wickedqueen.net

Really EPIC asshaberdashery, though. Srsly. And it happened at WisCon, my first and favorite con, by way of a miserable self-hating gamer girl named Rachel Moss, who as it happens is also a graduate student at my own institution.

You may want to take a moment to catch up with the Angry Black Woman’s comprehensive explanation of what happened. (And skip to the bottom if you have no idea what WisCon is.)

I use the term “gamer girl” above with a healthy dose of irony–Moss does seem to indicate herself that her primary fannish interest is in game, and she is female, but in general I try to take care with my application of the label “girl.”* Here, I mostly want to highlight something that I see as a problem: many people who have reported on the Incident and/or discussed its ramifications have identified her as “young” or “very young,” often in an attempt to render her in some way pitiable–not excused; very few people are on board for that, but somehow slightly less responsible, or at least that’s how it reads to me.

Moss is 25 years old. She’s a year younger than me. She’s a graduate student at UW-Madison, just like me. Unlike me, she apparently struggles with an eating disorder** and has for many years. Like other posters on the subject I hasten to clarify that I think it is very sad that she has an eating disorder, and should never be grounds for attacking her–or, conversely, seen as an insult when I note that she has one; she has spoken about it publicly and it is, if I may say so, profoundly fucked up to act like saying “eating disorder” is equivalent to “her mother’s a whore.”

However, having an eating disorder and being an asshole are not the same problem. They do seem to be at least peripherally related; Moss hates other women, and what she hates in them seems to be all the things she most fears to see in herself: fat, “inadequate” or somehow unconvincing gender performance (as I’d interpret her transphobia), disability, etc. Claire Light puts it beautifully, and acknowledges some unpleasant similarities inside her own head that I would bet almost all women in this culture have experienced:

But watching fat people get smacked down makes me want to cry because while most of me is an ally, a small part of me still tugs me towards the smack-down crew, and how can we fight this when I’m also the enemy?

There’s still a little voice in my head that agrees with such awful people as Rachel Moss when they say awful things about fat people. I’ve come close many times to stomping that little voice out, but it’s a tough one. It’s the same voice that tells me I’m fat, but it’s okay as long as other people are fatter. I know a lot of you out there know that voice, even if you won’t admit it.

Rachel Moss knows that voice, only she has completely failed–if she ever tried–to stomp it out. She’s let that voice take over, and it’s a monster’s voice. That’s what she’s turned into for the time being: a monster, who’s projected her hatred of her own body onto the bodies of others, to get some relief. Who can really doubt that that’s what’s happening with women who hate on fat women?

I definitely know that voice. I have done the “fatter than me” count in a room more than once. But the thing is, I don’t agree with it. I know the voice is fucked up and wrong. Even if–especially if–I start feeling like I believe it. Recently, I was discussing weight and body image issues with one of my favorite WisCon goers, and I noted that the big problem I have in entering discussions like that is that people often assume that because I am a small woman with a fairly intense workout schedule, I am judging them for lacking my “discipline” or however you want to term it. I’m not. I do sometimes get a little nuts about a couple of pounds of personal weight gain, mainly because I put on about 40 in my first two years of grad school and I recall that it starts with two or three, and also I prefer it when my clothes fit. And I like being strong, and knowing that I can bike 50 miles, etc. But this is my personal standard. It takes a lot of work. When other people are not as fit as me, I don’t think they are lazy slobs; I figure they have other stuff to do, because, eschewing false modesty, most people are not as athletic as I am.*** Most people don’t spend the time on it that I do, most people don’t bike 100+ miles a week, most people don’t do weight training ~3 times a week. Why the hell would they? Keeping in top shape is kind of like chasing storms or keeping a log of all the trains that come through town: important to some individuals, mind-bogglingly boring and/or insane to most.

So I don’t have an eating disorder, but I can get a little hyperfocused sometimes. On myself, not other people. And other people do have eating disorders–a depressingly large number of them, in fact. So far, only ONE person has come to WisCon two years in a row with the express purpose, on her second visit, of taking photos without permission and posting them online to mock people for being fat, disabled, trans, not white… In her original post, from what I saw, Moss was mostly focused on misogyny and fatphobia, but she didn’t shy away from asserting her authority to racially categorize all participants and thereby delegitimize their identities, and the racism that followed from the SASS crowd is, to a sheltered white academic, truly staggering.

I think Claire is absolutely right, both in her assertion of the psychological motivation behind Moss’s acts and also in her implication that Moss is very different from most women, who hear the voice but who do not develop a full-blown case of demonic possession by the patriarchy. For fucksakes.

