• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Comment Policy
  • Nav Widget Area

    • Instagram
    • Pinterest
    • RSS
    • Tumblr
    • Twitter

Pretty Terrible

Pop Culture Criticism by Natalie Luhrs

June 24, 2014

“Half-Sick of Shadows”: WisCon

There is absolutely no excuse for this level of organizational failure. None.

WisCon must do better.

It should not be on the people making reports of harassment to make sure their complaints are acted on in a timely and appropriate manner. It is on the organizations to which we have all given our trust to do this as a matter of course.

To delay action and to misplace key documents is unfair to all parties.

I  wonder how many other complaints have been misplaced or not acted upon over the years.  We have two three documented instances. How many more?

WisCon’s been on my list of conventions to go to someday for many years.

It’s not on that list any longer. Not until I see that they’ve addressed and changed this aspect of their culture. Silence and excuses and hoping things will blow over are no longer an options.

We must shine a light in the dark corners of our community. We must.

ETA: to change the number of lost or misplaced incident reports to three. My apologies to Lauren Jankowski.

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Tumblr (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Google+ (Opens in new window)
  • More
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Opinion Natalie Luhrs

About Natalie Luhrs

I'm a lifelong geek with a passion for books and social justice.

Reader Interactions

Links: 06/20/14
Links: 06/27/14

Comments

  1. Paul (@princejvstin) says

    June 24, 2014 at 10:52 am

    We MUST do better. This is not only unprofessional, but actively harmful.

  2. Laughingrat says

    June 24, 2014 at 11:27 am

    I’m getting secondhand embarrassment for WisCon just reading about that. So disappointing. I’d always gotten the impression that they were the best of the best when it came to social justice issues.

  3. Natalie Luhrs says

    June 24, 2014 at 11:29 am

    @Laughingrat: That’s the certainly the impression they prefer people have of them.

  4. Tracy says

    June 24, 2014 at 11:53 am

    I would like to hear what procedures other cons have put in place to avoid this type of situation.

  5. Joyce Reynolds-Ward says

    June 24, 2014 at 11:59 am

    Sadly, I have too many years of experience with “progressive” political activists to feel surprised by all this with Wiscon. It is not an unusual phenomenon; however, how such situations are handled can make a significant difference between people who just talk and people who walk the talk. I’ve not been wildly impressed over the past few years by Wiscon because I’ve gotten a certain vibe that suggests there’s more talking than walking.

  6. Natalie Luhrs says

    June 24, 2014 at 12:05 pm

    @Tracy: Geek Feminism has a page on their wiki with a good boilerplate policy. Readercon’s code of conduct–after the 2012 incident–is also quite good (policies and procedures are separate). I made a report last year and the process outlined on their site was exactly what happened.

  7. Veronica Schanoes says

    June 24, 2014 at 12:43 pm

    They lost not one but two complaints? That’s absurd.

  8. Tavella says

    June 24, 2014 at 2:37 pm

    Not quite at the “enemy action” stage, but getting there.

  9. Tracy says

    June 24, 2014 at 5:02 pm

    @Natalie Luhrs: that’s not quite what I meant; I was unclear. I am wondering how cons whose large con committees change from year to year handle the handoff of these important things so that nothing is lost between committees.

    I am also wondering about how the makeup of the con committee affects long-term solutions to problems… seems like the turnover of personnel would make for a lot of thrashing around with policies.

  10. Natalie Luhrs says

    June 24, 2014 at 5:11 pm

    @Tracy: Ah! Sorry for misunderstanding. I know that’s a challenge with Worldcons, where each year it’s a new legal entity but in the case of cons that are held in the same place year after year, there should be a parent legal entity that is the repository for this institutional memory. In the case of WisCon, that’s SF3. If you look at their about page, the same names keep showing up. I really don’t think that’s a significant barrier for any convention to surmount except possibly for ones that move each year and which are legally distinct entities (WorldCon, WFC).

  11. Xopher Halftongue says

    June 30, 2014 at 4:55 pm

    WisCon’s statement on these matters. Note the full apology-apology, featuring an acknowledgement of wrong behavior in the past, steps taken to reduce harm from that wrongness, steps to be taken to prevent any such thing from happening in the future. Not only do the current Safety Chairs apologize, the WisCon37 Safety Chairs apologize for dropping the ball back then.

    In short, they now have a formal report form; they now have a way of storing these reports electronically; there’s a new year-round position of Member Advocate to handle such matters; they admit it was all their fault and apologize to everyone involved and the community in general.

