The Comforting Tale of the Crazed Gunman

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A rifle barrel.

Remix of a photo by flickr user reneeviehmann, remixed and used under the terms of their creative commons attribution license.

In the wake of the tragedy in Connecticut, the narrative of the mentally ill gunman has reared its ugly head again. It’s a comforting story–one that says that people capable of mass killings are rare, and so far outside of society that they’re not really even human. It provides a neat, easy explanation of how someone could do something so terrible.

The truth is a lot more complicated than that. One out of every four Americans has some form of mental illness. The overwhelming majority of them never kill anyone, and many mass shooters have no medical history of mental health problems.

The kind of homicidal (and suicidal) impulses on display in mass shootings are a pretty obvious sign of some form of mental illness. But if someone shows no sign of having these impulses until the day they commit a mass murder, then it’s very unlikely that improving access to mental health care would do them much good.

When a mass shooting happens, derailing the conversation to talk about mental health actually just re-enforces misconceptions about mental illness, increasing the very stigma that makes it difficult for people who need mental health services to get care in the first place.

Mass shootings are irrational, so it’s easy to blame them on insanity. But we’re not going to protect ourselves or our children  by stigmatizing mental illness. We need to find the stomach for some hard conversations–not just about guns, but about how we construct masculinity, how we connect power and aggression, and the pressures we place one people who are already hurting. It’s easy to point at a mass shooter and say “they did that because they were broken.” If we’re serious about preventing these tragedies, we need to start asking ourselves what broke them.

Awesome Thing On The Internet: A Game of Rats and Dragon

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The cover of Tobias Buckell’s short story collection Mitigated Futures.

Lightspeed has a new Tobias Buckell short story up: A Game of Rats and Dragon, from Buckell’s upcoming Mitigated Futures collection.

He’s exploring a couple of ideas that really interest me: first, the idea of digital companions as equivalents to stuffed animals or pets–things to which we can have a deep emotional connection even when we know they’re not real.

The video game Dreamfall (which, sadly, was awful, in spite of being a sequel to The Longest Journey; one of my favorite games of all time) comes at this trope more directly, with actual stuffed animals that are given to children with some basic learning apps (speak and spell type stuff) and ‘grow’ with their owners to become personal data assistants. Even though they’re just computers stuffed inside plush toys, it’s easy to see how their owners anthropomorphize them and grow attached to them as if they’re actual creatures. After all, they talk. They walk. They play, sing, dance, teach, listen. Even without most of those traits, most people would still read humanity into them–just ask anyone who’s ever cussed out Siri.

The other thing Buckell’s getting into here is Live Action Role Play. My own experience with LARPs (yeah, I used to dress up and hit people with padded sticks. Judge me all you want; it was fun) has taught me that the more realistic the world–in terms of costume, props, setting, other players– the easier it is to get into the game and actually play a character without feeling silly. Buckell’s taking that one step further to posit that if augmented reality technology were good enough, LARPing would become a really popular pastime.

On top of that, he’s also telling an entertaining story. I heartily recommend giving it a read.

‘My Quakerism’ Responses, Take II

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Out of Order

image by Melanie M, cc-by

My Quakerism Will Be Feminist and Anti-Racist or It Will Be Bullshit got shared around on Facebook again after I wrote what I thought was the wrap-up. It’s now sitting at more than 700 unique views, which is, um. A lot more traffic than my blog posts usually get.

The overwhelming majority of the second round of comments got approved. I really appreciate the support, folks. It means a lot.

The comments that got moderated mostly fit into one of these two categories:

1. The commenter wanted to debate the existence of ‘reverse racism.’

Those were not approved because, per the comment policy on the original post, I didn’t want the conversation derailed.

Having to stop and explain basic concepts (like the definition of racism) to every new person who walks in the door is a huge obstacle to those trying to discuss racism beyond the 101 ‘this is a real thing in the real world’ level. If you can see this post, then you have the technology to educate yourself about these issues, using either the links in the original post or your favorite search engine. If you need a basic introduction to racism, I strongly suggest you seek one out.

