I'm still alive! I just caught the norovirus, a.k.a. Wischolera, that was going around Wiscon (luckily, the first symptoms began to dawn only on the second leg of the flight home, so I was safely ensconced there before it really hit, luckier still that my assistant Cara didn't get it at all). For some reason, it hung on and on, to the point that I'm still not 100 percent--but I've had my first meat in days! And I had protein yesterday for the first time! (It was crackers and bagels before that.)

Wiscon itself was great fun. I met Karen Healey karenhealey, Caroline Stevermer (briefly), P.C. Hodgell (we were on two panels and got to chat a bit--her powerful book GODSTALK, which has made her a god to a lot of writers I know, is going to be reissued, and she is working on a new one!), Patricia Wrede (we had lunch!!!!), and YA authors Heather Tomlinson, and Tiffany Trent. Also, I saw old friends like Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, Sarah Beth Durst, Elizabeth Bunce, Laurie Toby Edison, Cecil Castelucci, and Elizabeth Bear. And I got to see my beloved star_wizard for the first time in far too long, which makes me so very happy.

I'm still a bit wrung out and have a mother cat's litter box to clean. There's a story behind that, but do you mind going to the fan journal for it? And the pictures are here. I'll post all the kitten stuff there. I don't want to clog this blog up with too much copying of posts back and forth.

Edited to fix link to pictures. But keep checking if you're interested! I'll add more pictures every other day or so!

I was waiting to post about Penguicon before the current uproar because I have sworn to dedicate myself to BLOODHOUND and nothing but this week. I am going to finish it if it kills me. But then came the Open Source BP uproar. I think people are probably wondering why it's taken me so long to say anything (for one thing, I only heard about it yesterday--yes, I've actually been working), given that I was one of the Guests of Honor, so I am going to grab a half hour now to talk about Penguicon and that.

Before I say anything else: I had a wonderful time at Penguicon. I was treated like a goddess. I met many wonderful, intelligent, cool fans and many more wonderful, intelligent, cool, creative people. I got to meet my absolute favorite webcomic writer/artist, Jennie Breeden (how favorite? we both squeed and fangirled for five minutes when we met--she's a fan of mine--and had dinner and lunch and got photos taken and made arrangements to meet at DragonCon) and the very excellent writer Cherie Priest, and got to see the wonderful matociquala, writer Elizabeth Bear. I spoke all too briefly to Jim Hines (whose Goblin War books are popular with teens as well as adults), and then never saw him again, which tells you how mad the con was! I also met writer Sarah Monette, Matthew Keaton, and met writer John Scalzi for the second time, all with excellent results in the brain stimulation and panel discussions department.

I had the best baked goods (baking goddess Deb) and fudge (fudge goddess Kimba) I've had in years. Tim geeked out until he had no words. Or rather, the ones he kept trying to force on me didn't sound like English. I stood fascinated by the Chaos Device for at least 15 minutes as the young man working on it showed me the level of it that he was maintaining (he was about four feet tall, so he had his limits, but he knew how all the parts worked). And I met many strong, intelligent, creative, passionate, geeky, amazing young women.

I saw no one grabbing their breasts. I didn't even hear of this until yesterday. It wasn't an occasion where people were running around grabbing women's breasts. Neither Tim nor I saw or heard of any such behavior. It was limited to a small group, a tiny percentage of the con. I understand the group has since shut down their . . . social experiment.

So here is the post that blew the whole thing open on the Internet (the original is below the updates). tekanji supplies this list of links to discussions:

Badgerbag's comments
the-red-shoes
Sinboy
coffeeandink
littlebutfierce
peaseblossom
ktempest
jfpbookworm
Feminist SF
James Nicoll
Cynthia1960
cynthia1960
springheel-jack
springheel-jack
springheel-jack
brown-betty
misia
petronelle
odditycollector
pleonastic
fengi
fengi
drownedinink
coffeeandink (Different post than linked above)
kate-nepevu
nihilistic-kid
upstart-crow
hahathor
cjouchan
cereta
nestra
scalzi
kadymae
vito-excalibur
jim-smith
cyberpilate
jarodrussell
kadymae
Getofftheinternet.org
vito-excaliibur
coffeeandink
troubleinchina
coffeeandink
brown-betty
Metafilter.com
awelkin
sparkymonster
sinboy
Girl-Wonder.org
The Iris Network
synedochic
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edited to add synedochic
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These include other people's reactions and points. If you look at the comments to those links, you'll find still more reactions. As you can see, a lot of feminists are scorching mad, and I can't blame them.

