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Things we don't see (at Swancon)
So I've been thinking about cons, and con panels, and at the same time I've been thinking about racism and sexism and... stuff, and I have some vague thoughts about the way "minority" (which may not actually be in the physical minority) opinions and perspectives get ignored. Unsurprisingly, these are illustrated in particular by the panel I did on Race in SFF, but I'm planning on going into that in a separate post (the combined post got too long and rambly even for me)
Now first off I don't want to be one of those people who equates huge evil social injustice like racism etc with small scale unfairness like media fans not getting the same recognition as lit fans. They are Not The Same, and anyone who says they are is an idiot. But on an individual scale some similar dynamics come into play, it's just that with sexism etc those dynamics are underscored and reinforced by society wide predjudice, making everything nastier and more complex. I'm sorry to anyone who gets annoyed at the way I blur them a bit, I'm not the most intellectually rigorous writer ever :/
In general wrt Swancon, I think people are not very good at recognising that "interestingness" is not an objective measure. There's kind of a negative spiral, where the people who run/decide on panels aren't interested in something, so it doesn't get programmed, so noone who likes that stuff gets on any panels, so...
At the "What are we doing wrong at Swancons" panel there was a lot of interest in attracting new members, but none in figuring out what it is we could do that the people who don't go to Swancon would like (for example, what they do at Waicon). The assumption seemed to be that we just needed to get people to turn up, and once they'd done that they'd be overwhelmed by how awesome the con is and never leave.
But as someone at that panel did point out: how do you figure out what POVs you don't see, if you can't see them?
This ties into a discussion at a Gynaecon panel on the way female scientists are treated in fandom. There's sort of a double whammy, where women are automatically given less respect for doing things that would get respect from a man, but also things women tend to like (craft, soft sciences, romance etc) are given less respect than traditionally male topics (electronics, physics, action etc) so that if you're a woman who likes traditionally "girly" things you get very little respect at all.
(I'm never sure how much of this sort of thing applies to me personally, since I have a self deprecating attitude but fairly male interests. Of course one could argue that that my gender isn't coincidental to my self deprecatingness...)
The way I see it there are three stages to something like sexism. There's active discrimination, ie "You're stupid because you're a woman". There's subconscious bias, ie "I can just tell that you're stupid. And as it happens, this is true of all the women I know." And then there's indirect bias caused by society's biased values, ie "Everyone knows that dresses are stupid, and thus you are stupid for liking dresses". The last sort is the hardest to root out, especially since everything gets complicated by girls who don't like dresses and boys who do.
And of course individual "sexist" or whatever acts are rarely that straightforward, there's always confounding factors like personal history, personality, etc. It's like at the "Race and the Other" panel where people were coming up with all these plausible reasons for the fact that there are no non-white technological societies in StarGate: yes, it's not impossible that any one of those could hold and the whole thing could make sense in a non-racist way. But when this sort of thing happens in show after show you eventually have to put your foot down and stop acting like it isn't an issue. Racism, sexism etc are like the death of a thousand cuts (plus a few deliberate slashes and jabs), pointing out that each individual cut is quite small and that hey, all of us get the odd cut from time to time, isn't very helpful. Some people get WAY more cuts than others, and we need to do something about it.
But what do we do? Well, I think refusing to be ignored is important, as is being as involved as possible in the decision making process. Even if certain parts of fandom never get their head around why some of us like/care aboutfanfic anime dresses certain things, they can at least come to terms with the fact that a large and vocal subset of us do and grudgingly give us our due (in theory. I realise it hasn't always worked out that way, thus Gynacon etc). With actual discrimination I think you just have to speak up, make people think about whats really going on and not let things slide. From the other end, we have to really listen when people complain about feeling alienated or ignored, and try and get our head around the idea that just becuase we don't like something doesn't mean it's objectively bad, and just because we don't personally have a problem with certain patterns of bechaviour doesn't mean they don't need to be changed.
None of which is easy or always works, of course. *sigh* Still, do what we can right?
Now first off I don't want to be one of those people who equates huge evil social injustice like racism etc with small scale unfairness like media fans not getting the same recognition as lit fans. They are Not The Same, and anyone who says they are is an idiot. But on an individual scale some similar dynamics come into play, it's just that with sexism etc those dynamics are underscored and reinforced by society wide predjudice, making everything nastier and more complex. I'm sorry to anyone who gets annoyed at the way I blur them a bit, I'm not the most intellectually rigorous writer ever :/
In general wrt Swancon, I think people are not very good at recognising that "interestingness" is not an objective measure. There's kind of a negative spiral, where the people who run/decide on panels aren't interested in something, so it doesn't get programmed, so noone who likes that stuff gets on any panels, so...