A number of people have reposted and analyzed Moss’s opening remarks about the con–the con that she, remember, paid registration fees to attend not once but twice, although as a Madison resident she probably didn’t pay for lodging:

[WisCon] is like any other sci-fi con, except that well over half of the attendees are female, about a third of the panels are political, there is no gaming, and absolutely everybody is a huge bitch.

LiveJournal user hederahelix noted that contrary to her third assertion, Moss was sitting next to a gamer at one panel at least–since she sat next to hederahelix, and hederahelix is a gamer. I was on a panel about gender swapping in gaming during which there was a great deal of discussion about both MMOGs and table-top RPGs. At that panel, we also discussed the sexism and misogyny inherent in gamer culture on a number of levels: the automatic equation of healers with women, the reaction of a mostly male player base to the hiring of a female community manager at NCSoft, the way that male players often attempt to roleplay women (and absolutely refuse to hear “YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG” from actual women)…

I said that Moss is not particularly young, and I don’t think she is, at least not in any way that excuses or even explains anything. But she reminds me of an angrier and more poisonous version of 14-year-old me in the sense that she is obviously looking for an environment where she has no competition for male attention, and I think what she hates most about WisCon is that it both fails to provide much in the way of that commodity AND fails to acknowledge that commodity as inherently valuable.

When I was 14, I was the only female member of the RPG club at my high school. I was a sophomore, and for an entire year it was me and a bunch of role-playing guys. The next year, four or five other female students joined, and at the time I would have preferred it if they hadn’t. I was younger than everyone else, I was funny-looking, and I wanted the gamer guys to myself. And even then, I didn’t try to chase anyone away, I didn’t give up on it myself, I didn’t turn around and attack the other women in the environment. I thought a lot of crazy things at age 14, and I made a lot of bad decisions. But even then I realized that other women were not the automatic enemy. And I was not a complete asshole.****

On a more positive note: the thing that I love most about WisCon is the way that its attendees celebrate ourselves. It is, I suspect, this very quality at which Moss grits her teeth like the Grinch looking down on Whoville.

Many people have commented that the photos held up for mockery by Moss and others show people who appear to be having a wonderful time. Many of them are photos of my friends: hilarious, kind, wonderful, brave people. People who are not afraid to BE. WisCon is one of the few places where I never feel like I am Too Much: too smart, too weird, too flamboyant, too chattery…

Not that I make much effort to tone these qualities down in Real Life; I have pink hair for godsakes. But at WisCon, I feel like people GET it. Instead of mere wide eyes and the occasional burst of helpless laughter, my ensembles garner heartfelt appreciation. No one wonders WHY I am wearing a lovingly restored lime green go-go dress with hot pink fringe dangling big plastic flowers. They just marvel at the matching go-go boots. They appreciate my nerd/folk mix CDs (speaking of, I met my goal of distributing 100 of them this year).

So on the one hand, I’m not much moved by people pushing pity for Rachel Moss, who set out to deliberately humiliate and harm a number of people whose happiness I value highly, and who is DEFINITELY not sorry about anything other than possibly getting caught. But on the other… okay, yes. I do pity her. I pity anyone who can stand two years running in the middle of all that exuberance and Not Get It, like Kay with a chip of ice mirror in his heart. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, but then why come back? There’s got to be something there that she wants, and she hates everyone who has figured out how to let themselves have it.

I love WisCon. I am extremely bummed that I missed almost half the con laid up with the Wischolera (and how awesome is a group of people that collectively comes up with the term “Wischolera”?) but I am already looking forward to next year, when I’ll be living right by the conference hotel again. I just don’t have much time to spare for people whose lives are governed by fear.

—

ETA: It occurs to me that many people may be totally confused about what WisCon IS. It’s a feminist science fiction/fantasy convention held in Madison, WI over Memorial Day Weekend every year. It attracts a lot of academic types, enough that there is an academic programming track; I presented a paper on gender-swapping in MMOGs there a couple of years ago, and it was really nice to be talking to an audience that didn’t need a 15-minute primer on “What is a virtual world” before I could get to the substantive content of my paper. A lot of very cool people attend from all over the country and even outside the US, and of course they (and the late night parties at which we get to hang out and drink ever night) are really the best part of the con. Some of us are, I suppose, “huge bitches”; others of us are really fairly small bitches with tall shoes to compensate.

—

*Not quite as much as I do with the term “lady”; if you hear me use this word or its plural, you may assume that I am mocking some misguided person’s ideals of “modern chivalry.” This is pretty easy to cue into given how much I tend to extend the “a” when I say it.

****At age 14, I admit, no one is a complete NON-asshole either.

Note: It’s sort of buried, so I thought I’d just add an opening note that the point of this whole entry, aside from how cute I am in my cycling clothes, is that I made my first 30-mile ride yesterday. This is somewhat less impressive in light of my father’s latest exploits, but we all have to start somewhere.

