Not exactly a con report

[liv]

This year I actually stayed at Eastercon properly, rather than just dipping in. It's traditional to write up these things by listing and summarizing panels attended, squeeing over cool and famous people met, and going into great detail about food and drink consumed. And, well, there was some of all that, but it also felt like something of an emotional watershed for me in several ways, and I want to try to talk about that before the impressions fade out of my head.

Basically I showed up at the con determined to face these anxieties and related stuff. Yes, I know enough people in various overlapping subcultures not to be completely out of place. Yes, it's fine for me to show up to geek events dressed in whatever clothes I feel comfortable in, and yes, I can wear unconventionally glamorous outfits if I feel like it. Yes, I'm perfectly comfortable starting conversations with strangers (even if they are famous). In short, I should get over myself.

So I went to "meets" and Guest of Honour events as much as to panels. And I spoke up during the panels and attached myself to conversations where I knew few or none of the participants and generally had a great time. At the poly meet somebody did (very politely) the "are you sure you're in the right room?" thing, and another person spoke up (who knows me online) and said "oh, they definitely belong here". I had a mild crisis about the LGBT meet, because it was late at night and I was tired and a bit a tipsy and that tended to underline my anxieties about whether I belong in this community, but a friend of jack's invited me specifically and jack was supportive and pointed out I had no reason to stress about it (without laughing at me for being uncertain), so I eventually joined in (after the timeslot had officially ended, in fact, but there was still a lively discussion going on and we adjourned to the bar and carried on chatting informally). And it was fine and now I've dipped my toes back into the LGBT world, so hopefully I'll be able to get properly involved in that scene. Also when it got to about 2 am I made my excuses, saying I'd better leave before I got drunkenly pumpkin enough to say something really stupid, and deborah_c said before? with heavy sarcasm, which was such perfect timing that it made the last traces of anxiety evaporate.

I wore my black gothy dress one evening, not for any particular event but just because. I accessorized it with rainbow socks and flowing hair and somewhat enhanced cleavage, and I got plenty of positive attention but no creepy attention and generally felt good about myself. I wasn't the most stunning or the most outrageous person present, obviously, but it was totally fine to be somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. And for the Admiralty ball I dressed up a bit, with my double-breasted, brass-buttoned jacket (which is actually more indie or emo than strictly military, but it was within the theme) and a semi-formal red skirt. I had a bit of a persona in my head, I was a low-ranking mercenary arrived in the (space) port cruising for local trade, which matched jack's rakish space pirate sort of outfit. And I had a great time even though I really really can't dance (also there was a somewhat anachronistic vaguely Mediaeval band which didn't quite fit with the formal ball theme anyway).

In some ways the most memorable part of the event was fangirling rozk. I wasn't that interested in most of the guests of honour, David Weber who spoke entertainingly but mainly about military history and similar subjects I don't really care about, and Peter F Hamilton whom I muddled up with someone else and turned out to be a writer I know nothing about, though again he was fun to listen to. And I am not enough in fandom to have any connection to artist or fan guests. But I am somewhat aware of rozk as a poet and a blogger, and I was thinking of my brother Thuggish Poet's complaint that people don't engage enough with contemporary poetry, so I decided to go along to her stuff. And it turns out that she's amazingly more cool than I was previously aware!

Her official Guest of Honour interview was a shambles, in that it wasn't in the official programme and was barely publicized at all; I just happened to see a Tweet half an hour ahead of the event and decided to show up, along with half a dozen other people and some disgruntled anime fans who were expecting a quiz in that time-slot. But that was when I started to discover what a fascinating speaker she is, and what an amazing history she has. I knew vaguely she's been involved in LGBT activism, but I didn't know how much of central figure she was historically and currently.

Also somewhat shambolic was the kaffeeklatsch thing. jack explained to me how it was supposed to work, which is that you sign up to put your name into a lottery and then 12 randomly selected people get to meet the GoH. I signed up on a random scrap of paper in the Ops room, which didn't make it clear who was signing up for what. I then spent the morning before the kaffeeklatsch wandering around the con trying to find out whether I'd been successful (even though jack told me not to get my hopes up), and feeling stupid because the information didn't seem to be available anywhere and I felt sure I was screwing up by being such a newbie to con-based fandom. By the time I found someone who knew what they were talking about, the event had officially started, but the person said that (presumably due to the signup list being so disorganized) they had fewer than 12 signups so everyone who wanted to could go. So I arrived, slightly late and found only three people in the room, including the host. One more arrived even after I did, but it turned out that the other two were personal friends anyway, so rozk said that I should ask the questions as the others already knew her. I am really not a shy person, but that was embarrassing.

