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sunlit_musicAt vitoexcalibur's livejournal, I came across a link to a brilliant community for dealing with the problem of people being groped and harrassed and creating safer environments at http://community.livejournal.com/backupproject/profile
At http://shaysdays.livejournal.com/344566.html
shaysdays has a great list with practical specific advice on
-how to help someone leave a person who is harrassing them,
-when to tell someone that someone is being needlessly polite to them and wants to be left alone,
-why 'saving' someone from a harrasser does not reinforce victimhood, and
-Why are the men responsible for their actions, but the women aren't responsible for their reactions.
vitoexcalibur's post is a response to the Open Source Boob Project, which was developed at a convention where theferret and some of his friends talked about how it would be great if they could ask to touch someone's breasts and not be considered creepy, but as people 'appreciating' a person's beauty, never mind that it is creepy for strangers to invade a person's private space by asking to grope them.
violaswamp has an excellent post in response to the Open Source Boob Project here:
http://violaswamp.livejournal.com/63159.html#cutid1
chash also has excellent points to make about the OSBP (The following in italics is by chash and is from chash's livejournal):
If a group of people comes up to you, clearly outnumbering you, and asks if they can do something which they consider inocuous, then even if to you it isn't, it can feel pressuring--you start trying to justify your reasons for refusing, and somehow "I don't feel comfortable" becomes an insufficient reason. This might not be the group's intention at all! But that doesn't change the power-dynamic, or the way that power dynamic makes you feel...
theferret has made edits and statements that seem to say that he doesn't think everyone should participate in this kind of activity, and that it is not for everywhere. But that doesn't change the incredibly strong feeling that I get from his initial post that he does think that, and that this is a huge amount of where the hostility in the comments is coming from. It does not read to me as if he thinks this was a cool one-off thing that happened. It reads like he thinks this should become the attitude of the world. It's interesting to note that although theferrett's original post does not contain the word "movement," a number of commenters use it. It reads like it's supposed to start a social upheaval. And there are people in there agreeing. And then it gets to sound worryingly like it's going to happen. And that's scary to me, and apparently to others. Because cons can be fun. But they're already skeevy and weird and a kind of creepy environment for me. I try to never be alone at a con, because there's safety in numbers! And theferrett's post just reinforced that for me on every level.
I think that theferrett's initial post was incredibly creepy and quite offensive. I don't think this was the intent of the actual events, and I'm sure a lot of people felt okay with it. I feel just as sure that had I been there, I would have felt very uncomfortable with it. Which doesn't mean that it shouldn't happen, just that I think it should stay far away from me. I don't think any of the women involved were necessarily in the wrong, but I think that it's important to remember that many of us might already feel weird and judged at cons, and that this kind of atmosphere would make us uncomfortable regardless of how we did or did not interact with it. Just knowing it exists and that some people advocate it--even on a small, selective scale, which is its own kind of creepy--is skeevy to me. It's not that it's primarily men or primarily women. It's that if one person did this independentally, without any help from anyone else, I doubt it would have been acceptable. The fact that it was a group, that the fact that women were also being involved is being used as an argument that this means it cannot be offensive--those are the things that make me really upset by this debate.
TO SUM UP:
1. theferrett could have done so much fucking better with his presentation of this.
-Don't write about it like it's a project or a revolution
-Don't talk about how this girl was obviously displaying her aspects, how some girls were clearly "amenable," etc.
-Don't expect the fact that women were also on your side to mean that you could not have been in the wrong to some other women
2. I think women on both sides of the matter ended up feeling pressured, targeted, and deeply uncomfortable about their personal feelings.
-I don't think anyone meant to say that the women who were involved in this were objectifying themselves. HOWEVER, theferrett's post sure as hell made it sound like everyone involved was objectifying women.
3. The event was clearly different from the post about it made it sound.
-THAT DOES NOT INVALIDATE THE REACTIONS TO THE POST. If we weren't there, we don't know. I am somewhat more informed from comments about how things supposedly went down, but that does not change the fact that one of the people who originated this presented it in a way that was not only different from the reality, but downright offensive to many readers.
