From Juli Thompson comes a response to this post I wrote recently about sexual harassment…
I have been out of web contact for a week or so, and just saw your post about sexual harassment at the San Diego Comic-Con. I'm writing to comment on what you had to say.
First, this is not happening in a vacuum. Women have been being harassed at conventions since the first one, probably. We're in a minority, and frankly, a lot of the images of women in comics and fandom in general are sexualized. It's something that women have always talked about, usually only among ourselves. It isn't an issue that has been taken seriously.
Last summer, there was an incident that brought a lot of things together. If you want to spend a lot of time and energy reading about angry people and stupid behavior (on all sides), you can google "Open Source Boob Project." The short version is that some idiot decided that the world's problems were caused by the failure of women to let him fondle their breasts at will, and his decision to solve that by declaring that all breasts at conventions were available to all gropers at all times. He backtracked in the firestorm that followed, saying that women who didn't want to be groped should wear "No" buttons, and didn't see why that didn't solve the problem.
The incident, and the blogging, commenting, arguing and discussion that followed, sparked the activism of a lot of fans. They have been publicly declaring sexual harassment unacceptable, and working to prevent it at cons. There have been panels, buttons, vigilante groups, and much more. There have been complaints about this work, from those who are against sexual repression in any form, and those who think the incidents related were all good fun. There is also a subset of fandom that flatly refuses to believe that fans would ever do such a thing, because fans are a family, and cons are a safe place. John's post comes as part of this newly charged atmosphere, and reflects the request of many women that men at cons should name sexual harassment when they see it, and clearly say it isn't OK.
Your post was correct, in that sexual harassment isn't ever OK, just like murder is never OK. However, there is a subset of convention attendees who don't get that. They need to be told, firmly and publicly, that their behavior is not "cool" and it's not OK. Since fandom in general has promoted a culture of "anything goes" sexually, it isn't unreasonable to remind people in a very public way that "anything" means "anything two adults have agreed on."
I agree that this isn't something to be blamed on Comic-Con. I also agree that the management of the Comic-Con would probably have handled this better than the volunteers, but the volunteers do need to know what to do, and how to respond. I hope that John's post and other follow-up, leads to more explicit policies and training in the future.
This is longer than I intended, so I'll end it here. Thanks for reading all of this, and I hope it makes sense.
It makes sense and we're not particularly on opposite sides on this except maybe for approach.
I guess one of the things that's on my mind here is that I don't think "sexual harassment" is a useful term to employ if you want to discourage the kind of thing John DiBello's article was complaining about. The phrase was most likely coined for situations like when the boss says, explicitly or implicitly, "Sleep with me or you're fired," and maybe it needs to be saved for those pressures and intimidations. The unwelcome pawing of another person is not really harassment so much as it is assault. It almost trivializes it to call it harassment, as if the offense is primarily in that the victim is being annoyed or pursued.
No. If as John described, some lady was hugged and kissed against her will, she wasn't being harassed. She was being molested. How about if we call it that? I can well imagine some misanthropic frat boy thinking that grabbing some lady's buttocks is playful, fun, whatever…and it couldn't possibly be "sexual harassment" because it isn't particularly sexy and it isn't a boss using his position to grope a helpless employee. But call it molestation and there's no mistaking that it's a crime…and not a white-collar offense but something more akin to rape or physical violence.
I don't know that I agree that "fandom in general has promoted a culture of 'anything goes' sexually." That hasn't been my experience in close to forty years of convention-going, despite the yearning of many. It may be true in some circles, and true in the sense that the whole country has become generally more liberated. But I seriously doubt there's significantly more of it at a Comic-Con International than there is at any gathering of that size and age range. I also don't believe the cliché that cons are peopled by male geeks who live in their parents' basements and are more interested in Star Trek than in sex. I don't think that observation is any more accurate, though it seems to be far more prevalent.
Still, any violation of anyone's personal space and body is unacceptable and I'm glad it's being discussed. I just don't think announcing a policy in a program book is going to make a bit of difference and might even mislead people into thinking the threat has been somehow handled. For one thing — and I'm only half-joking about this — nobody reads convention program books. I know this to be so. I'll betcha I have the world record for the most articles, bios and certainly obits written in comic convention program books and I can't recall anyone ever saying anything to me that would indicate they ever read any of them.
More realistically, the problem is not that goons think that in the absence of an announcement to the contrary, sexual harassment is permitted. It's that they think what they're doing is not sexual harassment or, as I think it should be more effectively identified, molestation. That's if they even care about some convention's policy, which they clearly do not. What they might care about, and what might get them to keep their oily little hands to themselves, is if they think there's a decent chance of getting arrested and prosecuted. That needs to happen more often…and even if the identities of those involved is not publicized, the fact that someone got in trouble should be.
Actually, though I haven't spoken to anyone there about it, I suspect the Comic-Con International will go ahead and stick some "policy" into the program book that no one reads. It's easier for them to do that than to have the discussion about whether or not to do it. I just think it's a meaningless gesture and that where there's a genuine problem, you can do more harm than good via meaningless gestures.
