And he apologizes, but...

[leahbobet]

So I'm the last on this one, because my sleep cycle is screwed and I went to bed early, trying to fix it.

Would you believe that, having left the Hugo ceremonies immediately after my part in it, while it was still in progress ... and having left the hall entirely ... yet having been around later that night for Kieth Kato's traditional chili party ... and having taken off next morning for return home ... and not having the internet facility to open "journalfen" (or whatever it is), I was unaware of any problem proceeding from my intendedly-childlike grabbing of Connie Willis's left breast, as she was exhorting me to behave.

Nonetheless, despite my only becoming aware of this brouhaha right this moment (12 noon LA time, Tuesday the 29th), three days after the digital spasm that seems to be in uproar ...YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT!!!

IT IS UNCONSCIONABLE FOR A MAN TO GRAB A WOMAN'S BREAST WITHOUT HER EXPLICIT PERMISSION. To do otherwise is to go 'way over the line in terms of invasion of someone's personal space. It is crude behavior at best, and actionable behavior at worst. When George W. Bush massaged the back of the neck of that female foreign dignitary, we were all justly appalled. For me to grab Connie's breast is in excusable, indefensible, gauche, and properly offensive to any observers or those who heard of it later.

I agree wholeheartedly.

I've called Connie. Haven't heard back from her yet. Maybe I never will.

So. What now, folks? It's not as if I haven't been a politically incorrect creature in the past. But apparently, Lynne, my 72 years of indefensible, gauche (yet for the most part classy), horrifying, jaw-dropping, sophomoric, sometimes imbecile behavior hasn't--till now--reached your level of outrage.

I'm glad, at last, to have transcended your expectations. I stand naked and defenseless before your absolutely correct chiding.

With genuine thanks for the post, and celestial affection, I remain, puckishly,

Yr. pal, Harlan

P.S. You have my permission to repost this reply anywhere you choose, on journalfen, at SFWA, on every blog in the universe, and even as graffiti on the Great Wall of China.


Followed up by...


HARLAN ELLISON
- Tuesday, August 29 2006 12:26:56
CONNIE WILLIS'S LEFT BREAST, REDUX

Did I fail to mention, I am 100% guilty as charged, and NO ONE should attempt to cobble up mitigating excuses for my behavior? As with everything else I REALLY DO (as opposed to the bullshit that is gossiped third-hand by dolts), I am responsible for my actions 100% and am prepared to shoulder all consequences, instead of shunting them off to Vice-President ScaryGuy.

Adultly said, Yr. pal, Harlan

HARLAN ELLISON
- Tuesday, August 29 2006 12:28:31
REDUX, REDUX'D

This may be what killed vaudeville.

he

HARLAN ELLISON
- Tuesday, August 29 2006 12:31:1
REDUX TERTIUS

How's chances of me playing either the "I'm an old man and my brain is leaking out of my ass" card ... or ... even better ...

"I'm an old Jew and this is just another example of anti-Semitism because all you goyim are pissed that Jews really DO control the whole world."

I can go either way.

Yr. pal, Harlan

HARLAN ELLISON
- Tuesday, August 29 2006 12:43:2
ONCE MORE INTO THE BREACH

On a more serious note: if, in fact, Connie (or Courtney, or Cordelia) were/are/might in any way be offended by this latest demonstration of give'n'take jackanapery between Connie and Harlan (now in its longest-run on Broadway), you may all rest assured I will apologize vehemently, will crawl to Colorado through broken glass and steaming embers, and beg her (their) forgiveness. I need no one to prompt me.

Harlan Ellison, a friend of Connie Willis


Full original text and beyond here

Discussion at Patrick Nielsen Hayden's place, Jim C. Hines's place, Elizabeth Bear's place, Catherine Morrison's place (and part two), Lis Riba's place, Edward Champion for starters. And of all places, Fandom Wank.



I do not have half the blood in my eye that I did when I posted initially, at which point I was sort of pacing my kitchen with clenched fists, trying to do my lunch dishes by afraid I might throw them instead. So, mad enough to forgo the rule I usually have about the internet and being really mad about something. I'm wasn't sure if it was a good idea even an hour afterward, but that's about methods of presentation -- asking myself if snarky, not-funny-humor-angry was the best way to make the point that I still feel needs making.

