Sansha said:
So with another Comic-Con come and gone, the discussion again arises regarding sexism in geek culture. Reports of harassment and lewdness come about, some people on the social justice warpath, some people shrugging and wondering what the big deal is, and all the usual suspects in between.
What I want to know is whether staring, or blatantly looking at the exposed skin is acceptable. The costume has been designed specifically to have certain areas of the body exposed, so is looking at those areas without being too obvious or lecherous is acceptable?
The way I see it, looking from a distance is fine, but maintaining eye contact through conversation is necessary, and lewd comments and unwanted contact is always unacceptable.
The last con I went to, there was a group of guys sitting around a table, just watching the sexy costumes go by. No cat-calling, no creepers, just five dudes enjoying the eye candy. And I thought that was totally okay.
So where do you stand on where to look, Escapist?
I've been reading some stuff about this recently and my basic attitude is simple. If the allegations of groping are true that is going too far, and of course convention security should take that fairly seriously, and do things like shadow people discretely who are accused to catch them in the act of course.
As far as people staring at, following around, and photographing people in costume, that's no big deal. The bottom line is that if your going to a con in costume, your there to get attention, and you shouldn't get all upset when people give it to you. If you insist on showing up in an ultra sexy or revealing costume, then you have no right to complain about people looking at your breasts or whatever (as long as they don't actually molest you or whatever). If you can't deal with the heat, get out of the kitchen so to speak.
Contrary to what some of the "feminist rampagers" allege there are plenty of characters girls can dress up as that aren't running around showing a ton of skin. I mean you can say wear a pantsuit and blonde wig and go as Olivia Dunham (Fringe) or say trade the blonde wig for a black one and some green paint and go as She-Hulk in her lawyer role, or whatever else. Heck if nothing else paint a bucket or round (unused) trash can and go as R2D2. Nobody is holding you at gun point and making you go as Princess Leia in a metal bikini or whatever. If you don't want any attention at all, and just want to be left alone, then you probably shouldn't be going in costume, the point of which is to be seen wearing it and entertain people.
To me it seems like people making complaints in order to get attention, knowing that there will be a lot of left wing "social justice warriors" mindlessly coming to their defense. This is pretty much an "Anita Sarkeesian" type
issue, vapid, and without merit, but something that will rally people and get attention.
When it comes to the groping, that's going to be a touchy subject. Cons are one of those things where security can be touchy, frequently getting in trouble for overstepping it's bounds and being too militant about policies and enforcement. Typicaly because people complain about security doing it's job. This of course leads to security being scared into inaction by their own employers, which of course lasts until you start getting complaints about out of control groping and such, which of course leads to them being made to do their job properly again, which lasts until more complaints about them doing their job... and it's an endless cycle. I had to deal with this to some extent working Casino security for a while, and conventions of various sorts (not generally gaming or comic ones) when they hired space at the Casino. The nature of my job of course mitigated this somewhat, but it was still present. Given the fact that security has a bad reputation at various "geek cons" and is always being complained about (and parodied in a lot of TV shows and such when people visit cons) it wouldn't surprise me if half the problem is Security being scared into uselessness, especially if the con itself is terrified of getting in trouble (or losing money), and won't back
security up at all. Overall we'll see what happens at the next Comic Con and if security is able to step up.
To put things into perspective here security is not cops, they are generally able to act as "representing the property owner" which depending on where they are can give you various rights based on what you can do on your property. When renting a space for a con this means security either works for the property owner, or the people renting the space as the temporary owner. For the most part security works as a deterant and simply being seen is enough, however when it comes to actively stopping things it becomes very questionable, especially when it comes to physical intervention, intimidation, and other techniques. Say grabbing someone's hand who is in the process of groping someone can be considered an assault, unless of course your employer (the property owner) is willing to back you up on it, and make
the argument that what you were doing is tantamount to acting in defense of your guests under a stand the ground law or whatever, which can vary from area to area. Generally it comes down to the employer shouldering the legal burden if it comes to that. As a general rule as this can get expensive if it turns into a fight or gets touchy (such as someone being hurt in a serious fight) the first thing many employers do is tell their security "100% hands off" and turn them over to the sharks if something happens. Ditto for complaints about intimidation and the like (say 3-4 guys telling someone to follow them off the premises with the implication if they don't limbs will be broken). There are reasonable cases for this on both sides of the equasion as out of control thugs acting as security can be a big problem too. At the end of the day though when it comes to complaints about groping, unruly drunks, etc... the bottom line is always if you want to stop it, who is going to intervene... and frankly the police aren't going to be able to show up in force to provide security for regular cons (though when I worked casino security we had both a state police detachment as "guests" provided by the state doubtlessly due to the agreement to share some of the casino revenues, as well as Tribal police around, so you know... that made things a lot easier, security could handle most things, but if it was ever really problematic we could have multiple flavors of cops there really fast, along with a small army of security).
Sorry about the rambling, I'm tired I guess. Hopefully I sort of made my point about what I see as the actual problem and why I think it's become a problem (along with the parts of this that I think are utter bunk).
