Welcome to the Harlan Ellison Memorial Personal Boundaries Club

[james_davis_nicoll]

Sad male fan capitalizes on way to be even more creepy to female fans.

As seen on a wide variety of LJ accounts. I have to say there's a clear consensus on the idea of treating women's bodies as public commons and it's not heading in the direction of commutarian touching. Who could have predicted that outcome?

Comments

[luna-the-cat.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is a shame. I think he gets to chalk this up as one of those famous "learning experience" things, though.

Or, in other words..."welcome to a world where you feel like a target. Now you know how WE feel."

....More seriously, in my experience on the internet and elsewhere, I have seen plenty of people who respond to coming under fire not by backing down and reconsidering, but by digging in their heels and building up their original position in concrete. Like, when Ellison triggered the original gropegate and his original apology was not accepted, and the screechy monkeys continued to come after him, he eventually fell back on "well, honestly, she was asking for it and I don't know what her problem is" -- and that was very clearly a case where no consent was given, too. With examples like that in relatively recent history, I give theferrett credit for taking on board (even if it was only eventually) the fact that there really was a Big Damn Problem with this.

[ms-daisy-cutter.livejournal.com]

the screechy monkeys continued to come after him

"The screechy monkeys"? Yeah, how horrible that the Connie Willis incident was the last straw in a long history of Ellison's behaving abominably with women, and quite a few of them felt the need to share and vent! Poor, poor Harlan, so attacked after he issued his non-apology apology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-apology_apology)!

[luna-the-cat.livejournal.com]

Don't get me wrong; I am not using "screechy monkey" as necessarily being a term of condemnation. For the love of little green apples, this is a tried-and-true, fantastically successful primate tactic: when something threatens people or things that we hold dear, we mob it, and yell and throw things until it runs away! I'm not saying it can't be misapplied, but being a screechy monkey is a winning tactic in terms of group defense.

I was one of the ones to actually try to beard Ellison in his den over that one, and I crop up in a few of the LJ comment threads at the time; I don't know if you saw or not, but my attitude the whole way through was "dammit, what the hell? That is NOT acceptable and he ought to know better; is he going senile?"

So, if you please, understand where I am coming from.

[ms-daisy-cutter.livejournal.com]

OK, gotcha.