WisCon: Moments

[bcholmes]

A moment from a panel on Saturday night. I was attending a panel about doing political work on limited resources. One panelist[*] was talking about those moments where you just don't have the energy to go all educate-y. He used an example of coming out as bi to a colleague who then made the comment: "You must have lots of threesomes." The panelist's response was to smile and say, "oh, honey. You were doing so good. 95 out of 100. Maybe tomorrow you can try this again." Me, I loved the lightness in the response that said, "No, I need you to know that you screwed up but I don't have the energy for a full-on education about why you screwed up."

In one way, the point was marred by a woman in the front row who asserted (annoyingly) that the response was terribly rude and at one point said "If someone has said the wrong thing and you have the correct information, you have an obligation to provide the information." Hello. Have you heard the phrase, "It's not my job to edumacate you?" But the panelist's deft way of handling the deferral of an argument about it served as another example of how to avoid energy-draining stuff when one doesn't have the energy.

Through circumstances not of my choosing, I ended up having dinner on Sunday with the woman who objected, and Ian and I had a nightmarish argument with her. She seemed to believe that we shouldn't disapprove of anything that someone might say that might fit in to the cultural norms of wherever they might come from and that we are obliged never to be angry in any response we might give because that "poisons the well" for any future attempt to educate about any particular issue.

Many of the things she said lead me to believe that she believed that the only way to get a fair, oppression-free society is to act, at all times, as if there were no oppressions. At one point, I quoted a poem that I first heard on alt.poly:

Sure I'll go
If you go to
But I'm polite
So after you.

Another moment: at the joy of fat sex panel. kalmn inspired me. We'd been talking about online dating, and we'd become stuck in a bit of a "everyone will love you if you love yourself and embrace the power of positive thinking." (I do believe in faeries. I do. I do.) I think kalmn really well-articulated that while loving yourself is good, and while we shouldn't internalize fat hatred, we're still negotiating our way through a fat phobic dating scene and one should be prepared for stuff to be hard. I think I often admire people who are willing and able to swim against the current, but who are able to do so with a light touch (is that a mixed metaphor? It sounds odd, at the very least.)

Moment the third: it was Sunday night, and I was wandering the party floor with jiawen and we'd just wandered into the room that was originally going to be the LiveJournal party. Moments after we got there, a fellow on the other side of the room started shouting. Me, I felt, "Oooo. Uncomfortable scene." And we wandered back into the hall. No sooner was I in the hall than I thought: he was shouting at a woman sitting on a couch. And I recalled that people were wearing "backup" ribbons on their badges in honor of the Open Source Women Back Each Other Up Program. I said to jiawen that I think that maybe we didn't demonstrate good backup behaviour. So we went back into the room and jiawen went over to the woman who was on the couch and made sure that she was okay. The fellow was apparently venting his frustration about the WisCon troll situation that had just come to light earlier in the evening. There was no hostility aimed at the woman, and she did not feel in danger.

I don't know how it is for everybody else, but I find it really easy to be won over by grand ideas (so long as I'm sympathetic to the place where they're coming from). In fact, more easily than making those ideas part of daily choices. But I really like the part of ideas that involves them being incorporated into daily choices.

* I know who the panelist is, and he's very cool, but I'm uncertain about whether or not he wants to be identified

Comments

[indefatigable42.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the links to the Back Up project. I hadn't heard of that.

WisCon has popped up elsewhere in my universe

[chemlabgoddess.livejournal.com]

Here's a link to another blog I follow:

http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2008/05/28/a-report-on-an-anti-fat-anti-trans-wiscon-report/

I wondered if you were aware of any of this, since I knew you were there.

Re: WisCon has popped up elsewhere in my universe

[(Anonymous)]

In Alas, a Blog? The Wiscon Troll affair is hitting the big time!

I wonder if Amanda Marcotte will have anything sensible to say about it.

Re: WisCon has popped up elsewhere in my universe

[abostick59.livejournal.com]

Whoops. That was me.

Re: WisCon has popped up elsewhere in my universe

[chemlabgoddess.livejournal.com]

I SOOOOOO need to go to WisCon. It's only a few hours away, after all...

Re: WisCon has popped up elsewhere in my universe

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

I am aware of it. (All too aware of it)

It was an ugly situation, and it had negative effects on cool people I met at WisCon. My trans panel, scheduled at a time that was just after the situation came to light, was affected in some ways. We had con security checking up on us to make sure we were safe, yet we still lost some of our panelists because they were among the people hurt by the whole situation.

I don't really want to go into this any further because, in my view, the person who did these things is a troll with no life, and I'm not inclined to view such a person as worthy of much mental energy on my part.

[kalmn.livejournal.com]

am so curious which person it was you had sunday night dinner with. sooo curious.

i was just feeling like people were saying "if you do the right things, it will all work out (and therefore if it's not working out you're doing something wrong)". which i *hate*. sometimes, you do all the right things, and life sucks anyhow. i mean, not that my life sucks, because it doesn't. but hello continuing lack of anyone to put my cold feet on in the middle of the night.

[jiawen]

I'm pretty sure the man shouting was whumpdotcom, which is kinda ironic, I think.

[firecat]

Thanks for posting your memories and thoughts.

[nadyalec.livejournal.com]

Hi! It was so great to meet you at con.

So, the other thing about that interaction with the coworker: she _immediately_ figured out what she had done wrong. I mean, most folks are smart enough to figure out why it's not okay to ask coworkers about threesomes. There's something a bit odd about feeling the need to Educate folks on the completely Obvious. I think lots of times folks say the wrong thing not because they don't know better, because they slipped up. I like to try to give folks the opportunity to take it back and apologize. Saves my energy for explaining things folks don't actually understand-- and many people like being given the benefit of the doubt, and a chance to apologize for making a mistake, rather then having a lengthy processing session about something when they quite well know what they did wrong.

I'm sorry you had the sporky dinner with this person, tho!

xoxo

Nabil