Champagne and Socks

C: So I’ve booked the puppy in for a puppy clipping next Friday.

Me: nods

C: Later on we could get him show clipped.

Me: Wry eyebrow raise

C: What? I’ve been learning all about the kind of dog clippings today.

Me: Rolls eyes and wanders off

C: What? You think I’m weird.

Me: No. I love you. My life just flashed before my eyes and you were explaining to me all the kinds of tap shoes and which would be the best for our four year old.

C: I’m just adding “research tap shoes” to my to do list.

Seriously. *swoon*

The funny thing is, there were three men on my committee by the time Swancon came around – three very prominent, well known and respected long term members of the community, who were available and working hard all weekend to help the con run. If the Dude From Swancon really had an issue that he thought would garner too emotional a response if presented to a woman, then there were men he could have approached to vent his concern. Likewise, the WASFF Chair was at the registration desk helping out for a lot of the weekend and he is nothing if not approachable. The truth is, that this person is just nasty and enjoys tearing people down. I guess it makes him feel better about himself. Personally I’d rather climb higher than tear everything/one down and stomp on it/them to be the tallest person. But that’s just me.

I saw a lot of the uglier parts of the community in the last 2.5 years. Yesterday it had me admitting that it’s made me really think about whether I will continue to be a member – that this is not the sort of environment I would like to spend my free, leisure time. Doug reminded me that these are the loud voices of the few and in no way represent the many, and he is right. And the more I think about it, the less I think it is fair for those people to speak for everyone else in deciding who is welcome and who is not. They are, after all, just louder. Not better or right.

Because this has been a very personally gruelling journey for me, I have struggled to find good bits, things that made it worthwhile, because otherwise … I very much enjoyed working with the WASFF Board and the CSC. The Board had its challenging moments because of some specific issues that came before it. But I feel very honoured to have met, worked with and been mentored by both the Board and the Subcommittee. I learned a lot, about many things that I wouldn’t normally have the opportunity to do elsewhere in my life. And I think I walk away with some very good friends and confidantes.

I also am humbled by the many other members of the community who I met and worked with during the con itself. I was blown away, and still am, by those who didn’t know me, had had nothing to do with my convention, but showed up and asked to be put to work, and kept coming back in their less busy moments of the con, to check up on me and to help out with anything if they could. These are of course past and future Mumfans and having met them and seen what that means, I dunno that I really agree with the sentiment that maybe we should not have one in some years to indicate that it’s a special award and should not be expected every year. I think there are still a few people out there who deserve one. And I know that they don’t do it for that reason. I’m honoured that I got to peek behind the curtain. I genuinely feel changed, having been introduced to this part of our community – our heart and soul. When I mentioned this to one of them, she said to me, “this is what it means to be part of the Swancon community. And those that don’t have forgotten what it means to be part of Swancon.” I got the chance to glimpse the making of a con, which is so much more than just the committee, it’s the larger group of people who show up in the weeks leading up and just kind of unpack their bags and set up their wares and help make this thing happen.

And I learned what it’s like to be on the receiving end, I guess. I touched a bit on this in the last post. But this is the positive counterpost I learned that there is never a good reason to start out at anger of 11 out of 10. People feel much less inclined to help you when you start out as an asshole. And you know, chances are there is a reason you haven’t considered, find out what it is first. Makes you look less like a dick. Everyone is valuable and everyone deserves to be respected and spoken to kindly and with care. It takes so little to give someone else the benefit of the doubt (in terms of their lack of sorting your issue out in the first 30 secs or before you even asked) and reaps you so much more than you can imagine. I learned there are lots of ways to get things done and you know, don’t piss off the person who you need to get it done.

I don’t regret much – other than, maybe actually signing up. I do though, after observing all, want to move through this world more gently and kindly. It actually makes for a gentler and kinder (your) world. And I’m finding there is an enormous reward in taking the time to actually engage with the world and the people in it – you get to find out who they truly are. And I dunno, a bit twee but, they’re really beautiful. And maybe that’s why I’m so angry at the noisy, rude, ungrateful few? Spoiling it for everyone else. (And when you’re trying to sell a product to people who have never come along before, the spoiling it is farther reaching than perhaps they realise. And not really fixable with a shiny poster.)

That’s my balance, anyway.

I have another post to follow the last but right now I am finishing up my reading for the Special Russ Galactic Suburbia episode later tonight. Thee is nothing to soothe one’s feminist ails like reading Russ, I guess.

There used to be an odd, popular, and erroneous idea that the sub revolved around the earth.

This has been replaced by an even odder, equally popular, and equally erroneous idea that the earth goes around the sun.

In fact, the moon and the earth revolve around a common center, and this commonly-centered pair revolves with the sun around another common center, except that you must figure in all the solar planets here, so things get complicated. Then there is the motion of the solar system with regard to a great many other objects eg the galaxy and if at this point you as what does the motion of the earth really look like form the center of the entire universe, say, … the only answer is:

that is doesn’t.