I got this jersey half-off from Sierra Trading Post, so it was a reasonable price instead of the usual crazy high one. Another cyclist complimented me on it while I was out riding, and she didn’t even get the full effect of my hair.

As you can see, however, it also pretty much matches my helmet. Also oleander.

I love oleander.

Soon after I took this photo of the fancy houses from afar, I discovered I was hopelessly lost. I don’t know why I continue to be surprised every time this happens. Eventually I had to call my sister and give her my location so that she could figure out how the hell I was supposed to get to Arastradero.

I got so lost that I got to see some of these houses up close. Los Altos Hills is full of them.

Of course, it’s also full of hills. This one has been magically flattened by the act of photography, apparently; I assure you that it was nearly vertical. I actually attempted to bike up it and had to give up about a third of the way up–WALKING up this hill was punishing. Then it turned out to be a dead end. Thanks for signing that, City of Los Altos Hills.

I did eventually make it to Arastradero. Apparently this is what lies beyond my turn-off for work–some kind of mini-vineyard.

Once on Arastradero, I actually even figured out where I made that first wrong turn, so next weekend maybe I’ll actually be able to do the route my landlord recommended, instead of random riding around, getting lost, backtracking, etc. At any rate, I still made 30 miles, so I was pleased. The jersey, in addition to suiting my personal style, was indeed very lightweight and comfortable. I’ve ordered a couple more, plus real bike shorts,* from Sierra Trading Post, since they have a bunch of stuff on clearance and they’d sent me an additional 20% off coupon.

The hair in these photos is already out of date, however, as following my triumphant return I redid my dye job–I’m back to solid Atomic Pink, thanks to Cyn. I couldn’t find the vaseline when I was getting started, which led to an unintended second bike trip to Long’s for supplies (you need vaseline to minimize hairline staining), which I have to say I did not really enjoy–I’d sort of been planning to be totally done with biking for the day. I also picked up some bleach wipes and leave-on spray cleaner for the shower, though. Just trying to reduce my environmental impact.

—

*In fact, I ordered two matching ensembles, one purple/rose, one orange/coral. Rest assured I will post photos.

Paul McCartney Tells a Dirty Joke

The joke’s an old one–I knew it, anyway. But maybe you haven’t heard it, and anyway, you know you want to watch Paul McCartney tell it. Especially if you’re my sister.

For some reason, though, embedding his nervous twitch is fine:

You know, all those years of secondary school gym class, I thought I hated physical activity, but it turns out I just hated fascism.*

I remember all those thousands of hours
that I spent in grade school watching the clock,
waiting for recess or lunch or to go home.
Waiting: for anything but school.
My teachers could easily have ridden with Jesse James
for all the time they stole from me.

–Richard Brautigan, The Memoirs of Jesse James

(My other reflection on biking lately is that the older I get, the more like my father I seem to become. Biking, cooking,** and I’ve started contemplating camping, which was definitely not my thing as a child, at least not after age 8 or so.)

My hair is also getting really faded. I’m loathe to cover the highlights, which still look good (if faded), but probably I’ll dye it all back to Atomic Pink after I get back from visiting my cousin in LA. This does mean that Cyn and I will not be total twinsies if we get together for lunch, but that may well save the universe from implosion,*** so perhaps I should consider it a necessary sacrifice.

And speaking of the universe imploding, today’s Thursday PARC Forum is about dark matter. Maybe I should go.

—

*I’ve remarked this to several people now, which is why I can’t remember who thought it should be on a t-shirt. I think it might be a little long.

***I’ve always been a big fan of parallel universes, such as Star Trek Dark Mirror and the Futurama Cowboy Universe. Maybe there’s one where everyone’s got pink hair EXCEPT Cyn and me. I’ll tell you one thing: I bet Evil Bizarro Cabell has really conservative hair. Lime green would be the photo-negative, but I’ve done that, too.

These are the cutest things I have ever seen in my entire life, ever.

Cyn, you will LOVE them.

The whole site is pretty awesome, although the actual blogger is a big Hello Kitty curmudgeon and doesn’t seem to provide direct links with which one could actually ORDER the stuff. But there are some amazing photos, and now that I know that the Hello Kitty keyboard EXISTS…

(I’ve actually already converted my tower into a Hello Kitty machine–it was already hot pink, and I had some big sparkly Hello Kitty scrapbooking stickers. You see where this is going.)

