Interesting detail on Readercon

[james_davis_nicoll]

Their zero tolerance for sexual harrassment policy is only a sometimes policy.

Comments

[mondyboy.livejournal.com]

The whole thing, especially the Board's so called clarification, makes me furious.

[dd-b.livejournal.com]

Yeah, me too; people talking about "zero tolerance" as if it could, possibly, be a good thing makes me furious. "Zero tolerance" means "zero sense".

(The harassment is presumably real, and may quite possibly require a stronger response.)

[mondyboy.livejournal.com]

Zero tolerance may not be smart but it only increases the incompetence of the Board if they weren't aware of their own policy.

[caper-est.livejournal.com]

The Board say that the facts of the case are not in dispute, even by the perpetrator.

Zero tolerance is indeed a stupid policy and a worse slogan in most matters. Actual zero tolerance in this context might involve ejecting/ permabanning a somewhat socially-clueless fellow for an isolated incident of SmallTalkFail. Bone-wittedly excessive tolerance might involve - as a perfect example - the apparent actual Board policy on this harassment here.

A decision calculated to weigh more heavily on the victim's than on the perpetrator's ability to enjoy this particular society in future, has got to be a class-A double-prime stinkeroo on the face of it. And that's before taking account of all the obvious splash damage, which one would think that a Con Board just might have wanted to. Ych y fi!

[carloshasanax.livejournal.com]

Ah, it's "complain about quotas and defend Roman Polanski" guy again.

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

It's for a nonzero value of zero.

[apis-mellifera.livejournal.com]

I am horrified by the board's decision and by their so-called "explanation".

[actsofminortreason.blogspot.com (from livejournal.com)]

Come on, next you'll be wanting men to actually take responsibility for their actions and realize when they might be about to cross the sketch line and, instead, not do it. They're men, not machines! You can't seriously expect them to think ahead, or of anyone other than themselves, can you?

[daveon.livejournal.com]

Damn you sir! How very dare you!

[pickledginger.livejournal.com]

Bad Readercon, bad!!!

The concom has done some dumb things before, but still. What were they thinking? Were they thinking?

[martianmooncrab.livejournal.com]

Must be nice to be that person, because now he knows what he can get away with, and how to finessee the punishment.

More than that, he will probably rethink who he harassess, and start to pick off the weaker members of the herd.

[daev.livejournal.com]

It looks like Readercon's policy is inconsistent, even according to the first link which cites the rulebook. First they say that they will suspend membership permanently, and then they say that it will be done "at its discretion" [it = the concom]. They used the first principle in 2008, whereas now they're applying their discretion to the suspension and choosing 2 years as appropriate. It looks really unfair -- like somehow this guy's harassing behavior is more OK (why, because he's famous?), even though he harassed her 3 times (in 2008 the guy did it once, and he was kicked out on his ass posthaste).

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

There are different rules for BNFs.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

It looks like Readercon's policy is inconsistent

It apparently makes more sense if one knows there is an invisible clause explaining this policy is intended to deal with Aaron Agassi and only Aaron Agassi, not friends of the ConCon/BNFs.

[sean o'hara (from livejournal.com)]

So basically Zero Tolerance (for people who aren't important so we can show how tough we are). Is Harlan Ellison by any chance on the board that made this decision?

[agharta75.livejournal.com]

The guy they kicked out in 2008 is a Friendless Schizo Guy Who Never Bathes, so that was okay. BNFs are different.

[agent-mimi.livejournal.com]

Why doesn't everyone understand that the real issue here is how stupid "zero tolerance" is? Yadda yadda yadda serial harassment by a big name fan merits unequal punishment, blah blah blah women not feeling safe at a con because some behavior is essentially condoned... whatevs, ppl. We need to talk about how faulty the concept of zero tolerance is instead.

/SARCASM

[abigail-n.livejournal.com]

All that, with bonus "unsubstantiated complaints" - because apparently multiple corroborating statements from other congoers, a statement from the convention board that the facts of the incident are not in dispute, and an admission of guilt from the harasser himself count as lack of substantiation; I guess women have to walk around with recording devices if they want to be believed about harassment - in the first comment on File 770's report.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

+1

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

Maybe I'm too pessimistic, but after reading about some other cons (not just SFF), I'm mostly happy there was any punishment at all.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

I wonder how the board of Readercon is selected, or more importantly, replaced.

Given that a number of folks involved in the actual running of the Con have expressed annoyance at this result, one next step would seem to be to replace decision-makers to the point where this resolves itself.

[jsburbidge.livejournal.com]

Looking at the size of the storm this has raised and the speed with which it blew up, I can't see any result of this which saves the con except (1) the entire board at Readercon resigns and (2) the next board, after revising the decision to reflect the written policy, defers revising the policy until/unless it can be done with full input from the full Readercon community.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

Who appoints the chairman of the Hugo Awards Marketing Committee? Is the marketing committee a part of the relevant concom, or is it a separate entity? How des the rest of the committee feel about the chairman being a harasser?

[shsilver.livejournal.com]

The Hugo Awards Marketing Committee is appointed by a vote of the members at the WSFS Business Meeting and is separate from any sitting Worldcon.

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

In other news, Readercon 24 will be moving to the wonderfully named town of Sandusky, Ohio.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

How do you pronounce that? San-DOO-ski? San-DUSK-ee? Something else?

[(Anonymous)]

Interestingly, Tor.com had its usual Saturday posting about animations by Rene Walling this morning. Checking Tor tonight, I see the post has been removed. Whether controversial comments had been left or it was just decided to prememtively remove it before it attracted further attention and embarassment, who knows?

- matthew davis

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

I saw one comment saying something like "Why do you continue to host this scum?" with "scum" being a link to one of the discussions of the decision.