I've never had to experience this. I'm one of the lucky women.

[timepiececlock]

Help find an abuser of women: William Hamlet Hunt. Apparently this fuckwipe attacked a fellow convention go-er. The shit men do to women, it baffles.

Saw that on hakeber's journal. It's strange timing; today was the day that t-shirt display on gender violence, rape, and incest was put up on the UCI campus. I guess they do this every year (with new t-shirts every year) and I missed it last year. It was very moving-- t-shirts made by survivors and the relatives of victims. They were color-coded by category: assault, rape, incest, homophobia-driven violence, and assaults resulting in death. I read or skimmed probably 80% of the shirts. I don't have pictures, but here's the flyer:



It was very disturbing and very moving to read the t-shirts. Some of them described incidents on the UCI campus, some of them described incidents from childhood or from a year or two ago. Particularly affecting were the t-shirts on incest and the t-shirts on date rape. Though there were enough white t-shirts to make you look hard at those too.

They were angry, they were sad, and they triumphant. There's a "Take Back The Night" candlelight vigil tomorrow that happens just after my class ends, so I'll hang around campus and attend.

Comments

[thisficklemob.livejournal.com]

I just posted about this guy too. It creeps me out that he was on LJ. I mean, duh, abusers can blog too. But it's like... fandom and cons and stuff are for fun, at worst for drama... not for what amounts to attempted murder. I've never even been to a con, and it sends chills down my spine.

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

The only trepidation that I had about linking this was the fear that it would scare people from going to cons, which-- as you said-- are supposed to be places of fun. But I thought about it, and violence happens everywhere. Nowhere is purely free of it. And better to make people think and reconsider and realize that fandom as a social subgroup is not in any way exempt from this.

[thisficklemob.livejournal.com]

Yeah, this isn't gonna scare me away from any cons. (The money, the flying, and the social anxiety do that quite well on their own.) But I suppose I think of fandom as a bit of a subculture where some people take refuge, which makes it all the more an egregious betrayal. Like, "this is what people warn about, how dare you be 'the psycho she met on the internet!'"

I mean, the act of going to a con with people you may only "know" online is an act of trust to begin with. But as "the girl" said, you run into the problem of not knowing people, really, no matter where or how you meet them.

[sunlit5.livejournal.com]

Wow.

What an excellent idea.

Thanks for sharing.

Sun

[http://users.livejournal.com/_rednovember/]

Nnggh--Scary.

But the T-Shirts are a lovely idea; are pictures possible?

[rashaka.livejournal.com]

I didn't take any.

[muffytaj.livejournal.com]

I envy them their courage.