Tag: SFWA

Sexual harassment and SFWA

I posted the following in the SFWA forums a few days ago and hereby grant myself permission to quote myself:

Jerry Pournelle raised the historical example of a friend of his and
his eccentric habit of politely, and very directly, inviting women to
have sex with him.  Two things became clear in the course of the
discussion that followed, which was a) most of the members commenting
believed that this single polite invitation constituted sexual
harassment, and b) most of those members believed that their position
was the popular and mainstream one.  As I suspected that the consensus
opinion of the vocal membership on sexual harassment is somewhat out of
the mainstream for various reasons, I took a poll of the readers at one
of my blogs.

I first asked for the sex of the reader, then asked the following question, based on the example Jerry cited:  Do
you consider it to be sexual harassment when a man asks a woman with
whom he is unacquainted, once, politely, and with no physical contact,
if she is willing to have sex with him?  I counted most answers with conditions as “YES”.

MEN: 121 NO, 13 YES

WOMEN: 28 NO, 2 YES

One woman commented: “I am astonished at how many men are saying
yes or trying to qualify the answers with conditions and settings. Most
women get propositioned in some way, shape or form (not necessarily the
question directly, but jeezly, even innuendo, joking, and waggling
eyebrows convey the same question in a different format while leaving an
out of “I was just joking!”). You just say no if you are not DTF. It is
not a hard set of questions. If you have the victim mentality, which I
know some women do, then you will feel threatened by the mere asking.
But if you have a shred of backbone, you might be shocked at the
forthrightness of the question, but shock is not feeling threatened and
“harassed.” Any man or woman who says yes to the second question is an
idiot.”

And one individual took the question to his company’s HR specialist. “It
is not, under [state] and Federal law, harassment to ask ONCE. 
However, if it got to court, it is even money to be ruled sexual
harassment if the question happened at work and was unwanted. Full
discloser, we have a manager who was sleeping around with his
underlings. Nothing happened since he was “good looking” (no law suits).
Also had a supervisor buy flowers for another staff member’s birthday.
That was viewed as harassment and he was forced out. He was old and fat.“

So, it should be clear that many people outside the organization
disagree with the consensus opinion expressed here and that the core of
the problem here is that the men one encounters at cons too often tend to
violate the unspoken rules of avoiding the commission of sexual harassment:

1. Be handsome;
2. Be attractive;
3. Don’t be unattractive.

Now, one can certainly presume that the male and female readers of my
blog are a different subset of humanity than the members here.  I would
not dispute that, my objective is merely to point out that the present
groupthink here is not necessarily the societal norm and that by
attempting to take on the role of SF Sexual Police to the convention
world, (at the very least), SFWA is not only stepping far outside its
legitimate responsibilities, but will also look completely insane to
people who are, to be polite, of different socio-sexual classes than
most of the SFWA membership.

I am no stranger to sexual harassment.  I was in a successful band on
a gay-run music label in my early 20s and I can safely assert that I
have been sexually harassed by more men and women than most members
here. It can be annoying, and for women I’m sure it can at times feel
threatening.  And even so, sexual harassment is still irrelevant to the
organization’s primary purpose of helping the members write and publish
science fiction and fantasy.  Therefore, it is something that the
organization should not make itself look ridiculous in attempting to
combat, at SF conventions or anywhere else.

Needless to say, this lead to a civil, rational, and mutually edifying exchange of views among the professional science fiction writing membership, which was so exceedingly civil that the poor moderator was forced to lock it down barely two hours later.  And while the shambling shoggoths didn’t hesitate to declare their objections to, well, everything, it should nevertheless be readily apparent to all the members of SFWA that their position concerning a single polite but unsolicited invitation amounting to sexual harassment is not necessarily the societal consensus.

It would seem remarkable that those apparently least likely to receive such invitations appear to be the most terrified of them, until one reflects upon what sort of bottom-feeding omegas are likely to make a pass at a shambler.

What confidentiality rules? Part II

I receive some answers to my questions concerning the mysterious “SFWA confidentiality rules” from an SFWA officer:

1. Can you please inform me where in the bylaws these “confidentiality rules” can be found?

“This report contains posts from online Forums, and private emails sent to the Board in conjunction with the investigation.  Just as our Member Discussion Forums and our printed Directory and The Forum are subject to Board policies regarding limited access, so is this report, both for your own protection and for others.”

