"Hands Off" Policy

"Sexual harassment" is an important problem at comic book and science-fiction conventions. It's also an important problem not at comic book and science-fiction conventions and I think those that discuss it in reference to cons sometimes forget that fact and act like it's something that never happens at, say, the Target store. Or the classroom or the gym or the church social or anywhere someone with no manners or morals is horny. It's especially bad when that someone has some sort of power (hiring, for example) over the object of his or her lust.

I put "sexual harassment" in quotes because I think it's a bad term for what in some cases would be better described as molestation. It's just like how "global warming" causes stupid people to go, "That's gotta be a myth because it was so cold yesterday!" If you say "sexual harassment" to some people and they don't see someone being hit on by their boss, they write it off as a false charge. Years ago at a convention, I found myself — because I knew and liked both parties — in the midst of an incident that people were calling "sexual harassment." It was that but the proper level of outrage was better triggered by a term closer to "attempted rape."

All that said, I direct you now to a cartoon by Jim C. Hines about the issue. All of the clueless remarks he cites are things that are said by folks who are in denial and trying to change the subject. There are false accusations of rape in this world and, more often, people who brag that they were "hit on" when they weren't. There used to be a lady hanging around Comic-Con who claimed that every non-obese male, including the ones she didn't know were gay, had pawed and propositioned her inappropriately. Yeah, that happens but real accusations shouldn't be treated with less seriousness because there are the occasional phony ones.