Because there isn’t.

 

And this:

What is frightening about black art or women’s art or Chicano art – and so on – is that it calls into question the very idea of objectivity and absolute standards:

This is a good novel.

Good for what?

Good for whom?

One side of the nightmare is that the privileged group will not recognise that “other” art, will not be able to judge it, that the superiority of taste and training possessed by the privileged critic and the privileged artist will suddenly vanish.

The other side of the nightmare is not that what is found in the “other” art will be incomprehensible, but that it will be all too familiar. That is:

Women’s lives are the buried truth of men’s lives.

The lives of people of colour are the buried truth about white lives.

The buried truth about the rich is who they take their money from and how.

The buried truth about “normal” sexuality is how one kind of sexual expression has been made privileged, and what kinds of unearned virtue and terrors about identity this distinction serves.

And she goes on but you should really go read the book!

Recovery from Swancon is slow. I thought it would be faster than this and as every day goes on and I still suffer with burnout, I am getting angrier at myself for having done it. Run a con, that is. I know I signed up for two years of preparation and most of my Sundays over that time. I know I signed up for hard work and giving up my con the year I was running it to spend it solving problems, sorting out issues, making sure it was smooth for everyone else, smiling no matter how rude people were to me and not really sleeping or seeing my friends who came over for the con etc.

I signed up for all of that. I didn’t though sign up for the abuse, the unkind words said to me, about me on mailing lists I’m on and behind my back. I didn’t sign up for my integrity and achievements that come from my hard work and volunteering of my own time and skills to be called into question, especially by people who don’t like me for very specific reasons (that I could list in a public forum, but have not done so because it’s petty and unprofessional). I didn’t sign up for my friends and for people I work with in my publishing business to be attacked or their own integrity called into question because they know me or have been published by me or because they volunteered to help count votes independently for me. I didn’t sign up to be the punching bag, kicking stool, and general dogsbody for those with the self entitlement to think that they are the most important person in the entire world. And I didn’t sign up for the year after I ran a convention for the abuse, harassment and bullying (I’ve experienced all these in my time as convenor) to continue. I didn’t sign up to give the community a pound of my flesh.

What upsets me is that the loud noise of the negative few have the power to drown out the kind and encouraging words of support and validation from the many. And for some reason, the more untrue, the more hurtful.

I’m not going to rehash my experience of running a con here. I don’t have any desire to relive it, mostly. But for me, my experience of Swancon is something that is at the forefront of my every day. I’m told it takes up to a year for this to go away – nice, eh, that this isn’t a one time, one con kinda deal. This goes on a lot in our community, it seems. But every day that I can barely muster the energy to get up and go do my day job, I’m aware that the reason is because of Swancon. And the other night, the worst of it was that I could not force myself to pull an allnighter to get a print deadline. Normally, I could dig deep and find a way to do it. Because it had to be done. But the other night, I dug and there was no deep – I have used up all my reserves. There’s no last minute magic, no ability to pull through when it’s needed and on time. I missed my deadline, I went to bed early and I dragged myself out in the morning, late, again, to work. And I can see everyday that there are tasks that I’m not getting to for my press, things that are not happening, deadlines not being met, because I don’t have the energy reserves to push myself to do it. And I feel like that means now that this is all costing me money. And for that, I’m finding it hard to forgive myself.

An example of what I’m talking about, today someone told me something overheard at the bar during Swancon:

“This is why cons shouldn’t be run by women”

And when this person was asked why not speak to the committee about whatever their issue was, the reply was, “they’ll just get overly emotional.”

I do wonder what that particular person’s problem was that was all due to Swancon being run by women – not enough beer getting served fast enough? Women on the actual program? Women guests?

Really, a community has to ask themselves, when they wonder why the word “sexism” gets raised, as to how someone thinks that it’s ok to suggest that cons shouldn’t be run by women. Like at all. It’s lucky then, that all the cons run by men, up til now, have been perfect in every way. And nothing, when men run cons, ever goes wrong, and noone is ever unhappy. And there are rainbows and unicorns … oh wait, too girly, huh?

I am though really interested in the words “overly emotional” – what, I’m gonna cry if you come to me and tell me that you’re really unhappy that your beer didn’t get to you fast enough? Maybe I’d cry if you told me that you didn’t like the colour scheme we went with for the logo? Or wait, would I cry if you said, “hey, think you might have needed some extra audio equipment?”

The thing is, I’ve been thinking about this sexist put down of women being “overly emotional”. I’ve seen a fair few men act in pretty overly emotional ways since I’ve been a member of Swancon. I’d say there was also a bit of that going on after a certain set of awards this year too. I’m an engineer in my day job and I’m pretty ok with dealing with constructive criticism, and issues being raised that I can problem solve or negotiate outcomes on. I don’t take it personally if an idea I have doesn’t execute perfectly the first time (and if you do, maybe you should think about the kind of environment you’re fostering, it’s not one welcoming invention and trying new things and reaching for beyond known capabilities). The thing with “overly emotional” is it’s a cop out by the person who loads it as a weapon – what they mean is, “I want to be able to behave like an arsehole, and I want you to not react in any way that might mean that I have to admit that I acted like an arsehole. I’d prefer if I could just kick you and then walk away like it never happened, ‘cept I get to feel better and I don’t have to see that I hurt you in so doing.” That’s what “overly emotional” means. I mean really, how can one be “too emotional” – unless of course the implication is that the emotions aren’t *real*?