Why am I spending an entire paragraph telling you to google it instead of just explaining why reverse racism doesn’t exist? Quite simply, because the expectation that I will answer the question is born of white privilege.

As white people, we live in a world that privileges our opinions about race and racism, while downplaying as ‘biased’ and ‘anecdotal’ the lived experiences of those who experience racism firsthand. If someone shows up at our Quaker Meetings and says ‘you guys are racist’ and we don’t want to hear that, all we have to do is ignore them. They can’t do anything to change us or our communities without our participation, so if we don’t want to leave our comfort zone and listen to them, we don’t have to.

People of color do not have the privilege to walk away. Racism affects them every day, in ways both great and small. It’s not something they can ignore when it’s inconvenient or stressful (which it is for them more often, and to a greater degree, than it ever is for us).

When you have the privilege to walk away from a conversation and the other party doesn’t, you control that conversation. You get to decide whether the other person is ‘too emotional,’ or whether or not you like their ‘tone.’ You even get to set the standard of evidence you’ll accept before acknowledging the facts they live with every day of their life.

One of the ways that privilege manifests itself is white people entering conversations about racism and taking it as a matter of course that we can change the subject. If we still need the basics explained to us, we ask, fully expecting that everyone else will stop the conversation they’re trying to have and educate us. If we decide we want to ‘play devil’s advocate,’ we can just start doing it, without even considering whether or not the other party wants to be our partner in an academic debate about the truth of their lived experience. If something that comes up in the conversation upsets us, we can refuse to discuss the matter further until the other party apologizes–which often leads to the absurd circumstance of white folks demanding people of color apologize for saying that racism exists, and that white people perpetuate it. If our conditions are not met, we can just walk away, insisting that the other party is being ‘reverse-racist’ for not considering our feelings.

If you actually care about racism–if you want to be an ally to people of color, and create spaces that are welcoming to them–then step one is not exercising your privilege to walk away. If someone’s calling you out, listen. Think about what they’re saying. Participate in the conversation on their terms. If that takes you out of your comfort zone, then step on out, and accept that discomfort as the gift that it is. Always assume that what someone is telling you about their lived experience is their truth. If listening to that truth makes you realize your actions haven’t matched your intentions, acknowledge it. Apologize. Do better. Do it enough, and your comfort zone will grow. Take another step.

If you listen and you still can’t reconcile their truth with your own, keep listening. Remember that you–and everyone else–has been conditioned to privilege your experience of a situation over the experiences of people of color. Resist the urge to do that. Assume that you’re missing something before you assume that the other person’s truth is invalid.

Early Quakers didn’t speak of the inner light as a warm, fluffy ball of love. They saw it as a hard light–one that shines on us and illuminates our flaws so that we can see and work on them. They acknowledged that spiritual nakedness as a gift from God–and it is. It’s the unwavering belief that every one of us is capable of doing better. Embrace that. Listen. Educate yourself. Don’t hide your light under a bushel on the assumption that you can’t.

Everything I just said also applies to men and sexism (and straight folks and heterosexism, able-bodied folks and ablism, cis folks and cissexism, etc). Which brings us, in a round-about way, to the second category of comment that didn’t get approved:

2. The commenter suggested that I’d be much happier if I’d just [forgive everyone/stop letting assholes rent space in my brain].

The idea that people can’t make us feel inferior without our consent is meant to be empowering, I know. What it actually does is place the responsibility for both hurt and healing squarely–and exclusively–on the injured party’s shoulders.

Recent anti-bullying campaigns have finally started wising people up to the idea that ‘just ignore them and they’ll go away’ is not a winning strategy. It is, as I explained in point 1, a strategy that only works for those with social power, not those who are hurting for lack of it.

Forgiveness is part of the healing process. It’s pretty hard to heal when the wound is constantly being re-opened. My community is hurting me, and I’m not a failure for asking them to stop.