Here's why I was that angry:

I was raised to believe that I could be anything I wanted: a fireman, a scientist, a lawyer, a construction worker, whichever: anything within my ability and range of interest. Being a woman and being part of a (granted, not visible) minority should not be a barrier to what I wanted to do with my time. What would be noted and respected -- or not -- was my intellect, ability, and accomplishments: how valid or invalid the words coming out of my mouth would be.

What pnh characterized as the message of such a gesture:

"Remember, you may think you have standing, status, and normal, everyday adult dignity, but we can take it back at any time. If you are female, you'll never be safe. You can be the political leader of the most powerful country in Europe. You can be the most honored female writer in modern science fiction. We can still demean you, if we feel like it, and at random intervals, just to keep you in line, we will."

--still stands.

I can't remember the first time I got that message smacked into my face in full -- it was at a job, though. I can remember the first time it happened in a convention setting. I was sitting with a group of (male) friends in a room party at a local convention, and a guy came along with a cooler of beer. He talked with us for a bit, and then asked who wanted a beer. We were all legal to drink at that point. A few of us said yes. He gave them to my male friends, and then said to me: "the top of that cooler comes off when your top comes off."

Y'see, to anonymous guy with the cooler I could win the Hugo, the Nobel Prize, cure cancer, end war, and at the end of the day I'd still be a pair of tits. That's his sole interest in me as a human being: the two mammary bits on my chest. That's all I am.

Cue the uncomfortable laughter from my friends. None of them say hey, this isn't appropriate. I took it to security and made a complaint, with my male friends trailing along behind me, and one of them asked uncomfortably why I was making such a big deal of it.

These two attitudes -- that you can harass a woman verbally or physically in this community, and that when it happens it isn't in fact illegal, unwelcome, and wrong enough to merit even the official channels but should be forgiven by the woman -- are what I have a problem with. Harlan Ellison acting those two attitudes on two colleagues -- one a multiple Hugo winner and one much younger with her first book, a bestselling memoir, out this year -- is like this example grown large of what we let people get away with all the time in the welcoming, equal, inclusive SF community.

This incident, its participants and venue, spike the comfortable idea that you can get respected enough to not have to deal with this shit, to somehow remove yourself from the category that the rest of the women at conventions are in. It's the same idea that says you can not wear a revealing costume and not get bothered, or you can be a panelist and not get bothered, or you can sell a book and not get bothered. That you have any personal control over how you and your body will be treated in the place you go for your fun and professional activity, that there are any limits.

And you know what? This is our house too. This is our workplace.

So we have an apology, one that in the linked discussions has been read as variously sincere, unconcerned, flippant, offensive, and a host of other reactions, but I hope this explains why there is the distinct taste of dissatisfaction stuck to the roof of my mouth.

The apology is tendered, but the message remains.



Down in the comments of the angry post, cheshyre raises taking something positive from this, using it to make some positive change. I would damn well like to make some positive change here. This is past due.

But I really cannot say how. Public condemnation is useful, but only so useful as each person's capacity to realize that this applies to them and their potential or past actions, to their conscious and subconsious attitudes. We're up against the same problem if we want to make changes -- that the source of any inequality is in the held (unexamined or examined) attitudes of the people who perpetrate the inequality. I get the feeling this is the Big Question (tm) of any issue of rights: how to change the mind of someone who already looks at you as less than them.

So.

No fun tickybox polls on this post, folks, but I'd like to hear your ideas on how we get across that this kind of behaviour is no longer tolerated in our house, starting now.


ETA: Jim C. Hines already has a suggestion.

Comments

[kriz1818.livejournal.com]

So nice to know there's another "morning person" on LJ. Not that I managed to get up as early as usual today, but still.

As I see it, the biggest problem in dealing with this kind of thing is the differential between perceptions of male and female sexuality. In general and historically, male sexuality has not been used to demean the humanity and dignity of men. As a result, asking a guy how he would feel about being treated that way tends to backfire, because to a great many of them the idea of being groped by a lusty female doesn't seem like a bad thing. (Being groped by a lusty male might get a different reaction, but let's not bring homophobia into this, okay?)

So the problem is, what analogy or argument would actually *work*? "How'd you like it if somebody treated your mother/sister/girlfriend/wife like that?" is also unsatisfactory to me, because it draws on the "women are possessions to be hoarded" (whore-ded?) meme. So, what? I've been stumped.

