I see nothing wrong with the project as an experiment among consenting adults. But the evangelizing of it to everybody is a different matter. That's what pissed me off.
To put it in choice language: if you set up a safe space for touch experiments, you increase choice for both people who choose to participate and people who choose not to. If you bring the experiment out to people who have not explicitly chosen to participate, you increase choice for participants, but you put nonparticipants in a situation where their choices are reduced (by forcing them to deal with it when for various reasons they choose not to).
The fact that the guy who posted about it made it all about his teenaged issues with not getting enough bewbie (and that a man posted about it in the first place, rather than a woman) is a large part of the shitstorm. Maybe if this had been addressed initially by a woman, people would see it differently. One of my real problems with the whole thing is that the OP couldn't see that a lot of the discussion really wasn't about him and his personal boob-groping. It was about the context in which sexual touch was OK at cons.
Also, unagreed partial comment thread whacking is uncool on general principle.
See, I have been reading theferrett since before there was even a livejournal - I don't remember how I found him, but back in the dark ages, he somehow tripped a random trawl through the internet - and I realise that I may be coming from an overly-supportive point for him, because I do not believe that he ever, ever intends harm, and I do believe that he deserves mad propz for taking one on the chin on occasion - and if nothing else, everyone has had to think about this. Thinking is awesome. So I'm fully, fully prepared to admit that I am backing this because it was his post more than I probably should, especially given that I don't know what I would say if I were presented with the OSBP.
That aside: I agree with what you've said here completely, about touch experiments, choice, and space, though I will quibble and add that, at cons, there's a whole lot that goes on that I, personally, disagree with, but running through a con and shouting "OMG FURRIES" is not likely to get me any friends; I do have a very, uh, laissez-faire view of things that are not directly infringing on me, and I own that; if I don't want to see it, I can look away and not be bothered by it, and other peoples' mileage varies.
But away from that post - which I did not read the comments of, and have only reacted to where other people have reacted in their journals - I have been attacked, a lot, for saying that, see, this language shuts out people who have said yes, and that's not okay. So it's fair to say I'm not even really reacting to the OSBP any more, so much as I'm reacting to the people who want to see it quashed and all theferrett's works destroyed. Which is an exaggeration, but frankly, I'm feeling really attacked (not by you), and the fact that someone actually had the brass ones to censor what I said to her (and not respond when I called her on it) has had me in tears several times. I know we haven't known each other long or talked much, but that does take some doing to make happen.
All because I'm asking people to realise the irony of saying "No woman can be touched like that, blanket generalisation." Where is that different from "No woman can have an abortion, end of conversation"?
Which is not to say that I am attacking you with that, or saying that you're not saying that - I'm sorry, I do tend to overexplain online, because I'm never sure I got my point across, so I'm probably making you nuts by droning on - or even that I don't agree with you, just that I'm coming from a slightly different place about all of this, I think, by not having looked at the original post's comments. Hell, I'm not even saying I agree with the OSBP or that I would say yes if asked; just that I want people to realise that a whole lot of them are speaking in terms that, if a man, particularly, say, John McCain, used, they'd be calling for his blood.
We must have very different flists, because I'm not seeing a lot of this. I see a lot of "how dare this asshole think he can set up a default where I have to say no to not get my tits touched?", but that's a function of the average age of my flist (which includes a lot of college friends, thus a lot of late 30s and early 40s). A lot of the women in that age group, particularly geek women, have experienced a lot of harassment in geekspace, and the OSBP goes right to their bad experiences. Not everybody--I have a friend in her 40s who thinks there must be something wrong with her because it's not her hot-button issue. I told her no, there's nothing wrong with her. It's just not her particular damage.
Having said that, I find the statement "no woman can be touched like that" absolutely outrageous. WTF and who elected whoever said that arbiter of who touches my tits? My tits are mine and I am the only person who gets to say who touches them (absent prior agreements I made). If the goddamn PC patrol doesn't like who I permit to touch my tits, they can kiss my lily-white Texas ass.
