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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?
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But that the same time, it's very difficult for men not to become the same sort of problematic talking-over-people-when-they-just-don't-get-it "allies" I was talking about in my next post. Look at Joss Whedon: he means well and does a lot of good stuff, but still manages to be pretty sexist for a "feminist".
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I see parallels with disability rights/accessibility (I'm talking in general here, which I should have clarified from the start - about larger systems and patterns, not about Swancon, which I wasn't at. Partly for access reasons, which aren't anyone's fault as such, just the way most cons are set up by default.) Able-bodied people will say over and over again stuff that amounts to "But we have a wheelchair ramp! Anything else is too hard!", instead of actually listening to what people with disabilities are trying to say.
One of the strongest themes running through the feminists-allies discussions in the blogosphere seems to be "Just shut up, listen, and really hear us for a moment." ("Without getting defensive.") That, and "Believe our lived experience."
You make the parallels with race and racism also, which are totally valid IMO (disclosure: as a white person). All function in different ways, but the patterns repeat.
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I think the world would, overall, be a much better place if we could all learn to actually listen to what other people are actually saying :/ It's something I have real problems doing, especially with stuff like this where the default attitudes we were brought up with are so woefully inadequate for dealing with reality. I must admit that disability access is something I don't know a lot about, it's one of things you don't notice until it's forced apon you and then it's like "Oh...". I had a legally blind friend in highschool, and in recent years have had to avoid stairs as much as possible (though I can use them if neccesary, which makes a huge difference) and it's like living in this whole other world (also, fyi, Singapore makes Australia look like a haven of accesibility)
The more stuff like this I learn about the more I notice it everywhere. It really frustrates me how blind a lot of people seem to be to intersectionality etc, able to rant at length about how bad everyone is for making excuses for injustice against their group yet using exactly the same arguments to get out of confronting their own privilige etc. (And by people, I mean my white socialist father :))