2. Is it a violation of “SFWA confidentiality rules” to provide a copy of the report to my attorney?

“No.”

So, let’s summarize:

1.  The SFWA Board has openly and admittedly violated the clearly posted SFWA forum confidentiality rules by reposting material from the SFWA discussions forums outside those forums without the explicit permission of me, and presumably, other members.

2. The SFWA Board appears to have invented some imaginary “confidentiality rules” and appealed to them in an attempt to keep its admittedly one-sided “investigative report” from being released to the membership and the public.

3. According to one SFWA officer, these nonexistent confidentiality rules permit the release of the report to non-SFWA members, including, but not necessarily limited to, my attorney, contra the claim of another SFWA officer.

4. The SFWA Board has intentionally misconstrued the SFWA forum confidentiality rules, by claiming “the report contains material from the SFWA Discussion Forums which therefore may not be distributed outside of SFWA”.

This last claim is obviously and knowingly false, as the confidentiality rule is posted right on the front page of the forum and states: “The SFWA discussion forums are for SFWA members only, and all posts made
here are confidential. Material may not be re-posted outside these
forums without the explicit permission of their authors.”  Emphasis added.  Note that there is no special exception for the Board.

Since the Board has already broken discussion forum confidentiality by distributing material from the forums outside them, and since the SFWA officer responsible for the investigation subsequently informed me that the report “may not be distributed outside of SFWA”, I will provide a copy of the investigative report to any SFWA member who emails me to request one.  In light of the remote, but still extant possibility that the double-secret “SFWA confidentiality rules” relating to the release of the report to non-members will magically appear, I will refrain from making it available to the public for the time being.

In addition to the SFWA Board’s violation of existing rules and invention of nonexistent ones, if there is any doubt the process is a farce designed to give cover to their true object, consider the following answer to another question:

5. There are specific claims concerning [REDACTED]. Why was I not provided with the evidence supporting those claims?  The appendix included no copies of [REDACTED].

These are listed for context and the Board will be considering these, but they are irrelevant to the substance of the complaint and shared in confidence with the Board.

So, we are told, the Board will be considering things that are irrelevant to the substance of “the complaint”, which is the same thing as “the investigative report” even though, according to the protocols, the report is supposed to be “comprehensive”.  As I expect will soon be readily apparent to even the most unsympathetic SFWA reviewer, it is far from comprehensive and is strictly prosecutorial.  And I am warned that if I subsequently proceed to release the report to the public and thereby violate the nonexistent “SFWA confidentiality rules”, that will be held against me.

“Pelase be advised that such an action will be added to the material of
the complaint and considered by the Board in its deliberations.” [sic]

As I noted yesterday, what we’re seeing from the SFWA is a petty version of the same tactic one can observe being utilized by various governments and agencies.  Just as the police in Arlington, Massachusetts attempted to secure permission for a “voluntary walk-through” before finally breaking in and doing what they intended to do from the start, the SFWA Board is appears to be trying to provide cover for its predetermined actions in order to avoid alarming the rest of the membership and alerting them to the fact that any of them can be expelled for any reasons that happens to suit eight members of the current Board at the moment.

This charade of due process is only being played out to conceal the fact that, thanks to the revision of the SFWA bylaws, a united Board can quite legitimately expel any member for anything, including their appearance or their opinions.  This is the leftist’s dream structure, in which the only limits on the actions of the ruling body are its own self-imposed restrictions that can be ignored at will. 

The curtain has gone up. The lights will soon be shining bright. Enjoy the play.

What confidentiality rules?

I received an email from a gentleman from the SFWA today:

Complaints against you have been filed by
multiple members of SFWA. In following our procedures for responding to
such complaints a report was prepared by a Board-appointed investigator
and found, by a Board vote, to merit continuing our complaint process.

Our current protocols mandate presenting you with the report and
adequate opportunity to respond so that the Board may make a
determination. Responses may include, but need not be limited to,
denial, claiming extenuating circumstances, and claiming provocation.
You have 14 days to respond. If you require statements by others to be
submitted for the record, such statements shall be collected and added
to the record. If you request an extension of time to collect these
statements, one additional 7-day-period shall be granted.

