Go, Read: Julia Wertz On Harassment

Please do yourself the favor of reading this post by Julia Wertz on harassment she's received and how she's negotiated the cycle of responses that follow. Please do yourself the additional favor of reading it without being super self-conscious and defensive -- if you recognize yourself in any of the behavior, don't just dig in; seek the possibility of change.

When I was a kid and a more traditional believer in Christianity, I remember going to a youth service with a much-liked pastor for kids and teens. At the "rap" session -- we were all about the rap session -- kids were asking about being able to wear some kinds of evil rock and roll t-shirts and enjoy some level of intimacy while dating, maybe playing role-playing games without dice, when the pastor suddenly pointed out that the idea of having faith was to get as deep as one can into one's beliefs, not stay at the surface negotiating exceptions to the responsibilities one encountered there. He compared it to leaving the house to go outside and never taking your hand off of the doorknob.

It stuck with me.

Now might be the time with issues of harassment and gender relationships in comics to go as hard as we can in the other direction, towards the most exemplary behavior possible. Shouldn't that be the idea? Maybe it's worth doing whatever we can to minimize our exposure to this kind of behavior no matter how draconian or unnecessary or unfair it feels. Maybe we could cancel a few parties, maybe some of us could choose not to drink during show weekends, maybe some of us could pledge not to blend work and personal life to the exclusion of any other way of thinking about those things than they have to be together. Maybe we should blanket accept just how fucking demeaning it is to treat a peer like an object for some sort of acting out you wish to do, with whatever end in mind you think should be on the table. It's not like we're going to get to perfect, humane behavior immediately -- or at least I know I won't be perfect, because I constantly screw stuff up -- but we may get to a better place more quickly by trying as hard as we can to maximize how much progress we can make than we might by constantly bartering for a minimal amount of change. Maybe it's time we all stepped away from that door.
 
posted 5:25 pm PST | Permalink
 

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