  12. ULTRAGOTHA says

    June 30, 2014 at 5:42 pm

    Which is good, I agree. But does not explain why Frenkel was allowed back into Wiscon even though the entire SF/F/Geek blogosphere knew he’d harassed Elise. That’s not just dropping the ball, that’s coating your hands with frictionless grease.

  13. Xopher Halftongue says

    June 30, 2014 at 6:13 pm

    @ULTRAGOTHA: Some years ago, a friend of mine said “we all know what to do when someone says certain rude things at a party. But what do you do when someone starts peeing in the living room? It’s so outrageous that you take some time to figure out what to do.”

    I think there were at least two different things going on there. One is that no one expected him to have the unmitigated gall to show up. The other is that (and this is another FAIL on the part of the WisCon process) many people had the mistaken impression that Elise didn’t want him banned, or at least that she was OK with the decision not to formally ban him. I’m not on the committee and don’t have access to confidential material (and I haven’t asked Elise), but IIUC the truth was closer to “do what you feel you have to.”

    I was working Registration when he arrived. He was asked to wait, and two Safety people took him aside and talked to him for a few minutes. I did not hear the conversation.

  14. ULTRAGOTHA says

    June 30, 2014 at 6:48 pm

    And yet he was allowed to volunteer in the Con Suite. Rose’s harasser was working registration. There might not have been written records passed along; but even *I* knew about those harassment incidents, and I’ve never even been to Wiscon.

    Part of me half expects them to ask Harlan Ellison to present an award to Connie Willis, it’s that mind boggling. o_O

    Also, thanks Natalie! (sub comment 😉

  15. Xopher Halftongue says

    July 1, 2014 at 2:03 pm

    When I spoke of the “real apology apology,” I was referring to the part written by Ariel Franklin-Hudson. It goes into detail about what went wrong, why it went wrong, and how they’re trying to fix it.

    The other part, while not quite a standard-issue “we’re sorry if you were offended” non-apology, is much more limited in scope. “One [can] almost see the drawn line,” as Mary Renault once put it.

Trackbacks

  1. Amazing Stories | AMAZING NEWS: June 29, 2014 - Amazing Stories says:
    June 29, 2014 at 11:03 am

    […] Improving STEM Programs COSPlay & Humiliation Female Creators in Comics (via SF Signal) WISCon Must Do Better Howard To Lovecraft Steven Barnes:  Can You Separate the Art From the Artist?  Columbusing: […]

  2. The Reading List, 6/29/2014 » Almost Diamonds says:
    June 29, 2014 at 1:55 pm

    […] “Half-Sick of Shadows”: WisCon–”There is absolutely no excuse for this level of organizational failure. None.” […]

  3. WisCon: The Frenkel Decision — The Radish. says:
    July 21, 2014 at 9:32 am

    […] “Half Sick of Shadows”: WisCon […]

  4. Debunking the Fairy Tale of WisCon, Feminism and Safe Spaces | Geek Melange says:
    July 24, 2014 at 4:40 pm

    […] was back at the con because Matthesen had said he should be allowed to return; that there were missing or misplaced reports and miscommunications within the concom; that Frenkel had been volunteering in the con suite (and that he’d […]

Primary Sidebar

Welcome

Hello! I’m Natalie Luhrs. I write about books and culture and whatever else strikes my fancy.

Search

Conventions

Balticon, May 25-28, 2018
Readercon, July 12-15, 2018
Capclave, September 28-30, 2018
World Fantasy Convention, November 1-4, 2018

Support Pretty Terrible

Updates by Email

Blog posts, cat pictures, and other random things in email? Sign up here.
 

 

Popular

  • Off To Be The Wizard, Scott Meyer
  • Lilian Jackson Braun, Part Two
  • Silence is Complicity
  • The Many-Colored Land, Julian May
  • I Read Cal Newport's Deep Work So You Don't Have To
  • Lilian Jackson Braun, Part One
  • Doing the Thing
  • 2017 Hugo Reading:A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers
  • Review: Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho
  • Oh Dear: SFWA Bulletin Petition

Footer

Helpful Links

  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Comment Policy
  • RSS - Posts

Archives

Looking for Something?

Recent Posts

  • Obligatory List of Media I Enjoyed in 2018
  • How lucky I am to be alive right now
  • Links Roundup 06 July 2018
  • Links Roundup 29 June 2018
  • Links Roundup 15 June 2018

Copyright © 2019 Natalie Luhrs · Pretty Happy On Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.