Please find attached the Board investigator’s report. This report
and all contents not publicly available fall under SFWA confidentiality
rules and may not be publicly disclosed.

Now, here is what remains something of a mystery.  I examined the organization bylaws and there are no “confidentiality rules”.  There are confidentiality rules in the Forum, which are clearly posted, but an unsolicited email is not a Forum post and is no more protected by expectations of confidentiality than spam.

However, I certainly wouldn’t want to violate any more organization rules than I already have, so I requested more information from the gentleman:


I have received the information you sent me.  I shall be pleased to
review it.  However, I do not recognize that the information falls under
any “confidentiality rules”, as this is not the SFWA Forum, but an
unsolicited email sent to me.  Nor are there any “confidentiality rules”
in the SFWA bylaws.


Please inform me by what “confidentiality rules” you believe this report
falls under within 24 hours or I will assume that there are none
pertinent to this report and I am therefore free to reproduce its
contents in its entirety wherever I see fit.

Now, perhaps there are some double-secret confidentiality rules of which I am unaware, in which case I shall, of course, abide by them.  But if there are no such rules, then I shall certainly not hesitate to make the report available to the public.

Trying to pull Pournelle’s strings

Mary Robinette Kowal, who is a leading SFWA pinkshirt, a professional puppeteer, and a mediocre science fiction writer of Regency romances with a little fantasy sprinkled over them, (you know, the sort that wins awards despite nobody reading them), has decided to get tuff now and tell the real SF writers to “shut the fuck up” and leave the organization. Because respect.

Dear Twelve Rabid Weasels of SFWA, please shut the fuck up.

I know you value your freedom of speech. Good on you. However there are 1788 other members of SFWA who also value their freedom of speech and manage to exercise it without being raging assholes.

You are professional writers, so should know the power of words. I therefore must assume that you are deliberately being provocative and trying to set things on fire because you enjoy watching a flamewar.

There are 1788 other members who don’t. Scratch that… there are 1752 because some people just quit because of you….

Please quit. And by “quit” I mean, please quit SFWA in a huff. Please quit noisily and complaining about how SFWA is censoring you for asking you to stop using hate speech. Please quit and complain about the “thoughtcrime” of asking people not to sexually harass someone.  Please quit and bellyache about the good old days when people could be bigoted jerks. I want you to express your opinions clearly so that everyone knows them and knows that you are quitting because the other members of SFWA want you to Shut the Fuck up.

With all sincerity,

Mary Robinette Kowal

First, I note that of the three people that I know who have quit the organization, two quit due to the actions of Kowal and the junior members that the Scalzi administration foolishly encouraged instead of keeping in line.  And if 36 people have really quit of late, then obviously the responsibility lies with those who have actively sown dissension and dissatisfaction throughout the organization with their inept activist leadership rather than the so-called “rabid weasels” who have been there for years, if not decades.

It lies with people like Mary Puppinette Kowal.

Second, no one is complaining about anyone asking people not to sexually harass anyone.  They are objecting, quite reasonably, to the insane idea of setting up SFWA as a sexual harassment police with self-declared jurisdiction over every SF/F convention on the planet. They are objecting to the abuse of the organization by a number of vocal nonentities attempting to use it for their own ideological purposes.

If anyone is going to “Shut the Fuck Up”, it should be irresponsible nobodies like the Puppinette who have absolutely nothing of any value to say, either on their blogs or in their books, and who have contributed nothing to the organization except to bring it to the brink of self-implosion.

I continue with these SFWA-related posts, not because I think anyone is particularly interested in the petty squabbles of writers, but because they are a perfect micro-example of the greater processes in work as part of the Left’s long march through the institutions and organs of society.  Leftists like the Puppinette invade, infest, and then, as soon as they feel strong enough, start issuing dictates and posturing as if they speak for the entire organization in order to cement their control.  They attack, attack, and attack, and when they finally meet up with a modicum of resistance, shriek that their critics are being provocative for no reason at all except personal shortcomings.

Thus we end up with “Christian” churches devoid of actual Christians, a “Republican” party devoid of genuine republicans, a “Democratic” party devoid of proper democrats, and a “Science Fiction  writers” association without any actual science fiction writers.  Learn to recognize the pattern.  It is already at work in an organization near you; it is why every organization that is not firmly vigilant about keeping these destructive invaders out will eventually succumb to them.

