![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Some of you will have heard about the kerfuffle at the Aussiecon 4 Masquerade. Without going into the details as to why things blew up the way they did after the event (that's something for another post), I just wanted to talk about who was to blame for it.The person to blame is me. No one else, just me.
I'd like to make that 100% clear.
I'm big on people taking responsibility for their actions, and while Nick is the person who delivered the line one member of our audience seemed to find so very offensive, the reason the anecdote was told was me. In an unscripted moment (we had run out of material quite some time before), I essentially grabbed a gun, loaded it, cocked it, then tossed it to my friend, and it went off in his hands. The amount of control he had over the situation at the time was minimal.
That an individual found the line hurtful is unfortunate, was certainly never intended, and I am sorry that it has caused him pain. However, his choices over how to present what happened, who to demand apologies from, and who he was upset at I have found rather perplexing, hence this post to clear up who should be attacked over the incident.
So, to make it absolutely crystal clear to anyone - Rose and Perry weren't to blame and neither was the Aussiecon 4 ConCom, the hundreds of audience members for laughing at the time, or Nick.
The blame is mine and I'm quite prepared to wear it.
I should also point out that Nick doesn't want me taking the blame, but I am insisting, and have told him to refer anyone hassling him about this issue to me. I will not stand idly by and see him blamed for my mistake. Especially when it's by people who weren't there and are basing all their opinions on hearsay.
I would ask that anyone you see discussing the situation also gets pointed to this post.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
I think that this post is a balanced response to the issue on your part, and for which you have my respect.
From:
no subject
As I hear more and more first-hand versions of the story, it becomes more and more clear it was perhaps unfortunate, but absolutely not in any way deliberate. And that the conditions the two of you were working under were very hard (unknown amount of time to fill, little or no ability to prepare).
Also it sounds like it was indeed ONE member of the audience who was so offended. I personally wonder (I'm nowhere near having a full set of facts; probably never will be) if perhaps there's enough blame to share some in that direction as well.
From:
no subject
One problem with the internet is that some people see something written and take it as fact, then react based on that assumption. There's no allowance made for poor wording, hyperbole, paraphrasing, or deliberate misinformation.
I have yet to see any complaints about that specific bit of the masquerade that didn't come from people who were reacting to the complaints of this single individual factual and acurate.
As it stands I've already been accused, by someone who has read this piece, of having written a homophobic joke for the event even though I clearly state it was an unscripted moment.
This is why there will be a follow-up post.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
What, with all the years you've hung out about the net you can still be surprised by the Speed of Kerfluffle? :)
From:
no subject
The thing that feels like a new phenomenon (I've only been noticing it in the last 5 years, roughly) is people being openly unconcerned about the actual facts of the case. People always used to have to at least pretend to care about the truth, or they'd be laughed off the floor.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
I'll wait for your follow up piece.
From:
no subject
Wow!
From:
no subject
The fact there's an entire paragraph that clearly states it was unscripted, and that we'd run out of material, was essentially missed by the person.
What I dislike is that between the way the offended party has presented events, the people using what he wrote as factual and repeating it, and folks like the above example who state that it was all very cold and deliberate even when they've read the truth, there are going to be a lot more people being hurt and feeling slighted needlessly.
Where they may not have been upset at a tasteless, unscripted, unplanned remark, they are certainly going to feel hurt when it's presented as a massive, pre-scripted, homophobic diatribe.
From:
no subject
The whole thing just makes me queasy.
From:
no subject
I suspect that by suggesting that the audience was full homophobic hatred because they laughed at the piece, he's actually hurt and upset more people than we did.
Though now I think of it, none of the people who have taken his version of events as fact have attacked the audience for laughing, even though he states this was part of the reason he left.
From:
no subject
I asked Nick what happened, he told me, and I laughed.
*shrug*
I thought half the joke was that it came from Nick!
I'm sorry this furore is blighting your, and his, memory of the convention.
From:
no subject
The people I'm most upset for are the ones who have been distressed because they took the offended party's version of events as 100% accurate.
Oh, I'm upset for myself, but mostly because being Strokeboy, and having to toddler wrangle full-time while Sharon's back heals, and while recovering from the con, is making it hard to get things written up.
Oh, and one of my teeth disintergrated on the two-day drive home :)
Best week ever!
From: (Anonymous)
no subject
Basically saying that Twitter is better at spreading rumour than fact because information flow is assymetric. If you Tweet to 100 followers, and 99 reject it as bad information, but 1 retweets it, the 99 have no direct way of knowing about or correcting the 1 or the 1's followers.
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
ah, such is the price of political correctness on our society.
Gone are the days, from when I was growing up, that if someone offended you, and you reacted badly, you were the one that then had to go and apologise for going off the deep end and acting like an idiot.
