Moonfail continues to erupt
Okay, so SF3, the parent company of WisCon, has rescinded Elizabeth Moon's GoH status by announcing, "SF3 has withdrawn the invitation to Elizabeth Moon to attend WisCon 35 as guest of honor," then providing links to where a person might comment further. That is literally all of the announcement.
(BTW, don't read any of the comments. They're mainly from conservative trolls who came over from Instapundit, who didn't know or care that WisCon is primarily a feminist con, and are a bit reminiscent of the "long-time viewers of NPR" (National Public Radio has viewers?) who will now cease watching. Their threats to never buy any books from any author who attends WisCon are therefore meaningless, as they have no use for books. I digress.)
Color me less than impressed. I was expecting a lengthier statement-- something along the lines of, "Wow, we really had our heads firmly lodged up our asses on this one. We apologize and reaffirm our commitment to our core principles. We will never, ever do something this ass-backwards and wrongheaded again. Teaching moment? What the hell were we thinking??" As it stands, there is nothing that leads me to believe that they understand why what they did was wrong, and that rescinding was the right thing to do. It merely appears that they figured out that, for some reason, they were upsetting more people than they were inviting to be GoH. That means that the next potential GoH to out themselves as a -phobe is free to kick all this crap off anew. No thank you.
Add to this that I am hearing allusions to behind-the-scenes fuckery that is making others throw their hands up and walk away from working with the convention. I don't know specifics and if I did, I likely wouldn't be at liberty to disclose them.
All most of us want is a space free of major fuckery to enjoy ourselves with similarly-minded individuals. But if the people claiming to provide such a space have to be dragged along, kicking and screaming, into actually doing so? I have little faith that it will in fact be such a space.
Bother with going if you feel like it. I still don't.
(BTW, don't read any of the comments. They're mainly from conservative trolls who came over from Instapundit, who didn't know or care that WisCon is primarily a feminist con, and are a bit reminiscent of the "long-time viewers of NPR" (National Public Radio has viewers?) who will now cease watching. Their threats to never buy any books from any author who attends WisCon are therefore meaningless, as they have no use for books. I digress.)
Color me less than impressed. I was expecting a lengthier statement-- something along the lines of, "Wow, we really had our heads firmly lodged up our asses on this one. We apologize and reaffirm our commitment to our core principles. We will never, ever do something this ass-backwards and wrongheaded again. Teaching moment? What the hell were we thinking??" As it stands, there is nothing that leads me to believe that they understand why what they did was wrong, and that rescinding was the right thing to do. It merely appears that they figured out that, for some reason, they were upsetting more people than they were inviting to be GoH. That means that the next potential GoH to out themselves as a -phobe is free to kick all this crap off anew. No thank you.
Add to this that I am hearing allusions to behind-the-scenes fuckery that is making others throw their hands up and walk away from working with the convention. I don't know specifics and if I did, I likely wouldn't be at liberty to disclose them.
All most of us want is a space free of major fuckery to enjoy ourselves with similarly-minded individuals. But if the people claiming to provide such a space have to be dragged along, kicking and screaming, into actually doing so? I have little faith that it will in fact be such a space.
Bother with going if you feel like it. I still don't.