(no subject)

[telophase]

Most of you have probably run across this, but one of the best reactions to the whole Boobgate thing is synecdochic's post "sex-positive". what a loaded term, in which she manages to articulate a lot of thoughts that I, and other people, have about the whole affair and the larger context that was completely missed in the proposal - bystander consent, being sex-positive vs. being getting-laid-positive, and so on. (ETA: A quote from one of the comments, by marblespire: 'There's a line between saying, "I'm comfortable with my sexuality," and someone else giving you a creepy grin and replying, "I'm comfortable with it too."')

And in similar news, I, rachelmanija, and _fx are collaborating to produce a set of small 1" buttons reading "BACK UP" inspired by the Open Source Women Back Each Other Up Program to give out free, with small flyers explaining it, at A-Kon. Where there's tons of underage and college-age women enjoying freedom from parents and conventional social strictures and exploring their own boundaries and, all too often, getting unwanted or inappropriate attention* or being pressured to go to a physical or metaphorical place they're not really wanting to go. We'll be asking for small donations soon, as my funds are all tapped out after buying supplies for this year. XD Anyone going to A-Kon who's willing to have some of these on their table and/or pass them out: welcome to it!

I think I had a third thing to post, but I don't remember it.



* Three stories of varying degree of severity:

1) One A-Kon, I spotted a dealer's worker carrying a cane with a mirror affixed to the bottom. I told Security who made him tape it over (I think they should have told him to leave it in his room or confiscated it, actually). You can bet I checked to see that mirror was still taped every time I saw him.

2) Another A-Kon where my table was directly in front of the DDR machines, I saw a girl cosplaying as some sort of schoolgirl with a miniskirt playing DDR. And over the course of the track she was dancing to, all the male spectators in the chairs developed an amazing degree of slump and they slowly sank lower and lower trying to grab a peek under her skirt. And there was a sudden increase in the number of guys walking by, yawning and stretching ostentatiously, and deciding that near that DDR machine was a good place to recline on the floor and grab a nap. Minor, as far as levels of skeevy behavior go, but just because someone is wearing a short skirt does not mean she wants you to look up it or to be creepy at her.

3) I overheard two staff heads at AnimeFest on year discussing three guys they'd thrown out of the con for cornering a young cosplayer in the elevator and harassing her, and how they were going to ensure they didn't get back on premises. Yes, she was wearing a skimpy costume. No, that does not mean that their behavior was in any way acceptable or excusable. Predictable, perhaps, but not in any way shape or form the fault of the victim.

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

There's a cafe press store now: http://www.cafepress.com/openbackup

Is 1" big enough for people to easily spot? If this does catch on and we want people to be able to see who they can go to for backup, they need to be very easily visible.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Which charges $1/each for the small 1" buttons.* In bulk, from that place I found, costs $.32/button. (ETA: For 250 buttons.)

I picked the 1" size because of the price. If we get enough in donations, we can go to a larger size. You can check the price chart (http://www.shellysellsbuttons.com/Pricing.html) here. (Also, shipping and the cost of getting the flyer copied and cut will be part of the total cost.)




* It's CafePress's base price. The seller isn't making a profit, just to be clear to anyone reading this.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Let me know when you're ready for us to post asking for donations to cover the cost. Maybe on Monday, when everyone's reading?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

* If we get enough to go to a larger size and some extra left over, we can also order a "BACK UP (Gentlemen's Auxillary)" version.

[kate_nepveu]

Awesome. I got some of the CafePress buttons just to have, but I don't expect to be at a con until February, and the cons I go to skew older and sedate . . .