I don't doubt that you're running into this, but it's totally outside the discussions I'm seeing about the issue.
polymexina asked that same question, more or less, about where I was seeing it, and I realised that most of where I'm seeing it is the person that censored me, so I'm not naming names for a lot of reasons.
I think that there's a lot of confusion, actually, of that harassment and the OSBP, which is not to say that it might not be warranted; again, if it were implemented, it should be regulated by the participants to a fare-thee-well, but it got to a point in that original post that I felt that the poster was pretty much saying "All men are assholes and don't have the decency, none of them, to even understand the concepts here, let alone ask a question." And I dislike that sort of broad-spectrum generalisation, whether about sex, gender, race, creed, colour, etc, in all things. It was a recipe made for disaster.
I also count myself pretty blessed, when I'm not bummed out by it, that I'm not a target for social-sexual interaction, whether harassment, which is not something I'm saying I need more of in my life - just that people don't harass me because a) I'm ugly, and b) I could eat everyone alive in one bite, I'm that damn tall - or not; no one flirts with me, either, and that part of me doesn't work at all, doesn't know how to deal, which probably goes a fair way to explaining why this hasn't bothered me in some specific ways. I mean, yes, I've been treated exactly as I claimed in my post, I wouldn't lie about that, but I haven't been consistently treated that way by any means, so maybe I come at the whole idea too tolerantly, but it's still my right to choose, and everyone else's right to choose, and when choice is abrogated by another person is when I blow up.
I hear that you are not tarring me with the same brush and I appreciate it. This is a topic where everybody brings their own baggage and their reactions come accordingly.
I know a lot of very decent men (including the one I married) who think the OSBP idea stinks except among close friends and can explain why in ways that don't include "all men suck". The well is poisoned so badly for a lot of women that it doesn't take all men sucking to ruin a con. It takes a small number of aggressive men who don't abide by the OSBP rules, and, sadly it's highly likely that there will be guys like that at a con with 1000 people.
Naturally the topic is going to attract a lot of attention from women because we're more likely to get groped. But guys have an investment too, and not just in enjoying touching boobs. When I said to my husband, "This is the kind of thing that makes me not want to go to cons," he was unhappy because he wants me to think of congoing as fun (the way it has been for him) and not scary (where random men may ask to touch my tits the way the OP talked about at ConFusion in the first post).
And the fact that in grad school, I was the cute girl who worked in the comics/gaming shop and effectively putting up with their skeeviness was part of my job colors my take. So does the fact that I was raised Southern enough to not make a huge fuss and be ladylike, and that in the past I have failed to belt guys who got out of line even when they really needed it. I want the presumptive public choice on boob-grabbing to be loudly NO, so women who aren't comfortable saying that NO don't have to be groped because their permission was assumed.
Oh, TOTALLY agreed. There is NO reason to change the public's presumptive choice - it is NOT okay to touch anyone, ever, without their invitation.
Ergh, oh god.
Yeah, I work with geeks now, and...I love my job, but sometimes they don't get it. Like, my boss is a complete sweetheart most of the time, but when he's talking about women who have power over him, it's...kind of scary. He's not overtly sexist about it, but if you know what you're listening for, he really is. And a lot of the guys in my department have no idea what to do with a woman; I'm just glad that I'm not in a position of public exposure for this con, because I'd be up on assault charges by the end of the month.
So, you know, you're right. When people are coming from that level of social retardation that they might think it's okay to actively just grab someone without asking (or even knowing them) then the OSBP isn't a good idea, and the water was pissed in the moment it was posted. I just - I want everyone to win the pony, okay, I want everyone to have everything they want to be come true, I want everyone to tell people who say "You can't be a doctor, you're poor and don't speak English," to fuck off and die and then go out and become the best damn doctor ever just to prove them wrong. And part of that weirdly fundamental optimism is this: whatever behaviour people display, most of them are not bad people. Most of them could learn to be good, erudite, kind people. Most of them are not so broken they can't be fixed.