So it took me 90 minutes to bike into work today, but I think I can shave off some time tomorrow by not going 6.2 miles out of my way.*

First I forgot my cell phone. That cost me about a mile, but the real problem was when I forgot that Arastradero doesn’t start until after you cross El Camino, and failed to turn left on Charleston. Because I had written down directions for myself off the Gmaps Pedometer route I plotted over a map of bike lanes in the area, I was TOTALLY SURE that I was not supposed to turn left on Charleston, despite the niggling doubt in my mind as I sped through intersection after intersection with no sign of Arastradero. This is the peril of documents,** even ones that we ought to know are not exactly 100% reliable given that we created them yesterday and are notoriously bad at navigation in general. They just seem so authoritative. Oops.

So I didn’t lift any weights when I got in as I’d originally planned; just showered and changed and came upstairs to my office. At least I know how to get from home to work now, and am in good enough shape that I can handle a 6.2 mile detour.

As you may have gathered, I am safely in California–mostly moved in, even, largely thanks to the tireless efforts of my friends Greg and Stevie, who let me ship my many, many belongings to their apartment, helped me get my luggage and packages from my motel to my summer lodgings, and even took me in to the bike shop to get my bike reassembled this weekend. The house where I’m renting a room is pretty nice, and has pretty much everything I could ask for in the kitchen; I’ve already been baking up a storm. I’m hoping to finish organizing all my crap this week, so that my room doesn’t look so much like a dozen boxes of clothing, jewelry, and office supplies exploded in there. And I’m also planning to actually update again; I know everyone will be so pleased.

AMAZING CALIFORNIA DISCOVERY: There is a box karaoke place in Cupertino*** that has Belinda Carlisle’s “Summer Rain”**** in their catalog. This is like the holy fucking grail of karaoke for me; now I just need to find “Season of the Witch” and “When U Were Mine.”

And Stevie even took the best karaoke photo ever, as a bonus.

BEDSPREAD UPDATE: So Stevie took me to Target to pick up all the random stuff I still needed despite having shipped a dozen boxes of my crap to California, and I got a new bedspread to replace the one that, you may recall, I jettisoned in Boston because I hated it. At first I wasn’t seeing anything that really appealed to me in Target Housewares, but then I realized it was probably because I was looking in the adult bedding section. In the children’s section I found a comforter in PINK CAMOUFLAGE. Naturally I pounced on it. Now no one can sneak up on me when I’m sleeping! It is, after all, when I am at my most vulnerable.

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR COMMENTERS: If at any time you ever posted a comment here and it never showed up, it’s because it got lost in comment spam. I had like 10,000 of the freaking things and just mass deleted them all, so I’m sorry if I accidentally trashed any legitimate comments along with the rest. I’ve just enabled a special spam-busting plugin that will hopefully solve this problem, though.

—

*Yes, that pretty much doubled the length of the ride.

****No one ever knows this song. Belinda Carlisle is probably best known for “Heaven is a Place on Earth” and possibly “Circle in the Sand”; at least these are the two songs you can expect to find at every karaoke joint. They NEVER have “Summer Rain,” except in Cupertino. Lyrics here.

Conferences are really the academic equivalent of summer camp, with the sudden fast friendships and too many scheduled activities, except that sometimes there’s free booze and after an hour of that–during which you have perhaps been availing of yourself of the open bar like someone who knows it is only open for an hour–you can convince people to go to Allston for karaoke.

For the second time, I was the only person in the room (not including people who are related to me) who had EVER HEARD “Goodbye Earl.” I guess the Dixie Chicks really aren’t big on the East Coast. Or Australia.

Elizabeth took pictures, which she says are no good because the flash destroys the blacklight effect, but dude, I just want to see the hilarious karaoke faces. She will also find that there’s at least one self-shot close-up of my adorable pink head in there somewhere,* but I probably have enough of those already.

Martyn** insisted the entire way there that he was not going to sing any karaoke, but would suffer through the rest of us making fools of ourselves. Within an hour he was standing up singing “Closer” with me,*** although neither of us believe it actually ends like that.****

And Nathan sang “Fuck and Run” with me,***** for which I was very grateful, because as I KNEW from singing it at WisCon karaoke last year, it’s actually too low for me. Having a guy sing along, I can sort of pretend I’m, um, harmonizing?

And I finally got Laura (who lives here) to karaoke! We opened the night together with a rousing rendition of “Total Eclipse of the Heart,” without which, frankly, no karaoke session is truly complete.****** It was totally awesome and no one spilled anything on my phone. A fantastic karaoke evening.

Not that this means I’m not going to try to do another one before I leave town, don’t you worry. There is no such thing as too much karaoke. Some time before the 18th, we are hitting Do Re Mi again.

—

*This tends to happen with me after happy hours and similar events. At least I don’t take off my clothes anymore.

******I’m sorry, Aaron, but it’s true.