![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alias_sqbrThere's been some discussion on the unisfa mailing list (unisfa is my uni's sf club) about the committee's policy on sexual harassment, and I replied saying how VERY GLAD I am to see this being made a priority having felt pretty powerless when I was sexually harassed in the room myself many years ago. I thought it might be valuable to expand on this here for anyone who's interested.
So, first, the current context. This was posted on the unisfa list today as part of the minutes:
There was some discussion of other specific actions the committee has taken, I replied with:
And now context from the past...
No names since it was 15 years ago and we are all hopefully different, better people now. This is still a difficult topic for me so I'm going to have to ramble around the point to get anywhere, also I think it's helpful to examine the general culture.
So! At the end of 1998 I was 18 and just coming to the end of a terrible relationship I had not yet learned to think of as sexually and emotionally abusive that I'd been in since the end of highschool. I was also rather shy and self conscious, with undiagnosed anxiety and depression and a lot of unexamined crap inside my head. Geek culture was even more unselfconsciously male-dominated and sexist than it is now, and unisfa was no exception.
I still got a lot of enjoyment out of the club room. I had many friends there and got along with most people. Having a boyfriend and being in that comfortable "mildly attractive" zone between "so plain guys ignore you" and "so hot everyone hits on you" meant I was usually pretty safe from the sleazy guys and the (mostly male) people I hung out with were on the whole as uncomfortable with sexual topics as I was anyway. Afaict most people pigeonholed me as "sweet, clever, virginal nice girl".
There was a general culture of sleaziness and lack of respect for personal and emotional space. My ISSUES with hugs were often ignored, as they had been by the girls in highschool, and I was constantly made to feel like I needed to get over being so neurotic. I continued to refuse to hug anyone and it was seen as a weird eccentricity if not outright rudeness.
There was a guy I was vaguely friends with with a really obvious crush on me and others who sometimes flirted with less intent, which made me feel awkward since I HAD A BOYFRIEND WHAT DID THEY EXPECT ME TO SAY but they were all decent guys at heart and never made me feel unsafe.
Now, despite being SUPER AWKWARD about sex and sexual topics I was still proto-sex-positive in my proto-feminist way and didn't like the whole virgin/whore dichotomy the club had going on or the general idea that virginity/lack thereof said ANYTHING about a person's worth/personality etc. My then boyfriend had pressured me into some mildly kinky sex (pressuring me into sex I didn't want was a big part of his shtick, to the extent of waiting to ask until I was about to leave to catch a bus etc) which I was traumatised about, but at the same time I didn't think there was anything wrong with HAVING HAD sex, and was pretty sure the exact same acts could be happy and un-gross under the right circumstances.
Then the purity test went around the club. People started acting like there was two groups: fun/shallow party people with low scores, and sensible/uptight people with high scores (each group seeing themselves as positive and the others as negative). Most of the people I hung out with had high scores or said they would have if they were willing to do the test, and EVERYONE assumed the same of me. So to fuck with people and reclaim my (largely negative) sexual experiences, and also out of plain curiosity, I took the test and announced my relatively low score. Naturally the "party" people acted like I was obviously less dull than I had previously appeared (nope) and the "sensible" people were SHOCKED that I was SECRETLY A SLUT. This pissed me off, especially when I told people I'd been pressured into doing half of it and it seemed to make zero difference to anyone's attitude. (I mean yes I would have been willing to do all those things if asked nicely, but the fact is I wasn't and that should mean something.There was a survivor of child sexual abuse who had similar ISSUES with the way results were framed and made everyone feel very awkward when she brought it up)
Around the same time (I think) I started heading towards dumping my boyfriend. I had NO INTEREST in starting a new relationship for a while (I didn't end up dating again until 1999) but was curious to know if anyone would hit on me when I became single. There was the guy with the obvious crush, but I also predicted another sort-of-friend who see-sawed between douchey antisocial nastiness and being quite friendly and seeking out my company. If nothing else, I was about the only girl willing to give him the time of day thanks to his annoying personality.
Sure enough, crush!guy asked me out shortly after I became single (though it was more "So...I'm guessing you'd say no if I asked you out") which was fine and expected though then he CONTINUED OBVIOUSLY PINING which made me feel guilty, especially with my ex going on about what a callous heartbreaker I was. I'm not sure how uncomfortable I would have been with his behaviour if I wasn't also dealing with my ex, but since I was it was all a mess of horribleness.
