Catching up on email and comment notifications. Some of you can expect to be spammed.
Reading some things:
brihana25 writes about sexual misconduct at cons (the still ongoing imbroglio is in Supernatural, but the post is worth reading for everyone in fandom - context), and reminds us that victim-blaming is never acceptable.
Fandom, and the internet in general, is about as close to anarchy as you can get, and believe me when I say that's not a bad thing. No one knows who you are or where you live, and the opinions you hold and the things you do there don't follow you home. There are very few consequences for things done or said in fandom, and those consequences that do exist aren't really tangible.
Fandom sets your fantasies free and gives you a place and a peer group that you can talk freely about them without feeling the shame that the real world would bring down on you for them. Sex is celebrated, and the more the merrier. And in fandom, almost everybody's in to it. Those who aren't can just scroll on by.
But conventions aren't fandom proper. They are a hybrid of fandom and real life, and when those two things collide, they have a tendency to explode rather spectacularly.
If you go to a convention and you decide to bring your fandom fantasies to life, that is your own business. If you decide to seek out like-minded people to play your fantasy out with you, that's fine, too.
But if people who don't want to be there, who don't want to be part of that, get drawn into it on accident, they can't scroll past you. They can't hit the back button.
If their way out is blocked, even temporarily, even if it's not by you but by someone else you brought there? Then we have a problem.
Read More.
Also, Ableist Word Profile on disabledfeminists.com is a great 101 resource.
Reading some things:
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Fandom, and the internet in general, is about as close to anarchy as you can get, and believe me when I say that's not a bad thing. No one knows who you are or where you live, and the opinions you hold and the things you do there don't follow you home. There are very few consequences for things done or said in fandom, and those consequences that do exist aren't really tangible.
Fandom sets your fantasies free and gives you a place and a peer group that you can talk freely about them without feeling the shame that the real world would bring down on you for them. Sex is celebrated, and the more the merrier. And in fandom, almost everybody's in to it. Those who aren't can just scroll on by.
But conventions aren't fandom proper. They are a hybrid of fandom and real life, and when those two things collide, they have a tendency to explode rather spectacularly.
If you go to a convention and you decide to bring your fandom fantasies to life, that is your own business. If you decide to seek out like-minded people to play your fantasy out with you, that's fine, too.
But if people who don't want to be there, who don't want to be part of that, get drawn into it on accident, they can't scroll past you. They can't hit the back button.
If their way out is blocked, even temporarily, even if it's not by you but by someone else you brought there? Then we have a problem.
Read More.
Also, Ableist Word Profile on disabledfeminists.com is a great 101 resource.