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This is actually a comment I dropped in

veejane's LJ, on this post, reacting to RaceFail '09. My comment is mostly thinking out loud about the con I staff and programming, and may not make sense if you ahvne't read the post.

(RaceFail '09 timeline by

rydra_wong here, and

oyceter has a good summation of how this hurts everyone here.)

Con comm member here, who suggests a lot of the guests we invite. Although we've already had several of the participants in RaceFail '09 in previous years, so it's not like I'm going to have to fight really hard to keep the rest of the comm from agreeing to invite them. So my little gesture of solidarity in deciding to argue against inviting them is ... not particularly useful, unfortunately.

I am also trying to figure out how to get programming about these topics into the con, but I'm also afraid that it would be Round 23434324 of Fail, judging by the makeup of our con - there are, as is typical, very few PoC attending.*

*continuing to think* I could probably get programming about ablism onto the agenda easily, however, as we have a regular panelist who is in a wheelchair, very outspoken about accessibility issues, and who can be counted on to run a good panel.

I should probably stop thinking out loud here and go think about it in my own. LJ.

* But I have noticed a large uptick in the percentage of PoC attending the anime conventions I attend in the past year. This heartens me.

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One of the things I read today was for a 'first time congoer' free attendance or discount. Maybe that would help if you promoted it to the right communities?

Huh, interesting. I know there'd be some difficulties with implementation - how to make sure that someone was attending this for the first time and not trying to get an unwarranted discount - plus the difficulty of finding the right communities here to start with.

I'm not dismissing the suggestion, just nailing down the problems first. :D

Yeah, I'm not sure about logistics either, but I figure the more ideas to toss around the better. (I wish I could remember who suggested it so I could credit.) Is the con near a university/college, somewhere that would have a POC students' (probably several) organization?

It's in Dallas, so it's near numerous colleges. :D Although I work at a private college in the area whose nonwhite faces are primarily in the lower-status jobs in the support staff, instead of in the students and faculty (it's got a commitment to hiring diverse teaching staff until it reaches a certain percentage of non-white faculty, but as there's a not-quite-hiring-freeze now, I suspect that will end up taking slightly longer than expected). Also, the university that I *think* is closest to the location is the same sort of university that I work at, and I expect it to be much the same way.

We tend to skew slightly younger than the average non-anime con, because the staff that created it are all Elder Cepheids, who came up out of the Cepheid Variable SF club at Texas A&M and cut their teeth running Aggiecon, and every year we get a few carloads of current Cepheids coming up to volunteer and gain experience running the con, plus other 20 and 30-something Elders show up to hang out with their long-time friends. That might be a help in getting younger fen to attend.

Yeah, I couldn't remember how public you were about your location in public posts, and then I noticed it was linked. BUT I'D POSTED BY THEN, DAMMIT.

Maybe a 'bring a new congoer' promotion? With the economy down you may want to try some new things anyway, and people would be less likely to lie and more likely to drag in a friend?

And, of course, picking the brains of the PoC on your con staff, but you already knew that. :D

And, of course, picking the brains of the PoC on your con staff, but you already knew that. :D

It would help if we had more than one. :D And I think he prefers to have his only interaction with the rest of the con comm being "Here, have money for the consuite!" and then he takes it and runs a kickass consuite. (It may also have something to do with the fact that his RPG tends to be scheduled on the same day as our con meetings. :D)

People do like to stick to their strengths. :D

And it was veejane herself (http://veejane.livejournal.com/412361.html) who had the discount idea. I think this means I suck.

I'm sorry; in the middle of all this very serious discussion, I read your comment & thought "congoer" meant "someone who dances the congo"...

I'll get me coat.

Maybe we should have more congos at cons!

Bagsie a place behind a (realistic) Sanzo!

You've started me thinking about why I don't go to cons, and I think that for me disability plays a role. I have some mobility issues, so a lot of time on my feet and sitting in bad chairs means a lot of pain. I'm also very uncomfortable in crowds. I don't have panic attacks in crowds anymore; I just really hate them.

Cons need some kind of chill space/mellow room for local attendees who aren't renting hotel rooms...

(Not that it'll help with the bad chairs, though.)

That would be great for people like me who are averse to crowds. When I'm in crowds, the sensory overload gets to be too much and I want to go hide in bathroom stalls.

The chair problem is a real problem. I don't go to cons but I do sometimes go to academic conferences which are held in hotels, so I'm familiar with the kinds of chairs that get used. They're very bad for people with back and joint pain.

Yeah, I sometimes get a little overwhelmed, especially if it's Migraine Day, and I have friends and family who get *very* overwhelmed. The chair thing is pretty serious, I know--those things are terrible. I don't know what to do about those. The only thing that I can think of is to find some way to provide storage space for attendees who may be carrying lumbar support/etc., since it takes up a lot of room and if they're carrying that they may not want to be carrying their purchases, etc. I've never seen a con that provided this, although the largest academic conference I've been to had a mail-home service--for a fee you could leave the books you'd bought with them and they'd ship them home. I wonder if there could be some kind of "rent/borrow-a-storage-tub" service, even if just for people with health/mobility issues, and if that would help at all. Of course then you probably get into liability issues (but maybe signing a waiver would do?). I wonder if Wiscon has anything like this--they're certainly the most proactive con in terms of accommodations that I've heard of.

Possibly this is too much thinking out loud. :)

"Yeah, I sometimes get a little overwhelmed, especially if it's Migraine Day, and I have friends and family who get *very* overwhelmed."

YESYESYES. I have had ferocious attacks at WisCon and been very grateful for a hotel room. However, when I ventured out, it was a real problem that some events (like the banquet) had very long lines winding up stairs; I wound up spending a lot of time sitting on the floor, including at parties. More chairs in public spaces would be a blessing.