Then the second guy started harassing me. I don't remember the exact details, but for example he would go out of his way to sit next to me in the clubroom and then repeatedly touch me on the leg or arm or try to put his head in my lap, nothing VERY sexual but I was well known for having TOUCH ISSUES and he was unambiguously trying to make me uncomfortable. I told him to stop but that just proved to him that it was working. Other people told him he was being a douche but he didn't care, noone really liked him anyway. Physical violence was pointless since he was twice my size and though not disabled yet I was pretty weak. One of my male friends kicked him for me once which was satisfying but did nothing to fix the problem. He also verbally harassed me, going on about how much prettier other girls were and putting me down and stuff. My main reaction was "yes she is prettier than me, I hope you're not creeping on her like you are on me" but it was still wearying and gross from someone I had sort of thought of as a friend. This went on for months.
I found my helplessness INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING and felt like it was a sign that there was something SERIOUSLY WRONG with the club, but was too messed up about everything to do anything about it. It didn't occur to me to think of it as harassment, per se, and there was no sense that kicking him out etc was even an option, that just wasn't the culture of the club at the time. "Talk to the committee" didn't even cross my mind, nor did anyone suggest it, and I was ON the committee.
All this was basically background noise to the MASSIVE BLACK HOLE OF MISERY that was my breakup, my ex had pulled out all the emotional abuse stops and was doing his damnedest to destroy my self esteem for DARING to break up with him, and he was much much better at emotional abuse than harassment!guy. Unisfa was my one safe refuge from my ex since he couldn't ring me there and refused to enter (he had hated the club the one time he came in and kept talking about how they were all unsafe creeps wanting to get into my pants hahaha) so I spent hours there avoiding going home to my empty room, the fact that I would probably be harassed made the refuge bittersweet and made me VERY ANGRY. All that anger got rolled into the MASSIVE BLACK HOLE OF MISERY, as did my annoyance at crush!guy who kept acting like HIM having a crush on ME meant he had some claim on me. (One time at a party he picked me up and carried me for spurious reasons despite my loud and angry protests, to avoid having him touch me again I hung out with a another safer seeming guy WHO LATER TUNED OUT TO BE A RAPIST. Hooray for fandom)
Then the summer holidays started up. I decided to go to as many parties as possible and flirt with guys on purpose to spite my overposessive ex and feel less passive (though my idea of "flirting" was to try not to freeze up quite so much when flirted with. Maybe flirt back if I felt SUPER BOLD) Various guys half heartedly flirted with me only to suddenly move on when hotter girls entered the room which managed to be flattering and insulting at the same time. I met Cam at a party while avoiding crush!guy and he managed to mildly flirt with me WITHOUT coming across as sleazy and we got along really well.
By the time uni started up again I was feeling much more emotionally together. My ex had moved on to a new girl and stopped bugging me. Harassment!guy moved onto semi-stalking girls he actually liked rather than harassing me, which was treated with the same "haha that's so douchey" mockery-but-not-action. Crush!guy pined at me some more over the holidays, taking some of the fun out of parties, but eventually moved onto a new girl as well (Though when I got a new boyfriend he checked him out like some overprotective father, which we both thought was a little creepy) None of them cross paths with me any more and they're unlikely to read this post. I hear crush!guy is doing well which I'm glad of since he is, at heart, a decent guy.
I started dating Cam and went back to being "mildy attractive with a boyfriend". Unisfa became a fun place to hang out again. Guys sometimes flirted with me or invaded my space, and it sometimes made me uncomfortable (and sometimes I found it flattering or harmless fun and wasn't sure how to process that difference) but never to the extent that it seriously bothered me. Oh and I spent a year or two dissipating the MASSIVE BLACK HOLE OF MISERY by angrily ranting about my ex to anyone who'd listen.
I still thought there was something wrong with the club, but didn't know what to do about it. Other people (of various genders) were harassed or bullied or stalked. I tried to stand up against it sometimes, if only to make them feel like someone noticed and agreed that it was not ok, but was (and am) terrible at conflict. Also my own issues with touch make me bad at judging when other people feel uncomfortable, so I often settled for "You don't have to put up with that back rub if you don't like it" etc. Near the end of my Phd I got really annoyed at a trend of racist and antisemitic jokes being told and pointedly made my objection clear, then left the room. On the whole...I'm not sure I really did much.
A while after I graduated and stopped hanging out at the club this international movement to make fandom a safer, less harassment friendly space started up, and it has made me really happy to see it taking root within Swancon and unisfa.
And uh...yeah, that's about it :)
Normally I'd post about this sort of thing tosqbr but more unisfans follow me here. I've screened comments for now but will unscreen any that don't specifically ask to remain screened. Please try and be respectful of each other and careful of the fact that this is a VERY DIFFICULT SUBJECT for me and many other people. Also, please note: with a few exceptions I think the problem was the culture, not the individual people.
So, first, the current context. This was posted on the unisfa list today as part of the minutes:
Re: inappropriate touching issue. We want to re-announce that if someone makes you uncomfortable, report to a committee member (or CCC). We do not want you to be uncomfortable in the clubroom at all, and anything making you uncomfortable is an issue for us. We are here to help and will absolutely listen to you and do our best to help you out.
