September 1st, 2006
by
the angry black woman
Since this issue has been deemed important enough for FandomWank to pick it up, I thought it might be a good idea to round up some of the various posts on the subject.
The short story: Last weekend at the 2006 Hugo Awards Harlan Ellison was on stage to present the Best Short Story Hugo. Connie Willis was the Mistress of Ceremonies, thus was also on stage. During the course of some shtick, Harlan decided to grope/grab Connie’s left breast. It was a messed up moment for all who witnessed it.
Connie soldiered on, later Harlan received some kind of special award, they shared a friendly kiss (as they are friends) and the world went on. But, rightly, many people are still pissed because of the incident.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden put it best, in my opinion:
Just as with George W. Bush’s now-famous uninvited shoulder-rub of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the basic message of Ellison’s tit-grab is this: “Remember, you may think you have standing, status, and normal, everyday adult dignity, but we can take it back at any time. If you are female, you’ll never be safe. You can be the political leader of the most powerful country in Europe. You can be the most honored female writer in modern science fiction. We can still demean you, if we feel like it, and at random intervals, just to keep you in line, we will.”
It’s not okay. It’s not funny. It wasn’t a blow against bourgeois pieties or political correctness. It was just pathetic and nasty and sad and most of us didn’t want to watch it. It’s another thing that’s going to stop.
Ben Rosenbaum wrote a letter to Harlan and posted it on his message board:
Harlan,
I bet you can appreciate how I felt at the Hugos. I bet if you were in the audience and someone grabbed the breast of your friend and teacher — and she soldiered on so as not to spoil the coming triumphs of the winners — and then her assaulter got an award and an ovation and no one said a word…
I’d like to think you wouldn’t be one to laugh it off. That you wouldn’t be one of the posters now in the SFWA lounge saying “oh please, it was nothing” or “these PC types always overreact, can’t we have a little fun” or (a thinly veiled version of)”it’s not like she’s young and pretty” or “well they kissed later”, ie she must have asked for it, or “let’s talk about something *important*.”
I’d like to think that if it was your friend humilated onstage — attacked, not as a writer, but as a woman — you’d also spend the next week or so in a vengeful boil.
Looks like the comment was deleted…
Deanna Hoak asks:
Why didn’t any of us do anything in that moment? I’m asking sincerely, because I get furious with myself, after the fact, for actions I fail to take. When the groping happened, I was horrified… But I didn’t do a damn thing. I didn’t stand up and boo Harlan off the stage, or shout that it was inappropriate.
Rachel Manija Brown had her own encounter with Mr. Ellison:
“Hey, kid,” he said. “You’re not old enough to have written anything. I have things stuck in my teeth that are older than you!”
….
“My shirt is older than you,” he continued, and poked me in the belly button.
ETA: David Moles has some excellent summations of the chatter surrounding this, divided into the Depressing, the Typical, and the Encouraging.
Second (third, and fourth)-hand sources report on Connie’s reaction:
“…she started [an interview the next day] by referring to “f*cking Harlan Ellison” and “why do I always have to bell the cat”? She evidently kept her cool on stage, but she was upset by it.”
“I understand (from third parties; I haven’t spoken to her about it) that Connie Willis’s position is that Ellison has done worse and she can handle him.”
ETA: “At the closing ceremony Connie said something like ‘If someone wants to start a petition for Harlan Ellison to keep his fucking hands off of me, I’d be willing to sign it!’ Or something like that.” (We tried to reach Willis to confirm or clarify this, but our phone call has so far gone unreturned.)
ETA: “Harlan Ellison claimed, on his website, to have left an apology in a voice message for Connie Willis. From what I understand from her daughter, the message could only loosely be construed by a chimpanzee whacked on smack as an apology. … Under the circumstances, I doubt it would come as a surprise to anyone to know Connie Willis isn’t exactly happy.”
Wordweaverlynn comments on the broader issue:
I’ve taught a class called the Grammar of Consent a number of times, often as part of a college writing class. One of the things that never ceases to astonish me is the huge gap between male and female assumptions about what certain words and actions mean. A vast majority of the males I’ve taught believed quite sincerely that coming up to visit a guy in his room (to study, to talk, to watch a movie) was implicitly consent to sex, and that a woman’s No meant nothing unless she got up and left. The females, on the other hand, consistently believed that only a spoken Yes was consent, and that leaving would be rude and should be unnecessary.
