On Social Expectations; the Enforcing and Deconstructing Thereof

Much has been said over the last few days of the disgraceful behavior of the Readercon Board of Directors this week.* I'm particularly fond of Elizabeth Bear's and Leah Bobet's thoughtful and nuanced takes. But while I have strong opinions about what happened, and the reactions,** they don't differ that much from what other people have to say. ( What I'm writing about now is the idea that people have that 'since lots of fans have poor social skills, we can't expect them not to know to harass people.' )

*In case this is new to you: Genevieve Valentine, an author and panelist at Readercon, was repeatedly harassed by Rene Walling. The Readercon Board of Directors, rather than following their stated zero-tolerance harassment policy decided to talk amongst themselves and, latish on a Friday, release the decision that Walling would be banned from Readercon for just two years rather than the lifetime ban called for in the con's policy. There was considerable outcry (see the comments thread on that announcement-- 312 comments at this point, and none of them agreeing that the Board did the right thing), with people pointing out that not enforcing their stated policy makes the Board a) hypocritical, b) inconsistent, c) obviously favoring Walling because he's both a big-name fan and a friend of theirs, and most importantly, d) caring less about making Readercon a place where people can relax without harassment than they do about the tender feelings of harassers.


**I'm glad there's been such a huge outcry against the Board's decision; I'm very glad that Rose Fox, the Convention Committee Programming Chair, rosefox, has called for the ConCommittee to vote to override the Board's decision, and I'm hoping that it will do so-- I love ReaderCon, and would much prefer to see it become a place where all the people now saying they will not return would feel safe due to good action on the ConCom's part.