Be Good

by Erin Mitchell

In July, sci-fi author John Scalzi created a personal policy whereby he will not participate in conventions that don’t have a clear and articulated anti-sexual harassment policy. He felt this necessary following ongoing reports of harassment in various forms at sci-fi/fantasy/comic gatherings (I did a quick check and found detailed posts going back as far as 2008).

This week, someone asked on Twitter whether Bouchercon has an anti-harassment policy. I checked the bylaws and standing rules, and it does not. Which raises the question: does it need one?

I have no idea. I do know that I have never been harassed—not even close—at a Bouchercon (or any other crime fiction gathering). I’ve never seen anyone harassed, either. I have, however, heard stories that could fall into a definition of harassment, but they were dealt with between individuals, not requiring the intervention of organizers.

The fact is that Bouchercon is different from ComicCon. It has a completely different format, and the tone and tenor of events is vastly different. That said, there is a fair bit of consumption of adult beverages at Bouchercon, and any time there’s a group of grown-ups drinking copious amounts of booze, there’s a risk of inappropriate behavior.

Ultimately, though, I think it’s pretty simple: Be good. Treat people well. Have fun that’s not at the expense of someone else.

So, is the crime fiction community better than our sci-fi brethren? Nah. Is crime fiction less salacious than sci-fi? Definitely not. Do people wear fewer bikinis at Bouchercon than at, say, ComicCon? Yup. Should this make a difference? No, but here in the real world, it does.

Colleen Lindsay wrote a fantastic etiquette guide for people participating in ComicCon, and some of her advice applies to Bouchercon as well. Ultimately, I think it boils down to this:

We’re all going to Bouchercon for variations of the same reason. We all want to have fun, and we each define fun a little differently. We all know how to behave in ways that interfere with nobody else’s fun and that if we wonder whether something is appropriate, it probably isn’t.

I hope that a specific written policy for Bouchercon is unnecessary, but I realize I might be too Pollyanna about it. What do you think? Does Bouchercon need an anti- harassment policy? Do other crime fiction gatherings?

Comments

[Laura K Curtis]

The first full-length, finished novel I wrote was epic fantasy. I desperately wanted to join SFWA, but they were (and still are) highly exclusive. And although the vast majority of fantasy I read at the time was written by women (Melanie Rawn, Mercedes Lackey, Jennifer Roberson...), I always understood that

A) Fantasy was not considered by many in the organization to be as "good" as SF.
B) Women were not considered as "real" as writers as men.

This was the 1980s. So it's nothing new. In fact, I joined RWA in 1992 because I wanted to write and I couldn't join SFWA. I wanted a group of people who would welcome me, teach me about copyright, agents, editors, etc, and not look down on me for being a woman. And at my first RWA convention, when I told everyone I didn't write romance, I wrote epic fantasy, the response was a universal "oh, cool."

Later, life interfered, and I stopped writing for a bunch of years. But when I got back to it, even though I had switched from fantasy to crime, the first organization I joined was RWA. Then came Sisters in Crime and then MWA.

I've never been harassed at a writers' con. For that matter, I've been to ComicCon for years and never been harassed. But I never attended ComicCon *as a writer.* It's a convention for me, not a conference. A party. I think the problem occurs frequently in the SF world where women's capabilities are invalidated. If you're not there as a writer, I doubt you see it as much.

I do think there is some prejudice--though not harassment--in the crime fiction world. Many people, for example, see "cozies" as "less worthwhile" than harder crime novels. Is it because most cozies are written by women, or is that merely a coincidence? I don't know. But I do believe that the people who *feel* that way, who think of cozies as less "worthy" don't think of themselves as basing that judgment on the fact that they are primarily read and written by women. In the SF world, I felt that much more explicitly (though I could certainly name fabulous male fantasy authors and female hard sci-fi writers.)