If I sound angry, it’s because I am. But I’m not speaking up because I’m angry. I’ve been angry–and silent–for years. I’m speaking up because my silence on these issues does not serve God. I’m speaking up now because I’ve finally found enough grace and trust to believe that doing so will make a difference. I’m no longer willing to pay my faith community the insult of assuming that I have to rise above our failings because we can’t face them.

F(f)riends should be honest with each other.

I honestly believe that Friends can do better.

‘My Quakerism’ Post Responses, Thus Far

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Old wooden pews in front of a window looking out onto a garden at a Quaker Meetinghouse in Coanwood, England.

“Quaker Meeting House, Coanwood” by Akuppa John Wigham, cc-by

My last post got a bit more traffic than I was expecting.

It saw just over 200 unique visitors in the first twenty-four hours, and it’s now up to 300. That’s, um. More traffic than I normally get.

First of all, I just want to say that I’m a little floored by the response. It’s really gratifying to hear from others who feel the same way about these issues.

I also put myself out there in a pretty major way by telling my own story, and spent most of the weekend physically sick with dread that someone was going to be a jerk about that. So far, no one has been. My defenses on that front are still jacked up to 11 and are likely to stay that way for a good long while, but I’m starting to have hope that they won’t have to be forever. Which is…’nice’ isn’t the word. There’s probably a German portmanteau for “this s— sandwich tastes much better than it could have.”

A big thank-you for all the supportive comments, hugs, re-tweets, and hell-yeahs. They mean a lot. I do want to go back and respond to comments, but it might be a little while before there’s room in my brain to do so.

One common thread I’ve seen in a lot of the response is a desire for next steps–how do we build a more feminist, anti-racist Quakerism?

I have Things To Say about that, but I think it’s important to recognize that the conversation is already happening. So before I kick off a post on that topic, I want to finish assembling a list of references and links to ongoing efforts to improve Quaker spaces.

In the meantime, if anybody wants to have a conversation with me about feminism and anti-racism in Quakerism, let’s do it. Shoot me an email. I’m also a big fan of Google Hangouts. If you’re in the DC area, let’s grab coffee. I’m on Twitter as @leeflower, which is probably the best way to get in touch with me if you don’t already have my contact information.

My Quakerism Will Be Feminist and Anti-Racist or It Will Be Bullshit

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Old wooden pews in front of a window looking out onto a garden at a Quaker Meetinghouse in Coanwood, England.

“Quaker Meeting House, Coanwood” by Akuppa John Wigham, cc-by

[Content warning: this post discusses sexual assault, micro-aggressions, victim-blaming, and 'progressive' sexism and racism].

Just over a year ago, Flavia Dzodan wrote a incisive piece for Tiger Beatdown. In it, she calls out mainstream feminism for the rank hypocrisy of claiming to work for the betterment of all women while refusing to stand up for, listen to, respect, and welcome women of color and other marginalized women. She said MY FEMINISM WILL BE INTERSECTIONAL OR IT WILL BE BULLSHIT!

I can relate.

Not because I’m a woman of color who has to put up with a steady stream of micro and macro-aggressions from white people who claim to be my allies. I’m not a woman of color, and the intersectionality I have to deal with is a very different sort.

But I know what it’s like to be part of a movement that congratulates itself for its egalitarianism and dedication to social justice out of one side of its mouth while belittling and silencing me out of the other. I know what it’s like to put up with a steady stream of micro and macro-aggressions from people who think equality is all well and good until they have an opportunity to use their size, age, gender, and the timber of their voice to cow me into submission. I know what it’s like to look around a gathering at a sea of white faces and listen to someone congratulate us on how ‘inclusive’ we are.

Yeah. I know all about what that’s like. I’m a Quaker.

It’s exhausting, is what it’s like. It’s having to keep my guard up all the time; having to suffer hypocrisy in silence; having to live every day knowing that the love and acceptance I get from my faith community is conditional on that silence.

I have known for a long time that my silence on these issues does not serve God. I have prayed for the strength to live my witness, but I haven’t found it yet. When Quakers say ‘speak truth to power,’ rarely do they mean they want you to speak your truth to their power. I don’t think I’ll know whether I’m actually going to say it this time until I hit ‘publish.’