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I got the idea because there's a lot of girls at A-Kon that really need to hear the message - I remember being that age and being at cons (I started con-going at 14) and how they (and the SCA in college) were an exhilarating mix of "Finally! I found my tribe!" and boundary-testing and insidious, unspoken pressure to go over lines you're not yet comfortable with, and the pleasures and pitfalls of attention of the sort you never got before. I really needed someone to sit down and say "You can say STOP or ask for help at any point you're uncomfortable, and someone will help you without judging you."*




* What I got was, in my intro to the SCA at my first event, someone explaining social mores there with "If you go into the woods with someone and need to call for help, there are many large men with live steel here who will thunder in and help you. But on the other hand, if you go into the woods with someone, we're going to assume you knew what you were doing." A small but telling detail, which implies that there's going to be a lot of "Why did you go there with him if you didn't want to?"

[kate_nepveu]

I was fortunate to get into in-person gatherings in college.

Grar to your footnote.

[madame-manga.livejournal.com]

Especially since a lot of women/girls who feel tribal among the fen may not have much experience with men, dating and flirting even at college age, and honestly do not know where the lines fall and where titillating turns into dangerous. *points to self* I was not actually sheltered. I read the freakin' Joy of Sex in the library in my teens and my parents told me the facts of life in the scientific sense. I was just unsocial and dateless in high school, and a "good girl" that no one apparently thought they even needed to warn about men. I really could have used a basic prep course from some older woman with a clue.

So in my freshman year, 18 years old and away from home for the first time, I got into at least two situations that could have been VERY BAD INDEED if the man had been a predator, and I did not even realize how much risk I had run until several years later. I absolutely would have strolled into the woods with some guy to count the goddamn constellations without realizing that I was sending another message entirely.

Such as, I once went up to a grad student's room when he invited me to LOOK AT HIS ART BOOKS, in all seriousness. I could NOT figure out why he kept hovering over my shoulder so close I could feel him breathing. "Oh, can't you see the pictures? Here, what if I hold it up a little higher?" He must have copped to my utter innocence fairly quickly, the poor man, since he made his excuses after a few minutes and never laid a finger on me. Yes, eighteen years old, and in the twentieth century. Gaah...

[theidolhands.livejournal.com]

I agree with what you said, but honestly, WHERE is the line of responsibility for the person wearing the clothes? What reaction does one expect to get? There are times when I feel sexually harassed by the lack of clothing on another person's body, or the "display" of their anatomy, like it's being forced on me. It DOES make it difficult to treat someone like a person if they are dressed to be provocative, that says they want to be treated as an object not a person -- even if I'm being civil, sex is often on my mind, though I DON'T always appreciate that being stimulated (and sometimes the display isn't sexy at all, frankly). Note I am being gender neutral, since although woman often do this, sometimes it is males as well.

I have never sexually harassed someone or accosted them, for the record, but the clothing issue is getting out of control in school and the workplace. I also admit to having dressed very flaunting in my youth and have learned many lessons since then. I have changed my way of presenting myself and become more accepting of flirtatious behavior when I do. I know how to gracefully and more assertively stand up for myself. What's weird though, is that I've been harassed on the INTERNET (by women) without any real photos and I wasn't prepared to be on guard here. It goes to show ya though, clothes and gender are not exclusive at all in sexual harassment.

I'm also going to beg you to take this in a good tone because I don't mean to be argumentative, just voicing my own frustrations on the matter and a side I never hear addressed.

That mirror thing is pure perv though. Dude, it's called porn, get some. XD I half admire him for being such a sneak and half want to deck him. But fate saw to it that you were on his tail -- good for you.

[theidolhands.livejournal.com]

And one more note about cons....*sigh* I am REALLY sorry to say this, but a lot of ladies know EXACTLY what they are getting into and I'm aware that there's a new breed of slutty nerds/geeks/dweebs/spaz cases who go to conventions just to "hook up" with guys to buy them stuff, get them connections and even to move out of their home towns. Or simply to feel like they're "cool" because they "got some". It's the saddest thing I've ever seen, nerds (male and female) think living like Paris Hilton is cool now too; drinking, LIES, CHEATING, drugs, slutting (btw, don't hate Paris, just not my thing). I've seen the most heinous drama and it's majorly put me off fandom. I think the real fans are still there, but it's gone pretty mainstream, one doesn't have to be intellectual or obsessive to enjoy the material -- plenty of bimbos and mall bunnies (again, both genders) are doing it as well.

