a woman’s life in your fiction? All it takes is two simple things:

One: Read stories about women, by women; both fiction and non-fiction.

Two: When women say something, listen to them.

And while I’m not about to go off about how to write other demographics of which I am not a member, I suspect you can replace “women” with any other group of people you do not identify as, and these two steps should carry you pretty far.

And in the process, you can elevate the people whose work you are reading, by sharing their writings, and encouraging others to buy their work. Because just as we need more diversity in the stories we are reading, we need more in the writers we are reading.

Basically, I’m tired of “How to Write Women” posts written by dudes who are looking for their feminist cookie. No. You don’t get a fucking cookie. You’re not helping. In fact, you’re making it worse. So knock it off.

Galactic Suburbia announced today the winner of its first Galactic Suburbia Award for activism and/or communication that advances the feminist conversation in the field of speculative fiction. (For the un-initiated, “speculative fiction” is an umbrella term for science fiction, fantasy, and all the interstitial stuff in between.)

The Honor List:

• Carrie Goldman and her daughter Katie — The girl who dared to like Star Wars
• Cheryl Morgan — Female Invisibility Bingo
• Helen Merrick — the Feminism article on the SF Encyclopedia
• Jim C Hines — For being Jim C Hines also Jane C Hines
• Julia Rios, Kirstyn McDermott and Ian Mond — The Writer and the Critic special episode of the Outer Alliance podcast
• L. Timmel Duchamp –- Aqueduct Press
• Michelle Lee — A 7-year-old girl responds to DC Comics’ sexed-up reboot of Starfire

And the winner…

• Nicola Griffith — The Russ Pledge

Good stuff, all around, all really awesome things worthy of your time.

The American Library Association has released its 2012 Rainbow List, a list of books which the both the Social Responsibilities Round Table and the Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Queer Round Table, in a joint effort, have decided to highlight as awesome.

Some of the super-awesome bolded titles are Beauty Queens, by Libba Bray, Huntress, by Malinda Lo, and Shine, by Lauren Myracle.

At Arisia there was a panel about queer science fiction and fantasy, hosted by Julia Rios. The panelists were JoSelle Vanderhooft, Meredith Schwartz, and Don Sakers. Rios recorded the panel, and posted it on OuterAlliance as a podcast. Go listen. (Be advised: It’s an hour and fifteen minutes long.)