However it all turned out for the best because it didn't really matter what I asked, anything was a cue for rozk to recount the most amazing anecdotes, gossip about the sex lives of everyone from Bill Clinton to Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, and literary gossip about everyone from Salman Rushdie to Laurie Penny. And all kinds of interesting and thought-provoking stuff, I really can't do it justice. So then of course I was embarrassed at my tendency to get more and more wide-eyed with awe and admiration. And I didn't know if it was a good idea to seek out panels she was involved in for the rest of the con, or if that would seem too groupie-ish. I think the only real faux pas I made was at the late night extension of the LGBT meet when I expressed admiration for rozk managing to get the Pantheacon story into the Guardian. Of course this was an unpleasant reminder of second wave feminist transphobia; I meant to admire her for fighting it, not drag it up and make her relive bad experiences.

But there's more to this than just gushing, I am trying to frame something about, well, the academic name for it is Queer eldering, (though I noticed that Roz herself didn't use the term Queer, another reminder of the gulf between her generation and mine). I feel that I'm living at a funny time, perhaps at the tail end of the heavily persecuted and strongly activist subculture that was the LGBT world up until the late 80s early 90s, but not quite part of the world where sexual orientation isn't a big deal at all. Well, I mean, that world isn't quite here yet, there's still activism to be done, but certainly not being straight is a lot, lot, lot more accepted for me and my peers than it was a few decades ago.

I felt a bit like this meeting Daniel Boyarin at Limmud a few years ago. These are the giants, the people who risked everything to make it possible for me to have the relatively comfortable, uncloseted and unmolested life that I have. But they are also the leaders of a movement, icons and scholars of a culture that doesn't really have a distinct existence much any more. Not because LGBT culture is defined purely by oppression, because it really isn't, but... there isn't quite generational continuity in the way there is with most cultures. As the joke goes, most gay people have straight parents (and most trans people have cis parents, and so on), so we're as likely as not to miss finding out about this aspect of our people's history. And even if we make an effort to find out the information is often very patchy, because by definition it's underground and anti-establishment and doesn't get recorded very well. Still don't know if I can really justify saying "our people" here, even.

There's also something I can't quite put my finger on about class. Partly it's the fact that rozk has met the great and the good in both political and literary contexts, partly through the far-reaching network of Oxford alumni and partly through working in publishing. But she's also lived in squats and taken part in radical activism with all kinds of people who are barely counted as part of society at all, drug users, street walkers, people who sometimes achieve political change because they have nothing to lose, but most often die young and mostly unrecorded and unremembered. I really don't know many people who move between those two worlds, and I perceive an inchoate but urgent need for a connection between such disparate parts of society, and... I don't know. I most certainly don't want to return to a world where being gay or trans meant losing your connections with family, friends and mainstream society!

Partly it's the portrayal of fandom as an idyllic subculture where people who don't fit in can find acceptance and community. And that's really great, after this weekend I'm feeling distinctly seduced by it. But it's acceptance and community for people who can afford to drop a couple of hundred pounds on weekends away on a fairly regular basis, and the most respected people are those who have enough leisure time to take (often expensive) hobbies very seriously and don't need to cost their time or incidental expenses like travelling across the country to planning meetings. I sort of do want to get involved, there are many things about it that appeal to me, and indeed I'm about to talk about how Eastercon has nearly convinced me to take the plunge and make fandom one of my major hobbies. I'm just not sure that it's actually the most productive use of my time, energy and discretionary money. I'm also reminded of this righteous rant which I meant to link to when it was published earlier in the year. But, basically *flails in the general direction*, that.

About that getting involved thing. I was talking a lot to owlfish and purplecthulhu, people I always get on really well with but haven't quite managed to spend time with deliberately rather than just happening to run into them. And they're both very much in fandom in various ways (but without being massively pretentious and cooler-than-thou about it) and on some level I want to be them. But what also happened was that through them, and through overcoming my stupid anxieties and wearing a memorable dress and expressing my opinion forcefully to strangers, I met someone called coth who is very cool. And has a project to get teenagers, particularly those in the North-West London area from immigrant backgrounds, involved in the 2014 Worldcon, which people are hoping will be in London. And run educational projects in schools based around Worldcon and fannish stuff generally. That pushes my buttons so much, partly cos of the grassroots community stuff and the educational aspect, partly because it would be a way to get a toe-hold in organized fandom and maybe become the sort of person who gets asked to be on panels and gets my face recognized.

Except it will eat my life. It's very likely to be a great deal of fun, but it will Eat. My. Life. And I already have commitments to my career and the Jewish community and if I'm going to start getting properly involved in subcultural stuff surely the Queer community would be more worthwhile than the community of people who like reading SF and dressing up in silly costumes and drinking real ale. I mean, I can do both, there's a ton of overlap, clearly. But I'm really not sure if it's a good idea for me to get sucked in to things. The trouble is that I'm not by nature capable of just being a passive consumer, I always end up volunteering and sitting on committees and running things. I don't have to decide right now this minute, of course. But at some point in the next few months, yes, I do have to decide whether I want fandom to be a major component of my leisure and activism time, and I suppose of my identity, if you want to put it like that, or whether I want to carry on occasionally showing up to Eastercon and having fun conversations but not take it any further than that.

