Harassment

[la_marquise]

I'm going to regret this...

Sexual harassment is never acceptable. By anyone, of anyone. That is, for me, the bottom line. I've been on the receiving end of it on and off for most of my life. In my earliest memory, I was about 12 and a boy from my class walked past me in the school corridor and grabbed my crotch. Nobody said anything to him. Nobody said anything to me. It was just a thing that boys did. Ever since then, from time to time I've been randomly groped, grabbed, handled and commented on, backed into corners, stared at in ways that made me scared or uncomfortable, and generally treated as a object several times every year. Some of this happens in public -- on the street. Some of it happens in private spaces. Some of it happens within fandom, some not. Sometimes it happens at work. It is, sadly, part of my life. It's part of the life of every woman I know.

The worst incidents... The two scariest (the man who pushed me into his car in a country where I knew only one person, who was not there and where I did not speak the language, the group of young men who crowded into the phone box I was using and starting threatening me) happened out there in the real world. But I've had a fair number of incidents in fannish spaces, too. Most recently, a man I had never seen before in my life managed to make me very uncomfortable in a lift at Chicon 3. No, I don't know who he was. I was trying not to look back at him. I was trying not to give him an opening to move even closer or to try and start a conversation. I am, you need to know at this point, 50. This is 38 years and counting of intermittent harassment.

But here's a thing. These men (and twice, women) have come from all sorts of backgrounds and places, they have been older than me and younger. The man who forced me into his car was probably in his 60s. The one who followed me all over a con despite the continuous presence of the marquis and kept trying to get me to go off alone with him was probably no older than 21. I've been groped by strangers who were as strange to everyone else present as they were to me, and people 'everyone knows'. The behaviour -- touching, hassling, harassing, demanding attention, demanding a piece of me -- is not unique to any age group, any social group, any background.

Sometimes, I've had help when this happens. The people who help come from all backgrounds, age groups, social groups, too. The person who rescued me from one of the scariest things that's happened to me within fandom was someone who is a serial conrunner and possibly a Big Name Fan. I've been helped by friends and fellow fans, by strangers, by fellow writers, by officials (thank you, the porters of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, for rescuing me and my friend C from the man who was following us).

I am a serial volunteer at conventions (and I've been involved in the running of several small cons and one big one, though I am not a SMOF) and a lot of the hassle I've got has been when I was working. There is, sadly, a subset of convention attendees who forget that volunteers are people, too, and who become entitled, demanding and sometimes abusive, because volunteers are there for their convenience, and no other reason. Some congoers, frankly, treat the con staff as servants, and not servants they respect, either. (Yes, there are rude volunteers, too. Yes, some of them can be mean to congoers.) Volunteers are often in the front line when it comes to dealing with abuse. Female volunteers are particularly vulnerable. People with a grudge, a grouse, people looking for someone to manipulate often target the women who are working as a first move, because, culturally, we in the UK expect women to put up and shut up. And if we talk back, we're more likely to be told off for it, too.

I could draw various conclusions from this, most of them blindingly obvious -- I get more hassle when I'm alone or with one or two other women of around my own age than when with a larger group or with the marquis; some people think that having spoken to me once when I'm doing something official (like working in Green Room, which I do compulsively and have done since 1989, I think) means they know me and can follow me everywhere. I get more hassle at cons where I know fewer people (though as a side note, US cons are worse than Canadian or European ones for this. I do not have a theory as to why). When I look at the women I know, and the incidents I know about, though, there are two things overall that emerges about harassment at cons.

1) Any woman can be harassed, but women who are newer to the environment, or working at the convention are more vulnerable because they are more often either alone or with people they don't know well, and are more obliged to talk to strangers.

2) Anyone can be an harasser. ANYONE. It's not unique to older people or younger ones, to BNFs or walk-ins.

The most recent prominent incident that the sff community has been discussing involved one man who is prominent in fandom and two women. A BNF, a writer and someone who volunteers at conventions. Last year, at World Fantasy Con in San Diego, a man who seems to have been new to the sff community serially harassed and groped a number of women, some writers, some not. The year before, also at WFC, the harasser was an individual in a position of power in the professional world. All of these incidents are appalling.

And this is the bit I'm going to regret.

This isn't just something done to women by SMOFS. Editors do it. Writers do it. New fans do it. Established fans do it. People who are staying in the same hotel and are not anything to do with the convention do it. Other people say stupid things about it, because they don't want to think their friends can do bad things. But this is not just about SMOFs, or older fans, or conrunners. This is not a behaviour that can be attributed neatly to only one group and suppressed. I repeat.

Anyone can be an harasser.

And that includes me and you and everyone we know.

Comments

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

I have been saying this a lot recently, but if people are harrassing other people, then they should be banned from the con. I realise it's hard to do with peripatetic organisations which have different committees, but similar goes for pubs and Pubwatch, which can be quite widespread. We ban people for life if they misbehave on our premises. I don't care if they're friends: two of them were. My primary duty of care is to my colleagues and customers, and to my own safety. The local pubs and cafes will ban people on a regular basis: what this means is that sexual harassment and obnoxious behaviour is kept to a minimum, if not actually stamped out (that's unlikely to happen). Pubwatch's logo is, I think, 'banned from one, banned from all' and they stick to it.