I didn't go to fandom for this shit and if I'm going to sell out then I'd rather do it with the popular crowd quite frankly. I'd sooner join the nearest fraternity if I wanted to do that sort of thing and lately...I'm really thinking about it and setting fire to my comic booksand so forth. Ok, not really. OK, sorta. But seriously, this stuff at cons lately makes me sick. I lost my "happy place".

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I think this is part of an attempt to reclaim a space for those who aren't into that. There's a lot of people who leave con fandom and stop attending cons because of behaviour like that, and if more people make it clear that loutish behaviour is not to be tolerated, they may come back.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I'm not taking it badly, because I fully understand where you're coming from. One of the most ... offensive is not the term, but I can't find the right term. Unwelcome? ... cosplay outfit I've seen was a group of young men cosplaying as a Japanese comedy troupe whose clothes consist solely of tighty-whities* with a fig leaf pinned to the front. And it was fairly obvious by their behavior that it was more of an attempt to skirt the bounds of decency than a serious cosplay. But the con couldn't really do anything about them unless they crossed a certain line - defined, I think, as the amount of coverage a bathing suit offers - because they were legitimate cosplay costumes.

(And I often fight the temptation to say "Does your mother know you're wearing this?" to cosplayers, especially when they're possibly underage and wearing thong-back bottoms.)

However, the subject at hand that the buttons are addressing is actively harassing behavior and speech, and specifically an institutionalized sexism. It's quite true that men are harassed, and that harassers are both men and women - I had a friend in undergrad who could not get the idea that male friends of ours were uncomfortable with her climbing all over them and flirting heavily. She said that as she was in a committed long-term relationship, they knew she didn't mean anything by it. Which wasn't the point - her intentions were not the issue, her behaviour was. And I will admit that I and my other female friends who were witness to it were at fault for not telling her to knock it off as the guys didn't like it. We were just as guilty as guys are for not telling their friends to knock off creepy behavior.

However, there's an institutionalized sexism and power imbalance that comes into play when the subjects of harassing behaviour are women. We're (er, generic "we" that means "a lot of women", not "all") socialized to agree to things, to go along with the crowd, to be intimidated by someone who is taller and bulkier than we are. I look back at my early years at cons and the SCA and various situations I and friends of mine got into because we couldn't bring ourselves to say we didn't want to be there or we didn't want to do that, and the way we even subtly pressured each other into doing things. A better sense of ourselves and our boundaries - which is hard enough at that age, when you're still trying to figure out who you are - and of people willing to help us enforce those boundaries without judgementwould have been of immense help.

Anyway, the primary idea here is: the victim is not to blame, and the idea "Look what s/he was wearing - s/he was asking for it!" is false and inappropriate and does not factor in at all to the harassment. Whether the costume-wearer is harassing someone else simply by wearing the costume? I think that's offensive behaviour, rather than harassing behaviour, rather like a drunk person ranting at me about politics is offensive, while the same drunk person ranting to me about my breasts is harassing. Does that make sense?

I think the way to go about addressing the costume issue is to take it up with con organizers, and to ask for a stricter set of rules about costumes be put into effect. Way more effective than relying on peer pressure, the way the buttons are meant to do. The buttons are fighting a wider cultural problem and the costumes are more of a subgroup-specific problem.



* For those reading this who may not know the term: men's Y-front briefs.

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this comment--it articulates a good chunk of what I've been thinking but haven't figured out how to put into words.

Here you go!

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Their clothing is their issue. They control their clothing. Your behavior is your issue. You control your behavior.

Your responsibility: to follow the following rules of polite behavior at conventions regarding interactions with scantily dressed strangers:

OK: Looking. Complimenting the costume. Polite requests for photographs. Privately and silently thinking of sex.