My convention policy

Inspired by McRapey’s brave decision to tell the SF conventions of the world what is, and what is not, acceptable to the public, I too have decided to provide a list of hard requirements for my being a panelist,
participant or Guest of Honor at a SF convention in the interest of making the world a better, safer, and more respectful place for everyone:

1. That the convention has a harassment policy, and
that the harassment policy is clear on precisely how all Tor authors and editors will be harassing the other attendees, sexually, ocularly, olfactory and otherwise.  I mean, given the probability that McRapey is going to be running around in his little red pumps while “Hands” Frenkel is feeling up the lumpy protruberances of spike-haired shoggoths and the Toad of Tor is squatting in the corner croaking threats at all who pass it by, these are sights and sounds – and smells –  for which one desperately wants to be prepared.  Preferably with a hazmat suit and a flamethrower.

2. That the convention provide a list of the fawning terms by which I am to be addressed at all times by the attendees, by
at least one and preferably more than one of the following: posting the list on their Website, placing it in their written and electronic
programs, putting up flyers in the common areas, discussing the list
at opening ceremonies or at other well-attended common events.

3. In cases when I am invited as a Guest of Honor,
personal affirmation from the convention chair that I will be provided with two (2) attractive cisgendered women, age not to exceed 25, BMI not to exceed 18.5, and height no less than 5’6″, dressed in age-appropriate Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders attire to serve as my personal entourage. Pictures of the prospective candidates are to be provided by email no less than two weeks prior to the event for my approval. 

Thank you for your support of my courage and goodthought. I will now bathe in the smug comfort of my self-regard.

On a tangential note, I would be remiss if I failed to show my support for the reinvention of SFWA as the Science Fiction and Fantasy Sexual Harassment Police.  In their feeding frenzy, the pinkshirts are demonstrating, more convincingly than I could ever have managed myself, that SFWA is no longer fit for purpose and is now essentially divorced from the business of writing and publishing science fiction.

A scandal a day for SFWA

While the organization is still reeling from the loss of our intrepid president of the last three years, it appears another member has just seriously violated SFWA’s confidentiality rules by posting screencaps of posts by Jerry Pournelle, Susan Schwartz, Jim Bailey, William Barton, Brad Torgersen, Gordon van Gelder, Bud Webster, and Jim Fiscus on Speculative Friction.  On the basis of the posts selected, it appears to have been done by a member who is sympathetic to Ms Jemisin.

Some Background: After John Scalzi became president of SFWA in 2010
the organization moved the official SFWA forums away from SFF.net to a
server under the SFWA.org domain. Many members moved to the new forums,
but the private SFWA forum on SFF.net remained for people who did not
want to make the change. The conversations on this Tumblr come from the
private SFF.net forums.

These discussions center around the proposed expulsion of Theodore
Beale/Vox Day from the organization and a speech given by author N. K.
Jemisin. There is also mention of a recent issue with the SFWA Bulletin.
Context for all of this:

(My apologies, Josh, I was incorrect.) While SFF.NET is not SFWA.ORG, I am informed that it is every bit as off-limits to make the private messages from sff.private.sfwa.lounge public as it is to quote the messages posted in the SFWA forums.

And if you think these conversations are entertaining, I only wish you could read the insane drivel being posted by the pinkshirts.

Because respect

Like the SFWA member quoted below, I am bound by the confidentiality rule, but these quotes from Twitter should give everyone a sufficiently accurate image of the anklebiting junior members now running wild within SFWA, as well as for the disdain they openly display for the men, who, back in the day, created the organization and actually wrote genuine science fiction:

Jason Sanford ‏@jasonsanford 26 Jun
Pournelle (noun): Term for a well-known author who complains things were better “back in the day” when jerks could act with impunity.

Jason Sanford ‏@jasonsanford 26 Jun
I’d be nice if people RT’d last tweet. I’d love Pournelle to become a meme. Not that real Pournelle’d understand memes if they bit his butt.

Scott Edelman ‏@scottedelman 26 Jun
Sigh … what did he do now?

Jason Sanford ‏@jasonsanford 26 Jun
Pournelle is being his usual self on the
usual forums which can’t be mentioned due to the usual privacy policy.