And you know, in society, where the rest of us reside, there is behaviour that is not ok. The fact that you wish the person in charge was not a woman so that you can behave that way, doesn’t make that any better. In fact, if you think that what you wanted to do or say is hampered by the fact that if it is to a woman, she might cry, what does that say about how you treat men?

I refer to John Birmingham, who in responding to Bob Ellis this week said this:

But mate, you set back the cause for the rest us; …for every bloke who took seriously the admonition that it wasn’t all about him and his one-eyed little friend. … it insulted men on a much deeper level. It implied we can never change, we can never get better. And hell, maybe, as a gender, we can’t. But as individuals we can and do every day. And the first step is not making excuses for our bad behaviour or shifting the blame onto women as a whole, or on to some ill-defined political construct.

Man up, Bob. I don’t know if you’re better than this. But the rest of us are trying to be.

(except for the dude at Swancon who thinks they should never ever be run by women)

Been quiet round these parts. I finally finished moving out of my place this last weekend. I’m about halfway through unpacking and being absorbed into the new place. I’m getting used to and finding a routine living with C. We’re toilet training and training a 16 week old puppy with a mind of his own. I’m working on the next 4 books I’m publishing this year. I’m looking into going to World Fantasy Con in San Diego. I’m working on backlog at ASif and slushing for TPP and reading for Galactic Suburbia and Galactic Chat. And I’ve suddenly had a promotion in role but not salary at the day job. And I missed my handover into the role last week so I am now making it all up as I go along (it’ll be fine. I’m sure).

Life is full on at the moment. Actually this year so far has felt like it has a baseball bat in hand and keeps hitting me in the face with it. Over. And over. And over. I’m beyond tired. I’m beyond feeling like it’s too much. I’m on autopilot survival mode. I’m just hoping to make it out alive.

And this weekend gone, C and I celebrated 18 months together. With a quiet night in with a glass of white and a nice haloumi pasta.

So the unpacking. It’s been stressful. Essentially, when I moved from living with the ex, four years ago, I packed everything up and had the intention of sorting and culling and downsizing. Never happened. I think I froze – paralysed I guess by the idea of change and the unknown. And I was lucky to be in a place that was big enough that I could put things in cupboards and shut the doors and not think about it. But i don’t have that luxury here. There is very little storage here at all. Any storage I want I will have to buy and I don’t want to overcrowd the place with cupboards and what not. And besides, it’s just stuff.

So for the last two weeks, I’ve had the goal of unpacking one box a day. I think I had about 35 or more boxes (not all removalists’ size, some smaller with fragile things). I’m possibly more than halfway through now. I purposely didn’t label any of the boxes so that I had to open all of them (grr) and I mixed what I packed so old stuff was mixed with new stuff, also meaning I had to unpack all the boxes. I’ve been sorting and culling and have all the designated boxes – dispose, donate, return, ebay etc. It’s still a really slow process.

The thing I’ve had to grapple with the most is being ok with this settling in being an iterative process. Unless I unpack and work out what I am keeping and where I want to put it, I can’t figure out how much storage I will need. But I need to be sort of putting things away in order to have living space. It does my head in a little that it’s inefficient in that, I will have to move and reorganise stuff again once I have unpacked everything. I’m putting things away in “for now” places. And I hate that that means doing it over again later. But what I worry about the most is losing interest part way through the process and not doing a second or third iteration. It’s easy for clutter and mess to become part of the scenery so you don’t see it anymore. That’s partly why I have so much crap now. I worry about this so much that I have started a list of things that I need to come back and do once I have finished unpacking – all my books might be unpacked in the bookcases for example but they need to be reorganised and sorted the way I like them.

I watched so many hoarding shows this year and I can see a lot of myself in those people. I don’t think I would ever get to the stage of being buried alive – the clutter gets to me and it turns out I am much neater than C and that kicks me into being super neat (when living with a less neat person). But I get how and why those hoarders end up in that place. And I get that that’s why this unpacking process is so hard for me now. It’s hard to dispose of perfectly useful and functional items – even if you already have one or don’t actually use or like it. But I am in a bit of a ruthless clean out phase – some days better than others, and I’m slowly getting there. I plan to take a bunch of perfectly useful and functional things to a women’s shelter and maybe send some of my extra craft stuff to a detention centre, if I can figure out how to do that.

And I think/hope that in the future I will think more carefully before acquiring more stuff. Moving it all is a pain in the arse.