I may look back one day and realise I lived through the final years of LitFandom

[major_clanger]

"You are offering a room full of vintage first-edition hardbacks to a group of people who read books on their phones."

Madeline Ashby: 'Memento mori. (Or, how Worldcon’s youth problem will resolve.)'

If I had more time this would be a long post ranging over:

• how the people I see at conventions in my mid-40s are in large part those I went to cons with in my mid-20s
• the demographics and atmosphere at Nine Worlds as compared with Eastercon/Worldcon
• the lack of progress towards panel parity or meaningful anti-harassment policies at Worldcon

...and sundry related topics. But most of these are issues that are already being discussed, and I'll content myself for now with pointing to Ashby's very insightful post on how, unless these points are addressed, LitFandom's problems are going to end up being of purely historical interest.

Comments

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Hard to disagree. But gender parity definitely needs work, and we can see how to make further progress.

If you have ideas for speakers, let the London or Spokane concoms know. And then follow up a few months later to see if they are doing anything about your ideas.

Care to say more about how to consider all kinds of parity?

[emmzzi.livejournal.com]

Plenty has been written on the subject, I am not sure I add much. The will seems weak, however.

Non white guests of honour would be my starting point. Every event that has GoHs. And committees representative of wider society.

I don't see it as incumbent on me to "follow up" committees however!

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

It's not incumbent on you, it's just my best advice, based on experience with multiple concoms...

[emmzzi.livejournal.com]

If people truly want an inclusive approach they'll seek out advice and involve people who can help. My experience tells me if they don't seek advice, offering it won't do much good. I have some expereince with concoms who make "ooh yes, do!" noises and then never make contact again. From a variety of cons, with a variety of people, many more expert than me.

9worlds as mentioned above was a very different con-organiser experience. Decent idea, resulted in "yay, let's do it!" I've never worked with a group like them. Very much "how can we" versus "how hard would it be?"

I get that compared to eg fixing the hotel, dealing with memberships, diversity is not top of the list. And therein lies the lack of movement.

(One of my job responsibilities is around diversity. No/low awareness/motivation = rock up a hill. Result - minimal change, frustrated Emmzzi!)

I've been watching this discussion for many years. I am struggling to see a genuine will. And actually it has to come from a wider base - the 18% critical mass - than the 1% organising. I'm not sure SF fandom is going to get there.

[emmzzi.livejournal.com]

NB this is of course anecdata and not fact :-) Just acknowledging that!

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

I suspect that part of the problem is that a lot of people in fandom (and in the wider set of subcultures I refer to as the 'Three Gs' - Geek/Gamer/Goth) feel themselves to be somewhat alienated minorities, and the problem with alienated minorities is that they are sometimes not very good at recognising their own privilege or empathising with other, different, alienated minorities.

Or, in short, people come to conventions and think "At last! My kind of people!" and are so relieved or happy that they don't pause to think "Shouldn't there be more of my kind of people who, well, don't look quite so much like me?" Or worse, "I have nothing against those people but they probably wouldn't be my kind of people, would they?" - a view I am sorry to say I have heard.