Jason Sanford ‏@jasonsanford 26 Jun
But this may all tie in with an organization beginning with S, ending with A, and a FW in the middle.

Jason Sanford @jasonsanford 27 JunPournelle
(noun): Term for well-known author who complains things were better
“back in the day” when jerks could act with impunity.

Jason Sanford ‏@jasonsanford 27 Jun
It’s a good day when your words have irked the Pournelles of our genre. See previous tweet for definition of term.

Justin Howe ‏@JustinHowe 27 Jun
@jasonsanford Also my term for the Pournelles is “Dense Matter”. Such as, “And then we got stymied by the dense matter at the genre’s core.”

One can readily observe that there is no dearth of jerks acting with impunity these days. What horrifically nasty little creeps! Jason Sanford and his herd of never-will-bes are not worthy to so much as shine the shoes of veteran SF authors like Jerry Pournelle, Mike Resnick, and Barry Malzberg, no matter how many participation ribbons and affirmative action trophies they give each other in the pretense that they are Real SF Riters.

And in addition to snapping at the ankles of 80 year-old men, the pinkshirts are now waxing enthusiastic about [REDACTED: CASE PINK SWASTIKA] because apparently SF conventions are just overflowing with perverts uncontrollably attracted to the hairy dugs and misshapen posteriors of shambling quasi-bipedal manatees.

I shitteth thee not.

Needless to say, this is all being driven by the sort of overweight, unemployed “writers” who spend considerably more time talking about themselves – and, one is forced to presume, eating –  than they do actually writing anything. Because respect.

What any of this has to do with writing and publishing science fiction, I leave to your imagination.

The ironic thing is that [REDACTED: CASE PINK SWASTIKA] will almost surely have the unintended consequence of exposing homosexual harassers instead of the intended targets. Women, especially overweight and unattractive women, have absolutely no idea how overtly aggressive gay men tend to be in comparison with straight men. Based on the sob stories dating back decades that have been shared on various blogs, I would estimate that I have been “sexually harassed” by gay men 2x more than any ten female SFWA members combined have been “sexually harassed” by straight men.

Actually, come to think of it, I was once “sexually harassed” by a famous female author at a professional convention. [ALERT: TRIGGER WARNING!] I accepted her gesture as the compliment it was obviously intended to be, smiled, removed her hand, and continued with the conversation. But apparently the concept of gracefully rejecting an unwanted or inappropriate invitation is completely beyond the pinkshirted manatees.

Because respect.

At this point, I suspect the SFWA’s old guard is thinking “you know, we would have been a lot better off if we had simply called [REDACTED]’s bluff, maintained the membership standards, and permitted her to walk away mad.”  Lower standards seldom produce desirable results.

Fictitious profit

Some SFWAns around the Internet have been pointing to this profit calculation to “prove” that rapacious publishers are ripping them off by more than doubling their hardcover royalties on ebooks.  As one has learned to expect from the fun bunch, they have no absolutely idea what they’re doing.

Look at Harper’s own numbers:

$27.99 hardcover generates $5.67 profit to publisher and $4.20 royalty to author
$14.99 agency priced e-book generates $7.87 profit to publisher and $2.62 royalty to author.

So, in other words, at these average price points, every time a
hardcover sale is replaced by an e-book sale, the publisher makes $2.20
more per copy and the author makes $1.58 less. If the author made the
same $4.20 royalty on the e-book sale as he/she would have on a
hardcover, the publisher would STILL be making an improved profit of
$6.28.

Now, I have less use for mainstream publishers than just about anyone who publishes books these days, but this calculation is completely misleading for the obvious reason that it is using the wrong price from which to calculate the profit.  As per DBW:


“After months of consistent declines to a low near $6.00, they’re on the rise again. This week, the average price of an ebook best-seller is $9.48, up slightly from last week, which was the first time the price was north of $9.00 in all of 2013.”

Since the average price of an ebook is more like $8.00 on average, this means that if we plug it into the Harper model, the ebook generates $4.50 profit to the publisher and $1.50 to the author.  And it has gone as low as $3.15, although we can safely disregard this lower figure because it was unduly influenced by low-priced, self-published bestsellers. Regardless, both figures, you will note, are less than the $5.67 in gross profit minus author’s royalty generated by the hardcover sale.