There was some discussion of other specific actions the committee has taken, I replied with:
I am am SO HAPPY to see that official, active steps are being taken to deal with sexual harassment and racism etc within the clubroom. I hung out in the room from 1997-2006 and it was appalling and the most anyone did was make fun of the perpetrator. There was a period during which I KNEW I would probably be sexually harassed any time I entered the room and that there was absolutely nothing I could do about it except choose not to go. To anyone currently experiencing this kind of crap: I'm sorry it's still happening *offers virtual cake and fanart*
The committee may make some missteps as they try and fix the problem, and obviously the details should be discussed and debated, but it's still awesome that something is finally being done.
And now context from the past...
No names since it was 15 years ago and we are all hopefully different, better people now. This is still a difficult topic for me so I'm going to have to ramble around the point to get anywhere, also I think it's helpful to examine the general culture.
So! At the end of 1998 I was 18 and just coming to the end of a terrible relationship I had not yet learned to think of as sexually and emotionally abusive that I'd been in since the end of highschool. I was also rather shy and self conscious, with undiagnosed anxiety and depression and a lot of unexamined crap inside my head. Geek culture was even more unselfconsciously male-dominated and sexist than it is now, and unisfa was no exception.
I still got a lot of enjoyment out of the club room. I had many friends there and got along with most people. Having a boyfriend and being in that comfortable "mildly attractive" zone between "so plain guys ignore you" and "so hot everyone hits on you" meant I was usually pretty safe from the sleazy guys and the (mostly male) people I hung out with were on the whole as uncomfortable with sexual topics as I was anyway. Afaict most people pigeonholed me as "sweet, clever, virginal nice girl".
There was a general culture of sleaziness and lack of respect for personal and emotional space. My ISSUES with hugs were often ignored, as they had been by the girls in highschool, and I was constantly made to feel like I needed to get over being so neurotic. I continued to refuse to hug anyone and it was seen as a weird eccentricity if not outright rudeness.
There was a guy I was vaguely friends with with a really obvious crush on me and others who sometimes flirted with less intent, which made me feel awkward since I HAD A BOYFRIEND WHAT DID THEY EXPECT ME TO SAY but they were all decent guys at heart and never made me feel unsafe.
Now, despite being SUPER AWKWARD about sex and sexual topics I was still proto-sex-positive in my proto-feminist way and didn't like the whole virgin/whore dichotomy the club had going on or the general idea that virginity/lack thereof said ANYTHING about a person's worth/personality etc. My then boyfriend had pressured me into some mildly kinky sex (pressuring me into sex I didn't want was a big part of his shtick, to the extent of waiting to ask until I was about to leave to catch a bus etc) which I was traumatised about, but at the same time I didn't think there was anything wrong with HAVING HAD sex, and was pretty sure the exact same acts could be happy and un-gross under the right circumstances.
Then the purity test went around the club. People started acting like there was two groups: fun/shallow party people with low scores, and sensible/uptight people with high scores (each group seeing themselves as positive and the others as negative). Most of the people I hung out with had high scores or said they would have if they were willing to do the test, and EVERYONE assumed the same of me. So to fuck with people and reclaim my (largely negative) sexual experiences, and also out of plain curiosity, I took the test and announced my relatively low score. Naturally the "party" people acted like I was obviously less dull than I had previously appeared (nope) and the "sensible" people were SHOCKED that I was SECRETLY A SLUT. This pissed me off, especially when I told people I'd been pressured into doing half of it and it seemed to make zero difference to anyone's attitude. (I mean yes I would have been willing to do all those things if asked nicely, but the fact is I wasn't and that should mean something.There was a survivor of child sexual abuse who had similar ISSUES with the way results were framed and made everyone feel very awkward when she brought it up)
Around the same time (I think) I started heading towards dumping my boyfriend. I had NO INTEREST in starting a new relationship for a while (I didn't end up dating again until 1999) but was curious to know if anyone would hit on me when I became single. There was the guy with the obvious crush, but I also predicted another sort-of-friend who see-sawed between douchey antisocial nastiness and being quite friendly and seeking out my company. If nothing else, I was about the only girl willing to give him the time of day thanks to his annoying personality.
Sure enough, crush!guy asked me out shortly after I became single (though it was more "So...I'm guessing you'd say no if I asked you out") which was fine and expected though then he CONTINUED OBVIOUSLY PINING which made me feel guilty, especially with my ex going on about what a callous heartbreaker I was. I'm not sure how uncomfortable I would have been with his behaviour if I wasn't also dealing with my ex, but since I was it was all a mess of horribleness.