These days, after one person is offended, popular opinion can jump to the "that person said a bad thing and offended someone" camp, and it gives that person very little room to move. People say all sorts of things, and some people make mistakes with what they say, we need to accept that sometimes someone says the wrong thing, and we move on. Victimising someone just because they incidentally said the wrong thing, ends up harming the public face of good people.
With all this political correctness, it has legitimised people's ability to get upset when someone says something they don't like. IN turn, this has legitimised people being able to jump off the deep end if they hear something they don't like, and thus acting in an undignified manner.
What people don't realise until afterards, is that they are neglecting their own dignity and respect in public life by being so reactive to one sentence, phrase, word etc, by carrying on about it and making it such a public affair.
Furthermore, it is difficult for people to know what to say to someone, if they think that that person is in a group of potential prejudice. I am fed up of going somewhere that provides a public service, and hearing someone say "this person needs help....because...umm" and they don't know what to say, because they don't know what the *correct* word is to describe me. For goodness sake I'd rather have a label, so that people can somehow categorise what my disability is, in terms of "this person needs help because she can't see".
I am thoroughly fed up with saying the right or wrong thing being headline news, I'm thoroughly fed up with people feeling that they have some right to launch off at people because they hear something they don't like, and I'm thoroughly fed up of people not being able to talk to me comfortably, because they are scared of upsetting me by saying something that they don't know if it is the wrong thing before they speak.
From: (Anonymous)
no subject
(a) Was Nick and Danny's shtick inherently offensive?
(b) Are Nick and Danny homophobic, or otherwise bad people?
(c) Was someone offended?
(d) Should Nick or Danny apologise?
And the trap is to think that if the answer to any question is "no", the answer to all questions should be "no". Clearly Nick and Danny are not bad people, as I'd think the vast majority of people who know them would agree. Equally clearly someone was, rightly or wrongly, genuinely offended and felt genuinely upset.
As Danny has recognised, it's entirely possible to say, "I'm sorry I offended you, I realise it was entirely possible for me to have not offended you, and I wish that's what I had done," without pleading guilty to homophobia. We all wish this person hadn't been offended; Danny is just acknowledging that he was in a position to have prevented it. It's not necessarily an obligation to have prevented it; just that he had that opportunity, and missed it.
It's not a political correctness issue. It's not about what words or phrases we can or can't say in public. It's recognising that one person had a disproportionately bad day, it didn't have to be that way, and that as fans, we support fans, and we therefore support solutions that allow everyone else to enjoy the Worldcon as much as we did.
From: (Anonymous)
no subject
I absolutely don't follow the logic of, "This comment was offensive because of the way it attacked and vilified a community without sensitivity or discrimination, and, because it was said, AussieCon 4 and all of its members are bad people."
Reading down past the source of this particular drama to his earlier Twitters that night provides some much needed context.
From:
no subject
Only just seen this since most of my day yesterday was taken up, so a request - if any of you follow the link and read his Twitter, don't comment to him, or try to correct him. He's not going to listen, and as he's made clear, he's only going to use it to fuel his idea that Aussiecon 4 was not a safe WorldCon.
Further upsettting him helps no-one.
From: (Anonymous)
no subject
From:
no subject
From: (Anonymous)
no subject
On a related note, I told my sister, she laughed and said "Oh no! I laughed! I must be homophobic! Quick, someone go tell my girlfriend!"
From:
no subject
I mean that literally, I really did Laugh Out Loud.
From:
no subject
But yes, the way people react to stuff in general is vilify. As I posted a while back, a person is not the worst thing they have ever done.
From:
no subject
It's a short trip from hearsay to heresy.
From:
no subject
* for a value of 'said' that is 'this is the best phrasing I can generate from the bits I remember
From:
no subject
I remember - after having surgery - having the stick I was using described in an embarassed way as a "mobility aid". C'mon !
From:
no subject
BTW, we live in a world where 25% of a 1st world nation believe their president is a Muslim, despite HUGE amounts of evidence to the contrary. With belief like that, who needs fact?
As a librarian, I shudder.
From:
no subject
As in cheesecloth, popular for dresses in 1815 and again 1n 1970.
From:
Fear not for the reaction of the silent majority (of, um, randoms)
ps. obviously I can't really speak "on behalf of random people" - just a turn of phrase :) Dan
From:
Re: Fear not for the reaction of the silent majority (of, um, randoms)
One thing I find interesting is that some of the people who attacked me on this, didn't know or read the guy previously. So they take the side of one person they don't know against another person they don't know. Very weird.
Next con you're at that I'm at, introduce yourself. I can never quite make the connection between LJ people and RL people, and I do like to.
From:
Re: Fear not for the reaction of the silent majority (of, um, randoms)
Nods, will properly introduce next opportunity :)