Wiscon – Wis[s]e Words

Finally

Published on August 5, 2014Leave a comment

Wiscon has permabanned Jim Frenkel. It’s about time. This is something that should’ve been done last year, not at the end of a cackhanded “process” seemingly more designed to provide the illusion of concern rather than any real understanding of what needed to be done. With another, unrelated harassment case still being decided, Wiscon isn’t out of the woods yet. Far from it in fact, even when the second case has also been resolved.

Wiscon has shown itself not be serious about protecting its members against harassment and far too understanding of the needs of the harassers. It now needs to rebuild trust in the community and show that it can learn the lessons of this disaster, as Readercon did before it.

Wiscon again

Published on July 29, 20141 Comment

Elise Matthesen talks about what happened after she reported being harassed at Wiscon 37, in a post also posted at: C. Lundoff, Mary Robinette Kowal, Stephanie Zvan, Sigrid Ellis and John Scalzi‘s respective blogs.

Last year at WisCon 37, I told a Safety staffer that I had been treated by another attendee in a way that made me uncomfortable and that I believed to be sexual harassment. One big reason I did was that I understood from another source that he had reportedly harassed at least one other person at a convention. I learned that she didn’t report him formally, for a lot of reasons that aren’t mine to say. I was in a position where I felt confident I could take the hit from standing up and telling the truth. So I did.

I didn’t expect, fourteen months later, to have to stand up and tell the truth about WisCon’s leadership as well.

Let’s get some backstory to this, shall we?

As discussed here previously, Elise Matthesen was harassed by somebody who was later identified as Tor editor Jim Frenkel. Shortly after this, he was no longer. It turned out that Matthesen’s experience with Frenkel wasn’t unique; he’d long had a reputation in some circles in fandom. Wiscon at first seemed to take the harassment complaint as seriously as Tor had done, but then it turned out that not only had Frenkel been allowed to attend, he had also been allowed to volunteer at this year’s Wiscon.

That was in late May. Wiscon was slow to react to this but eventually formed several subcommittees, one to look into the general problem of harassment and safety and two to look into specific allegations, with the one looking into what happened to Elise Matthesen finally reporting its verdict on the 18th of July, formally banning Frenkel:

WisCon will (provisionally) not allow Jim Frenkel to return for a period of four years (until after WisCon 42 in 2018). This is “provisional” because if Jim Frenkel chooses to present substantive, grounded evidence of behavioral and attitude improvement between the end of WisCon 39 in 2015 and the end of the four-year provisional period, WisCon will entertain that evidence. We will also take into account any reports of continued problematic behavior.

Allowing Jim Frenkel to return is not guaranteed at any time, including following WisCon 42; the convention’s decision will always be dependent on compelling evidence of behavioral change, and our commitment to the safety of our members. If he is permitted to return at any time, there will be an additional one-year ban on appearing on programming or volunteering in public spaces. Any consideration of allowing him to return will be publicized in WisCon publications and social media at least three months before a final decision is made.

Responses to this announcement were largely critical, with e.g. Kameron Hurley calling for Wiscon to be abolished completely while others said they’d be unlikely to attend Wiscon in future. Elise Matthesen herself had already said she wouldn’t, despite the loss in revenue this would cost her. EDIT: to clarify, she said she would stay away for a year, not forever; see the comments to this post.

In response to this criticism, one of the members of the subcommittee handling Matthesen’s case wrote two blogposts in a personal capacity explaining and apologising for the process with with the committee had handled the case.

From the discussion in those two posts it became clear Wiscon had been doing what Rose Fox had warned about two years earlier, in the context of a similar harassment case at Readercon:

When someone does something we find noxious, they become the focus of attention: how will they be punished? Will they apologize? Can they be brought back into the fold? Meanwhile, the person they targeted with their noxious behavior is forgotten, dismissed, or scorned. Harassers are often charismatic, which is how they get close enough to harass, and they often target the shy and vulnerable, who are that much easier to ignore if they manage to speak up at all. We are all intimately familiar with the narrative of sin-repentance-redemption, and it’s startlingly easy to try to follow someone through it while all but forgetting that they wouldn’t have even started down that road if they hadn’t treated another person badly.

They also pointed out that focusing on the harasser’s redemption means at least two other people would no longer be comfortable at Wiscon.

Following up on all this criticism, Wiscon put out an update saying that

1) In light of the intense community response to the Frenkel subcommittee’s decision, and the concom’s own concern about the “provisional ban,” the WisCon concom is itself currently appealing the subcommittee’s decision and will vote on the matter this week.

2) Debbie Notkin has resigned as Member Advocate, effective immediately.

3) The Bergmann subcommittee is assessing if they can continue given the valid concerns about Wiscon’s existing process.

To which Elise Matthesen’s post was a response.

