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gaudiorMuch 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."
I was particularly struck by a snarky and entertaining (despite the seriousness) blog entry by Shea Wong talking about the fact that people don't seem to realize that the social rules against harassing people still apply at a con. She says, "The rules of reality, with police and judges and jail, don’t stop existing because people are dressed as tribbles or Doctor Who. If you can’t follow these rather simple rules, you may want to well consider not leaving your house, as you obviously haven’t learned how to exist in society."
The thing about this, though, is that it's not exactly true. These aren't "rules of reality," per se, they're social conventions. We have a social convention, here and now, in American culture, that you shouldn't rape people. It's important enough to be backed by law, but that doesn't make it any less of a social convention. We also have social conventions, here and now, in American culture, that you shouldn't dress up as a tribble, because people will look at you funny. Nor should you (if female) leave the house if you're not wearing make-up, if you're not dressed in clothes (straight) men will find attractive, if your body doesn't resemble a magazine model's as much as it possibly can.
We have a lot of social conventions, in short, and a great value of fandom is that it throws some of them the hell away.
The difficulty is that people seem to think that getting rid of some of them (like, for example, the convention that being too interested in fantasy novels is unattractive and pathetic) means getting rid of all of them. Or if not going that far, that you have to understand that people in fandom are getting rid of conventions not because they don't like them, but because they can't live up to them. That fans as a group aren't socially skilled enough to understand social cues, and so if you want to hang out with people who have interesting conversations about science-fiction, you have to put up with the fact that they'll have obnoxious personal habits.
This idea removes an unacceptable amount of personal agency and choice from people's behaviors.
I think I see where it comes from. I think lots of us, when younger, went through the following set of steps.
1) Try to figure out social conventions. Everyone does this as a child. No child is born with perfect knowledge of the unspoken (or spoken) rules of society, and any parent will back me on this.
2) Before figuring out all the social conventions, notice that some of them didn't make sense, or suit us. Those, we questioned, or disobeyed.
3) Get punished, by adults or peers, for breaking those social conventions, exactly the same way any kid would get punished for breaking any other social convention. There are exceptions, but I think a lot of us got the exact same sorts of reaction to gender nonconformity or doing well in school that we would have gotten for picking our noses, putting lunch-meat on our heads, etc.
4) Become horribly confused as to why we're expected to go along with things we know don't make sense, to us or in general.
5) Conclude that social conventions, in general, are bullshit. Or, more sadly, that we're just so defective that we can't understand something that everybody else gets, because it still just doesn't make sense to us. Or both.
6) Attempt to learn the fucking stupid social conventions well enough to fake it. Or give up, or refuse to go along with them, or some combination of same.
7) Grow up, meet other people as smart or as different as us. Rejoice! Bound joyfully into fandom, where we have a society where lots of the most idiotic-seeming social conventions don't seem to apply.
And... that's where many people seem to stop. But there's a really, really crucial last step.
8) Think back to Step 2. Sort out which conventions you're not going to follow, because they're actually stupid, and which conventions you are, because they have a function.
Because at root, all social conventions have a basic function: to create a social environment where the majority of people feel comfortable the majority of the time, because they know what they're supposed to do, and because other people will suffer severe consequences if they disrupt others' comfort. This unfortunately gets skewed to favor the comfort of the powerful over the comfort of those with less power, but the basic idea is: make sure everyone feels as comfortable as they can as much of the time as you can.
Fandom tends not to be as sure about "making people comfortable." We've had too many experiences of people seeming uncomfortable just because of things we did that were important to us; reading great big books, questioning the religions we were raised in, choosing a family that doesn't match the nuclear version. But that discomfort with caring about people's comfort leads to things like people getting harassed at cons, and other people excusing the harasser because "he was just socially clueless." To the idea that worrying about people's feeling of safety is the same as mindlessly obeying social conventions.
So my proposal is this. Look at any situation, and the social convention associated with it, and then ask two questions:
1) Can I break this convention without causing discomfort and unhappiness to the people around me?
2) Would breaking this convention allow me to do something really damn awesome?
And if the answer to both questions is "no," then don't bloody well break the social convention.
Even if it's what you really want to do. Even if you really, really want to touch that person, who doesn't want you to touch them. Even if you really, really want to interrupt the person who's talking, and go on at length about your unpublished novel. Even if you don't feel like showering today, because it's a waste of time. If it's not awesome, and it will bother people, don't do it.
So, for example: sexually harassing someone is not awesome, and does cause people discomfort, so don't do it. Eating baked beans for breakfast is not particularly awesome, but it's not going to cause discomfort to anyone, so go ahead. Wearing a Princess Leia costume in public (especially if you're biologically male) might make some people uncomfortable, but it's awesome, so go for it. Writing a symphony about My Little Pony is awesome and will make people happy, so do it a lot, even if no-one's ever done it before.
Of course, this is in no way an easily-quantifiable rule, because "awesome" is a wildly variable word. Lots of people would argue about whether something is awesome. My personal definition is that something awesome increases the general level of beauty, insight, love, or fun in the universe. That's still vague, but it gives you something to go on.
