lederhosen | I don't get it.

I don't get it.

I don't get all the fuss about the 'Open Source Boob Project' business.

Don't get me wrong, I agree that it's skeezy and obnoxious and all. I just don't get why Some Guy On LJ being skeezy at a con is suddenly provoking such a flurry of posting, because my understanding is that there are lots of skeezy people on LJ - quite a few of whom go to cons - and generally it doesn't attract anywhere near this level of attention. If it was Orson Scott Card or somebody else famous (or even Brendan Nelson) I could understand, but not this.

(I think what this boils down to is that a lot of people seem to view the originator of the concept as a Somebody, and I've never figured out what makes him any more noteworthy than all the other folk on LJ who have opinions and aren't afraid to post them. Therefore I just write him off under the "lots of people are idiots" umbrella category.)

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Someone mentioned this to me last night.
Until then, I'd not heard anything about it.
my little corner of lj is blessedly free of this particular drama it appears.

Are you CRAZY!? This is LIVEJOURNAL! Pointless verbal WANKING over TRIVIA is what it's FOR!

(Sometimes in ALL CAPS! With more mipsellings!)

((Me, I've just have been contributing because the bad argumentation, inconsistency and Gramscian shash bugs the crap out of me, and having only just invented my 76th Law, I haven't been abiding by it yet.))

I agree that the response seems disproportionate to a couple of dozen people doing something at a con, and one idiot talking about it on LJ. But I think the massive response is in large part because he pushed a lot of people's buttons on the particular subject of unwanted touching, which is something about which a lot of women have very strong feelings indeed. A lot of straws settled on a lot of camels' backs.

ms_manna said, a lot of the reaction was about straws and camels. For me, there was also the combination of:

-- the OP encouraging people to replicate this at other SF cons;

-- the attitude that he was being a Nice Guy by selflessly putting himself in a position where he could feel up random women (and the implied corollary of "You should be thanking me!"); and

-- the cutesy name, which carries the implication that women's bodies should be public property.

His initial refusal to check his fucking privilege only served to escalate...and then he just wouldn't STOP DIGGING.

Didn't really see any of it until

cerebresque pointed to it, and I saw it was ferrett (though the comments weren't visible then). I used to read him, but stopped about a year or two ago.

Since you mentioned it, I took another look at the original post. Yeah, I don't get it either. He may be a lot of things, but I doubt he even gets in the same galaxy as evil incarnate.

I long ago gave up on TheFerrett as unworthy of the attention and fandom he seems to have garnered on LJ. James Nicoll is way less pretentious, sexist or Nice Guy-ish(TM) and has the distinction of penning one of the BEST Intarweb Quotes EVAR, IMO.

And James (the one who pointed to the dispute in question) definitely had it right when he called Ferrett a "sad male fan".

BTW, can someone enlighten me regarding the Harlan Ellison ref? Was/is he known for grabbing boobs at cons?

oh so THAT'S what the 'May Not' t-shirt was about... my LJ bubble didn't quite touch this story sufficiently for me to get it.

I don't see the fuss, really, simply based on the culture of cons. The last convention I went to, a large number of people were going around with 'Free Hugs' signs and a smaller number with 'Free Glomps' 'Free Gropes' and other such things. (D tried wearing a '$5 Hugs' sign, but didn't get any takers.)

If they were being rude and asking every woman trying to enter a convention hall to present her breasts first, that would be fucked up. If they were running around grabbing, that would be criminal. But from what I can understand of it, the pins thing doesn't sound like that big a deal.

What's the big deal here? It sounds like the sort of thing that always goes on at cons -- groping and in-jokes.

Not *exactly* on the same topic, I really don't get people who hate to be touched. I'm not really comfortable around them, because it's like, you know. I might accidentally touch them and then they'll shatter like an eggshell or something. It's sort of like a passive aggressive be-damaged aura they're constantly running. They're a trap.

http://fetchmemyaxe.blogspot.com/2008/04/as-per-latest-shitstorm.html

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