Definitely not. The vast majority of the time the creepsters are older. In my personal experience, of the 8 times sexual harassment has gotten physical, 7 of the men involved were significantly older than me, usually in their 40s through 60s.
Sexual harassment at SF cons
- Thread starter Dohlman
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Definitely not. The vast majority of the time the creepsters are older. In my personal experience, of the 8 times sexual harassment has gotten physical, 7 of the men involved were significantly older than me, usually in their 40s through 60s.
Some people are just shitheads. They are going to act like that anywhere because that is how they relate to women, it's all a boy's club of ass-grabbery. The point with cons is a real effort has to be made to establish that this is totally unacceptable in con culture. That effort is only just being looked at as far as I can tell. I had to laugh at the suggestions that anyone being harassed report it, the last few cons I went to were quite chaotic, staffed by often teenage volunteers who were up to their eyeballs in trying to keep people in lines etc.. I can't even imagine who I would report such a thing to. I would not have been able to find anyone.
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I saw a number of 50+ year old men hitting on 18/19 year old women. You know how liberal minded I am, but even I found it rather disturbing. Mainly because these men weren't even genteel or polite, they were outright leering. That kind of thing bothers me.
Yeah, reporting it is easier said than done, and really, unless the folks running the con get a lot of reports about one particular person, most offenders are going to be ignored.
Another option would be to choose a male character and gender-bend the costume a bit. I've seen some great examples of that pulled off without necessarily showing lots of skin.
Yeah, I've seen that with Doctors from Doctor Who a lot.
Last year at Comicon, I saw a woman who had done that with the 11th Doctor's outfit and done such a good job with it that I had to take a photo. Her costume was done so incredibly well.
What kind of conventions are you going to? At the fan-run conventions I attend and help to run, it's fairly easy to find a committee member. At the very least, there should be an Info Desk where, if there isn't a committee member on duty, they should be able to summon one fairly quickly. (Some conventions combine the Info Desk function with Registration, so if they have no Info Desk, that would be the next place I would try.)
At the cons I work on, it's even easier - anyone wearing a headset or a T-shirt with the word "Concom" on the back can help.
And most cons have a Security department. It's only the big for-profit cons, in my experience, that hire outside security whose only job is to make sure that you don't come in without a badge.
(Yes, this is all fairly obvious when you've been attending or working on conventions as long as I have - which is about 25 years. So if the above comes across as condescending, think of it as a public service announcement for people who are fairly new to fandom.)
Not necessarily.
I won't name any names, but I have a friend who is fairly well-known in fandom (which doesn't narrow it down at all) who, at a convention a couple of years ago, was accused of sexual harrassment. Anyone who knows him - and as I said, that's a lot of people - wouldn't think him capable of such a thing.
Not only is he well-known in fandom, he was well-known at this particular convention - he'd been attending for years, and had several friends on the committee.
The convention's response was to ban him for life.
Yes, there was some blowback - as I said, the described behaviour was viewed as being out of character for him, but that didn't stop this particular convention from acting on the complaint. And as far as I know, this was the first time he'd been accused of harrassment, so it's not like he had a reputation.
There has actually been a lot of conversation about this sort of thing on an email list I belong to for people who run conventions, and as a community, we're doing our best to bring our policies up to snuff. The fact that most conventions didn't have a formal policy on the subject, in my view, only goes to show that most fans are reasonably well-behaved and implementing formal sexual harrassment policies wasn't thought to be necessary.
Though, again, at the big for-profit shows, it might be harder to get anything done about incidents like this because, frankly, it seems to me like they don't care about the community aspect of fandom the way the fan-run conventions do.
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Wow! I feel bad for your friend. If you're innocent and get accused, that has to be rough!
As for myself, the convention I attended was a Creation Entertainment ran Trek event. While I had fun, I had little need of help. Still, I didn't see many representatives on hand, though I could have just missed them. There was a lot to take in.
As for myself, the convention I attended was a Creation Entertainment ran Trek event. While I had fun, I had little need of help. Still, I didn't see many representatives on hand, though I could have just missed them. There was a lot to take in.
Well, the thing is, when he was asked he admitted to his behaviour. I don't think his behaviour (from what I heard) was the most egregious case of harrassment ever - he wanted to pay someone a compliment, and chose his words poorly. I believe there was also some mild physical contact (as in, he touched her shoulder). It's not like the case I referred to upthread, where there was below-the-waist groping that occurred.
He may have made things worse for himself by attempting to apologize later in the weekend - the woman in question may have thought that he wanted to continue his earlier behaviour.
So I wouldn't exactly say that he was innocent. I would say that - in my opinion, based on what I heard because I wasn't there - that his behaviour was definitely poor. But personally, I wouldn't call it "harrassment" per se. An awkward flirtation attempt, definitely.
(The one thing I haven't been able to wrap my head around was the people who said that his later attempt at an apology was a passive-aggressive means of asserting control over the woman. Apparently, according to those people, when you've behaved inappopriately, you're just supposed to disappear and not acknowledge that anything untoward happened. It must be the Canadian in me that makes me think that position ridiculous... we apologize for being in the way when someone else steps on our feet.)
Aha. Creation. 'Nuff said. What's that Rule of Acquisition: "Once you have their money, never give it back?" I think that's Creation's corporate slogan, and it extends to their customer service in general.
We have two kinds of Trek cons here.. small ones with a maximum of 200 people which are absolutely lovely and if anyone got harassed it would be easy to complain. Never seen or heard of anything going on. And BIG cons that are multi-fandoms with thousands of people. In recent years these have exploded necessitating moving to bigger and bigger venues. There are three to four a year of this nature in my city. They are a blast but I think it would be hard to find a bandaid if you cut yourself much less find someone who wanted to do something about a complaint.
I totally get the passive aggressive accusation as to the apology, having been on the end of that kind of thing. It's about the offender acting like you need to listen to their explanation, as if you want to stand there and give your time and understanding to someone who you felt abused by in the first place. And then of course they expect you to properly accept their explanation/apology in a way that offers them absolution. If you've felt sexually harassed by someone you do NOT want to listen to their "oh me me me" shit and sometimes you will be portrayed quite badly because you don't want to listen to it.
All that said, of course I have no idea if any of that was an element of your friend's story TorontoTrekker. I'm just attempting to offer an explanation as to what these kinds of apologies feel like from the person having to listen to them.
I totally get the passive aggressive accusation as to the apology, having been on the end of that kind of thing. It's about the offender acting like you need to listen to their explanation, as if you want to stand there and give your time and understanding to someone who you felt abused by in the first place. And then of course they expect you to properly accept their explanation/apology in a way that offers them absolution. If you've felt sexually harassed by someone you do NOT want to listen to their "oh me me me" shit and sometimes you will be portrayed quite badly because you don't want to listen to it.
All that said, of course I have no idea if any of that was an element of your friend's story TorontoTrekker. I'm just attempting to offer an explanation as to what these kinds of apologies feel like from the person having to listen to them.
This isn't harrassment on the same level, but I know someone who used to cosplay and would occasionally get looks and/or comments, usually from non-cosplayers who didn't approve her choice of costume, or would suggest alternatives more appropriate to her race. She did imply it was rare, but I suspect it was hurtful nonetheless. I thought she looked lovely, the couple of times I saw her kitted out. Plus the UK scene is pretty small and insular, I guess, and experience may be different abroad?
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