But here it is–this is my truth. I feel the presence of God in my heart, and he has asked me to say: my Quakerism will be feminist and anti-racist or it will be bullshit.

And so will yours.

One year, two of my meeting’s regular attenders–a young couple of color–decided to use our first-time attender coupons to check out our Yearly Meeting’s annual sessions. They came back the week after to report that practically every conversation they’d had started with the other party wanting to talk about ‘diversity’ and brag about their personal progressive credentials. One of them called it the “Oh My God, You’re Black!” conversation. We offered them sympathetic laughter.

They stopped attending Meeting shortly after that, and joined a nearby church.

I don’t blame them.

I heard a white Friend compare a space for Quakers of Color to apartheid once.

I’m not kidding.

I’ve also heard white Friends use the term ‘reverse racism’ as if that’s a real thing that exists in the real world.

When we refuse to respect and believe the lived experiences of people of color in our communities, we are contributing to a system of structural violence that lifts white people up at the expense of people of color. It’s not ok. It’s not just. It’s not honest. It’s not God’s will. And it’s Not Quaker.

So my Quakerism will be anti-racist or it will be bullshit.

When I was a teenager, I was sexually assaulted at a Young Friends conference.

I was asleep at the time, and I never spoke up about it because I was half-convinced I’d dreamt it. Years later, I was going through another Friend’s old conference photos, and there it was, like a punch in the gut: a picture of an older Young Friend with his hand up my shirt, while I was asleep. And around us, a room full of other Friends–some of them adults–going on about their business as if nothing was happening.

The young friend in question went on sexually harassing me until we were both well past our high school days. Eventually he assaulted me again–while I was awake, that time. Once I’d had a few days to process that, I decided I was officially through with being anywhere near him. Mutual Quaker friends of ours have told me that it’s a personal conflict between him and me, and they don’t want to be involved.

Or they’ve just told me to stop saying mean things about their friend. That happened too.

I wish that I could trust the larger Society of Friends–my meeting, my yearly meeting–to help me heal that bleeding wound in my heart, but I can’t. I’ve been around Quakers long enough to know what will happen. Some people will be sympathetic, but reluctant to ‘take sides.’ Others will ask me, in concerned voices, if it’s possible that I led him on, and he didn’t realize. Others will demand proof, and in its absence (I don’t have that photo), they’ll insinuate that I’m a liar. Others still will just weaponize my story and add it to the arsenal they level at Young Friends when trying to paint them as irresponsible and incapable of running their own community. (For the record, the current generation of Young Friends were in grade school when this happened).

My community’s love and acceptance is conditional on my silence, and I’m tired of it. My Quakerism will be feminist or it will be bullshit.

When I was serving as clerk of my meeting, there was an incident at the rise of worship one day. A male attender tried to kiss the female attender next to him. She told him no. A few minutes later, when I invited Friends to share their prayer requests, he held forth at length about how Quakers are too ‘prudish’ and ‘uptight.’

I was the clerk. I should have said something. Instead, I thought of what happened when I tried to speak up for my own physical and emotional boundaries, and sat silently seething while he passive-aggressively upbraided her for exercising her right to decide who touches her, and how.

No one else said anything, either.

At this year’s Annual Sessions, an older, larger Friend approached me while I was alone, in the dark. He took a threatening stance and took me to task for helping another group of Friends stand up for themselves in a manner he took personally. He called me immature, and an embarrassment, and when I refused to apologize, he used his size and the timber of his voice to frighten me into silence.

These stories may seem like little things, on their own. These two men probably didn’t even think about the fact that they were using their masculinity to threaten. I’m sure they didn’t think of their actions as acts of violence. But they were. Those little aggressions add up, and they build a community in which women are not safe, let alone respected equals.

I’m tired of living in that community. My Quakerism will be feminist or it will be bullshit.

A few years ago, a Friend posted a sexist video on Facebook. One of those ‘funny’ college-humor style jokes where the ‘punchline’ is “hahaha women are lying bitches, am I right?”