At the "What are we doing wrong at Swancons" panel there was a lot of interest in attracting new members, but none in figuring out what it is we could do that the people who don't go to Swancon would like (for example, what they do at Waicon). The assumption seemed to be that we just needed to get people to turn up, and once they'd done that they'd be overwhelmed by how awesome the con is and never leave.
But as someone at that panel did point out: how do you figure out what POVs you don't see, if you can't see them?
This ties into a discussion at a Gynaecon panel on the way female scientists are treated in fandom. There's sort of a double whammy, where women are automatically given less respect for doing things that would get respect from a man, but also things women tend to like (craft, soft sciences, romance etc) are given less respect than traditionally male topics (electronics, physics, action etc) so that if you're a woman who likes traditionally "girly" things you get very little respect at all.
(I'm never sure how much of this sort of thing applies to me personally, since I have a self deprecating attitude but fairly male interests. Of course one could argue that that my gender isn't coincidental to my self deprecatingness...)
The way I see it there are three stages to something like sexism. There's active discrimination, ie "You're stupid because you're a woman". There's subconscious bias, ie "I can just tell that you're stupid. And as it happens, this is true of all the women I know." And then there's indirect bias caused by society's biased values, ie "Everyone knows that dresses are stupid, and thus you are stupid for liking dresses". The last sort is the hardest to root out, especially since everything gets complicated by girls who don't like dresses and boys who do.
And of course individual "sexist" or whatever acts are rarely that straightforward, there's always confounding factors like personal history, personality, etc. It's like at the "Race and the Other" panel where people were coming up with all these plausible reasons for the fact that there are no non-white technological societies in StarGate: yes, it's not impossible that any one of those could hold and the whole thing could make sense in a non-racist way. But when this sort of thing happens in show after show you eventually have to put your foot down and stop acting like it isn't an issue. Racism, sexism etc are like the death of a thousand cuts (plus a few deliberate slashes and jabs), pointing out that each individual cut is quite small and that hey, all of us get the odd cut from time to time, isn't very helpful. Some people get WAY more cuts than others, and we need to do something about it.
But what do we do? Well, I think refusing to be ignored is important, as is being as involved as possible in the decision making process. Even if certain parts of fandom never get their head around why some of us like/care about
None of which is easy or always works, of course. *sigh* Still, do what we can right?
no subject
I didn't think there was the 'get them there' and the event itself will do the rest, but that the next bit of that discussion didn't actually happen on that day, and at the time, there was a lot of focus on looking at how to get people there - it's two seperate things, one of which was discussed thoroughly at the time, and was the focus of the panel inadvertently, and several other points that were also worthy of similar discussion and stuff, didn't quite make it into the limelight. (despite my trying!)
The issue of growing this is nothing to do with dropping numbers, numbers are in fact fairly steady (this year will be bigger, it was a Natcon and there was a strong eastern states presence.) The reasoning behind growing things is so that we have the membership numbers and potential funds to afford the bigger, and exponentially more expensive venue space. My many meetings with hotels and such put the most reasonable large hotel quote at a guestimate (and not actual quote) at $40k. Which is WELL over twice what we're currently paying, just for venue space. There are also several other associated factors. More members means that the number of people sharing the cost is more, and thus membership is less expensive.
For a value of expensive, which is actually for what you're getting, not at all expensive. Which is not to dispute that $120-150 or more to go to an event, is actually a lot of money.
There was coherence at some point... just some thoughts and info that might be useful.
The other thing that I'm trying to keep in mind is that there ARE constraints to how and what we can do, money is one, space is another, volunteers is a huge one. There may be many things that we agree to in principle - such as having a room for the entire convention for dealers, but as far as feasibility goes right now, very difficult.
Hope the info is useful/interesting in any case.
i'm noting this and various posts to go through and spend time on with the 2009 committee. At the very least we will take on board things, have the discussions and facilitate space for listening and said discussion - what we can then do with it will remain to be seen, but knowing
Also, you may not be aware that the social BBQ that we're doing, is also going to be a first programming meeting, largely informal and a chance to debrief on stuff, and discuss what's on people's minds before we really turn our hand to the upcoming swancon. Also gives people a chance to become familiar with our programmer, and she with everyone else :) Details on bbq available on request. There will be many other opportunities to do this if you or others interested cannot make it.
no subject
Ha, yes, I do realise that there are a lot of ideas people suggest and get attached to that would be very nice in principle but aren't necessarily practical. I do not envy you your job, unisfa committee was bad enough :)
BBQ! I forgot! Yes, when is it? Perhaps a post to
no subject
Thanks for the reminder :)
no subject