Mary Anne Mohanraj on rising above social conditioning:
…at the same time that I sympathize with Harlan’s action, with the way he was conditioned to such actions, I also think that all of us, however subject to our own cultural conditioning we may be, should be able to rise above that conditioning. We must be able to admit, in the cold light of the next morning, that our pre-programmed sexist/racist/etc. behavior is a relic of an earlier, brutal, age. If we are not to be condemned as brutish relics ourselves, we must repudiate that monkey behavior.
We must uphold the standards of civilization, even if we sometimes (inevitably, all of us) fail at enacting them.
Harlan apologizes (scroll down), then recants.
This comes several months after Harlan’s statement at Octavia Butler’s memorial service that she was the King Kong to his Fay Wray and caused much consternation.
It’s true that Harlan is pretty much infamous for this kind of behavior. I remember when the King Kong comment was made people were pretty much split between “What a horribly racist statement, we should string him up!” and “That’s just Harlan being Harlan.” Very often, whatever Ellison does is waved away with a “that’s just the way he is” or something similar. Others note that he’s getting old (how that excuses things, I’m not sure), he’s set in his ways, and he doesn’t mean any harm, anyway. Oh, and there’s always this defense: But Harlan is her friend! Yes, Harlan was a good friend to Octavia Butler and is still (as far as I know) a friend of Connie Willis’. However, I don’t allow my friends to touch my breasts without permission.
I don’t know what there is to be done in this case. What I do know is that the right reaction isn’t, “Oh that’s just,” or “But he’s her,” or “You’re being too,” or any other bullcrap platitudes.
More links as they come in.
ETA: whileaway’s link roundup.
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Filed under Cons & Community, Writers & Artists | Comments (8)
I hadn’t heard about HE’s racist comment at Octavia Butler’s funeral until you just linked it here, and this is an outrage. Was it me–did I miss mention of it? Or was there not a widespread general outrage over this?
That was me above.
I remember when he said it I first heard via my Clarion’s mailing list. We were lucky to meet Octavia on several occasions, but she wasn’t one of our teachers. Someone pointed out the King Kong comment in the article and wondered how it was people could still get away with saying things like that in these modern times. (then we had a
fightheated discussion about it. I know the comment was mentioned on the Carl Brandon list, too. Outside of that, I don’t know. I can’t remember if bloggers picked up on it.You know what would be cool?
A general fannish/writers strike – a public committment, posted on blogs, journals, in zines, wherever – that if Harlan Ellison is involved with an SFnal event, you will withdraw your presence and/or your labour.
In short, if any other con ever lets Harlan Ellison on stage at the Hugos, or asks him to be on a panel, let the Hugos go ungophered until Ellison is removed or removes himself: let the other panel participants all take themselves off somewhere else: let the audience walk out. Harlan Ellison is a known, persistent, unapologetic bully and sexual harasser: he can’t be stopped from buying a con membership, but it should be made clear to him when he does that he won’t be allowed on any panels, that any gophers in attendance will be there to protect the people at the con from him: that he’s not welcome in fandom any more – except of course to the kind of people who think that publicly groping Connie Willis at the Hugos was acceptable behavior, or any of the other public harassment and bullying that Harlan’s committed over the years.
Seriously. Call a damn strike.
There’s no reason he can’t be stopped from buying a con membership. He just has to be stopped by the con organizers. It’s a private function, hence the word ‘membership’, so cons can bar anyone they please. They can revoke the membership of anyone they please. They can throw out anyone they please. Legally, at least. Politically, they might want to think about it first, but in this case I think it’s certainly justified. If he wasn’t who he was and still did what he did, I don’t think there would be any question about barring him.
Wow, thanks for the excellent summary and analysis!!
Bellatrys on livejournal points out that this is hardly the first time – out of Ellison’s own mouth – that he’s behaved like a scumbag to a woman.
If anyone wants further details on the issue of what Harlan said at Octavia’s funeral, see Claire Lght’s post on Harlan and Groping. It’s excellent all around and I can’t believe I completely missed it before.