Not OK: Touching. Requests for sexual contact of any kind. Complimenting body parts. Peeking up dresses. Informing them that you're thinking of sex.

Their responsibility:

To conform with public codes of decency, ie, no visible nipples or genitalia.

Otherwise, the same as yours, ie, no touching, etc.

[madame-manga.livejournal.com]

I get the sense from some people who (under)dress like anime characters that they think they are somehow protected by impersonating someone who isn't real. As if there were a glass wall between them and the rest of the world that keeps them aloof from possible repercussions. They'd probably wear many more inches of fabric in any situation where their clothing choices were IDed with their real selves rather than with some kooky sex-bomb guy/gal who exists only on paper.

That's the charitable version. *sigh* Heck, I'm a straight woman, and I get a little uncomfy at having to look at some gal in a costume that threatens to vanish into a small strip around her waist if she laughs too hard. This is a highly loaded issue for most women -- if other women dress provocatively, it's like a challenge or a judgment; do you dare to do the same? Are you young and attractive enough to pull it off without looking delusional? Are you going to be laughed at for covering up? Do the sluts get all the guys and the nice girls get ignored? It's never actually a neutral "that's HER personal choice" situation, not when every male in sight is thronging around a few of the bolder un-dressers. Simply being female implicitly holds you up to comparison with all the other secondary sexual characteristics in the vicinity.

I've always come down on the covered-up side of the question, but even that is NOT a reliable defense in the strange, charged, sleep-deprived con atmosphere. I got some very odd come-ons when dressed as Captain Janeway complete with Bun of Steel; you never know what's going to trip some people's triggers. And then there was the guy who followed me around to fondle my vinyl boots at my very first con; I was fourteen and fully dressed, and didn't even know there was such a thing as a security station. I think it would make a lot of sense at most cons to have a well-spelled out and enforced policy on flesh exposure and physical contact, just as there is on weapon-carrying, and for similar reasons. Some people might be bummed that they can't let it all hang out in public, but they can ruddy well do it on their own time.

[ebony14.livejournal.com]

If you need help on the flyers and buttons, I will be glad to donate funds/editing services. Let me know if you need anything.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Cool, thanks! Will do!

[selenite.livejournal.com]

This whole thing is striking me as a case study in Geek Social Fallacy #4: Friendship Is Transitive (http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html). "X and Y trust each other, X and Z trust each other, therefore Y and Z should trust each other." No. Doesn't work that way. And X and Y's trust levels are probably asymmetric to begin with.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I mean I know guys who have not-very-good social skills who are otherwise perfectly fine and, in my estimation, wouldn't dream of harming or pressuring someone, but I wouldn't ever dismiss it if someone came up to me and complained of harassment from one of them. Because I *don't* know them 100% and it's possible that *my* judgment is the one that's wrong.

(I'd probably ask the circumstances, then go to the harasser in question and say "Dude, did you mean to be this creepy? WTF?" actually.)

[tirwen.livejournal.com]

On story number 2, I have to put in my own two cents... I'm probably 10 years older than you, so that may be what's influencing my take... Personally, I would have pointed out to her that unless she was intending on giving all and sundry a free show, a longer skirt might be in order if she wants to play DDR. Yes, she has a right to wear it if she wants, but... I'm not putting this really well. I guess what I'm trying to say is educate them on consequences. I'm sure I'll get flamed on this... No, I'm not saying she can't do what she likes... she just needs to realize that there are a lot of creeps out there ;p

[bravecows.livejournal.com]

Minor, as far as levels of skeevy behavior go, but just because someone is wearing a short skirt does not mean she wants you to look up it or to be creepy at her.

D: That doesn't seem very minor to me, but I'm probably showing my n00bishness to cons here.

*shudder, shudder, shudder*

But yay, buttons, yay!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I'm calling it minor because they weren't groping her, making lewd comments, backing her into a corner, etc., and they were actively trying to be discreet. Hilariously unsuccessfully, of course, but it showed they knew it was bad and were trying to do it without her noticing. Although the goal was the same, it came across as less skeevy than the guy with the mirror on his cane to me.

