Don’t be; it’s the fall that kills you, but also don’t watch this video, of climbing to work on a 1700 feet height antenna tower. Everytime you think, this is not so bad, the horror gets kicked off a notch. An elevator ride 1600 fee tup? Not so bad. Climbing a ladder up from there safely inside the tower? A bit worse. Freeclimbing on the outside of the tower on a small ladder? Getting scary. Ladder stops and you have to climb the actual frame. Okay, I’m out. Whoops, you now have to climb the antenna itself, using an even flimsier ladder, the hoist yourself over the top and stand over 1700 feet high while trying to do your job? Whoa.
geekdom
Fandom should get its act together
To cut a long story short: at Readercon Genevieve Valentine got (sexually) harassed by what turned out to be a high powered sf fan (don’t laugh). Readercon having a zero tolerance policy for that behaviour was supposed to ban him permanently, but decided to make it only a two year ban for reasons. Once Genevieve went public with the verdict and her disappointment about it, the inevitable internet outrage firestorm happened and it got changed to the lifetime ban it should’ve been in the first. In the process the problems fandom has with sexual harassement were highlighted once again, with various cons examinating their own processes for dealing with this sort of toxic behaviour. A good development all round, right? Perhaps, but it did take its toll on Genevieve, still dealing with fallout like this two months later:
You will find out that, seven weeks after a “sincerely regretful” admission of his behavior at Readercon, your harasser was put in a position of power at a con, overseeing volunteers. He cornered a woman to talk about how hard this has been on him; he spoke inappropriately to a woman while bartending a party, to the point that a stranger intervened.
You will see some people are wary of these reports, because they think that, having been named, the harasser’s behavior was under scrutiny. (That this should be an advantage of identifying harassers, or that any harasser could avoid censure by not harassing women, is, as of press time, not under discussion there.)
The fact that a known harasser can just stroll into another high profile voluntering position is depressing enough, but more so is the idea that so many people are wary of believing further accusations against him, for fear of, what, some sort of crusade against him, of women getting their kicks by inventing abuse and see him as an easy target? The first can be explained if nto excused by ignorance, the second seems more like a wilful denial, where it’s more important to absolutely exclude the possibility of a false positive than it is to believe the women coming forward with their own stories of harassement. I’m all for giving people the benefit of the doubt, but not when they proven already they can’t be trusted and have done nothing to remedy that.
The more I learn (secondhand) about how sexism, but also racism or transphobia and homophobia, operates, the more it becomes self evident how important it is to believe the victims when they report harassement, or it continues. Fandom as a whole still needs to learn that, though it is slowly getting better (I hope).
Oh fandom, please stop disappointing me.
When I first discovered it fandom seemed so exotic, yet welcoming. That was old skool fandom, written sf only, which as far as I was concerned was the only fandom. These were my people and I felt safe there. But as has become clear, should have been clear for years if not decades if I had paid attention, that safety is relative. A white bloke like me? Little problems fitting in, but as racefail has shown, as various groping incidents have shown, it may be different for women or people of colour. Fandom is slowly, haltingly grasping for improvements, getting to grips with the idea that yes, it does have to care about racism, sexism, homo and transphobia and so on.
There is a lot of resistance to this idea however, best symbolised in the following quote from the somewhat shit stirring Overheard from the Smof Mailing List Tumblr, taking anonymous quotes from a convention runners mailing list:
“What really disturbs me even more is a rather marked generational divide, again, particularly around the sexual harassment. The most horrific abuse I’ve seen, and experienced, has come from thirty-somethings, roughly. Their eagerness to see and punish harassment worries and befuddles me. I wonder if we’re beginning to see the bitter fruit of helicopter parents and/or the notion that safe spaces are possible. (This latter is a hot button topic for me. No space can be made safe. Safer perhaps, but … I just want to say that I have never felt unsafe at an sf con and am completely boggled by the whole notion.)”
Sometimes it does look like an entire generation of older, entitled, largely white middeclass male fans have to die off before we can get any real progress going, but then I remember Frederik Pohl.
Be disappointed in Heinlein all over again
If there really was one taboo subject in the old Usenet days of discussing science fiction, it was doubting the genius of Robert Heinlein. there were always acolytes and fanboys aplenty to explain away the homophobia, misogyny or racism that cropped up again and again in his work, or excuse the flawed logic or inconsistencies that could be found in them. Times have changed though and as new generations of sf readers have grown up, Heinlein has lost much of his former prominence in science fiction. Which means there has been room to start seeing the real Heinlein, not the idealised picture his fans have build up around him.
Ironically, it’s the self same fans who are helping to tear this picture down, as they are the only ones dedicated enough to publish things like a never send letter to F. M. Busby about freedom and race relations (PDF, starts at page 68). It’s full of gems like this:
Nor do I feel responsible for the generally low state of the Negro—as one Negro friend pointed out to me; the lucky Negroes were the ones who were enslaved. Having traveled quite a bit in Africa, I know what she means. One thing is clear: Whether one speaks of technology or social institutions,
“civilization” was invented by us, not by the Negroes. As races, as cultures, we are five thousand years, about, ahead of them. Except for the culture, both institutions and technology, that they got from us, they would still be in the stone age, along with its slavery, cannibalism, tyranny, and utter lack of the concept we call “justice.”
Which is straight out of any angry white nerd’s rant against political correctness ever written. So when was it written? 1964.
We’re NASA and we know it
Brilliant.