Diversity in Fandom

Disclaimer: personal opinions only from personal observations in fandom.

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In the last 2 years or so there has been a lot of noise about equality/parity/safe spaces in fandom. A giant issue of Journey Planet on gender. The Paul Cornell panel parity activity/campaign/call it what you will. The Readercon harassment case. Etc.

I have read reams of explanations of the difference between positive discrimination and positive action; of why it is all very *difficult.* About why (some) women Do Not Want. Of what privilege really means.

Mainly I have seen people explaining why changing the status quo by engineered means is wrong and/or difficult.

Well, I am mainly through with greying white male fandom which is happy to pretend to be liberal, and open, while working consciously, or unconsciously, to exclude. I am through with females complicit in this process. It feels like a conversation with my elderly relatives, who carry all the prejudice they were indoctrinated with for decades. They try very hard, but stereotypes keep falling out of their mouths, they fear the unknown, and deep down, will never change their beliefs, whatever they say in public. And now I see, I cannot unsee, and events lose their joy.

If we are having change, well, then, let us stop messing about, and have some change. We are chipping at the edges and it's going to take a long time unless we get a bigger bag of tools.

Diversity is hard work; but making improvements in diversity is not difficult, it's merely time consuming. Thousands of organisations move their statistics every year while, miracle of miracles, maintaining and increasing profit margins, not just by widening the pool of women at all levels in the organisations, but also considering races, religions. physical ability levels - all kinds of diversity. Diversity has been shown to increase profit. Oh and hey - all of this is legal! If you have under represented groups, you can do all of this right now! How great is that?

What are these organisations doing? Well, they look at every stage of the employee life cycle - and they take action.

Attraction - if you advertise in "Bloke Monthly", you are mainly going to get male applicants for your jobs. With conventions, if your main attraction campaign is advertising to existing convention memberships, you are going to replicate exactly what you have. If the benefits you have are of no value to new audiences, you'll get the same old audiences.

How many people of abstinent faiths will be put off by the obsession with the real ale bar? (And gosh it is an obsession, I have never seen the like outside of a CAMRA event.)

How many people look at the all white, almost all male guest list and can't find anyone to identify with?

What is the message being sent - to whom - and what's the selling point for each target market? Right now there is a message of "more of the same, with people just like us, next year!"

Recruitment - for panelists and programme members. Who is choosing who they are? Do they in any way represent a broader fanbase?

Have you trained your selection panel ("programme team") in unconscious bias? Have you really specified the core criteria for being part of your organisation, or are you operating an "old boy network" which will only enable the organisation to replicate itself?

Induction - under-represented groups are offered coaches or mentors to help them find their way around the organisation, the "rules", the politics, how to get ahead. One step further and you introduce sponsors - who have hard targets to demonstrate what they have done to acclimatise and assist the new entrant. Now, you will struggle in UK fandom to find many experienced BAME people to be mentors. All the more reason you need them!

Training - "How to be a panellist" is a good event - and all fair praise to SK who often runs it, I have always found him to be progressive and in NO WAY wish to denigrate his work.

But, this needs to be run way before the event, before the prep stage, before panels are even formed. In my job I run "pre appointment" training programmes which help people gain confidence before they take up a role or in some cases even apply for it. In this day and age, most prospective programme participants can be skyped to orient them - which will build confidence, and lead to better prep and performance. Open sessions could be held instead of the random emails and volunteer forms, for different groups of people with different interests or concerns.

And if you want more balanced panels, you target your under represented groups for these activities. This way you also find out what their *specific* concerns AND interests are. And you need a diverse range of people running these sessions, or the rules and standards are clearly set out by, you got it, another white male, who we are now presenting as "the" source of authority.

Similary moderators - train them in different communication styles, how to handle and wrangle their panellists, how to balance the comnversation. This is good for *everyone* but there are well documented differences in male/ female communications styles and an awareness of these amd how to respond to them could lead to richer debates. And you know. "What to do when someone says something stupid and offensive" is a great skill to practice in a training environment.

Pastoral care - day one in all the organisations I've worked in, you get "the diversity policy" and told the consequences of what happens if you breach it, where to report, how to raise a grievance. The larger organisations have a dedicated hotline. Senior management take it seriously, and deal with infractions fast.

So, we know a lot of conventions have a sexual harassment policy - how about being a bit more explicit about racism? How about every convention trains listeners who will advocate and support the person in difficulty, in resolving matters with the con committee, the police, the person who caused the issue? Not counsellors - but a supportive voice to take people through a robust, consistent process, and help them feel less alone? I train listeners at work; we can train listeners for conventions, always have them and a quiet room available, and give them a hotline to committee and the local emergency numbers. If you take harrassment seriosuly - then show you take it seriously.

Reward and recognition - this is where you select the people who have gone above and beyond, usually as Guests of honour. I believe the balance of male:non-male GoH is getting better. Non white? Not so much. Non-author? Jury's out, still patchy - not sure the people organising events always see a benefit in broadening. To me, we have novelists who write scripts and comics and columns and blogs... purist compartmentalisation is not helpful in the evaluation of fandom. What is that actually saying? That fandom wishes to perpetuate. For a genre abut the speculative and the future and the art of the possible, that's damn depressing.

I'd also like to mention fanfunds here. This is probably the controversial bit - for me it is the simple ethics of transparency. Larger conventions like Eastercon are asked to donate free memberships to fan fund winners - not a biggie - but can also be asked to fund TAFF/GUFF/DUFF hotel bills. If you are going to run a fund, you should fund the entire trip; if you can't raise the funds to do that, then you postpone the trip until you can - until people care enough to dig deep.

In terms of asking conventions to donate to fan funds, if a concom is committed to diversity (and why wouldn't it be?) I believe it should be contingent on the fund runners to demonstrate they have actively campaigned to a broad and diverse range of people to find candidates. Hey, if you are paying for it, you can do what you like - but if you are asking the ordinary membership to fund it, then the standards and transparency need to be higher.

Retirement - sometimes people aren't in tune with or able to adapt to new ways of working. This is not age dependent. But if they aren't going in the same direction as your organisation, you need to ask them to leave. Stop wheeling them out for convenience.

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That's how businesses get change. I don't see anything you cannot apply to fandom, if you have enough enthusiasm for change.

If you are working for change in fandom, I would love to hear of the results of your work.

Comments are screened only for the usual trolls.