She was actually very good at DDRing without flipping the skirt up. Her arms were rigidly at her sides like she was riverdancing, holding it down.

[tprjones.livejournal.com]

I strongly approve of the message of the Back Up project. It's a message that many young women do need to hear.

I don't think anything else I'm about to say here applies to you, telophase. You seem firmly in the "part of the solution" camp on gender issues. But you've got me wanting to babble about it a bit.

In the case of the Open Boob project I've read many write-ups and comments and - to me at least - it sounds like there's just a whole bunch of people that are threatened by the fact that there are others (both touchees and touchers) that are enjoying something that their own restrictive mindset sees as inappropriate.

From what I understand it was a fully opt-in thing, and there was no preassure to be a part of it. There were "NO" buttons made available just in case, but the default position was clearly that no button at all was the same as a "NO" button. If that's really true - I keep reading where people say that it could be a mishandeled, or it could be threatening, but no one that I've read yet gives actual cases of anyone being pushed into anything they didn't want to be a part of - then how is it the business of anyone who chooses not to opt-in?

To me it just seems like there's a lot of people showing the same sort of mentality that leads to Sunday Blue Laws and making homosexuality a crime. I think our culture is growing past these things, and this incident is one of those growing pangs. The history of mankind has a lot of extreme sexism in it, and in the modern world it's faded quite a bit and will possibly be gone in a few more generations. As we learn to be more accepting of ourselves and others, I think things such as the Open Boob Project will become more commonplace. It's a natural side effect of the process.

Which is why I don't think this was sexist, at least as it's been described. In general people like to touch things they are interested in. And in general people like to be appreciated and touched. It's independant of gender, too, this goes for everyone. The degree to which these two things are true is entirely different for each person and for each situation, of course, and no one should ever make any unfounded assumptions in this area. The fact that it's boobs is irrelavent in my opinion, and if the men involved had boobs they'd have been just as interested in being touched as the women that decided to be a part of this. It could just as easily have been the Open Butt Project and then we'd have had the asses of both genders being patted - and still many would cry that it's sexist. Because for some even as they fight the history of sexism they still cling to it's mindset to a degree, and for the most extreme it is the tinting with which they see every event even when it is not there and thereby help perpetuate the existence of exactly the problem they are fighting against.

But, all that being said, the Open Butt Project would be a very unfortunate name.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

The people I've read on it are looking at it from a larger feminist viewpoint, and from a point of view that considers this as happening within the context of a larger sphere, not just a small, delimited area. It's quite telling to point out that none of the people I've read (or I, for that matter) have a problem at all with it if it occurs in a specific, delimited space that's labeled so that people know where they're going, and not in a public space. I.e., in a special party room somewhere and not in the halls of a con.

I'll try to find some of the posts that I think encapsulate it, but until then here's a few of the points:

1. Women's bodies are considered to be public property by the general society as a whole. You probably don't see this, but almost every woman out there has been asked something like "Can I touch you?" -- in those words, in the form of taking money out of a wallet and waving it at you, in the form of men sticking their heads out of windows and waggling their tongues at you, of pats and pinches on the butt, of groping in elevators, trains, and the street, long conversations where their eyes don't rise above the level of your bust, unsolicited comments on your body parts or sexual prowess, and so on -- multiple times. Often, multiple times a day. It's not flattering. It's skeevy.

With this in mind, the simple question "Can I touch you?" from a stranger who walks up to you is not a new, liberating, simple thing. It's Yet Another Goddamned Asshole.

2. The original post was, as someone put it, "dripping in patriarchal terminology." Yeah, I know that wording tends to polarize people, but in an academic context, "patriarchal terminology" is the correct term. I won't try to explain it, because without going back and re-reading some posts, I'll screw up the argument. I'll find them and link them.

