Another for the "Don't be that person" file

So much of this comes down to a simple rule, as expressed by Wil Wheaton: Don't be a dick.

Really.

In "Don't Be a Dick" news, O'Reilly has just released a strong anti-harassment statement for their technical conferences, including putting the big freeze on "stalking, offensive comments, and unwanted sexual advances," and expressing the idea that if you ARE "that person" and the conference gets enough complaints about you, you may not be invited back.

Given the strong overlap between tech types and people who also like science fiction/fantasy/horror/gaming/comics/anime/etc., I would love to see sf conventions and conferences take a similar strong stand, up to and including the option to not invite certain guests back to their events year after year after year, despite repeated complaints.

It would be great to see fandom come together as a whole and say "No More. Enough. You--out of the con circuit."

Instead, we seem to have a group case of the Five Geek Social Fallacies, in which bad behavior is perpetually written off as "Oh that's just so-and-so being so-and-so."

Yeah, I'm a starry-eyed idealist sometimes. But in my dream sf con circuit, "just being so-and-so" isn't a "Get Out of Jail Free" card.

Corollary: having the following ALSO are not "Get Out of Jail Free" cards, IMAO: Asperger's or other diagnosis on the autism spectrum/mental illness/depression/social anxiety/GAD/[other illness here]/previous history of being abused.

But, but but... But NOTHING. Even if you can't understand the reason why a particular behavior of yours is skeevy and wrong, you CAN learn to not do it anymore. And if you don't, then the price is that we as a society can decide to not associate with you.

Jim Hines has a great post on Reporting Sexual Assault in SF/F that's an excellent compilation of resources, including a list of who to contact at various SF publishers, plus links to the Con Anti-Harassment Project, and the Back-Up Project.

Call me crazy, but I have this idea that we should be able to get together for one weekend and NOT be jerks, NOT foist unwanted attention on people, and NOT belittle each other.

We're all at convention X, Y, or Z because we want to have fun, right?

We're there to see and interact with the guests and other fans, right?

We're not there to be creepers, right?

We--the collective convention-running and convention-attending "we"--need to stop giving the creepers a free pass on their behavior, and if you're a creeper, you need to stop being one, lest you find yourself uninvited to fannish gatherings.

Who's with me?

Just doing my @#^% job

Every club and convention on the planet needs to read and memorize this:

HARASSMENT IS NOT NEGOTIABLE.

To wit:

When you get a valid harassment complaint--and while investigation is always a good idea, so is starting with the assumption that said complaint is valid--you go to the person responsible, who I will hereafter call Gray Icky Thing...

You say: "Icky Thing, we've received reports that you're harassing people," or whatever. You say "We want you to stay away from Bob/Jane/freshman girls in the future."

Some of you, I hear, consider the following alternative: "Hey, Gray, what will make you stop harassing people?"

To you I say: NO. DO NOT SAY THIS. NEVER SAY THIS. THERE IS NOT ENOUGH CAPSLOCK IN THE WORLD FOR ME TO TELL YOU HOW WRONG YOU ARE. SWEET GOD ON BUTTERED TOAST, THIS IS NOT OKAY.

Just go, read the whole thing. I'll wait.

Done? OK.

I've been in the position of having to be the club's bad guy and kick out someone who was holding the club (and club's mailing list) hostage with her Borderline Personality Disorder antics--she was gaslighting, and making a couple of people into her personal villains--her very own "black hats."

But some people thought that I was being "mean" for excluding this horrid person, who'd been sabotaging the club for several years. Finally, I'd had enough, and as one of the club's officers, I put my foot down. I wanted to get a printout of the Five Geek Social Fallacies and smack these people with it.

Because in actuality, the people we were being unfair to were the ones who'd felt too uncomfortable to participate in any of the group's activities as long as this one person was still in the group. So one person had been ruining it for a lot of others, and I'd eventually had enough.

So yeah. I'm an Evil Ostracizer. Whatever. Shut up.