This inability to grasp the basic facts of the rapidly changing market for books is why the SF/F writers are going to be taken completely by surprise when more publishers “unexpectedly” go the way of Night Shade.  These authors think ebooks have made their publishers nearly 40 percent more profitable, all at the expense of the royalties paid to them, when the reality is that despite the ebook’s much lower cost of production, (which, keep in mind, has no impact on the publisher’s overhead), the publishers are actually running somewhere between 20 percent and 45 percent LESS profitable on a per-unit-sold basis alone.

If the publishers were to do as the post’s author suggests and pay the same $4.20 royalty on the ebook that they presently do on the hardcover, they’d make a profit margin of 7.1 percent instead of 42.6 percent.  That would barely pay their rent and utility bills, never mind their payroll.  Note that historically, commercial publishers have run at 40 percent profit margins; even the powerful academic publisher, Elsevier, has seen its operating profit margins slip to 36 percent.  SF/F genre publishers aren’t doing anywhere nearly so well.

Falling retail prices and shrinking profit margins are why the publishers have been cutting their midlist authors and offering fewer, smaller contracts.  They simply can’t afford to publish moderately successful authors anymore, and if average ebook prices fall to $4, as I expect them to within the next 2-3 years, they will not be able to afford publishing anyone who hasn’t already proven to be a reliable bestseller… usually through self-publishing.

Deen proves Hoyt right

Prof. Stephen Clark writes in to Instapundit:

The cancellation of Paula Deen’s book at this time is about avoiding
being seen as enabling what appears to be an evolving protest as
expressed through the advance orders, coupled with a desire to flip off
the protesters. Just another page in the ongoing cultural aggression
being waged by the bicoastal elite. It does, however, neatly illustrate
the inherent viciousness of the class.

Taken in
combination with the complete inactivity concerning Alec Baldwin’s
recent comments on Twitter, it also shows the utter hypocrisy of that
class.  By the elite’s standard metric, Baldwin’s speech was every bit
as hateful and unforgivable as Deen’s theatrics, if not more so, but he
hasn’t been fired from his show or lost any endorsement contracts.

Now,
I certainly don’t pity Mrs. Deen in the slightest, as like James
Frenkel, she is simply reaping the harvest that she helped sow with her
active support of progressives and the establishment of today’s
political elite.  And there are worse fates than being paid millions of dollars to not write a book or two. But she does serve as what should be an educational
example to all the Scalzis and Hineses and Goulds of the world; no
amount of goodthink, political posturing, or progressive flag-waving is
going to save you when the pinkshirts and/or savages you have championed
turn on you and tear you apart without warning.

John
Scalzi was very fortunate that his inept political satire last year was
accepted as such. That didn’t have to be the case; it was far more
potentially offensive than the “lady editor” comment that sparked
Bulletingate. If it had served the whims of the pinkshirts to destroy
him, (for example, if they had had a candidate for SFWA president they
wished to push), he would have found himself the bewildered recipient of
the same sort of ideological hysteria to which Messrs. Resnick and
Malzberg were inflicted.  As readers here have probably noted,
pinkshirts tend to fall silent and run away as soon as they meet with
direct opposition willing to openly confront them; the only thing even
the most abject apologizing accomplishes is to inspire them to go into a
feeding frenzy.

In fact, because he has shown obvious Scalzi-like weakness in his obvious desire to appease the pinkshirts, I think it
quite likely that Steven Gould, the incoming president, will soon come
under attack from the organizational left for one reason or another.

To return to Mrs. Deen, the cancellation of her book, which at the time was Amazon’s #1
bestseller prior to its release, also shows that Sarah Hoyt was
absolutely right and that “business reasons” have absolutely nothing to
do with the ideologically driven decisions of the publishing
gatekeepers.  That defense, which was never the least bit convincing to
anyone with actual experience of mainstream publishing, has now been
exploded in a very public and undeniable manner.

And it also demonstrates the importance of building distribution channels that circumnavigate the attempts of the gatekeepers to control what is made available to the public.