And I kind of wished I lived in that world already, and forgot that really, where I'm at is better than a lot of people even in my country have it, in terms of respect they receive from "the man on the street", and that the things I don't like about myself are the things that keep me "safe".
But as far as I'm concerned, you have the choice to hand someone their ass if they behave badly again, and I personally think you should take it. *g*
I should add that something that influenced my take on this was the Harlan Ellison/Connie Willis incident a couple of years ago, when he groped her onstage at some awards (the Hugos, IIRC). There was a huge storm about that and his follow-up behavior, the details of which I've largely forgotten other than that I was appalled to see people defending his right to grab a woman's breast in public on ground that basically, boys will be boys.
Put that attitude together with moving OSBP into general conspace and you have real problems.
Oh, totally agreed that it doesn't work if all the participants don't consent (and actually, that incident's still having repercussions here.) and can't act like grown-ups omg, it is NEVER anyone's right to do anything because "boys will be boys" argh flail froth stab.
To put it in choice language: if you set up a safe space for touch experiments, you increase choice for both people who choose to participate and people who choose not to. If you bring the experiment out to people who have not explicitly chosen to participate, you increase choice for participants, but you put nonparticipants in a situation where their choices are reduced (by forcing them to deal with it when for various reasons they choose not to).
The fact that the guy who posted about it made it all about his teenaged issues with not getting enough bewbie (and that a man posted about it in the first place, rather than a woman) is a large part of the shitstorm. Maybe if this had been addressed initially by a woman, people would see it differently. One of my real problems with the whole thing is that the OP couldn't see that a lot of the discussion really wasn't about him and his personal boob-groping. It was about the context in which sexual touch was OK at cons.
Also, unagreed partial comment thread whacking is uncool on general principle.
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That aside: I agree with what you've said here completely, about touch experiments, choice, and space, though I will quibble and add that, at cons, there's a whole lot that goes on that I, personally, disagree with, but running through a con and shouting "OMG FURRIES" is not likely to get me any friends; I do have a very, uh, laissez-faire view of things that are not directly infringing on me, and I own that; if I don't want to see it, I can look away and not be bothered by it, and other peoples' mileage varies.
But away from that post - which I did not read the comments of, and have only reacted to where other people have reacted in their journals - I have been attacked, a lot, for saying that, see, this language shuts out people who have said yes, and that's not okay. So it's fair to say I'm not even really reacting to the OSBP any more, so much as I'm reacting to the people who want to see it quashed and all theferrett's works destroyed. Which is an exaggeration, but frankly, I'm feeling really attacked (not by you), and the fact that someone actually had the brass ones to censor what I said to her (and not respond when I called her on it) has had me in tears several times. I know we haven't known each other long or talked much, but that does take some doing to make happen.
All because I'm asking people to realise the irony of saying "No woman can be touched like that, blanket generalisation." Where is that different from "No woman can have an abortion, end of conversation"?
Which is not to say that I am attacking you with that, or saying that you're not saying that - I'm sorry, I do tend to overexplain online, because I'm never sure I got my point across, so I'm probably making you nuts by droning on - or even that I don't agree with you, just that I'm coming from a slightly different place about all of this, I think, by not having looked at the original post's comments. Hell, I'm not even saying I agree with the OSBP or that I would say yes if asked; just that I want people to realise that a whole lot of them are speaking in terms that, if a man, particularly, say, John McCain, used, they'd be calling for his blood.
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Having said that, I find the statement "no woman can be touched like that" absolutely outrageous. WTF and who elected whoever said that arbiter of who touches my tits? My tits are mine and I am the only person who gets to say who touches them (absent prior agreements I made). If the goddamn PC patrol doesn't like who I permit to touch my tits, they can kiss my lily-white Texas ass.
I don't doubt that you're running into this, but it's totally outside the discussions I'm seeing about the issue.
