On Acting Slowly

[ashnistrike]

I have some thoughts about why the Wiscon con committee was so slow to disinvite Elizabeth Moon. I didn't post earlier, because if they'd then continued to do nothing, having given them the benefit of the doubt would have been somewhat embarrassing. This isn't based on any direct knowledge of what's going on behind the scenes, or of the legal situation, just on my own social modeling. But I strongly suspect that, during the delay, the following things occurred:

-Research into past uninvitings (there's at least one) and what the social and legal consequences have been.
-Extensive discussion about what sort of precedent they would be setting, and what the social and legal consequences were likely to be.
-Checking in with a variety of pros to find out if they would boycott forever a con that treated its GOH that way, or if they would still cheerfully accept future Wiscon invitations under the assumption that they're not assholes and we're not idiots.
-Negotiation with Moon to try and minimize legal and social consequences. I suspect they tried to convince her to resign, which is the more usual action for public figures who get caught being bigoted, and that she eventually told them to go stick it.

All those things take a while. Mind you, I have no good excuse for the Troika's first attempt to keep her on--except that they may not have thought of uninviting as a real option, at the time. Without SF3's backing, any liability might have fallen squarely on the few individuals in the concom. I Am Not a Lawyer, obviously.

Short form: I wish they had disinvited her earlier, and I'm not sure they could have. And I respect a preference for finding out what's at the bottom of a cliff before jumping off--even if you know that eventually, regardless of the consequences, you'll have to jump.

(ETA: Some of my guesses are supported here: <http://community.livejournal.com/wiscon/287005.html>)

Comments

[michaeldthomas.livejournal.com]

I think it's important to also remember that these are all volunteer committees. Putting together meetings isn't easy in these situations (I've been part of volunteer concoms before). When all is said and done, it took them about 40 days to come to a decision. That's not unreasonable considering that the convention is still seven months away.

I'm pretty sure there was never a legal issue. I can't imagine an actual contract existed. The only problem would have been if they already purchased her airline tickets, but that would be unusual this far out.

[michaeldthomas.livejournal.com]

Sorry, but I'm going to nit-pick your ETA. The poster clearly says she didn't know the process, isn't on the ConCom, and wasn't involved in any of the phone calls. She doesn't support your guesses as much as she simply shares some of them.

[ashnistrike.livejournal.com]

It sounds like she has talked to them about their initial statement, and that they were indeed hoping for Moon to resign.

[michaeldthomas.livejournal.com]

Moon resigning would have been the simplest solution. Unfortunately, she forced their hand.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

This makes sense to me. I strongly agree with this: I respect a preference for finding out what's at the bottom of a cliff before jumping off. Grand Dramatic Gestures are all well and good, and indeed did end up having to be made-- but I prefer not to go to them as my very first choice before checking out other options.

[robling-t.livejournal.com]

The one thing that they could have done to minimize the fallout if that was indeed how it eventually played out would have been to make a stronger statement RE "we are looking into how we need to handle this" up-front at the beginning, maybe raising the point that it wasn't just a matter of a unilateral handwave and POOF something would be settled one way or the other; they seem not to have realized that they were facing an instant-gratification internet generation of fans who would interpret the first response as the response without considering that more may have still been afoot. A bit more of "dude, we have sixty-five people we have to call up on the phone about this and then some of them need to talk to each other" would have gone farther towards fostering more of an impression that it was a delay and not an answer of silence...