At http://shaysdays.livejournal.com/344566.html
shaysdays has a great list with practical specific advice on
-how to help someone leave a person who is harrassing them,
-when to tell someone that someone is being needlessly polite to them and wants to be left alone,
-why 'saving' someone from a harrasser does not reinforce victimhood, and
-Why are the men responsible for their actions, but the women aren't responsible for their reactions.
vitoexcalibur's post is a response to the Open Source Boob Project, which was developed at a convention where theferret and some of his friends talked about how it would be great if they could ask to touch someone's breasts and not be considered creepy, but as people 'appreciating' a person's beauty, never mind that it is creepy for strangers to invade a person's private space by asking to grope them.
violaswamp has an excellent post in response to the Open Source Boob Project here:
http://violaswamp.livejournal.com/63159.html#cutid1
chash also has excellent points to make about the OSBP (The following in italics is by chash and is from chash's livejournal):
If a group of people comes up to you, clearly outnumbering you, and asks if they can do something which they consider inocuous, then even if to you it isn't, it can feel pressuring--you start trying to justify your reasons for refusing, and somehow "I don't feel comfortable" becomes an insufficient reason. This might not be the group's intention at all! But that doesn't change the power-dynamic, or the way that power dynamic makes you feel...
theferret has made edits and statements that seem to say that he doesn't think everyone should participate in this kind of activity, and that it is not for everywhere. But that doesn't change the incredibly strong feeling that I get from his initial post that he does think that, and that this is a huge amount of where the hostility in the comments is coming from. It does not read to me as if he thinks this was a cool one-off thing that happened. It reads like he thinks this should become the attitude of the world. It's interesting to note that although theferrett's original post does not contain the word "movement," a number of commenters use it. It reads like it's supposed to start a social upheaval. And there are people in there agreeing. And then it gets to sound worryingly like it's going to happen. And that's scary to me, and apparently to others. Because cons can be fun. But they're already skeevy and weird and a kind of creepy environment for me. I try to never be alone at a con, because there's safety in numbers! And theferrett's post just reinforced that for me on every level.
I think that theferrett's initial post was incredibly creepy and quite offensive. I don't think this was the intent of the actual events, and I'm sure a lot of people felt okay with it. I feel just as sure that had I been there, I would have felt very uncomfortable with it. Which doesn't mean that it shouldn't happen, just that I think it should stay far away from me. I don't think any of the women involved were necessarily in the wrong, but I think that it's important to remember that many of us might already feel weird and judged at cons, and that this kind of atmosphere would make us uncomfortable regardless of how we did or did not interact with it. Just knowing it exists and that some people advocate it--even on a small, selective scale, which is its own kind of creepy--is skeevy to me. It's not that it's primarily men or primarily women. It's that if one person did this independentally, without any help from anyone else, I doubt it would have been acceptable. The fact that it was a group, that the fact that women were also being involved is being used as an argument that this means it cannot be offensive--those are the things that make me really upset by this debate.
TO SUM UP:
1. theferrett could have done so much fucking better with his presentation of this.
-Don't write about it like it's a project or a revolution
-Don't talk about how this girl was obviously displaying her aspects, how some girls were clearly "amenable," etc.
-Don't expect the fact that women were also on your side to mean that you could not have been in the wrong to some other women
2. I think women on both sides of the matter ended up feeling pressured, targeted, and deeply uncomfortable about their personal feelings.
-I don't think anyone meant to say that the women who were involved in this were objectifying themselves. HOWEVER, theferrett's post sure as hell made it sound like everyone involved was objectifying women.
3. The event was clearly different from the post about it made it sound.
-THAT DOES NOT INVALIDATE THE REACTIONS TO THE POST. If we weren't there, we don't know. I am somewhat more informed from comments about how things supposedly went down, but that does not change the fact that one of the people who originated this presented it in a way that was not only different from the reality, but downright offensive to many readers.
