WisCon 2008
I bought tickets to WisCon this year because I had a lot of friends who were attending. I've been hanging out with feminists since were_duck and I befriended one another in 2006, but I never took a lot of time to think about feminism itself. I've never taken a womens studies course or a sociology course.
I attended a panel on privilege today. My only previous exposure to thought about privilege was reading Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, which I did think about a great deal after I read it. The panel itself was great and really instructive, and gave me new ways of thinking about privilege which I will be stirring around in my head for a while.
There was something that really threw me which was incidental to the actual panel. One of the panelists was responding to a comment from the audience, and made a comment like "Women need to stop being raped." I didn't bat an eye at this, but a woman in the audience called out, with very real passion, "No! Men need to stop raping women!" The panelist apologized, and noted that this is the kind of thing that we need to be called on.
Before I heard this exchange, I had never thought of myself as a person who could be sexist, or do sexist things. I thought that being biologically female excluded me from having to worry about my actions, or my inaction, harming other women in a sexist manner. In that moment I found a core of something in myself that could work, and has worked, to keep other women down. I realized that feminism isn't something that I can decide not to study or care about. I found something in myself that I have to fight.
After the privilege panel, I went to a presentation by Karen Healey of Girl Wonder. I don't remember how I stumbled across her blog, but this article addressing common ridiculous things in comics fandom really opened my eyes to how misogynistic fandoms can be. Nobody can really be in the male-dominated communities I participate in (SF, IT, security, gaming) without knowing that someone, somewhere, thinks that community is horribly misogynist. I had always brushed that criticism aside as a combination of two factors - anomalous experiences with particularly awful men, and women who didn't have enough character to roll with the big boys. Karen set me straight. It was wonderful to hear her speak, and the conversation on fangirl and fanboy identities was fantastic. (Unfortunately, I admitted to being an uneducated moron in front of Justin Pierce, the guy who makes Wonderella. Oops.)
That panel made me think about my own identity in male spaces. Since I first bothered to think about it, I've thought of myself as having a lot of male-associated behavior patterns. I can chalk that up to growing up with my dad, getting into games fandom early, and not having any close female friends until I was about 15. I have always been strongly rewarded for these behavior patterns. (I should mention that I do a lot of female-associated things in male spaces as well; I think I generally come off as "I am in your tribe, but I will not challenge you for dominance in any way".) There are some problems with that which I need to read more about traditionally male behavior patterns to really understand, but from now on I am going to try to rein them in when I think they could be hurtful or damaging to conversation.
I can't finish this post without mentioning this horrible post about WisCon on SomethingAwful. I know the person who posted this. Through my association with her, I feel complicit in this hateful, horrible, awful screed. It's clear that the poster has no real consideration for any of the people in her photos, nor any respect for anyone who might happen to disagree with her or act in ways she finds annoying. I can understand finding some fellow con-goers annoying; I did too. What I hope I will never be able to understand is the mindset that results in such an asshatted posting. There is no basic human decency there, and no amount of "ha ha it's only internets" makes up for that.
In the past I may have kept this to myself, but I'm sick of being silent, and I'm sick of tolerating things that I shouldn't.
I attended a panel on privilege today. My only previous exposure to thought about privilege was reading Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, which I did think about a great deal after I read it. The panel itself was great and really instructive, and gave me new ways of thinking about privilege which I will be stirring around in my head for a while.
There was something that really threw me which was incidental to the actual panel. One of the panelists was responding to a comment from the audience, and made a comment like "Women need to stop being raped." I didn't bat an eye at this, but a woman in the audience called out, with very real passion, "No! Men need to stop raping women!" The panelist apologized, and noted that this is the kind of thing that we need to be called on.
Before I heard this exchange, I had never thought of myself as a person who could be sexist, or do sexist things. I thought that being biologically female excluded me from having to worry about my actions, or my inaction, harming other women in a sexist manner. In that moment I found a core of something in myself that could work, and has worked, to keep other women down. I realized that feminism isn't something that I can decide not to study or care about. I found something in myself that I have to fight.
After the privilege panel, I went to a presentation by Karen Healey of Girl Wonder. I don't remember how I stumbled across her blog, but this article addressing common ridiculous things in comics fandom really opened my eyes to how misogynistic fandoms can be. Nobody can really be in the male-dominated communities I participate in (SF, IT, security, gaming) without knowing that someone, somewhere, thinks that community is horribly misogynist. I had always brushed that criticism aside as a combination of two factors - anomalous experiences with particularly awful men, and women who didn't have enough character to roll with the big boys. Karen set me straight. It was wonderful to hear her speak, and the conversation on fangirl and fanboy identities was fantastic. (Unfortunately, I admitted to being an uneducated moron in front of Justin Pierce, the guy who makes Wonderella. Oops.)
That panel made me think about my own identity in male spaces. Since I first bothered to think about it, I've thought of myself as having a lot of male-associated behavior patterns. I can chalk that up to growing up with my dad, getting into games fandom early, and not having any close female friends until I was about 15. I have always been strongly rewarded for these behavior patterns. (I should mention that I do a lot of female-associated things in male spaces as well; I think I generally come off as "I am in your tribe, but I will not challenge you for dominance in any way".) There are some problems with that which I need to read more about traditionally male behavior patterns to really understand, but from now on I am going to try to rein them in when I think they could be hurtful or damaging to conversation.
I can't finish this post without mentioning this horrible post about WisCon on SomethingAwful. I know the person who posted this. Through my association with her, I feel complicit in this hateful, horrible, awful screed. It's clear that the poster has no real consideration for any of the people in her photos, nor any respect for anyone who might happen to disagree with her or act in ways she finds annoying. I can understand finding some fellow con-goers annoying; I did too. What I hope I will never be able to understand is the mindset that results in such an asshatted posting. There is no basic human decency there, and no amount of "ha ha it's only internets" makes up for that.
In the past I may have kept this to myself, but I'm sick of being silent, and I'm sick of tolerating things that I shouldn't.