The important thing is that "awesome" is not the same thing as "what you really want to do." There are some things we'd all really like to do that we give up the right to in order to interact with other people. An unfortunate reality at cons is that the people who have been able to do many of the things they really want to do are the people who share lots of the characteristics of people in power not at cons-- straight white rich cisgender men. And so people at cons who are female, of color, queer, trans, etc (many poor people can't even go to cons) have been able to do less of the things we'd really like to do. Because some of the outside social conventions have been kept in fan spaces, and not to our benefit.
Figuring out the social conventions may be particularly difficult for us going forward, because there are a lot of people who get stuck at step 5. Because we have Asperger's Syndrome or are otherwise neuroatypical, or because we're introverts and simply find social interactions tiring, or because we were so shamed as kids for not fitting in that we can't imagine feeling safe being ourselves if we try to follow social rules. That makes sense to me.
But I think that this idea can be freeing. What I'm saying is: there can be a system in which social conventions make sense. They don't have to be a set of mindless rules that we follow for fear of punishment if we step out of their incomprehensibility. We can have a set of rules that all have reasons, that are all actually designed to make our lives more comfortable and more full of wonder at the same time.
And we've already started. The enormous outcry about the Board's treatment of Genevieve Valentine says to me that we are creating spaces where we have rules for our benefit. That we have hundreds of people who say, "it's great to be smart, it's great to have good conversations about the mechanics of time travel, it's great to have unconventional appearances-- and it will be even more great if we're not assholes while we do it."
So let's not assume that all fans are hopelessly socially inept forever. Let's keep on seizing our own kinds of socialization-- ones that value creativity and intelligence and caring deeply about things-- and let's work on putting our social values into words, clear and sensible enough for us all to follow them.
I think we can do this. I think we're already doing this. I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes.
--R
*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,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
I was particularly struck by a snarky and entertaining (despite the seriousness) blog entry by Shea Wong talking about the fact that people don't seem to realize that the social rules against harassing people still apply at a con. She says, "The rules of reality, with police and judges and jail, don’t stop existing because people are dressed as tribbles or Doctor Who. If you can’t follow these rather simple rules, you may want to well consider not leaving your house, as you obviously haven’t learned how to exist in society."
The thing about this, though, is that it's not exactly true. These aren't "rules of reality," per se, they're social conventions. We have a social convention, here and now, in American culture, that you shouldn't rape people. It's important enough to be backed by law, but that doesn't make it any less of a social convention. We also have social conventions, here and now, in American culture, that you shouldn't dress up as a tribble, because people will look at you funny. Nor should you (if female) leave the house if you're not wearing make-up, if you're not dressed in clothes (straight) men will find attractive, if your body doesn't resemble a magazine model's as much as it possibly can.
We have a lot of social conventions, in short, and a great value of fandom is that it throws some of them the hell away.
The difficulty is that people seem to think that getting rid of some of them (like, for example, the convention that being too interested in fantasy novels is unattractive and pathetic) means getting rid of all of them. Or if not going that far, that you have to understand that people in fandom are getting rid of conventions not because they don't like them, but because they can't live up to them. That fans as a group aren't socially skilled enough to understand social cues, and so if you want to hang out with people who have interesting conversations about science-fiction, you have to put up with the fact that they'll have obnoxious personal habits.
This idea removes an unacceptable amount of personal agency and choice from people's behaviors.
I think I see where it comes from. I think lots of us, when younger, went through the following set of steps.
1) Try to figure out social conventions. Everyone does this as a child. No child is born with perfect knowledge of the unspoken (or spoken) rules of society, and any parent will back me on this.
2) Before figuring out all the social conventions, notice that some of them didn't make sense, or suit us. Those, we questioned, or disobeyed.
3) Get punished, by adults or peers, for breaking those social conventions, exactly the same way any kid would get punished for breaking any other social convention. There are exceptions, but I think a lot of us got the exact same sorts of reaction to gender nonconformity or doing well in school that we would have gotten for picking our noses, putting lunch-meat on our heads, etc.
4) Become horribly confused as to why we're expected to go along with things we know don't make sense, to us or in general.
5) Conclude that social conventions, in general, are bullshit. Or, more sadly, that we're just so defective that we can't understand something that everybody else gets, because it still just doesn't make sense to us. Or both.
6) Attempt to learn the fucking stupid social conventions well enough to fake it. Or give up, or refuse to go along with them, or some combination of same.
7) Grow up, meet other people as smart or as different as us. Rejoice! Bound joyfully into fandom, where we have a society where lots of the most idiotic-seeming social conventions don't seem to apply.
And... that's where many people seem to stop. But there's a really, really crucial last step.
8) Think back to Step 2. Sort out which conventions you're not going to follow, because they're actually stupid, and which conventions you are, because they have a function.
Because at root, all social conventions have a basic function: to create a social environment where the majority of people feel comfortable the majority of the time, because they know what they're supposed to do, and because other people will suffer severe consequences if they disrupt others' comfort. This unfortunately gets skewed to favor the comfort of the powerful over the comfort of those with less power, but the basic idea is: make sure everyone feels as comfortable as they can as much of the time as you can.