Writing this out has made me think, though, why do we need to convince men that *they* wouldn't like like it? Damn, but that power differential has seeped into my *bones.* It should be enough to convince them that *we* don't like it, and that that's a good enough reason to not assault us AND to protest when other guys do!

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Hey. :) Not so much a morning person as, well, my sleep cycle's screwed right now -- I tend to the nocturnal when I don't have anywhere to be, and classes don't start up here for two weeks. So I stayed up night before last and went to bed really early last night (6pm), and hopefully we will be on a daylight schedule once again. :/

Yeah -- the power differential is just in every corner of this. Men might not on the whole mind being groped by a woman because they know the woman isn't a sexual threat to them. And then...yeah. Tangled.

What I actually keep thinking of is the China Mieville Metaphor (tm): I don't have my copy of Perdido Street Station (minor spoiler below) back from the person I lent it to too long ago. Where the crime the garuda character was dewinged for is referred to as a severe instance of "choice-theft", which, we eventually find out was a rape. And then the protagonist treats it as...both worse and different than he had through the rest of the book. I sort of liked that view: seeing it as having a rather fundamental, serious, and personal choice taken away.

I think the instinct is, yeah, to go for empathy, to go for the metaphor to express exactly how it feels, because women and men aren't exactly assigning the same concepts to the same words when it comes to this topic. We are, in a very abstract-linguistic way, not speaking the same language.

I do like to think that most men, if grasping just how bad it is to have that choice removed, would speak out loud and clear against it -- a lot seem to and do. I have a suspicion that a lot of people, as people tend to when something is far away, not easily empathized with, or just not their problem somehow, don't really care. People are self-centered -- people think about what affects them first.

So it becomes an issue of making people care, then?

[kriz1818.livejournal.com]

"Care" is such a (forgive me) limp word. Step One is making people acknowledge that there's a problem. Step Two is convincing them that they can and should take an active role in doing something about it - namely, not tolerating it, in both word and deed.

And that being said, I believe we're talking about re-memeing the SFF community, not the whole world (yet). This calls, frankly, for a sort of publicity campaign. Men and women need things to say, key phrases that have deliberately been given the resonance of that aggravating "boys will be boys" phrase. It needs to be discussed in blogs and message boards, magazines and conventions (panel discussions? squads of people should putting up slogan posters? Hey, it works for governments ...).

But right now I need to attend to the usual morning routine ... maybe when other people get up they'll have an idea or two.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Heh -- substitute "give a shit" for "care", then? :) The distinction I'm trying to make with it is between acknowledging there's a problem in the distant, not-my-problem sort of way that reads: "oh yeah, racism/war in the Middle East/poverty, that's bad. Boo upon it, and I shall continue with my life now, no alterations made" and acknowledging there is a problem in the way where it sits in your gut and demands resolution. Making it an active issue, I guess.

Yup, just talking about re-memeing SFF at present. I'm not going to live long enough to do the whole world. I wonder how many people that takes...? (she said speculatively, with a glint in her eye)

[kriz1818.livejournal.com]

I read Hines' piece ... naturally, I think he's on the right track, since he mentioned making posters. 8-D

What's needed to actually change things is a *sustained* campaign. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Fandom Sexual Assault Awareness Campaign. SF³ SAAC for short. Motto: "Doing Something About the Weather." With posters, training sessions on handling sexual harassment for convention organizers, maybe an LJ or other blog community.

Of course, I haven't been to a convention in a decade or so, and can't afford to start going to them now (except maybe locally), so offering ideas seems like the most I'm going to be able to do. Maybe. I used to work for an employment attorney who I might be able to cozen into helping prep training materials "pro bono." And I had an idea for a poster.

Oh, dear. ;-)

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

training sessions on handling sexual harassment for convention organizers

Now that is a serious smart idea.

If we can rustle up a crew interested in doing the training, I can put them in touch with some people who I know are involved in Worldcon-level conrunning.

[kriz1818.livejournal.com]

I could research and write something easily enough. It isn't really all that complicated.

I have to wonder, do con organizers even have coherent policies about conflicts and their resolution? Get thousands of people together and likker them up and there's bound to be arguments and even fights, I would think.