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One of the posted panels at WindyCon, a Chicago convention that took place this past weekend, was called “Tutti Frutti Literature.” The panel description read, “With changing social norms and lifestyles, how is this affecting our literature?”
Annalee Flower Horne tagged the convention about this on Twitter, saying this was not okay. A number of people agreed, including WindyCon attendees and former guests of honor.
When I saw the panel write-up, my mind went to the anti-gay slur. The reference to changing lifestyles also made me think this could be a panel about how “the gay” was getting all over our books.
I knew one of the listed panelists, Chris Barkley, and tagged him to ask if he knew what was going on here.
Barkley ended up posting his thoughts on the matter at File770. He spoke with Louisa Feimster, who explained:
“We were under a lot of pressure to come up with titles for panels and we kinda finished up in the middle of the night. Really, we didn’t mean to offend anybody, we were just tired.” She also went on to explain that in her end of the BDSM world, “tutti frutti” does not have a negative connotations and she thought it would be an interesting way to title a panel on the changing forms of literature.
Fair enough. I’m glad it was a mistake, as opposed to a deliberate slam on the LGBT community.
However, Barkley also calls this a witch hunt, and gave a statement at the panel (reproduced in the column), saying, “The main point is that damage has been done to the honor and reputation of Windycon because someone was offended. To which I respond : BIG DEAL!” Basically, if I’m reading his statement correctly, people were offended over nothing, and should save their energy for real injustices.
Panelist Mari Brighe ended up walking out of the panel after Barkley’s statement there. She’s written a blog post about what happened. She says about the panel title and description:
“My general assumption with this panel is that it had been proposed by a queer and/or trans person who was couching their language to make the panel sound more widely applicable, and that the panel title was something of an attempt to reclaim some previously hurtful language.”
She also explains her reasons for leaving the panel:
“Mr Barkley’s egregious tone-policing of queer concerns made me feel quite unwelcome. As a young queer trans woman on panel of unfamiliar older men who clearly had some anger at my community and were predisposed to thinking we were overly-sensitive, I did not feel especially safe. I’ve been in similar panel situations before (including one at Windycon several years ago), and the usual result is me being shouted down by men until I’m nearly in tears. Given that I already had one clearly angry, hostile panelist harboring very negative beliefs about someone like me, I made the decision that I would recuse myself from the panel for my own safety and emotional well-being, and in protest of the kinds of over-the-top tone-policing and complete dismissal (and denigration) of the concerns of queer folks that Mr Barkley had engaged in.”
Finally, WindyCon posted an apology on their website.
“Now that the convention is over, we have had the opportunity to read through the many posts and comments on the subject. We have taken to heart the hurt and anger caused by the poor choice of wording used in the title and description of this panel. We are very sorry we offended. While this was not our intention, it was the result, and for this we sincerely apologize. We will be working to ensure this does not happen in the future. These are some specific steps we will take moving forward…”
###
Speaking as someone who was not at this WindyCon, but who has attended many of them in the past (including as a Guest of Honor), I’m impressed with the convention’s apology. I believe the offense was unintentional. I appreciate that they recognize unintentional hurt is still hurt. There are no excuses, and they give concrete steps they’ll be taking in the future to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
In an age of excuses and fauxpologies, I thought this was very well done.
I’m disappointed by Barkley’s response. As he says:
“[T]here was no grand conspiracy to offend the gay community. While the choice of the term ‘tutti frutti’ may be regrettable, it was NOT done in any sense of malice, at least from my point of view.”
I believe him. But he seems to presume that because no harm was intended, no harm was done, and therefore everyone should just STFU about it. He acknowledges being angry and enraged, while telling people who were offended to save their anger and rage for bigger targets.
Of course, it’s possible to be angry about big issues like national politics and also be angry about things like a convention panel description at the same time.
Nobody was calling for WindyCon to be burnt at the stake. They were calling out a panel description which, intentional or not, came off as hurtful, insulting, and dismissive.
I’m glad it wasn’t intentional. I would have been much more pissed if this had been a deliberate thing. But we’ve got to stop thinking “I didn’t mean to hurt you” is some kind of magic eraser. “I told you I didn’t intentionally run over your goat. How dare you continue to be upset!”
While I understand the convention was this weekend and everyone was hellabusy, I wish WindyCon had posted their apology sooner. I wish Barkley hadn’t attacked people who were upset about the panel title/description.