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I think that there's a lot of confusion, actually, of that harassment and the OSBP, which is not to say that it might not be warranted; again, if it were implemented, it should be regulated by the participants to a fare-thee-well, but it got to a point in that original post that I felt that the poster was pretty much saying "All men are assholes and don't have the decency, none of them, to even understand the concepts here, let alone ask a question." And I dislike that sort of broad-spectrum generalisation, whether about sex, gender, race, creed, colour, etc, in all things. It was a recipe made for disaster.
I also count myself pretty blessed, when I'm not bummed out by it, that I'm not a target for social-sexual interaction, whether harassment, which is not something I'm saying I need more of in my life - just that people don't harass me because a) I'm ugly, and b) I could eat everyone alive in one bite, I'm that damn tall - or not; no one flirts with me, either, and that part of me doesn't work at all, doesn't know how to deal, which probably goes a fair way to explaining why this hasn't bothered me in some specific ways. I mean, yes, I've been treated exactly as I claimed in my post, I wouldn't lie about that, but I haven't been consistently treated that way by any means, so maybe I come at the whole idea too tolerantly, but it's still my right to choose, and everyone else's right to choose, and when choice is abrogated by another person is when I blow up.
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I know a lot of very decent men (including the one I married) who think the OSBP idea stinks except among close friends and can explain why in ways that don't include "all men suck". The well is poisoned so badly for a lot of women that it doesn't take all men sucking to ruin a con. It takes a small number of aggressive men who don't abide by the OSBP rules, and, sadly it's highly likely that there will be guys like that at a con with 1000 people.
Naturally the topic is going to attract a lot of attention from women because we're more likely to get groped. But guys have an investment too, and not just in enjoying touching boobs. When I said to my husband, "This is the kind of thing that makes me not want to go to cons," he was unhappy because he wants me to think of congoing as fun (the way it has been for him) and not scary (where random men may ask to touch my tits the way the OP talked about at ConFusion in the first post).
And the fact that in grad school, I was the cute girl who worked in the comics/gaming shop and effectively putting up with their skeeviness was part of my job colors my take. So does the fact that I was raised Southern enough to not make a huge fuss and be ladylike, and that in the past I have failed to belt guys who got out of line even when they really needed it. I want the presumptive public choice on boob-grabbing to be loudly NO, so women who aren't comfortable saying that NO don't have to be groped because their permission was assumed.
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Ergh, oh god.
Yeah, I work with geeks now, and...I love my job, but sometimes they don't get it. Like, my boss is a complete sweetheart most of the time, but when he's talking about women who have power over him, it's...kind of scary. He's not overtly sexist about it, but if you know what you're listening for, he really is. And a lot of the guys in my department have no idea what to do with a woman; I'm just glad that I'm not in a position of public exposure for this con, because I'd be up on assault charges by the end of the month.
So, you know, you're right. When people are coming from that level of social retardation that they might think it's okay to actively just grab someone without asking (or even knowing them) then the OSBP isn't a good idea, and the water was pissed in the moment it was posted. I just - I want everyone to win the pony, okay, I want everyone to have everything they want to be come true, I want everyone to tell people who say "You can't be a doctor, you're poor and don't speak English," to fuck off and die and then go out and become the best damn doctor ever just to prove them wrong. And part of that weirdly fundamental optimism is this: whatever behaviour people display, most of them are not bad people. Most of them could learn to be good, erudite, kind people. Most of them are not so broken they can't be fixed.
And I kind of wished I lived in that world already, and forgot that really, where I'm at is better than a lot of people even in my country have it, in terms of respect they receive from "the man on the street", and that the things I don't like about myself are the things that keep me "safe".
But as far as I'm concerned, you have the choice to hand someone their ass if they behave badly again, and I personally think you should take it. *g*
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Put that attitude together with moving OSBP into general conspace and you have real problems.
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Seriously, I absolutely hate that justification.
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