It’s not science, but it sure looks like fiction

Now, I’m not at all surprised that the SFWA warren is hopping madly with news of a shocking sexual harassment scandal now that it has been made clear by the SFWA owsla that it is open season on all non-crossdressing men in the organization – and at the annual gathering of angry land whales known as WisCon, no less – but even I assumed it would take more than a few weeks before the next inevitable pinkshirt scandal exploded all over the increasingly dysfunctional organization’s face.

As it happens, I may actually have met know the woman who is accusing a Tor editor of sexual harassment.  If Elise Matthesen is the same the Elise I knew back in the late nineties, she was a completely useless and not terribly ornamental member of an otherwise excellent writing group in Minneapolis, she never actually did any writing, and all she wanted to do was talk about herself and babble about feminism, sexual harassment, and so forth.  And if  since it is her, I will not be at all surprised if it is eventually determined by the publishing house and the convention alike that the “harassment” was nothing more than a product of her fevered but uncreative imagination.

According to Ms Matthesen, the gentleman who sexually harassed her was a Tor editor, albeit one of the old school Tor editors who actually published genuine science fiction once upon a time: “My name is Sigrid Ellis. I was one of the co-hosts of the party Elise
mentions. The person Elise reported for harassment is James Frenkel.”

Now, I have no idea what actually happened, nor do I care in the slightest, but I have to say, I’m a little bit dubious surprised to learn that it is the Elise of my erstwhile acquaintance, not because she appears to have made a false claim of sexual harassment, (if you’d asked me about her yesterday, I’d have told you that I’d be surprised if she didn’t have dozens of them to her credit), but because the following account would make for the longest piece of fiction she has ever actually managed to write:

 “We’re geeks. We learn things and share, right? Well, this year at
WisCon I learned firsthand how to report sexual harassment. In case you
ever need or want to know, here’s what I learned and how it went.

Two editors I knew were throwing a book release party on Friday night
at the convention. I was there, standing around with a drink talking
about Babylon 5, the work of China Mieville, and Marxist
theories of labor (like you do) when an editor from a different house
joined the conversation briefly and decided to do the thing that I
reported. A minute or two after he left, one of the hosts came over to
check on me. I was lucky: my host was alert and aware. On hearing what
had happened, he gave me the name of a mandated reporter at the company
the harasser was representing at the convention.

The mandated reporter was respectful and professional. Even though I
knew them, reporting this stuff is scary, especially about someone who’s
been with a company for a long time, so I was really glad to be
listened to. Since the incident happened during Memorial Day weekend, I
was told Human Resources would follow up with me on Tuesday.

There was most of a convention between then and Tuesday, and I didn’t
like the thought of more of this nonsense (there’s a polite word for
it!) happening, so I went and found a convention Safety staffer. He
asked me right away whether I was okay and whether I wanted someone with
me while we talked or would rather speak privately. A friend was
nearby, a previous Guest of Honor at the convention, and I asked her to
stay for the conversation. The Safety person asked whether I’d like to
make a formal report. I told him, “I’d just like to tell you what
happened informally, I guess, while I figure out what I want to do.”

It may seem odd to hesitate to make a formal report to a convention
when one has just called somebody’s employer and begun the process of
formally reporting there, but that’s how it was. I think I was a little
bit in shock. (I kept shaking my head and thinking, “Dude, seriously??”)
So the Safety person closed his notebook and listened attentively.
Partway through my account, I said, “Okay, open your notebook, because
yeah, this should be official.” Thus began the formal report to the
convention. We listed what had happened, when and where, the names of
other people who were there when it happened, and so forth. The Safety
person told me he would be taking the report up to the next level,
checked again to see whether I was okay, and then went.

I had been nervous about doing it, even though the Safety person and
the friend sitting with us were people I have known for years. Sitting
there, I tried to imagine how nervous I would have been if I were
twenty-some years old and at my first convention. What if I were just
starting out and had been hoping to show a manuscript to that editor?
Would I have thought this kind of behavior was business as usual? What
if I were afraid that person would blacklist me if I didn’t make nice
and go along with it? If I had been less experienced, less surrounded by
people I could call on for strength and encouragement, would I have
been able to report it at all?

Well, I actually know the answer to that one: I wouldn’t have. I know
this because I did not report it when it happened to me in my twenties.
I didn’t report it when it happened to me in my forties either. There
are lots of reasons people might not report things, and I’m not going to
tell someone they’re wrong for choosing not to report. What I intend to
do by writing this is to give some kind of road map to someone who is
considering reporting. We’re geeks, right? Learning something and
sharing is what we do.

