A friend of mine linked this article by a woman who cosplays at conventions. Read it. Or, if you don’t care to, let me summarize it for you: she’s upset that when she dresses in a way to draw attention to her sexual characteristics, people pay attention to her sexual characteristics. She notes that this unwanted attention goes away when she dresses normally. She also notes that when she attends a nerd convention, and engages in interactions with male nerds, they engage in typical male behavior with her. (I suspect that she has No Idea that this is normal male behavior, and that they are, in fact, treating her as an equal, as they have been taught from childhood to do. Because male-to-male behavior is more confrontational than female-to-female behavior, most uneducated women, like this one, don’t recognize it and interpret it incorrectly as a personal affront.)
Notice, also, that she doesn’t hesitate for a second to condemn the behavior of others whenever she finds it in the slightest bit uncomfortable – BUT she makes no allowance for the fact that her behavior is obviously making others uncomfortable. Apparently, all of society needs to reorganize itself so that any behavior she wishes to engage in will be totally acceptable, and any behavior she finds objectionable in the slightest will be anathema.
Uh, no. For as long as she’s judging others for making her uncomfortable, others have a right to express their own discomfort with her behavior. She even expresses understanding of how to avoid all the discomfort altogether: behave in a manner which doesn’t offend anyone else. Obviously this isn’t an acceptable solution for her, so I see no reason why others should cease judging – and expressing their disapproval of – any of her behavior that makes them uncomfortable.
Something Fishy 