I responded, “Wow. That’s really sexist.”

He told me that he and I would have to ‘agree to disagree’ about that, because his wife thought it was funny.

If that was the end of it, I probably would have brushed it off. But it wasn’t the end of it.

A friend of his who’d never met me–and who identifies as a Quaker–jumped into the comments. He posted a ‘translation’ of my comments, complete with caveman-style grammar, suggesting that I was offended because I was just like the women in the video (which is to say that I, like them, must be an emotionally immature, passive-aggressive liar). I tried to engage with him about sexism and micro-aggressions; he called me a ‘little girl’ (I was an adult out of college), and told me that sexism didn’t exist. When I asked for an apology, our mutual friend (the one who’d posted the video) asked us both to take it off his facebook page because he didn’t want to see us arguing.

I guess asking him to stand up to his buddy for being a sexist jackass who blatantly disrespects women he’s never met was too tall an order.

I stopped going to meeting, after that.

I didn’t even tell my friend how deeply he hurt me. I still haven’t, because I suspected our friendship wouldn’t survive that conversation (though he’s probably going to see this, so I guess he has a chance to prove me wrong). I just stopped going to his meeting. And shortly after that, I stopped going to my own.

There are extenuating circumstances. I’ve got a health situation that can make it hard for me to get out into the world. But even on Sunday mornings when I wake up pain-free and don’t have a hundred other things to catch up on, I don’t go. I contemplate the exhausting notion of facing more micro-aggressions amidst a community that claims to be dedicated to justice and equality, and I just stay home.

It’s not all Quakers. There are many wonderful Friends in my life who work very hard to recognize their own privileges and decolonize their minds of the racism, sexism, ableism, and other brands of injustice that we’re all poisoned with from birth. But the Religious Society of Friends–the people once called the Friends of the Truth–are supposed to be dedicated to justice as a whole. We are supposed to answer God’s call to listen deeply, to think critically, to improve ourselves, and thereby improve the world. It’s very difficult for me to be around Quakers who aren’t doing that.

Because it’s become a leading, for me. My Quakerism will be feminist and anti-racist or it will be bullshit.

EDIT TO ADD: I’ve written two follow-up posts on this subject: part one and part two. In Part Two, I discuss a basic step that Friends can take towards building a more inclusive and welcoming community: acknowledge the privilege to walk away.

A Note On Commenting: I haven’t had comments on this blog yet, but if any of my posts are likely to start a conversation, it’ll probably be this one. Since this is such a sensitive topic, and especially so for me, this thread is going to be heavily moderated. The following things are specifically not ok:

  1. If I wanted to name names, I would have. Please don’t ask, don’t speculate, and if you already know, keep it to yourself.
  2. The following things are not up for discussion:
    1. Whether or not sexual assault survivors have a responsibility to name and shame.
    2. Whether or not what happened to me was ‘really’ assault.
    3. Whether or not I’m telling the truth.
  3. This also isn’t the place for an introductory-level discussion about the basics of racism and sexism, and how they affect racial and gender minorities. If you are new to the idea that racism and misogyny are still alive and well in our society, here are a few resources to get you started:
    1. Mary Anne Mohanraj gets you up to speed, Part I
    2. Resist Racism: Racism 101
    3. Finally, A Feminism 101 Blog
    4. Shakesville– The Terrible Bargain We Have Regretfully Struck

Writing this post has taken a lot out of me. In fact, contemplating putting this up and linking to it where other Quakers–including the Quakers I’ve just refused to name–will see it has pretty much taken all I’ve got to give at the moment.

So in order to make it possible for me to post this, a F/friend has agreed to step in and help me moderate comments. Here is the comment policy. If your comment breaks those rules, or the ones stated above, she is going to clean it up with the Squeegee of Gentle Eldering. And if you take this conversation somewhere she can’t moderate it–to my email, or twitter, facebook, g+, etc– for the purpose of violating the boundaries I’ve laid out here, please be prepared for that to be the end of any relationship you and I have.

