http://synecdochic.livejournal.com/213567.html

My kids are all gamers. My daughter and daughter-in-law have a short list of comic shops and game stores where they will buy things and a much longer list where they will not. It’s all about how invisible they are. Quite often staff (always male) will not wait on them or will stare/leer from a distance. My daughter has literally stood at the cash register, item in one hand and money in the other, shouting, ‘Hey, can I buy this?’

Baby girl came out of the game store at the mall Sunday afternoon empty handed. I asked her if she found the game she was looking for and she said, ‘No. The guy at the counter said he liked my Legend of Zelda t-shirt, but I was getting a creepy vibe from him so I just left.’ I told her to trust that vibe.

For a significant portion of gamer/geek males, ‘girls’ are invisible when they want to buy a manga or check out a game, but the minute some pinhead emerges from his momma’s basement and wants to cop a feel, women are suddenly valuable members of the sub-culture. Only worth noticing if one can help them ‘feel good about themselves.’

And they wonder why women all over the internet are upset?

No, because they engaged passing strangers in it, according to posts on the original thread. If people want to get a room and have a group grope, more power to them! But doing this in public settings is inappropriate.

It’s probably something you’d have to be there or been in that sort of atmosphere to truly understand

I’ve been in “that sort of atmosphere” pretty much every day of my life for the past 30 years, if by “that sort of atmosphere” you mean “strangers asking if they can touch my breasts or other body parts.” I call it “walking down the street” or “going to the grocery store” myself–no button needed.

So, I see what happened at the con as probably a relatively harmless and inclusive thing. It’s probably something you’d have to be there or been in that sort of atmosphere to truly understand. I don’t think there was anything wrong with it, though whether or not I would personally participate would depend on how comfortable I felt with the group of people as a whole. (A whole con? Uh. No. A group of about 20-30 people that I am acquainted, at the very least, with everyone? That may be a different story.)

Turning it into a “movement”? That bothers me. I’m concerned that it will impact the public view of SF/F conventions (I’ve been to a good few and never seen anything like this going on, btw). I’m concerned that women at these cons will feel pressured or ostracized. I’m afraid that someone may get hurt, because once something like this reaches a certain “mass”, there will be people who abuse it. I don’t think that the supposed overall “good” (which I don’t really buy) is worth even one person being emotionally or physically hurt and degraded.

The people for this sort of “movement” seem to believe that abuse will not happen or if it does, the offender will be punished. Mere punishment will not take away the fact that the abuse happened. Depending on several factors, including the extremity of the offense and the victim’s past, it could be severe. To deny that this is even a possibility is extreme naivety, and to dismiss concerns of womens’ well-being and safety is insensitive and negligent at best.

Because–newsflash–I don’t want detailed feedback about my attractiveness and touch requests from strangers at public gatherings. I bet he doesn’t, either.

Best. Line. Evah!

:)

I like the Open-Source-Kick-you-in-the-Balls-Project, myself…

Can I just add that whatever goes on between (oh the triteness of that phrase) consenting adults can continue to go on between those people with my blessing – if the original group had kept it to themselves and had fun doing it, well, hey, whatever floats your boat, as it were.

Two things stuck in MY craw really badly.

One was that the whole incident, far from being contained in a in-group having fun with each other, was escalated into a “movement”. And a movement which disingenuously tried to pull the wool over people’s eyes. Calling something an “open source boob project” stopped being “non-sexual” in nature the moment you used the word “boob” in there – and in any event it was never even contemplated as an open source elbow project which means that the sexual angle was basically built in from the beginning.

The second was the so-called “opt in” thing. You know what would be an opt in? Put a sign on a closed door, explaining what goes on within. Anyone who crosses that threshhold is opting in. Having to wear a button to opt out is not “not optin in”, it’s crossing over into defensive behaviour. How about everybody out there – unless that person has good and openly affirmed reason to think otherwise – simply assumes that the default position is simply no – a woman’s body is not available to be touched fondled or groped by passers by no matter how much those passers by might profess to admire individual attributes of that body or the body as a whole. You want fondling privileges, at least buy me a fricking bouquet of roses first.

The whole thing could blow up in people’s faces in so many ways that it isn’t even funny.

I go to lots of cons. My husband’s response to this whole affair was that if anyone ever offered gropage to me I should say, “sure, if I can rearange your family jewels afterwards.”

Luckily, many cons have outlawed this, but not all. I would absolutely never go to a con where that sort of behavior, or the behavior above was allowed.