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

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

The idea that the only thing wrong with the project of liberating the oppressed boobs of the women of fandom was the writing is risible.

Fortunately I didn't say that, so, you know, it's a point, but I hope you don't think it's aimed at *me*.

I wrote a statement about the project that's over here if you're interested in my more general comments about it, and subsequent discussion that may or may not be of interest, but a number of people raised a lost of good points. That is not, however, an invitation to be nasty and mocking to the people commenting there, since they've really had more than enough of that at this point.

[daedala.livejournal.com]

When people say he seems creepy, you say without qualification that he's socially ept and attrative.

When people say that people who know him say he seems creepy, you say oh, actually, you don't know him very well, but he's not the most socially ept person involved.

When you get called on that, you explain that the other people in the project are pinnacles of social eptitude, and he's only a little lower down on the scale.

This is a classic case of moving goalposts.

Elsewhere in this thread, you change tenses so that when someone talks about how the Movement works as a concept, you say it wasn't like that at the con itself. That is another case of moving goalposts.

The idea that someone who has almost 3,000 people reading him, and is explicitly trying for more readers and more comments, can't be held responsible for what he wrote because he's not that good a writer, boggles the mind.

And the idea of an attractive white local conrunner, who is known and knows people at the con, who teaches social skills classes for fans, but you can't see why this fails as a concept, despite the overwhelming responses explaining it (which are all dismissed as gleeful castigation of helpless victims), is really pretty scary. It's called privilege. You're swimming in it.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

Re: the current tense, they sounded like they were speaking of something that actually existed, not the concept. It sounds as though I misread the comment, thinking it was trying to talk about something that exists, or existed. Since there is no Movement, it did not occur to me that they might be speaking of that nonexistent thing as though it existed.

I do think he can be held responsible for what he wrote. That doesn't mean I believe the project deserves to get judged, denounced, and misrepresented purely on that basis, nor that he or the other people involved deserve to get attacked the way they have been, based on what he wrote and has since apologized for at great length. I don't know if you know the extent to which they have been attacked.

I can definitely see how this fails as a Movement, or as a thing to be evangelistic about, but for what it was, it was ok. It was even interesting and positive and, in a way I have described, feminist and empowering, and as an insider the first time I read Theferrett's post I could read in it a lot of the echoes of why it truly was positive and glowy the way he said in his spider robinson-like "social contact and togetherness and sexy women can be so beautiful, man" tone. I can see how the idea could get way out of hand, and I understand how it bothers people, and why (especially given the various representations of it all over the place). I may be white and privileged, but that doesn't mean I haven't suffered from unwanted touch and unwelcome attention. I'm not really what you think it does mean or how it's relevant, so I invite you to clarify.

But the reason I do go out of my way to socialize geeks is, no, I don't believe that someone who out of good intentions commits the sort of gaffe theferrett did with his first post deserves to be castigated and attacked.

I think you are right that I've shifted in my statements about him, and perhaps I should just go ahead and back down on saying he's socially ept. I *don't* know him that well, and people do have a point that the way he's blundered here points in the other direction, and I've had people I trust say that he can be quite sexist; though I personally don't think the project needs to be nonsexual to be ok, I think a post by someone who didn't take it so much that way would have been a better jumping-off spot. Perhaps as I get to know him better I can help him with that. But I'm not going to do it by throwing stones at him or at his friends.

[daedala.livejournal.com]

I am just in awe of your nobility. It's so gracious to note that you think you might be changing your tune at random. It's so lovely for you to take care of the poor, skeevy, boys in fandom.

It's really stupid to defend someone from attack without addressing why he is being attacked. HE DESCRIBED IT AS A MOVEMENT. HE SAID IT WOULD BE WONDERFUL AND TRANSCENDANT TO BRING IT TO ALL CONS. THAT IS WHY HE IS BEING ATTACKED. Nearly everyone I've seen write about it has said it would be fine in private. But we DO NOT THINK that "It should be a better world" where people can walk up and ask to invade your personal boundaries in public places. Are you really so stupid that you didn't understand that that was what people were complaining about, or notice your own tense shifts around it?

And you are defending that, and that is why you are being attacked, and why you deserve it.

[netmouse.livejournal.com]

People are complaining about a lot of things, and attacking much, much, more than the idea of it's being a movement. Yes, it is difficult to keep track. But no, it's not just about one thing.

And the said thing?

[theotherbaldwin.livejournal.com]

There are now discussions amongst some future attendees of Dragon*Con about how they will do this.

Not if, but *how*.

Re: And the said thing?

[daedala.livejournal.com]

Yup. I've seen more than one fan go into "fix it problem solving mode" without even being creepy sad male fans, just wanting to figure out how to make it ok, and not quite grasping that the problem wasn't just the implementation of the buttons.

[daedala.livejournal.com]

No, it's not, but when people SPECIFICALLY ATTACK THAT THING, you pretend that doesn't exist. And that really is one of the biggest objections, one of the main reasons people are attacking the rest and the people advocating, or being seen to advocate, the same.

[daedala.livejournal.com]

Oh, and in rewriting this I managed to lose the statement where I acknowledge you didn't say that. You didn't.

But you've very strongly implied it many times.