Here's my take. This is something embarked upon by consenting adults. Fine. Although contrary to the ferret's claim that no one was approached randomly in the halls, he himself writes of the woman in the princess outfit who they approached. The women who did this agreed to it, and John Scalzi writes that the woman who first told him about it was a participant and found it wonderful. I'm frankly envious that she is so free within her skin.

But.

I have spent most of my life in the fight to be perceived as a person, not a collection of body parts. "Biology is not destiny" is very important to me for a number of reasons. To read of women offering up their breasts to be fondled like fruit makes me crazy. That's my issue, obviously, not theirs, but it's something a lot of women and men will be thinking about when they observe this behavior, which is taking place in public. I want to ask these women, what message are you sending? You think you are sending the message, I am free in my body; I am proud of my body, but is that the message that people receive?

Most people won't know about the significance of red and green buttons; they will only see people groping other people, in public. Those who see this will be tense, wondering if they will be approached next. They will not feel safe in a space that the con organizers want them to feel safe in. Women who want to have fun and wear the costumes of their superheroes or anime characters will not feel safe. No matter how many times they tell themselves that clothing is not an advertisement for sexual contact, social brainwashing whispers "you're asking for it." They will choose either not to costume, or not to attend a con where they will not feel safe. Their enjoyment and their sense of safety will be destroyed. The con will be hurt when attendance drops, a serious thing when gas and flight prices make congoing more difficult.

Think on: this social experiment can go bad very quickly. All it takes is one woman who thought she'd try it and then feels violated, not liberated, or one man who decides that breast gropage means yes to further gropage. All it takes is outsiders who witness and report it to hotel management, or fans who don't know what's going on to blast what they've seen all over the internet as a SexCon. All it takes is one he said/she said, or worst of all, one rape. One misunderstanding, one person who thinks because the limits are lifted a little, it means they're lifted all the way.

Why was this not done behind closed doors? Why was it done publicly? I don't want to see other women making this kind of choice. To them it's freedom; to me it looks like they are allowing themselves to be treated as objects. Yes, in their own minds they are free, but do they know what is in the minds of those who fondle them, and those who see them fondled? By keeping it private, they have more control over those fondling them being the kind of person who perceives them as free and giving (maybe). But in public they lend themselves to others' perception of women as collections of parts to be handled. Even if they carried big, informative signs or gave PowerPoint demonstrations about their understanding of what they did, they cannot govern the views of others. They perpetuate a perception of women as sex toys, without even meaning to. I wish they had limited the damage.

I had a WONDERFUL time at Penguicon 6. How many people will remember that as the con of the two singing Tesla coils, and the comics artists drawing all over that guy's skull, and the Tron guy and the Ox delivering goodies from Acme? Or will they remember it as the con where guys were grabbing girls' tits?

The wondersome, brilliant, and insightful Elizabeth Bear matociquala wrote this column for the Winter 2007 edition of Subterranean Press. I saw it, of course, via When Fangirls Attack, the entry for December 3.

If you read Bear's column, you'll know why it appealed to me. Check it out:

. . . I’ve been hearing some complaints that women are taking over fantasy and science fiction, getting our relationship and character germs all in it, and ruining it for honest blaster-lovin’ men. That our books are all soft and fuzzy and full of ponies with braided manes and pretty princesses and happy endings where true love triumphs over the wicked king and then there is a wedding.

Now, me, I love a good blastering as much as the next guy. But apparently, I’m in ur genre, spreadin’ my girl germs, and ruining it for the boys.

It seems I’ve become a poster child for female SF authors (an interviewer told me not too long ago that I was notorious for penning strong women) which amuses me to no end, because the odd thing is, I can walk around for days on end without remembering that I Am A Girl. I just don’t think about it, frankly. Except when I have to put on a bra before I walk to the corner store.

I don’t think of myself as a woman writer. I think of myself as a writer, full stop, or a speculative fiction writer, if it comes right down to it. If somebody asks what I do for a living, I tell them I’m a novelist. I don’t tell them I’m a woman novelist.