So I reported it to the convention. Somewhere in there they asked,
“Shall we use your name?” I thought for a millisecond and said, “Oh,
hell yes.”
This is an important thing. A formal report has a name attached. More about this later.

The Safety team kept checking in with me. The coordinators of the
convention were promptly involved. Someone told me that since it was the
first report, the editor would not be asked to leave the convention. I
was surprised it was the first report, but hey, if it was and if that’s
the process, follow the process. They told me they had instructed him to
keep away from me for the rest of the convention. I thanked them.

Starting on Tuesday, the HR department of his company got in touch
with me. They too were respectful and took the incident very seriously.
Again I described what, where and when, and who had been present for the
incident and aftermath. They asked me if I was making a formal report
and wanted my name used. Again I said, “Hell, yes.”

Both HR and Legal were in touch with me over the following weeks. HR
called and emailed enough times that my husband started calling them
“your good friends at HR.” They also followed through on checking with
the other people, and did so with a promptness that was good to see.

Although their behavior was professional and respectful, I was
stunned when I found out that mine was the first formal report filed
there as well. From various discussions in person and online, I knew for
certain that I was not the only one to have reported inappropriate
behavior by this person to his employer. It turned out that the previous
reports had been made confidentially and not through HR and Legal.
Therefore my report was the first one, because it was the first one that
had ever been formally recorded.

Corporations (and conventions with formal procedures) live and die by
the written word. “Records, or it didn’t happen” is how it works, at
least as far as doing anything official about it. So here I was, and
here we all were, with a situation where this had definitely happened
before, but which we had to treat as if it were the first time — because
for formal purposes, it was.

I asked whether people who had originally made confidential reports
could go ahead and file formal ones now. There was a bit of confusion
around an erroneous answer by someone in another department, but then
the person at Legal clearly said that “the past is past” is not an
accurate summation of company policy, and that she (and all the other
people listed in the company’s publically-available code of conduct)
would definitely accept formal reports regardless of whether the
behavior took place last week or last year.

If you choose to report, I hope this writing is useful to you. If
you’re new to the genre, please be assured that sexual harassment is NOT
acceptable business-as-usual. I have had numerous editors tell me that
reporting harassment will NOT get you blacklisted, that they WANT the
bad apples reported and dealt with, and that this is very important to
them, because this kind of thing is bad for everyone and is not okay.
The thing is, though, that I’m fifty-two years old, familiar with the
field and the world of conventions, moderately well known to many
professionals in the field, and relatively well-liked. I’ve got a lot of
social credit. And yet even I was nervous and a little in shock when
faced with deciding whether or not to report what happened. Even I was
thinking, “Oh, God, do I have to? What if this gets really ugly?”

But every time I got that scared feeling in my guts and the sensation
of having a target between my shoulder blades, I thought, “How much
worse would this be if I were inexperienced, if I were new to the field,
if I were a lot younger?” A thousand times worse. So I took a deep
breath and squared my shoulders and said, “Hell, yes, use my name.” And
while it’s scary to write this now, and while various people are worried
that parts of the Internet may fall on my head, I’m going to share the
knowledge — because I’m a geek, and that’s what we do.

It should be fascinating to see just how interested the pinkshirts are in continuing their crusade, not against elderly writers and maverick outsiders, but an editor at the largest genre publisher who is married to one of the finest female SF writers.  Especially in light of the fact that his accuser is a well-known whack-job.  Which, of course, doesn’t mean she’s lying or delusional, only that she’d better be able to produce some evidence or eyewitnesses to back up her claim.

The best part is that the SFWA leadership genuinely believes that it is people like Resnick, Malzberg, and me who are the problem.  They don’t realize that they can get rid of every single non-crossdressing male who has ever published in the genre and that won’t even slow down the more radical pinkshirts, as those women are so angry, narcissistic, and delusional that they are capable of seeing racism in a stiff breeze and sexual harassment in a handshake.

If I ever went to an SF/F convention, I can only imagine the pinkshirts would no sooner catch sight of me in the distance before they’d burst into tears and start racing for the “mandated reporters” to be the first to claim that I beat them to death and abused their corpses.