Also I have thinky thoughts about feminism and race, based partly on responses to panels and discussions that I attended, but I think I'll leave those to another post, because this is long enough and filled enough with my issues as it is!

Comments

[emperor]

I'm glad you had a good Eastercon! I think, despite 10 years as a TS committee member, that I am only ever going to be peripherally involved in fandom (I guess /the/ big UK SF con clashing with Easter every year may be a factor in this). Maybe that TS committee time used up all my volunteering-for-stuff tuits as regards fandom (past Eastercons did involve discussions about future bids, but I seemed to avoid committing to anything), I'm not quite sure.

[liv]

What's a TS committee, please? I may end up being peripherally involved, and in some ways that would be the most sensible option for me. But I am not very good at peripheral, I always end up volunteering for stuff. And the project about bringing in teenagers from diverse backgrounds is the kind of thing I find really hard to resist! I can even convince myself it's professionally useful, almost!

Clashing with Easter is definitely a pain, yeah. It's bad enough for me trying to keep Passover while stuck in an airport hotel, but if you were actually trying to celebrate the festival I can well imagine it being a huge barrier.

[deborah_c]

I think in this case it's the committee of the Tolkien Society. emperor was on it some while ago, and there was some Unpleasantness affecting him and at least one other person I talked to at some length at Eastercon this year (although not about what happened -- I know no details, merely that there seem to be several very nice people who are still very unhappy about whatever it was).

[emperor]

The TS is http://www.tolkiensociety.org/

[deborah_c]

Curiously, while I spent years being peripherally aware of Eastercon but never going because I was a church musician, this year it was only because I went that I had a service to attend... Going to a chapel which only operates for 24 weeks a year tends to bypass most of the major festivals, of course, so I rather appreciated the celebration at the convention.

[liv]

Yeah, I've been in term-time only communities sometimes, it's weird. I was impressed to see the Easter service being advertised; it made me think that in theory I could have tried to organize an Eastercon seder on Sunday night, possibly even a service on Monday. I don't know I would have felt confident to stick my neck out that far, but the concept amused me.

[ceb]

The way to get onto panels is to email the programme contact when you sign up and say "I know about XYZ and would like to be on panels" ;-)

[liv]

Ah, I totally did not know that, I thought you had to at least know people and preferably be famous or an expert. Thanks for the tip, I may well try that in future.

[purplecthulhu]

You have a PhD and a lecturing post in an area of science of substantial interest that is not that well represented in fandom. You are an expert :-)

As to contributing to fandom, I had one helper (a UK academic scientist as well) on the 2005 Worldcon science programme I've never even seen at a con. The brains trust thing I was discussing really is as little as you care to do so life eating is only a small risk.

[liv]

Wow, are you ever persuasive! It's quite clear to me that emotionally I'm looking for an excuse to be convinced, but also you're expressing things in a way that exactly addresses my concerns. Thank you!

[purplecthulhu]

Clearly my managerial fu is good today...

Or maybe it's my years of smoffing* :-)




* A SMOF is a Secret Master of Fandom, in case you didn't know. It's also a transitive verb - to smof someone means you get them to do something in fandom.

[dsgood]

Depending on where you live, face-to-face participation in fandom can be a short bus ride (sometimes even a short walk) away. There are various local clubs and less formal gatherings.

And: see http://gaylacticnetwork.org -- only in the US so far.

[liv]

Hm, good suggestion. I'd forgotten about the existence of local clubs and was only thinking about con-based fandom. I am pretty certain there's an active scene in Birmingham, which is more like an hour on the train than a short bus ride, but quite possibly just the thing I need for a social group that doesn't have too many expectations of me.

[redbird]

I know it's tempting to dive in, especially when fandom (or another activity) is new and you're figuring out which bits you like best, and getting to know people. But it's also possible to be involved in stuff without spending huge amounts of time: you can volunteer and say things like "I'm interested in programming, but no more than two panels" (or "four" or "one"). It does take some analysis of which things are priorities (and then modified by things like "I'd really like to go to another Orycon, but Portland is three time zones away"), but it sounds like you're already doing that.

[liv]

Yes, priorities are hard, especially with people dangling educational outreach projects in front of me! Maybe the best compromise is to go to cons and volunteer at the events, but carefully avoid getting involved in any time-eating planning and organizing. But part of me is thinking that regular congoing would eat up the time and money that I really want to save for things like visiting my friends in North America, even aside from the considerations of how much positive effect my participation would have.

[redbird]

That feels very familiar. A friend of mine over on LJ was wishing more people she knew were at Minicon (same weekend as Eastercon, used to be huge, now about 400 people) and her post was phrased something like "Why aren't you here?" I replied something about limited vacation time, and didn't say "it was easier to get to cons when I wasn't involved in long-distance relationships." It's true that if I had the same relationships, but a month of vacation a year instead of two weeks, I might well manage more cons, but still probably not as many as I did before I met my beloveds.

[azurelunatic]

One of the reasons why I am an irregular congoer, indeed: time and money.

[purplecthulhu]

I want to be them

Blush!