Not the brutes you would have us be.

I rarely write about sexual politics because like many topics there is the potential for some kind of atomic blast of backlash or hurt. However, I was reading something about the San Diego Comic Con recently and it caught my eye. I can’t remember where I specifically read it, I know it was referenced in a regular read and then I went on to another site but it basically told of misbehavior at the con.

It was bad behavior to be sure but the thing I took issue with was the context in which the behavior was portrayed.

Some of it had to do with guys going up to women they didn’t know and being overly touchy feely with a complete strange or just downright rude. It was from this base that a whole discussion sprang up about guidelines for sexual harassment at cons had not been drawn up (specifically SDCC).

In a word, feh!

Now, to some that comes across as a bit of a cavalier statement but hear me out before you rush to judgment...

How is this kind of behavior any different than say the obsessed female fan that trails a male creator around a con? How is it different from someone coming up to a complete stranger (a pro) and making some off the cuff rude remark?

What I mean to say is, let’s not have so much a discussion about ‘sexual harassment’ per se but more about what is acceptable and unacceptable behavior at any public gathering and how convention organizers can go about creating a better, more civil environment for fan and pro alike.

Case in point, I was at Yankee stadium in the last few months at one of the Subway Series games. I’ve gone to Yankee stadium quite a bit over the course of my lifetime but there came a point where going to the stadium just became a lot less fun.

Why?

Well, when I was a younger person, funnily enough, Yankee stadium used to have all these older guys in red shirts that acted like ushers and dealt with the crowd at the game. If anything got out of hand they got stadium security and pretty quickly put an end to whatever misbehaving was going on. I used to love going to the stadium in the early 90s and this was at a time when the Yankees well and truly SUCKED!

Going to the game though was a great experience for the most part though because the only people who would wind up going to the game were true baseball fans and were there to watch the game not to use it as an excuse to get far too drunk and act out.

The years passed and as the mid nineties came the team got better and ticket prices went up. The Yankees even did away with the ushers and instead had NYPD actually throughout the stadium for increased security. You would think it would make for a nicer atmosphere?

Wrong!

Now, as the team got more popular, even with the cops there, there was an increased incidence of just rowdy, unruly fan activity. I can remember two specific incidents, one involved sitting in the left field box seats and seeing the father of a young girl use sailor’s language to curse out a player in front of his young daughter, the second involved being in the upper deck having taken a co-worker to the game and winding up being absolutely embarrassed by a group of about 8 really drunk guys who didn’t have the common sense or the courtesy to realize there were women and kids around them.

It just got to the point where it became less fun to be at the stadium.

This last visit, my cousin took his girls and I to the stadium. He thought it would be a treat to take them one time before they razed Yankee stadium since they had never been and at this point as young women (early 20's/late teens) he figured they could weather it.

Sure enough, there came a point where we found ourselves once again amidst a group of overly drunk people.

These conventions... like any public gathering seem to bring out the worst in some people. This is by no means an excuse for that behavior because I find it as distasteful as anyone else. Certainly, steps need to be taken to make everyone able to go to an event like this and have a good time.

I mean, I’m always a little surprised at the lack of manners in some and I’m not the world’s most mannerly guy by any stretch of the imagination.

Sexual harassment though?

See SDCC is reminding me a lot of Yankee stadium.

How?

Well comics like those Yankee teams of the early nineties had been a more insular community until just recently. By recently I’m talking about the last few years. The Yankees got popular and all the low-lifes came out of the woodwork and now, as comics becomes more mainstream and has a larger profile in society, SDCC gets more popular and the event becomes a bigger draw. I don’t know what the answer is here but I am concerned that if we paint the problem in such specific hues (sexual harassment), we miss dealing with what is the core issue (polite behavior at a public gathering).

Cops didn’t make the difference at Yankee stadium; announcements don’t make the difference at Yankee stadium. As long as the Yankees are a draw and make money they don’t have to give much more than lip service to the issue. SDCC is in the same boat, there’s more money to be made and as long as that money keeps rolling in convention organizers will have little reason to deal with the problem. Clear guidelines on sexual harassment won’t do that but, a clear code of conduct for all fans that implies ejection from the event and possible prosecution will go a lot further in correcting the situation before it develops into something worse.

It just remains to be seen if the people running SDCC have the wherewithal and the will to put such procedures in place. Let’s hope they do it before we here that one really bad story out of SDCC.