The Readercon response has continued to build, which is gratifying and speaks, I hope, to a general shift in con culture, but that’s a post for later. In the meantime, there are some more links happening that I want to address, and a couple of brief updates.
Firstly, the inimitable BC Holmes has been keeping track of an impressive collection of relevant links and screencaps.
Jim Hines has a post on reporting harassment in SF/F., if you choose to do so. Please know that if you have been harassed, your… Read more »

Some updates that I think are worth mentioning.
First of all, let me say that I am overwhelmed by the positive response from the community, and am unspeakably grateful not even on my own behalf (though I am), but for all those who are trying to make cons a safer space and want evidence that the community is ready for change. I hope that any future targets of con harassment will find the same support if they choose to go public, even if the response from those in authority is… Read more »

[This is an update to the events of this post.]
Harassment
Readercon has always had a zero-tolerance harassment policy.
Harassment of any kind – including physical assault, battery, deliberate intimidation, stalking, or unwelcome physical attentions – will not be tolerated at Readercon and will result in permanent suspension of membership.
As always, Readercon reserves the right to strip membership at its discretion.
In 2008, a friend of mine was harassed at Readercon by a man who stared at her fixedly, repeatedly, crowded her in narrow hallways, and followed her throughout… Read more »

“Why do we fall?”

The third act of Nolan’s eight-hour Batman film concluded this weekend with the release of The Dark Knight Rises. With 850 plot points stuffed into a 450-plot-point jug, and some fumbles in pacing, character, and subtext, the film doesn’t hold up as a standalone in the same way its predecessors did. It also has some seriously questionable politics, even for a superhero movie (we’ll get there). However, Nolan knows how to use callbacks to great effect, and the movie provides just enough closure that the things… Read more »

This weekend, I went home for a family visit, where we trundled out to DC for the Isabelle de Borchgrave exhibit at the Hillwood Museum in DC. The gardens are lovely, the house is impressive, but I think we can all agree we know why I was there:

Isabelle de Borchgrave makes dresses out of paper. And that sounds like a paper-doll thing, or a whimsical thing, until you start to examine her work and realize the thousands of hours of details put into the construction, and that as well… Read more »

[A more fun roundup of things is here.]
So, a couple of pretty frustrating things happened this year at Readercon.
Programming guidelines decreed I had to be on a panel in order to do a reading; despite not being comfortable on panels as a rule, I signed up for the Frankenstein panel. I was the only woman (which didn’t seem to be a rare thing, this year), and despite making some comments which would indicate I am an adult with a functioning critical-thinking module, the moderator, Theodore Krulik, made me… Read more »