One of the things I liked about WisCon is that it has a quiet room for this purpose.

Aha, I might have guessed. :) Awesome.

Normally I'd suggest our con would be a perfect one to attend for you, as we usually run 300-400 people. But we exploded to 700 this year, which we weren't quite expecting, so our panel room (new hotel) were a bit small. XD

I noticed way more people with wheelchairs attending this year - usually there are two, who are longstanding members of local fandom, but there were a few more, as I almost got run over by a string of three in the dealers' room. XD

We're definitely going to have to deal with this, because these are our attendees and we want them to come back! And we want more people to feel welcome at our con.

One of the real dilemmas when dealing with disability issues is that there are so many different kinds of disabilities, not all of which are immediately visible. Wheelchair use is very visible, and accommodations for them can benefit a lot of others as well, but it can leave organizers feeling as though they've done enough in having wheelchair access and an ASL interpreter, not realizing that other disabilities may not be addressed. I've used a cane off and on, and it's still hard for me to be on my feet.

Oh, I thought of a suggestion for a con -- special lines for people with disabilities to expedite their registrations, etc. quickly, so that they don't have to do a lot of standing and waiting.

Oh, that might be useful for future cons for us - it wasn't a concern previously because our Reg lines were never more than 1 or 2 people long (well, until the gaggle of Cepheids showed up), but this con we had a long Reg line.

In addition to the line, maybe some chairs that go with it and a policy that you don't lose your place in line if you have to go sit for a while?

YES. I have an invisible disability -- and I'm still coping with the idea that it *is* a disability -- of chronic migraines, which lead to exhaustion, which means in a long line I HAVE to sit on the floor.

More chairs in public places would be a profound blessing. I just can't stand as long as I used to, and it isn't obvious from looking at me why that is.

I help to do disability access for WisCon. We have a bunch of info

http://www.wiscon.info/access.php

Including suggestions for people who can't stand for extended periods of time (you have the option to request to be seated early).

Cool, thanks!

This is a big part of why I don't go to cons. Agoraphobia does not make interacting with strangers easy, and pain after being on my feet for a while.... Yeah. I definitely hear you on the issues. For many years, I also got migraines any time I got less than eight hours of solid sleep. All of that combined to make cons less than appealing.

One thing that we find makes the mobility issues a little easier is renting a motorized scooter. We've done that for Origins and GenCon which are both cons that my husband enjoys a lot. It's not cheap, but it helps me a lot. I think the cheapest we've found was $35 a day and the most expensive $75 a day. I find that the seats on the scooters are often comfortable, but that's a crap shoot as one gets whatever the agency has on hand.

I'm going to my first Con as a thinking adult this year (hopefully: Note to self: get plane sorted).

I really really REALLY want to talk with people about the way PWD are presented in Science-Fiction/Fantasy media.

I was watching Torchwood for the first time in January and came up on the episode "Adrift". I wrote about my reaction to it here (http://troubleinchina.livejournal.com/384034.html), which I can sum up as feeling gutted that ONCE AGAIN! PWD are horrible monsters to be feared or hidden away. See Also: Merlin's "A Remedy to Cure All Ills".

[Sometimes, people become blind and earn Very Special Powerz.]

After a few days of wandering around feeling angry and hurt, I started thinking about Fandom's reaction to these episodes. Or maybe fandom's non-reaction would be more appropriate.

People knew I was watching these shows, and was watching them months after original air-date. People knew that seeing PWD only existing to be Evil or Scary upsets me and makes me angry. No one warned me. [Correction: One person warned me that there was an episode like this, but didn't mention the title, and I had forgotten all about that until after I talked to her about it later.] I've looked (not too hard, I will admit, but I did) for meta on these issues, and there just doesn't seem to be much. Metafandom had nothing at all. [I know I should write something, and want to, but I'm still too angry, and I'm trying not to start derailing the general conversation about Racism.]

I can't remember the last time I saw someone who wasn't White on t.v. as a PWD. I suppose I could be happy because of how rarely this media shows PWD in a positive light, but really? Really? No PoC use wheelchairs? No PoC are Deaf? No PoC are blind? ARG.

No wonder so many people think I should be "pitied" with my "wheelchair bound" husband.

"Adrift" didn't hit my PWD meter that way since the premise was that the people had been damaged by their experiences in the Rift -- cast into environments that were inhospitable and then sent back, rather than people with naturally occurring disabilities. The show that hits my PWD meter is House. Gregory House is the only chronic pain sufferer as a regular character I can think of, and that's the representation we get -- a pill-popping asshole?

I've avoided House for various reasons and was glad of the decision when I saw commentary on the way his chronic pain has been handled. I think it would have enraged me.

Then there's the show Monk. Sometimes, I'm able to love it, but other times.... It's the one portrayal I've seen of a person with relatively severe anxiety and OCD as the main character of a series. I want to love it and tend to make sure I watch the version in my head if the version on the screen isn't working for me.

I think that, had Torchwood shown any people with disabilities in the show, even someone with a wheelchair in the background at some point, I might not have been so angry or upset. It's hard to say.

I do remember, when a friend made me watch the Jack episodes of Dr Who, there's a person in a wheelchair in the creepy one with the kid wearing the gasmask, and I got pathetically excited cuz Look! LOOK! It's a PWD!

*sigh*

Wasn't there a POC in a wheelchair on Malcolm in the Middle? I seem to remember one of Malcolm's friends was an African-American boy in a wheelchair.

There was, and I always liked the way he was presented.

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My Thoughts About Ablism

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