Your Happening World (July 22nd through July 25th)

Published on July 25, 2014Leave a comment

As Reason’s editor defends its racist history, here’s a copy of its holocaust denial “special issue” – For them, FDR was a tyrant and a criminal, an American Hitler, only no one else could see things their way, because the real Hitler was widely believed to be one of the worst figures in history. Therefore, libertarian “historical revisionism” had to convince these Americans that Hitler wasn’t nearly as awful as they believed, which meant that the Holocaust couldn’t have happened — if the goal was to discredit FDR and the New Deal.
The Top 200 Ways Bleacher Report Screwed Me Over – In my three years at Bleacher Report, I covered the San Jose Sharks while studying in the Bay Area, and the Twins, Wild, Timberwolves, and Vikings upon returning home to Minnesota. I wrote over 500 articles, generated nearly three million page views, and received $200 for my services.
Jim Frenkel at WisCon 38 – Geek Feminism Wiki – In 2014, serial harasser Jim Frenkel attended Wiscon 38 despite complaints about him harassing a Wiscon 37 attendee, and previous reports. The Wiscon 38 organisers reported that they did not have a systemic way to track such issues. They reviewed the situation and provisionally banned Frenkel for several future years, a response that did not satisfy many onlookers.
Under the Beret » The Readercon Thing – I’m sure that most people on my friends lists are already aware of the sexual harassment incident at Readercon, but here’s my attempt at a link round-up
Readercon: Safety Procedures –

Cons should worry about victims, not harassers

Published on July 19, 2014Leave a comment

Thinking more about Wiscon, I came back to the point Rose Fox made two years ago, in the wake of the harassment problems at Readercon:

When someone does something we find noxious, they become the focus of attention: how will they be punished? Will they apologize? Can they be brought back into the fold? Meanwhile, the person they targeted with their noxious behavior is forgotten, dismissed, or scorned. Harassers are often charismatic, which is how they get close enough to harass, and they often target the shy and vulnerable, who are that much easier to ignore if they manage to speak up at all. We are all intimately familiar with the narrative of sin-repentance-redemption, and it’s startlingly easy to try to follow someone through it while all but forgetting that they wouldn’t have even started down that road if they hadn’t treated another person badly.

That is, that too much of the focus in this is on the harasser and that cons even when starting to address harassment do this, sometimes with the best of intentions. As with Wiscon, you get all those pseudolegal procedures and folderol to make sure that harassment policies are fair and balanced and while having due process is important in the justice system, if you run a con it should be more simple to expell people who hassle and harass other congoers. There’s no need to reinvent the legal system.

And at the forefront of every conrunner’s mind should be the simple idea that for every harasser treated with kid gloves and not expelled, several victims or potential victims will feel unsafe and not go to their convention.

Wiscon still favouring harassers

Published on July 18, 2014Leave a comment

As you know Bob, Wiscon has had problems getting its house in order after Jim Frenkel was accused of harassment. After Elise Matthesen reported being harassed by him last year you would’ve expected him not to have been welcome this year, but that turned out not to be the case. Fianlly, after lots of anger online and elsewhere and more incompetence from the con, Wiscon finally established a subcomittee to look at the Frenkel case and come to a decision about what to do with him. Today it reached its decision:

The WisCon committee announces the following actions:

WisCon will (provisionally) not allow Jim Frenkel to return for a period of four years (until after WisCon 42 in 2018). This is “provisional” because if Jim Frenkel chooses to present substantive, grounded evidence of behavioral and attitude improvement between the end of WisCon 39 in 2015 and the end of the four-year provisional period, WisCon will entertain that evidence. We will also take into account any reports of continued problematic behavior.

Allowing Jim Frenkel to return is not guaranteed at any time, including following WisCon 42; the convention’s decision will always be dependent on compelling evidence of behavioral change, and our commitment to the safety of our members. If he is permitted to return at any time, there will be an additional one-year ban on appearing on programming or volunteering in public spaces. Any consideration of allowing him to return will be publicized in WisCon publications and social media at least three months before a final decision is made.

Based on the policies adopted by WisCon’s Harassment Policy Committee before WisCon 38 in 2014, Jim Frenkel has the right to appeal this decision to SF3, WisCon’s governing body. If he enters an appeal, we will make public statements both when he does so and when the appeal ruling is issued.

Which really isn’t good enough? Because if I read this right, in the worst case scenario, if Frenkel is really really sorry, he could be back at the con in two years time, the year after it back as volunteer. Even a straight four year ban seems too little for somebody who harassed at least one woman at Wiscon, perhaps more. How could his victims feel safe there with this resolution? In everything this statement seems more concerned with Frenkel’s rights than with that of his victims, especially as it offers some sort of vague rehabilitation process he could undergo to be allowed back in less than two years.

Note that Elise Matthesen has already said she’d rather not come back to Wiscon regardless of the economic consequences for her business; I can’t imagine this ruling will change her mind. By bending over backwards to give Frenkel options for redemption, Wiscon keeps driving away his victims, not to mention those who have no desire to become his victim. The con had an opportunity to make a statement here, by banning Frenkel either for life or for a long enough period that it would actually have inconvenienced him; by not doing this they confirm that his rights to come to their con trumps the ability of any woman to feel safe at it.

This is not how a serious con deals with harassment.