final thoughts on the whole VVC brouhaha

[0mindthegap0]

I've been writing in a lot of other places about this stuff, but a few more points never really made it into any other discussions.

VVC recognises a very important female tradition, and celebrates the female gaze. This is a very important thing to protect, and I'll fight with tooth and nail (LOL, I wrote that as 'tooth and claw' the first time

Comments

[milly]

I think in large parts the issues we're seeing now is that certain people have decided in their minds to dub Vividcon as something it is NOT and has never presented itself to be. Vividcon is a vidding convention. It has never called itself the convention for female vidders. However, it was born out of growing interest in vidshows at slash cons, which traditionally has a more female attendance. Being that it was born from that, the original attendees (VVC is not that old, it was created in 2002) were in large part women. So without being created as a vidding con specifically aimed at women, it's what people have learned to see it as, because it was largely attended by women. But it's not a con for women, it's a con for vidders. And I think there are issues here that are way out of the concom's hands.

The one thing that bothers me most is that a small group of peope are creating wank - I have many first year attendees on my friendlist, and in large porprotion, their con report is positive and filled with squee. I'm one of the people who went out to newbie meet-ups and gatherings, and always asked people if it was their first con, talking with them about it, trying to make myself reassuring when I saw some O_O faces and just being generally friendly with peope. And this year? Was only my second year. I was a newbie last year. VVC is a very short con, only three days, which sadly doesn't really leave much free time for bounding and introductions. There was a very popular thread this year a few weeks before the con for tips and newbie questions, and tons of 'veteran' attendees posted in there. But people went and ran away with the wank.

I'll just say that the newbies I have seen complaining the most were very stand-offish and made no effort themselves to mix in with people, even at newbie gatherings. When you're giving people the impression that you *don't* want to talk to them, even when they approach you and talk to you, I think you partly surrender yourself the right to complain about it after the fact. I understand that some people are more socially awkward, and lord knows I've had my own issues with that in the past, but there's so much others can do.

[0mindthegap0]

...and we're getting back to the de facto/ de jure issue about how the con (and our fannish cirles in general) is run. Explicitly it is only a vidding con, but implicitly it is a vidding con for women. Just like how the conventions they migrated from were explicitly just media cons, but also de facto 'women's cons'. I ... I just can't see this being resolved very easily, but *shrug* who knows.

Implicit understandings do count for a lot, and while I have a lot of issues with that personally (these things often tend to fly right over my autistic head), you can't force a quite vocal and respected crowd to just change their views. But at the same time.. yikes. Just bill VVC as one thing and stick to it, guys.

And I do really, really appreciate you coming on here and explaining your experiences because, again, the chinese whispers are really kind of fucking with everyone's heads. I can really, really sympathise with anyone who freaks out and acts standoffish (LOL, I would totally be the one glaring in the corner out of fear to start with too), but you're right, there is only so much you can do. It's just kind of depressing anyway. : /

[milly]

you can't force a quite vocal and respected crowd to just change their views. But at the same time.. yikes. Just bill VVC as one thing and stick to it, guys.

Except that when that quite vocal crowd is a minority of the attendees and the majority of the attendees are looking over and going "WTF?", there's sadly a point where one party has to take a moment to look at itself and go "oh, right. Might have dropped the ball on that one". And logically, the majority shouldn't bend to the wish of the minority.

[0mindthegap0]

I do entirely agree with you on this, honestly. Please don't take my OMG glass is so half empty attitude to heart too much, because I do. It's mostly pessimism talking. : )

[milly]

Don't worry! ;)