The Foulest Words I Know

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A picture of a microphone

photo by Michael Rhys, (cc-by).

I’ve been working lately on cleaning up my language.

Not for F-bombs or impolite references to excrement; those I still employ with unladylike abandon. But there are other words–fouler words–that I’m trying to quit saying, even if most folks wouldn’t think of them as obscene.

Lame, Bitch, Crazy, and Sucks are my worst offenders. They insult by implying similarity or relation to groups of marginalized people. The mobility-impaired. Women. People with mental health issues. People who have sex with men. They’re a way of saying “this thing is bad because it’s like these people who are bad.” That’s ugly, and I don’t want to do it anymore.

Sometimes I’ll hear another phrase and look it up only to discover–yup. Super-racist. Or sexist. Or otherwise offensive. “Indian Summer” is the most recent. In the same vein as “Indian burn” and “Indian giver,” it’s using ‘(American) Indian’ as shorthand for untrustworthy, unreliable, and/or fake.

Some people seem to think I try to be intentional about my words because I’m ‘politically correct’ and ‘scared of offending anyone,’ but that’s not actually true. There are plenty of people I don’t mind offending. But I do mind marginalizing people. I mind picking on people who don’t have the societal power to make me answer for it. I mind bullying.

So choosing words I actually mean isn’t about trying to look virtuous. It’s about trying to be decent.

 

Beware Padd Solutions

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Out of Order

“out of order” by Melanie M, cc-by

If you stopped by here yesterday (and a record number of you did, just my luck), you may have noticed that the place looked a mess. Here’s what happened.

I was using a theme called Rhodiumite, from a company called Padd Solutions. I chose Rhodiumite because I liked the look, and it seemed to be above-board. Alas, it was not.

Padd Solutions includes creepy encrypted code in their themes, which will add hidden links to dating sites and other spammy things to your site. They’re skeezy skeezoids who skeeze (hence the rel=nofollow in that first link).

But their themes are really nice. So many users who discover their seedy underbelly choose to just rip out the skeezy code and go on with their business. I contemplated that option myself. Even after the code was removed, however, I was still seeing massive performance issues. Tweeting a single site link to my extremely modest list of twitter followers was enough to put the server 25x over capacity and crash the site.

I’m fairly new to wordpress and even newer to PHP, so it took me a bit to cotton on to the notion that the theme could be responsible. My performance diagnostic tools were telling me that actual download times were normal, and silly me the Django developer, I’m used to a Model-Template-View setup where my site’s templates don’t do the heavy lifting. After more than a little cussing and some serious thoughts about switching to Django’s Mezzanine because then at least I could figure out what was going on under the hood, my friend and partner-in-server-space suggested I try switching themes.

And the problem disappeared immediately.

Or the backend problem did; the front-end problem, which is that I am really choosy and missed my theme, was still around. You know how people say not to grocery-shop while hungry? Don’t try to find a new WordPress theme while cranky. Especially not when you like the theme you’ve got now and want one just like it. So the site looked a mess for several hours while I tried and discarded a dozen or more themes.

For the time being, I’m sticking with this one (WP-Creativix), but this incident has convinced me to go learn PHP. I’ll be customizing and editing it as my time and skills permit.

First lesson learned: stay the heck away from Padd Solutions.

Second lesson learned: if your free theme isn’t available through WordPress.Org, it may contain malicious code, violate relevant licenses, or be otherwise skeezy. Proceed with caution.

Ada Lovelace Day: Selena Deckelmann and Jackie Kazil

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Ada Lovelace, by Margaret Sarah Carpenter

Ada Lovelace, painted by Margaret Sarah Carpenter in 1836

Happy Ada Lovelace Day, folks!

Named for Lady Ada Lovelace, a collaborator of Charles Babbage’s and the first computer programmer of the modern world, Ada Lovelace Day is an opportunity to celebrate women in science, technology, math, and engineering.

My Adas this year are people I’ve only recently met–Selena Deckelmann and Jackie Kazil. Hanging out with these two amazing women in tech was my favorite part of DjangoCon.

