Drowning Nor Waving

And I guess I'm not immune. Things like this still make me unholy angry.

If you are not yet sufficiently acquainted with me to find the bit that pisses me off yourself, I'll quote:

Jan Lancaster's story drew a great deal of response from our listeners. Jan lost a job with a construction company, after a long and satisfying career as an executive administrative assistant. The hardest part of getting back on her feet? Wearing a uniform as a cashier at Canadian Tire.

Jan's bald honesty about what it's like to face acquaintances and friends from the wrong side of the counter, starkly framed the whole experience of what it means to lose a job in this economy. In Jan's life, the uniform had become a mute metaphor for what it meant to exchange a job she was proud of for one that felt beneath her, a job as ill-fitting as the uniform that goes with it.

Excuse me, CBC? Run that by me again?

Jan's bald honesty about what it's like to face acquaintances and friends from the wrong side of the counter--

I thought you said that.

Listen up. I spent ten years of my working life, since literally three weeks after I turned sixteen and was legal to work, on the, ahem, wrong side of the counter. I recognize all too clearly that the jobs I worked during that time placed me and my co-workers, in many people's estimations, beneath them (insert the bit about how North Americans pretend to not have social class here. It'll save me typing). Some of those jobs I hated and did anyways, because I needed to pay my rent and eat food. Some of them paid me minimum wage and practically no hours, and I loved and looked forward to them. Some were fairly indifferent. Yes, some of them had uniforms or dress expectations.

None of them caused me shame.

I don't know if the tone of this article is a result of the reporter or the people interviewed, and yes. It is an emotional blow to lose a job you have invested effort and identity and time into. All those things are true. But working a service industry job is not a source of shame.

The ability to get for yourself a roof and a meal is a glorious thing. That you can, when for so many reasons so many people can't. That's independence and self-reliance, and even when it isn't fun, it's a big deal.

So I would not hesitate to scrub toilets to keep myself fed. And I'd scrub them to the best of my ability as long as I had to, in front of anyone you please. Without shame.

Because there is no shame in self-reliance.

Not only are there girl gamers out there, but like their male counterparts, there are girl gamers with an emotional age of thirteen:

([Redacted] sends cristalia a team invite, which is declined.)
[Redacted]: want to join my team?
cristalia: No, thanks.
[Redacted]: oooh please, we are having great fun
cristalia: Dude, I said no like twice now.
[Redacted]: a girl can't take no for an answer
cristalia: A girl's gonna have to.
cristalia: Or a girl's going on my ignore list.
[Redacted]: oh no, not your ignore list.....whatever will I do without a d-bag like you in my life??
(cristalia dies with laughter, while blocking other player's tells.)

Morals!

1) Never make binary gender assumptions while gaming! Do not calibrate your social tactics in-game to a normative standard of Stereotypical Gamer Boy! Or one day, you will find yourself trying to ineffectually cocktease a straight woman into teaming with you, then trying to wound her with feminine scorn despite her total immunity. And she will put it on her LJ and laugh at you.
2) If this chick's typical, I understand why I catch so much static as a girl gamer.
3) If you're trying to dis me, actually type "douchebag". Your debate position is weakened otherwise.
4) I don't want to team with you.

(fin)

Dear Self-Published Authors:

While I am generally happy to sit in my corner and not make any claims as to your ability to write your way out of sodden paper bags or not, your legitimacy, or your navel lint, 'cause it's not my business nor my problem? I would respect you more if you didn't act like you were born in a barn.

Do not harvest people's e-mails from legitimate semi-private mailing lists and give them to your "publicist" to add to your self-published people's promotional e-mail list. That is called spamming. It is not a friendly social practice. And we know who you are, because we know whose work's getting promoted, so yes, you will be linked to the crime.

I have put publicist in scare quotes because I did a little googling, and not only is this individual not a publicist, but what it looks like is that you have four friends, and you and your four friends go around publicizing and interviewing each other under the guise of being objective third parties in order to promote your self-published books. Or, to use short words, you lie. And this is all writ large and obvious inside five minutes of Google work, because you did not think to cover your trail.

I can only conclude that you think the rest of us are stupid. Alas for you, we are not. We see you there, and we see what you're doing.

So the next time you're sad because Publishing is persecuting you and nobody respects you? Remember this thing. There are rules in life, and they're not all handed down by Big Evil Publishing.

Some of them are called basic manners. And they are not optional.

Okay. So twice within the hour today I have seen posts on LJ and/or groups on Facebook* advocating not buying books at Canadian retailers who will not sell at the US cover price. Specifically, going in, demanding that the book be sold at the US price, and trying to pay in US funds at that price** or making other kinds of stink if the clerk says no, or informing them that because they will not accede to your demands, you will purchase at Amazon. Possibly when you had every intention of purchasing at Amazon.

I am here to tell you that there are two broad kinds of activism in this world: those that promote change and those that are an excuse to act like an asshole.

This is the latter.

People have explained this until they're blue in the face (typing fingers):

1) Publishers set prices.
2) The books are sold at a fixed discount from the publisher, through the distributor, to the bookseller. For most of our distributors at the bookstore, that is about 40%. Our profit margin as a business is defined by the rest of the distribution chain.
3) Bookstores, by and large, therefore do not exactly have a huge profit margin. Nobody's in this for the money, even Heather Reisman. She already has some.
4) If you, the customer, do this and were to get your way, the bookstore would be fucked. Its profit margin is set by outside forces, but those same forces don't set the rent it has to pay, staffing hours, hydro, the free food you get when you come to events, toiletpaper, and other necessities.
5) No clerk in Canada is going to say yes to that proposition and you know it.

Therefore?

This is not efficient activism, it's looking around to be nasty to people who can't hit back.

If your sensibilities as a customer are actually outraged at the lack of parity between Canadian and American prices on all kinds of goods at the moment (and yes, there is a degree to which they should be), here is what you should do to actually make a difference:

1) Write your MP a strongly worded letter saying that, as a constituent, you are not happy with how this government is enforcing your right to pay fair prices for product.
2) Write the publishers and say the same, as it is they who set the prices.
3) If you were planning on just buying online anyway? Just do it and that's all. Don't go into a store to pick on someone who you know has no say in the decision. If you held food in front of a cat and snatched it away, having never intended to feed it, they would pick you up for animal abuse. It's not okay for people behind counters either.
4) Consider, while this situation hopefully corrects, that there are things you get from a bookstore that you don't get online: the ability to browse, to be put on the trail of new authors or books. Expert opinion. That trick we do where you give me three authors you like and I find you something you've never heard of before, that you will like. Just as people fall down assuming that books are interchangeable commodity products (they aren't), methods of purchase for your books are not interchangeable either.

If you go into a business and pull that act and have not done any of the four above things? Well. You now know what I think of you.

So, in short?

Remember: Activist and Asshole both start with A, but that doesn't make them the same.

*Okay, I heard tell of that, I don't venture into Facebook.
**Won't work.

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... )

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.