3. Yes, there's a lot of "might be" in the objection. But the might-bes are actually probabilities, not possibilities. I have witnessed and experienced enough boorish, loutish, obnoxious behavior at cons to know with certainty that at any con this is going on there WILL be assholes who come up and ask those who aren't playing the game. And who assume that a Yes button means "Yes you can," not "Yes you may ask." And who will sulk and whine and be gawdawful persistent if you say No to them.

4. This is again something most men don't deal with from this particular, sexualized, point of view, but: social pressure to conform. Women are socialized to please others. Again, I'll find someone who says this better than I can. I'll just mention that even a couple of years ago at a con, I went along with a flirt and kissed him when I didn't want to because (a) I knew him and considered him a friend and didn't want to hurt his feelings (I knew he didn't mean it to be taken farther), and (b) there were other people in the room and I didn't want to raise a fuss by refusing. I look at that and say "Why the hell did I DO that?" now, but I know it's because of that damn socialization that I don't have anywhere near as much control over as I thought I did.

5. Women have fought long and hard to not be objectified. Reducing someone to a set of breasts and asking to grope without even the courtesy of asking her damn name is objectification, pure and simple, no matter how much you dress it up in words of sexual freedom. Some women are fine with being objectified. But it doesn't hide the fact that it's still objectification.

The whole thing boils down to: hey. Consenting adults in private? Knock yourselves out. Bringing it into the public sphere? Bad idea.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

This comment thread (http://theferrett.livejournal.com/1087686.html?thread=54722758#t54722758) explains how the original proposal is couched in sexual terminology, even as Ferrett kept insisting it wasn't sexual.

Another comment (http://theferrett.livejournal.com/1087686.html?thread=54853830#t54853830) talks about being the subject of this barrage of uninvited attention.

A response from coffeeandink (http://coffeeandink.livejournal.com/808967.html).

kate_nepveu illustrates why the possibility of being asked (http://kate-nepveu.livejournal.com/323736.html) is an issue.

synecdochic's post (http://synecdochic.livejournal.com/213567.html) on why bringing this into the public sphere isn't liberating (or even polite).

springheel_jack articulates the issue (http://springheel-jack.livejournal.com/2504302.html): "But of course we can't keep patriarchy out of it; the mere attempt is a means not so much of re-inscribing patriarchy but of shoving people in front of it to be run down, as if by a rampaging elephant. Women have not generally been able to define for themselves their own sexual identities and the parameters of their own sexual lives. Their sexuality has been policed by men - now restricted, now afforded, never at the woman's will but at the man's. That fact makes it more than childish to propose this as a psychosexual utopia - it's something much worse, much more culpable, then a mere boy's callow musing. [...]The ferrett wonders why a man's asking, out of the blue, if he can feel up a woman's boobs shouldn't be understood as "a way of saying that I may not yet know your mind, but your body is beautiful." But this is simply to ask why he shouldn't be able to continue to treat women as they have always been treated. Body first, sexual delectation to men first, as object first, "mind" - i.e. as a human subject - very firmly second."

seajules explains why (http://the-red-shoes.livejournal.com/1263869.html?thread=12433917#t12433917) this would be good if it involved holding hands, touching hair, anything that isn't a sexualized part of the human body.

brown_betty points out (http://brown-betty.livejournal.com/372768.html) that a woman's body is not a mystical healing experience for men, as Ferrett made it out to be.

I can't yet find the post made by one of the women who participated in it, who had second thoughts later on, after seeing how it worked (or failed to work) in the public sphere, instead of the private sphere in which it started. But when I do, I'll link it. Here we go (http://novapsyche.livejournal.com/1996568.html). Note, especially: "I do have to say, however, that if I'd read theferrett's post about OSBP before someone offered me the pin, I would have turned it down, and perhaps gone into feminist reasons why I was declining. His post was extremely heterosexist, and I was dismayed that he got defensive to the point of not listening to others who pointed this out to him. I have to say that I didn't feel honored to be part of the group once my body had been reduced to "gropes". Sorry, but word choice matters."