This could be me, only my area is fantasy for teenagers. In the last couple of years, there has been a lot of stuff about how we don't have enough books out there for boys. Subtext: there are too many girls writers out there. We are getting our girl cooties all over things, with our pretty princesses and our long-maned horsies and our royal weddings. We're getting relationship and character germs all over teh Bookz and the boys are running screaming with their t-shorts over their heads out of the libraries--

to read gamer manuals, gaming magazines, computer magazines, whatever's online, plus books by Eoin Colfer, Anthony Horowitz, Clive Cussler, comics, and nonfiction.

Bear is also right in that we girl writers are not being sponsored by charitable institutions as an alternate means of putting us in sweatshops. (Trust me, a lot of us would sew our fingers to the Britney t-shirts.) We are on the shelves because we have a market, and it is made up of both sexes. My own audience now stretches from ten to eighty, with more and more over-twenties at every appearance. And a lot of those are librarians, teachers, and booksellers.


This led me to a second conversation on WFA, this one being held on the blog of anon, a mouse, in the thread ur doin it rite. Bear's column was the subject, and women writers finding an audience, whether it is with the comics Big Two--Marvel and DC--was one point raised. That's when a lot of things came together for me: what the posters were saying (at least one of whom I've had knock-down, drag-out fights with), what Bear said in her first paragraph, and my last two years' experience in the world of comicdom. I had a moment of comics satori

As far as the Big Two are concerned, women are never going to get a serious foothold. I'm not as 100% positive on this where DC is concerned--they make moves like hire Gail Simone to do Wonder Woman and try the Minx line, still going when other houses would have dumped it, and my conviction wobbles. But I am certain about Marvel. I am also certain about the fanboys. Not all of them. There are seriously good guys out there, and I feel bad for them, being tainted by the brush of the rabid, vicious, snapping, wild-eyed, runny-nosed, spitting, slavering, howling, gnashing, straining, grunting, muscle-flexing, finger-clenching, vein-popping, yapping, knee-jerking guttersnipes who turn on and savage anyone who dares to breathe on their comics worldview. They encourage each other to descend to their circle of the mudpits with slaps on the back and bonus points at each tentative sign of trogdom.

And they hose any person not one of their cherished creators if that person attempts to do anything in comics. They create a closed circle of stagnant growth with the connivance of the Big Two.

We don't have to do this. Every woman who has made a name for herself and her own vision in the arts has done so by taking whatever opening she was given and muscling her way to creating her own audience, those who appreciate her unique vision. Gail has been able to do that at DC, but Lea Hernandez established her kingdom with the indies. There are women building their audiences with independent comics, creating their worlds without the savagery of the Big Two and their fanKomodos to fight. Yes, it's thankless. Yes, it would be cool to write Spider-Woman, Storm, Huntress, Rogue, Black Canary, et al., who were our heroes as kids.

But on the other hand, rather than be dissed time after time, maybe it's time to turn our backs on the asshats and build our own icons, online and via the independents. Yes, it will take years and lots of frustration to do it. It will take some of our own money and soul-crushing day jobs.

In 1979 I went to work for a literary agency. It was there I learned that 80% of us--people in the arts, including writers, DON'T MAKE A LIVING AT IT. Most of my friends have day jobs. I knew, after three years of reading income statements, reverting rights for authors, and going over contracts, that my chances of making a living were slim. I was going to write anyway, because I was dirt poor and had nothing else to make me better off. So I worked as a secretary and wrote. I began to publish a book here and a book there. Then I was told I could do better if I wrote boy heroes--but I didn't want to write boy heroes. So even though I knew I could do better, I kept writing girl heroes, because that's what I wanted to do. Things got really bad in the 90's, when I quit working in an office and tried to get a writing career off the ground--but by then I'd become one of the 1% who can barely live on her writing. By 2000 I was one of the .5% that made a good living at it. And I was still writing girl heroes.

Fuck the meanness and the smallness of the mainstream comics. Let's do it for ourselves. Let's build a new publishing empire. We know there's a market, otherwise who is manga selling to? But who needs this abuse, from the publishers who make fun of us to the fanboys who abuse us? Let's do it like we want it.