I also feel like my tagging Barkley into the conversation on Twitter was one factor in this becoming a larger blow-up than it needed to be, and for that I apologize.
Personally, I appreciate people calling out problematic and troublesome stuff like this. And I very much appreciate WindyCon’s apology. This is how we grow and do better.
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Annalee Flower Horne tagged the convention about this on Twitter, saying this was not okay. A number of people agreed, including WindyCon attendees and former guests of honor.
When I saw the panel write-up, my mind went to the anti-gay slur. The reference to changing lifestyles also made me think this could be a panel about how “the gay” was getting all over our books.
I knew one of the listed panelists, Chris Barkley, and tagged him to ask if he knew what was going on here.
Barkley ended up posting his thoughts on the matter at File770. He spoke with Louisa Feimster, who explained:
“We were under a lot of pressure to come up with titles for panels and we kinda finished up in the middle of the night. Really, we didn’t mean to offend anybody, we were just tired.” She also went on to explain that in her end of the BDSM world, “tutti frutti” does not have a negative connotations and she thought it would be an interesting way to title a panel on the changing forms of literature.
Fair enough. I’m glad it was a mistake, as opposed to a deliberate slam on the LGBT community.
However, Barkley also calls this a witch hunt, and gave a statement at the panel (reproduced in the column), saying, “The main point is that damage has been done to the honor and reputation of Windycon because someone was offended. To which I respond : BIG DEAL!” Basically, if I’m reading his statement correctly, people were offended over nothing, and should save their energy for real injustices.
Panelist Mari Brighe ended up walking out of the panel after Barkley’s statement there. She’s written a blog post about what happened. She says about the panel title and description:
“My general assumption with this panel is that it had been proposed by a queer and/or trans person who was couching their language to make the panel sound more widely applicable, and that the panel title was something of an attempt to reclaim some previously hurtful language.”
She also explains her reasons for leaving the panel:
“Mr Barkley’s egregious tone-policing of queer concerns made me feel quite unwelcome. As a young queer trans woman on panel of unfamiliar older men who clearly had some anger at my community and were predisposed to thinking we were overly-sensitive, I did not feel especially safe. I’ve been in similar panel situations before (including one at Windycon several years ago), and the usual result is me being shouted down by men until I’m nearly in tears. Given that I already had one clearly angry, hostile panelist harboring very negative beliefs about someone like me, I made the decision that I would recuse myself from the panel for my own safety and emotional well-being, and in protest of the kinds of over-the-top tone-policing and complete dismissal (and denigration) of the concerns of queer folks that Mr Barkley had engaged in.”
Finally, WindyCon posted an apology on their website.
“Now that the convention is over, we have had the opportunity to read through the many posts and comments on the subject. We have taken to heart the hurt and anger caused by the poor choice of wording used in the title and description of this panel. We are very sorry we offended. While this was not our intention, it was the result, and for this we sincerely apologize. We will be working to ensure this does not happen in the future. These are some specific steps we will take moving forward…”
###
Speaking as someone who was not at this WindyCon, but who has attended many of them in the past (including as a Guest of Honor), I’m impressed with the convention’s apology. I believe the offense was unintentional. I appreciate that they recognize unintentional hurt is still hurt. There are no excuses, and they give concrete steps they’ll be taking in the future to make sure this doesn’t happen again.
In an age of excuses and fauxpologies, I thought this was very well done.
I’m disappointed by Barkley’s response. As he says:
“[T]here was no grand conspiracy to offend the gay community. While the choice of the term ‘tutti frutti’ may be regrettable, it was NOT done in any sense of malice, at least from my point of view.”
I believe him. But he seems to presume that because no harm was intended, no harm was done, and therefore everyone should just STFU about it. He acknowledges being angry and enraged, while telling people who were offended to save their anger and rage for bigger targets.
Of course, it’s possible to be angry about big issues like national politics and also be angry about things like a convention panel description at the same time.
Nobody was calling for WindyCon to be burnt at the stake. They were calling out a panel description which, intentional or not, came off as hurtful, insulting, and dismissive.
I’m glad it wasn’t intentional. I would have been much more pissed if this had been a deliberate thing. But we’ve got to stop thinking “I didn’t mean to hurt you” is some kind of magic eraser. “I told you I didn’t intentionally run over your goat. How dare you continue to be upset!”
While I understand the convention was this weekend and everyone was hellabusy, I wish WindyCon had posted their apology sooner. I wish Barkley hadn’t attacked people who were upset about the panel title/description.
