However, this is the internet and while I totally thought I was topped out? It turns out I wasn't.
cereta posts here about the events that occurred during and after Wiscon this year. For a pretty thorough explanation, Angry Black Woman posts here about what happened. Short version:
A woman named Rachel Moss put a post on Something Awful mocking attendees not because of their politics or their feminism or their willingness to come to Wisconsin, but because they were too fat, too white, too male, or too black for her taste.
Not just a post. Pictures (faces blocked, badges not so much) of attendees.
Fannish community standards were created as a protective measure to fen from harassment that, as this has pretty much proven, still exists. We created it because we're fen, because our first reaction to being hit is to hit back as hard as we possibly can, because that shit hurts and no one wants to be around for a second punch. If we get rid of them first, they can't get us again.
(Or we vanish. For good.)
It was created to protect us, as much from each other as others. It gives everyone a quick, easy answer to the question. To protect our community. To make as safe as possible the spaces we created for ourselves.
It was not, and never has been, a way to protect the harassers. This isn't a fine line situation. This isn't even a grey spot of sliding scale. This was not the internet alone. This was real life, in the flesh, in a physical location, documented stalking of attendees and their children for the purposes of abusing them. Community standards are not a way to fuck each other over in RL and expect and require people to never talk about it.
This had nothing to do with fandom. RL harassment is not a protected fannish activity. Community standards do not apply.
...the posts I linked to say this a lot better. Go there.
ETA: Or go here, where
coffeeandink gives an excellent, thorough, and well-measured response to the Unfunny Business post that I'm still--boggling over.
a. Went around photographing people without permission for purpose of identifying them and ridiculing them anywhere.
b. Made all people who have mental illness look bad by being a total asscrab. People really need to lay off using her eating disorder as a reason, never mind an excuse, for her behaviour. With the media, it's not like the general public needs any more ammunition to think we're all dangerous when cunts like her go around proving the point by stalking others.
Also, Rachel Moss attended Wiscon under her own name, with her real name and her LJ name on her badge. Why she should get protection not extended to any of the victims of her viciousness is beyond me.
Therefore: fannish rules do not apply here. This is internet harassment. Period. It has nothing to do with fandom of any nature, because the where she did this is irrelevant. I wouldn't care if it was a school, or a sporting event, or a church. She didn't grey out the badges, she attended a public function where real names -- including her own -- were known. Nothing about that is fannish.
I am... more torn about her name and information being spread around, and I'm not sure I like the idea of contacting her supposed graduate school -- I don't know what that's going to do, really. The University is not her parent, she's a legal adult, etc. They're not legally responsible for her, and the idea that she broke their code of conduct is... really flimsy. Pictures posted on the internet and mocked is hardly uncommon.
However. I do think that someone needs to really research internet harassment laws and look into what kind of charges could be brought to bear. That is, to me, a far more appropriate response. She went to the con specifically to harass people, was thrown out because of it, and there's gotta be something done to limit her damage the next time. Since it's clear she wants there to be a next time.
So nice to be reminded that isn't just fannish shenanigans that are assholes. It's our whole damned species.
From what I've read in the posts, her fellow students might be the ones doing that.
Since it's clear she wants there to be a next time.
With any kind of luck, the con mods who see this will blacklist her. She should *not* be at a fan convention again. Like, ever.
The people at the con who had their photos taken have (in my mind) every right to contact RM's boss- I don't know that I would do it myself, but they can make that determination on their own. I don't know that I agree with posting RM's address and phone number on the internet, but associating her real name with what she did IN REAL LIFE is A-Okay in my book.
This is NOT the same as getting into a shipping war with another fan and then outing said fan's fanfiction hobby to their family and friends.
I don't know that I agree with posting RM's address and phone number on the internet, but associating her real name with what she did IN REAL LIFE is A-Okay in my book.
Okay, for disclosure, I read comments to page seventeen (and discovered--i don't even know what the hell that was) on page eighteen. Someone on SASS linked to her phone number via google. On the timeline, I dont' know when it was done, bu tI totally invite anyone who has a strong stomach for 4chan images to find it.
This is NOT the same as getting into a shipping war with another fan and then outing said fan's fanfiction hobby to their family and friends.
Exactly. Far as I know, stalking with the intent to do harm? Not a protected fannish activity.
*sigh*
Which again, it comes back to me, stalking cons for ridicule is not a protected fannish activity. That anyone can make that argument blows my mind.
A chapter (not one of hubby's)at a major university here was closed down a few years ago. They were one of the leading fraternities on campus, strongly known for their community service and high GPA standards. Why were they closed down? Well, someone thought it would be fun to post some pictures of one of their costume parties on FaceBook. And some of these pictures included members of the fraternity putting on blackface and participating in pseudo-lynching scenes...with nooses around their necks.
Facebook and MySpace pages have cost college students jobs, scholarships, entrance into graduate schools, and who-knows-what-else. Some of them learned the hard way that everything they put on the Internet, if they choose to use anything that can connect them to their RL identity can and will come back to haunt them.
I say she deserves what she gets. First, what she did was wrong, period. Second, if she's stupid enough to use her RL identity when posting such garbage on the Internet, it should come back to haunt her in RL.
Bigotry is wrong. Period. Nothing in this world makes me angrier.
I want this posted in giant blinking text. I don't understand why this is a difficult concept.
This woman needs serious help because what she has expressed in this doesnt say anything about the people she is crucifying, which she doesn't even know, but instead says some major things about herself. This woman has so little a life that she spent her day somewhere so she could literally just reticule the people she saw and the things she heard. I'm thinking maybe she needs a job or at the very least some friends to occupy her mind.
To be so insecure that you have to mock people for any and everything you can think of is a sign of some serious neurosis and to rip apart a child like that is just psychotic. I'm not sure whether to be angry at her or try to find someone to offer her some help.
(And the horrible icon the guy made from ABW's picture...I had to go log off for a while to calm down.)
Who the hell knows.