Which is not in any way to denigrate the panel last night, or the collaboration between WisCon and the Center for the Humanities that caused it to be, just that it's 6:30 in the morning and I can't think of what the darn thing was called.

It was a good panel, even if people were a little thrown at discovering they were preaching to the choir. (Attendance was pretty good, considering the meteorology (Bear and I had to go maybe a block from where we were parked to where the panel was being held, and we were Soaked. To. The. Skin.), but overwhelmingly the pre-converted. Plans to explain science fiction and science fiction conventions had to be ditched.) The panelists (Nalo Hopkinson, Elizabeth Bear, Justine Larbalestier, Karen Joy Fowler, and Meg McCarron) were thoughtful and articulate and showed a lovely willingness to unpack ideas like "feminism" and "community" and to talk about the ways in which both of those, even at WisCon, sometimes fail us. I particularly remember Nalo pointing out the way in which the sf community polices itself, that it is a very accepting community until you have the temerity to point out that the Emperor is wearing no clothes, that acceptance is predicated on conformity, even if that conformity is much more loosely and eccentrically defined than the norm. And it's still conformity to the white, male viewpoint being enforced. Because it's uncomfortable having your position of privilege pointed out to you, and we (as a species) react to being made uncomfortable by trying to defend ourselves.

The great thing about sf, though, is that it is communally resilient enough that it can change, that you can carve out spaces like WisCon, and it can still be going strong 30 years later. Which is not to hand out pats on the head all round and say, "Jolly good show! We can all go home now." But to say that sf, the people who read it and the people who write it, tend to make me more optimistic about the human race.

Two favorite quotes from the evening:

[the punchline of Karen Joy Fowler's story about the first sf convention she attended, at which the first thing that happened to her was a woman dressed as a giant cat said, "You're Karen Joy Fowler? Your stories changed my life."]

I spent the next fifteen minutes saying to myself, "Calm down, calm down. You have no idea what she was dressing as before."

[And one from Bear]

I think of WisCon as a women's music festival with indoor plumbing and cute boys.