Then the second guy started harassing me. I don't remember the exact details, but for example he would go out of his way to sit next to me in the clubroom and then repeatedly touch me on the leg or arm or try to put his head in my lap, nothing VERY sexual but I was well known for having TOUCH ISSUES and he was unambiguously trying to make me uncomfortable. I told him to stop but that just proved to him that it was working. Other people told him he was being a douche but he didn't care, noone really liked him anyway. Physical violence was pointless since he was twice my size and though not disabled yet I was pretty weak. One of my male friends kicked him for me once which was satisfying but did nothing to fix the problem. He also verbally harassed me, going on about how much prettier other girls were and putting me down and stuff. My main reaction was "yes she is prettier than me, I hope you're not creeping on her like you are on me" but it was still wearying and gross from someone I had sort of thought of as a friend. This went on for months.
I found my helplessness INCREDIBLY FRUSTRATING and felt like it was a sign that there was something SERIOUSLY WRONG with the club, but was too messed up about everything to do anything about it. It didn't occur to me to think of it as harassment, per se, and there was no sense that kicking him out etc was even an option, that just wasn't the culture of the club at the time. "Talk to the committee" didn't even cross my mind, nor did anyone suggest it, and I was ON the committee.
All this was basically background noise to the MASSIVE BLACK HOLE OF MISERY that was my breakup, my ex had pulled out all the emotional abuse stops and was doing his damnedest to destroy my self esteem for DARING to break up with him, and he was much much better at emotional abuse than harassment!guy. Unisfa was my one safe refuge from my ex since he couldn't ring me there and refused to enter (he had hated the club the one time he came in and kept talking about how they were all unsafe creeps wanting to get into my pants hahaha) so I spent hours there avoiding going home to my empty room, the fact that I would probably be harassed made the refuge bittersweet and made me VERY ANGRY. All that anger got rolled into the MASSIVE BLACK HOLE OF MISERY, as did my annoyance at crush!guy who kept acting like HIM having a crush on ME meant he had some claim on me. (One time at a party he picked me up and carried me for spurious reasons despite my loud and angry protests, to avoid having him touch me again I hung out with a another safer seeming guy WHO LATER TUNED OUT TO BE A RAPIST. Hooray for fandom)
Then the summer holidays started up. I decided to go to as many parties as possible and flirt with guys on purpose to spite my overposessive ex and feel less passive (though my idea of "flirting" was to try not to freeze up quite so much when flirted with. Maybe flirt back if I felt SUPER BOLD) Various guys half heartedly flirted with me only to suddenly move on when hotter girls entered the room which managed to be flattering and insulting at the same time. I met Cam at a party while avoiding crush!guy and he managed to mildly flirt with me WITHOUT coming across as sleazy and we got along really well.
By the time uni started up again I was feeling much more emotionally together. My ex had moved on to a new girl and stopped bugging me. Harassment!guy moved onto semi-stalking girls he actually liked rather than harassing me, which was treated with the same "haha that's so douchey" mockery-but-not-action. Crush!guy pined at me some more over the holidays, taking some of the fun out of parties, but eventually moved onto a new girl as well (Though when I got a new boyfriend he checked him out like some overprotective father, which we both thought was a little creepy) None of them cross paths with me any more and they're unlikely to read this post. I hear crush!guy is doing well which I'm glad of since he is, at heart, a decent guy.
I started dating Cam and went back to being "mildy attractive with a boyfriend". Unisfa became a fun place to hang out again. Guys sometimes flirted with me or invaded my space, and it sometimes made me uncomfortable (and sometimes I found it flattering or harmless fun and wasn't sure how to process that difference) but never to the extent that it seriously bothered me. Oh and I spent a year or two dissipating the MASSIVE BLACK HOLE OF MISERY by angrily ranting about my ex to anyone who'd listen.
I still thought there was something wrong with the club, but didn't know what to do about it. Other people (of various genders) were harassed or bullied or stalked. I tried to stand up against it sometimes, if only to make them feel like someone noticed and agreed that it was not ok, but was (and am) terrible at conflict. Also my own issues with touch make me bad at judging when other people feel uncomfortable, so I often settled for "You don't have to put up with that back rub if you don't like it" etc. Near the end of my Phd I got really annoyed at a trend of racist and antisemitic jokes being told and pointedly made my objection clear, then left the room. On the whole...I'm not sure I really did much.
A while after I graduated and stopped hanging out at the club this international movement to make fandom a safer, less harassment friendly space started up, and it has made me really happy to see it taking root within Swancon and unisfa.
And uh...yeah, that's about it :)
Normally I'd post about this sort of thing to
sqbr but more unisfans follow me here. I've screened comments for now but will unscreen any that don't specifically ask to remain screened. Please try and be respectful of each other and careful of the fact that this is a VERY DIFFICULT SUBJECT for me and many other people. Also, please note: with a few exceptions I think the problem was the culture, not the individual people.