Selena Deckelmann contributes to PostreSQL and runs Postrgres Open, a non-profit Postgres conference. At Djangocon 2012, she gave a keynote titled “While We’re Here, Let’s Fix Computer Science Education.” Now she’s working on finding new and creative ways for CS teachers and programmers to collaborate to make CS education more awesome. This is a cause near and dear to my heart–her talk really fired me up to want to go out and build stuff. When the discussions at DjangoCon around her talk inspired her to create a mailing list about the topic, I jumped all over it. I’m really excited to see what comes of it.

Jackie Kazil founded PyLadies DC, a group that encourages and supports women Python developers. PyLadies sponsored the scholarship that got me to DjangoCon in the first place, and once I was there, Jackie encouraged me to submit my first proposal for a technical talk. She also leads intro workshops on Python and Django to help get more people excited about tech.

I also want to give a shout-out to Mary Gardiner and Valerie Aurora, the founders of The Ada Initiative, because their work makes my life better.

And, as always, a shout-out to Mackenzie, without whose support, encouragement, and mentorship I’d still be printing “Hello World.”

On Not Creeping: Fan Edition

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A creeper from Minecraft.

They invade your personal space and ruin your day.

I’m at CapClave this weekend (about which more later; I’m having a great time), which has helped me distill some of my thoughts on Fan Creeping. As a relatively-young woman with a relatively-large personal and social space bubble, I don’t worry much about accidentally sexually harassing people. But fan creeping? The fine art of making the smile freeze on the face of a famous or influential person? Yeah. Pretty sure I’ve done that. And it’s a little mortifying when I realize I’ve done it.

John Scalzi is here as CapClave’s author guest of honor (and I know that by typing his name, I’m invoking the Law of Scalzi*, so hi Scalzi!).

Yesterday, my spouse and I spotted him in the hotel bar, as we were wandering past.

“That’s John Scalzi,” said Spouse.

“Yup,” I said.

“You should go say hi.”

I glanced back over at Scalzi. He was surrounded by a crowd of people I didn’t know, and sunk so far down into his armchair that I could barely see the top of his head.

“Nope,” I said.

“But he knows you,” said Spouse.

My spouse is a sweetheart, but overstates my relationship with John Scalzi. I’m a regular commenter on Whatever, and Scalzi and I have met enough times that he recognizes me when I see him, but he and I are not buddies. He’s polite to me in the way famous people are polite to their fans, and I sincerely hope I don’t inflict upon him that sense of social dread we all get when we see That Guy Who Thinks We’re Friends. In service of not becoming one of Scalzi’s Guys Who Think We’re Friends, I’m not going to approach him while he’s talking to people I’ve not met, and hang awkwardly around the edge of the circle like a fart everyone’s pretending not to smell.

It’s harder for me around Quakers. My mother is something of a Name among Quakers, to the extent that I grew up accustomed to random strangers approaching me and telling me they’ve ‘known’ me since I was X weeks/months/years old. You’d think this would make me more sensitive to the concept of the one-way relationship that can develop between the public and those in the public eye, but it’s actually kind of messed me up. I’ve gotten so used to people doting on me for my mother’s sake that I’ve lost any sense of social decorum around walking up to other Big Name Quakers and expecting to be treated as part of their circle.

This may have been endearing when I was a child, but now that I’m a grown woman, not so much. This summer, I walked up to two of the biggest Names at a Quaker gathering and asked them if I could join them for lunch. They were very nice about telling me to go the hell away, because they’re very nice people. That was a bit of a wake-up call (paging Annalee–your party is waiting for you in the Grown-*** Woman’s department). So the next time I was at a Quaker event where there was a Name present, I tried my best to stay the heck away from her outside of my capacity as event staff. She came over to say hi to me at one point; we caught up, then I left her alone some more.