I also feel like my tagging Barkley into the conversation on Twitter was one factor in this becoming a larger blow-up than it needed to be, and for that I apologize.
Personally, I appreciate people calling out problematic and troublesome stuff like this. And I very much appreciate WindyCon’s apology. This is how we grow and do better.
from Jim C. Hines http://ift.tt/2yIdq9Z
via IFTTT
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Second, disclosures: I've been on concoms as programming staff and in many publications roles, including editing pocket programs; I have seen lots of panel titles/descriptions go by over the years, and written many as well. I have also been a panelist at cons, mostly here in the Northwest, for many years.
My observations?
#1: As all observers seem to agree, the unintentionally hurtful nature of the title is an artifact of a Feist's Law variant, to wit: "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by
stupidityexcessive but inevitable haste." Deadlines and schedules often slip even in the best of conditions, and very often panel titles and descriptions are written or rewritten at the last moment and compressed to fit into smaller spaces than one would like. I think it's clear that there was no intent to offend on the concom's end; I would hope that any hurt caused by the title alone -- and I grant that hurt did occur -- could be as easily forgiven as it was readily acknowledged.However.
#2: I think there was a much more serious failure to communicate here that seems to have been wholly overlooked -- and that led directly to the panel disintegrating as badly as it did. My concern is this: Given what both parties have acknowledged was an extremely vague and easily misinterpreted panel title and description, neither the assigned moderator nor Windycon programming staff made any attempt to clarify the intended scope and subject matter of the panel with one another prior to the con. Instead, Ms. Brighe walked into the room prepared to lead one panel, Ms. Feimster walked into the room prepared to introduce an entirely different panel.
That absolutely should not have happened. Speaking as a past panelist and moderator of panels, if I'd been presented with a description that vague and, particularly including a phrase whose meaning wasn't entirely clear from context, I would have promptly emailed my programming contact to ask for more detail about what their intentions for the panel might have been. It is clear that Ms. Brighe didn't do that.
It's also clear that she didn't, as I usually do when I moderate, send email to my assigned panelists well before the con outlining my sense of the panel's potential structure (if I have one) and asking for suggestions on how best to amplify, adapt, or change that structure based on their own knowledge and expertise. [That said, OryCon routinely includes contact information for one's fellow panelists with its schedule emails, explicitly facilitating that process; I don't know if Windycon does the same. They may well not do so, since evidently they didn't give Ms. Brighe enough information about her assigned panelists for her to realize in advance that she was the only woman assigned to the panel.]
And that's not the biggest thing that went wrong.
In all the years I've been attending conventions -- and that started well before I was a concom member or a panelist -- it's been my understanding that once a panel starts, the subject of the panel is what the panelists determine it to be. This is a tradition precisely because pocket-program descriptions are often so short and imprecise, and it can also be a useful hedge against (or springboard from) just the sort of social-media discussion that occurred in the present case. (Yes, this is a tradition that can be abused, and probably has been on occasion, but that's a separate discussion.)
And yet. It's clear from the accounts that Ms. Feimster came into the room without knowing what preparations Ms. Brighe had made as moderator, although she did have clear knowledge of how the panel title had been interpreted online. In those circumstances, I submit that it was completely inappropriate for her to say, at the very last possible moment, from the front of the room, "yes, well, but I meant this panel to be about SOMETHING ELSE ENTIRELY"...and *not* expect that statement to completely derail Ms. Brighe's ability to moderate the panel she had walked into the room prepared to moderate. At that point, whatever was originally intended DOES NOT MATTER; the right thing to do is to let the panelists and the moderator do the job they (hopefully) came prepared to do.
Ms. Feimster did just the opposite. She sandbagged Ms. Brighe, and I absolutely do not blame Ms. Brighe for walking out in those circumstances even if that isn't the expressed reason for the walking-out. In Ms. Brighe's case, I think I'd be wary of going back to WindyCon at all after that experience, barring proper acknowledgement of and apology for what happened to her both from Ms. Feimster personally and the concom as a whole. (I don't ask or expect that such apologies would be made publicly; that's a matter between Ms. Brighe and those involved. But I think that they're absolutely owed to Ms. Brighe in the wake of what she described.)
At the end of the day, I think the social-media kerfuffle is a side issue. The real damage was done by the principals' failure to communicate with one another...even though the social-media kerfuffle gave them a valid excuse to do just that.
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