Fandom tends not to be as sure about "making people comfortable." We've had too many experiences of people seeming uncomfortable just because of things we did that were important to us; reading great big books, questioning the religions we were raised in, choosing a family that doesn't match the nuclear version. But that discomfort with caring about people's comfort leads to things like people getting harassed at cons, and other people excusing the harasser because "he was just socially clueless." To the idea that worrying about people's feeling of safety is the same as mindlessly obeying social conventions.
So my proposal is this. Look at any situation, and the social convention associated with it, and then ask two questions:
1) Can I break this convention without causing discomfort and unhappiness to the people around me?
2) Would breaking this convention allow me to do something really damn awesome?
And if the answer to both questions is "no," then don't bloody well break the social convention.
Even if it's what you really want to do. Even if you really, really want to touch that person, who doesn't want you to touch them. Even if you really, really want to interrupt the person who's talking, and go on at length about your unpublished novel. Even if you don't feel like showering today, because it's a waste of time. If it's not awesome, and it will bother people, don't do it.
So, for example: sexually harassing someone is not awesome, and does cause people discomfort, so don't do it. Eating baked beans for breakfast is not particularly awesome, but it's not going to cause discomfort to anyone, so go ahead. Wearing a Princess Leia costume in public (especially if you're biologically male) might make some people uncomfortable, but it's awesome, so go for it. Writing a symphony about My Little Pony is awesome and will make people happy, so do it a lot, even if no-one's ever done it before.
Of course, this is in no way an easily-quantifiable rule, because "awesome" is a wildly variable word. Lots of people would argue about whether something is awesome. My personal definition is that something awesome increases the general level of beauty, insight, love, or fun in the universe. That's still vague, but it gives you something to go on.
The important thing is that "awesome" is not the same thing as "what you really want to do." There are some things we'd all really like to do that we give up the right to in order to interact with other people. An unfortunate reality at cons is that the people who have been able to do many of the things they really want to do are the people who share lots of the characteristics of people in power not at cons-- straight white rich cisgender men. And so people at cons who are female, of color, queer, trans, etc (many poor people can't even go to cons) have been able to do less of the things we'd really like to do. Because some of the outside social conventions have been kept in fan spaces, and not to our benefit.
Figuring out the social conventions may be particularly difficult for us going forward, because there are a lot of people who get stuck at step 5. Because we have Asperger's Syndrome or are otherwise neuroatypical, or because we're introverts and simply find social interactions tiring, or because we were so shamed as kids for not fitting in that we can't imagine feeling safe being ourselves if we try to follow social rules. That makes sense to me.
But I think that this idea can be freeing. What I'm saying is: there can be a system in which social conventions make sense. They don't have to be a set of mindless rules that we follow for fear of punishment if we step out of their incomprehensibility. We can have a set of rules that all have reasons, that are all actually designed to make our lives more comfortable and more full of wonder at the same time.
And we've already started. The enormous outcry about the Board's treatment of Genevieve Valentine says to me that we are creating spaces where we have rules for our benefit. That we have hundreds of people who say, "it's great to be smart, it's great to have good conversations about the mechanics of time travel, it's great to have unconventional appearances-- and it will be even more great if we're not assholes while we do it."
So let's not assume that all fans are hopelessly socially inept forever. Let's keep on seizing our own kinds of socialization-- ones that value creativity and intelligence and caring deeply about things-- and let's work on putting our social values into words, clear and sensible enough for us all to follow them.
I think we can do this. I think we're already doing this. I'm looking forward to seeing how it goes.
--R
*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.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-29 10:12 pm (UTC)2) Would breaking this convention allow me to do something really damn awesome?
The problem that I see with the first one is that some people won't think that breaking a particular social convention might cause discomfort or unhappiness, assuming they know that there's a social convention that they're breaking in the first place. If your gut deep reaction to physical contact is 'yay, hugs!' then it might not occur to you that touching strangers could make them uncomfortable. Now, one would hope that when the stranger's reaction to being touched is "stop that" that you would, you know, stop that, but if you're socially clueless and think that hugs make everything better, it might take a while for it to sink in that other people might not want hugs from strangers and that "stop that" means "you are making me uncomfortable, back off" and not "I don't want a hug right now."
And if you're not sure if taking an action might make someone uncomfortable because you don't understand what does and does not make other people nervous, you'll start being afraid to do anything at all, which is not the point either.
Having said all that though, I'm not sure how one can go to conventions and not have come across this kind of discussion before, so I don't know how people could not at least intellectually know certain behaviors which have been repeatedly talked about in fannish circles in con reports after this sort of thing happens are considered to be harassment and you should therefore not do these things. I suppose this is where the "But I'm a Nice Person so it's okay, everyone knows I don't mean any harm by it" comes in.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-08-01 03:18 pm (UTC)Because fandom can and does have social conventions. It's just that one of them is this problematic idea that this is a space where it's okay to not be conventional and "mundane," and "normal," so anything should go. I would rather we have positive conventions (doing creative, unusual things is awesome!) than negative ones (it's not okay to make fun of people for wearing costumes).