Con coms seem to be going through a remarkable (to me) process of angst over this - relatively few other public places do.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Partly it's down to the Geek Social Fallacies thing, I think, partly down to the myth of fannish tolerance, and partly down to the lack of a formal, overarching organisation. Different concoms have different views, and are variable about how they feel about external pressures.
There is also the legal side, which I can't speak to. I suspect major_clanger will know, though. Cons are private events, technically, rather than businesses, and the rules are different, I think. People have been removed and had their memberships refunded in the past, and one person has been refused a membership that I know of. But it's tricky.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

MC will know. I'm wondering about hotel involvement, though. They are public places and they do have to ban people on a fairly regular basis. And cons are held in public spaces. I'm assuming that the law varies between countries, which may make things complicated for Worldcon. The Pubwatch analogy may not hold, but it would be helpful if it did, or if it could be tied into the hotel's policy.

I think the myth of fannish tolerance may indeed be to blame with regard to some of this. Ironically, a whole bunch of my online pagan contacts have just been harrassed by someone online whom we all know IRL (this is someone I've banned) and I gather that someone's just called the police on him - I'll let you know what happens with this, as there are analogies (sexual harrassment was involved at one point, as well as online abuse).

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Certainly hotels have been called in to help remove people, I believe. And anyone can call the police at any time. But MC is definitely the person needed to answer this.
Online harassment... argh. I am still desperately trying to think of sensible strategies on this.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

There are two issues: the theoretical legal position, and the practical legal position.

How it works in theory, at least in England: when you join a convention, you enter into a contract with the convention* by which you get admission to an event. The con promises, within reason, to run the event and to grant you admission. You implicitly promise not to behave in an unreasonable way. If you breach that then the con can terminate your membership and throw you out. If the con throws you out without good reason then it has breached the contract, but what remedy do you have?

That brings us on to the practical point. It doesn't matter what the legal position is if in fact there is little point in enforcing it. Lets say Special Snowflake is thrown out of ThingyCon. Special Snowflake may think he has been removed unjustly and that ThingyCon was in breach of contract. So Special Snowflake can pay £70, fill in a claim form online, get it served on the convention, and if the convention does not dispute the debt get an order for his membership to be refunded (plus the £70). If he is lucky he may get his other con-related expenses back but the court might not allow these. Or the convention might defend the claim, in which case Special Snowflake has to pay a £110 hearing fee and attend the small claims court (probably one local to ThingyCon) and persuade a judge he was unreasonably removed. If he loses - and let's face it, if the ThingyCon committee weren't daft then they will be able to come along and explain that Special Snowflake was ejected for a reason - then he gets no money and has to pay the expenses of ThingyCon's committee who attended.

In short, I consider the suggestion that a disgruntled fan would bring legal action against a con to be unlikely, because said fan will quickly discover how much hassle it is in proportion to what is likely to be recovered.

*Strictly, only if the convention is big enough to incorporate itself. For a smaller con the contract is with the committee.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Thank you. I suspected it was something like this -- and this is why, presumably, many concoms refund memberships to people who are asked to leave?

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Indeed. Once you've removed the direct loss, it puts the ejectee in the position of having to try to claim for consequential losses (e.g. travel to the convention, hotel bill) which would be rather harder to do.

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this - it's very interesting. I'm assuming that in a harasment case, Injured Person could just begin legal action against Special Snowflake in a private capacity if IP wished.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Yes, although how this played out would depend on what SS had done and what remedy IP wanted.

The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 defines harassment as a course of conduct (two or more separate instances) of behaviour that alarms or distresses the victim, that the perpetrator knows would alarm or distress the victim, and which a reasonable person would consider to be likely to cause alarm or distress.

Unusually, PHA 1997 creates both criminal and civil liability. Harassment can be dealt with as an offence, punishable by fine, community order or imprisonment. It can also form the basis of an application for an injunction, by which a court orders the harasser to desist on pain of contempt of court (and possible prison).

It might be possible for IP to get an injunction against SS prohibiting him or her from approaching IP or contacting IP by phone, text or email. Conceivably, if SS's proven pattern of behaviour was bad enough, IP might seek an injunction excluding SS from conventions, or at least conventions that IP was attending, although I can imagine serious practical difficulties with this.

These are all rather dramatic options but in my view if person A is making person B's attendance at conventions so unpleasant as to potentially stop B from going, then B may well be entitled to legal recourse against A, irrespective of whether the convention committee intervenes.

(As a legal aside, SS's misconduct might also lead to IP making a complaint to the police of sexual assault, s.5 public order act offensive language, or s.127 Communications Act offensive or menacing communications. If a conviction resulted from any such complaint, then IP could ask the prosecutor to seek a restraining order in the sort of terms mentioned above.)

[mevennen.livejournal.com]

Thanks very much! This is very clear.

[al-zorra.livejournal.com]

The legal aspect is very important. I don't know about England, but here it's only very recently, in terms of the law codes, that the legal conditions of rape included marital rape, for instance. That there was a legal definition of sexual harassment and abuse in the workplace meriting criminal penalty.

That has made huge differences here for younger women.

Love, C.