The thing I try to keep in mind when dealing with famous people, for whatever value of ‘famous’ is relevant to the context, is that they’re ‘on’ when they’re talking to people who have a one-way relationship with them. Most of them are good-natured people who are inclined to be kind to fans just for kindness’s sake, but in many cases, being kind is usually also an important part of their public brand. A science fiction author can do just fine if they never go to conventions, but if they show up at conventions and don’t put on their Author Face for fans, they’re likely to get a bad reputation that might affect them professionally. Big Name Quakers don’t have public brands in the same way, but in many cases they know they’re going to end up having to work with me on committees and things, and probably prefer not to make things awkward even if I really have it coming.

Our side of the bargain is that in exchange for their kindness, we can’t ask too much of them. They’ve only got so much Author Face they can put on, and it’s not fair to take more than our share. We also can’t expect them to welcome us into the circle of people with whom they share their personal, non-brand face. If we take the kinds of liberties their friends might take (like inviting ourselves to lunch, or asking them to read our work**, or just following them around like they must want to spend the whole weekend hanging out with us), then at best, we’re going to see that smile freeze. At worst, we’re going to creep them out badly enough that they feel the need to shut us down. Even if they’re nice about it, that’s mortifying for us and probably not much of a picnic for them.

*What’s the Law of Scalzi? Simple. Stand in front of a blank blog post and type ‘Scalzi’ thrice. By the time you get to the third i, HE WILL HAVE SEEN THE POST. His massive robot army apprises him of all things.

**If you’re wondering why I have info about my unpublished novel up on my website? It’s because it keeps me from talking about it to uninterested parties. If someone wants to know what it’s about, it’s off in the corner where they can have a look at it without the pressure of me hovering over their shoulder demanding to know what they think.

I’m an Ada’s Anchor

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Portrait of Ada Lovelace, World's first computer programmer.

Ada Lovelace, the world’s first computer programmer.

Last night, I became The Ada Initiative’s 100th Sustaining Donor for 2013.

The Ada Initiative is a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing the participation and status of women in open technology and culture. They do a lot of great work, including advocating for conference Anti-Harassment policies, which make tech conferences safer and more welcoming spaces for women and other minorities. They also organize AdaCamp. AdaCamp DC was a really positive experience for me, and I’m glad I had the opportunity to attend.

Many wonderful people advocate for women in open tech and culture (OT&C), but our community still has a long way to go. Mary Gardener and Valerie Aurora founded the Ada Initiative so they could treat advocacy for women in OT&C as the full-time job that it is. Those of us who value this work need to understand that while volunteer efforts are important and necessary, expecting women and our allies to do this work on a strictly volunteer basis is another way of devaluing our contributions to Open Tech and Culture. We can’t be equal participants if we’re expected to spend a good chunk of our free time–time others get to spend actually contributing to OT&C projects–fighting for our right to safe spaces and basic respect.

The Ada Initiative’s impact on my own life and career extends beyond a couple awesome days at AdaCamp. Their work to promote Anti-Harassment Policies has lead to a sea-change in how conferences think about and address harassment and assault. I’ve been attending geek conventions since I was thirteen, and I’d gotten so used to sexual harassment that I just thought of it as the price of attending cons. The two conferences I’ve attended in the past year have been the first I’ve ever been to where I was neither harassed nor assaulted. One of them had an anti-harassment policy based on the Ada Initiative template. The other addressed their efforts to increase women’s participation in their project in several talks and sessions, including the keynote. I have no doubt that the Ada Initiative contributed to their thinking on that. The Ada Initiative’s work has made me feel safer and more welcome at conferences.

They’ve also helped to foster a community of women and allies within OT&C who support each other in speaking out about bad behavior. When a company does something sexist, or a speaker includes pornography or references to ‘explaining technology to girls’ in their talk, they’re increasingly more likely to get called out for it. Public censure is an important tool in developing an atmosphere where misogyny and harassment are not acceptable.  The Ada Initiative’s advocacy inspires me, supports me, and gives me hope for the future of women in Open Technology and Culture.

The Ada Initiative is still seeking donors to sustain its work in 2013. I’m an Ada’s Anchor. Will you join me?