Okay, this isn’t news per se. But I really feel the need to put this on the front page, rather than under the blog tab, because it’s important.
Today, WFC came out with an absolutely toothless, insulting harassment policy. On the same day, SXSW canceled various panels on harassment and safety in fandom spaces, over threats of violence. I’m not often a fan of the whole "If you’re not on one side, you’re on the other" dichotomy. But sometimes, it’s accurate.
Convention-runners? If you aren’t overtly anti-harassment? YOU ARE PRO-HARASSMENT. Maybe you don’t mean to be, but that’s the message you’re sending to the people who do the harassing and those who are victims of it, and guess what? Those are the only messages that count.
Step the hell up already.
Obviously, I’m not the one threatened by a lack of such policies, but that’s exactly why I–and other people in my position–need to support this effort. Sadly, the people who are affected aren’t likely to be heard. A while back, author John Scalzi created a pledge, which many authors signed, saying that he (and they) would not attend any conventions that didn’t have a functional anti-harassment policy in place. Consider this public notice that I’m on board.
