Readercon: creeping of another sort
Sep. 14th, 2012 04:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_archfiendRest assured that this post will have very little to do with Rene Walling for the most part.
For those of you familiar with the entire Readercon debacle (or at least the repeated version of events you get to see online), the entire harassment issue has been resolved by Readercon after a protracted public argument concerning the severity of the punishment that was initially doled out. All good and well, but someone took issue on their own blog for no apparent good reason. That person is one Peter Huston. Here's a sample of what he wrote on the subject (I only became aware of these comments through Nicholas Kaufmann's blog and then found them available at Huston's own site);
(Again, [Valentine] can't communicate with SH-2 [Walling] who is giving her unwanted attention, but can communicate with her friends about how she is so allegedly desirable that men cannot control themsleves around her. I've seen this before. Although I do not know the alleged victim, and have never even met her, it is a sign of a couple different diagnosable personality disorders --borderline and histrionic, look it up. If she's got the latter, wait ten to twenty years and she'll be seeking attention due to bizarre medical maladies that only she can detect.)
Ah. I see. Mr. Huston was neither at Readercon or is a licensed psychiatrist, yet he's using his dog-eared edition of the DSM to diagnose a person that Readercon fully admits was a target of Mr. Walling's unwanted advances. He also makes her look as narcissistic as possible in that paragraph and goes on to predict her future aberrant behavior a decade or two down the line. Taking the high road already, I see. Again, keep in mind that he also wasn't at the convention and therefore witnessed none of the incidents Ms. Valentine complained about. But oh, it gets so much better:
[Huston] (Fuck you Bitch. --Yeah, I used the "B word." But we both know you were going to accuse me of sexism and insensitivity anyway so I just decided to make your life a little easier when you do. Do too. And, as you have proven in this silly document, there's not a darn thing you can do about it. AND IT'S NOT BECAUSE YOU ARE A WOMAN --IT'S BECAUSE YOU HAVE SHOWN YOURSELF NOT TO BE A FUNCTIONING ADULT WHO CAN DEAL WITH SIMPLE SOCIAL INTERACTIONS THAT HAPPEN TO ALL PEOPLE ALL THE TIME., YOU LIVE IN A FANTASY WORLD AND WHEN YOU LIVE IN A FANTASY WORLD THEN REALITY OFTEN INTRUDES LEAVING THE PERSON FEELING CONFUSED, UNCOMFORTABLE AND TRYING TO CHANGE THE ENTIRE PLANET SO THAT IT WILL CONFORM TO YOUR FANTASY.
Ooooooooookay then. Just a little touchy, I see.
The touchiness, it seems, has expanded not to just Huston's blog but also Black Gate (see the comments section for same), genevievevalentine.com (see the comments, again) and probably the surface of the moon by now if Mr. Huston has enough abundant money to waste on expanding this campaign of his. Come to think of it, when you consider the fact that Mr. Huston has now posted no less than six lengthy diatribes on a subject he has next to no firsthand knowledge of (granted, neither do I, but I'm not the one questioning Ms. Valentine's psychological stability or Readercon's decision - he is), you begin to wonder more than a few things about him. But hey, I'm not willing to do what he did and diagnose him as Herr Doktor Sigmund Quak-Quak like he did with Ms. Valentine:
Why is Peter Huston so stuck on this subject?
It could be because he truly believes all of this stuff; in that case, he's sadly mistaken to do so for someone so removed from what actually happened at Readercon. Is he an Internet drama queen? Fuck if I know; I wouldn't know him from Adam and probably wouldn't want to know him if his attitude is anything to go by. Is he just some petulant asshole with a blog? He's got a blog, certainly. As for the "asshole" part of that equation...
Another observation: he's making Rene Walling almost look good in comparison. Funny, that. Walling, at least, can be accused of merely being extremely unsocialized and behaving in an incredibly inappropriate fashion as a result. To paraphrase an observation I made earlier, what's Huston's excuse?
Furthermore, does he even realize how he comes off when he writes this shit? On other people's blogs, for that matter?
For those of you familiar with the entire Readercon debacle (or at least the repeated version of events you get to see online), the entire harassment issue has been resolved by Readercon after a protracted public argument concerning the severity of the punishment that was initially doled out. All good and well, but someone took issue on their own blog for no apparent good reason. That person is one Peter Huston. Here's a sample of what he wrote on the subject (I only became aware of these comments through Nicholas Kaufmann's blog and then found them available at Huston's own site);
(Again, [Valentine] can't communicate with SH-2 [Walling] who is giving her unwanted attention, but can communicate with her friends about how she is so allegedly desirable that men cannot control themsleves around her. I've seen this before. Although I do not know the alleged victim, and have never even met her, it is a sign of a couple different diagnosable personality disorders --borderline and histrionic, look it up. If she's got the latter, wait ten to twenty years and she'll be seeking attention due to bizarre medical maladies that only she can detect.)
Ah. I see. Mr. Huston was neither at Readercon or is a licensed psychiatrist, yet he's using his dog-eared edition of the DSM to diagnose a person that Readercon fully admits was a target of Mr. Walling's unwanted advances. He also makes her look as narcissistic as possible in that paragraph and goes on to predict her future aberrant behavior a decade or two down the line. Taking the high road already, I see. Again, keep in mind that he also wasn't at the convention and therefore witnessed none of the incidents Ms. Valentine complained about. But oh, it gets so much better:
[Huston] (Fuck you Bitch. --Yeah, I used the "B word." But we both know you were going to accuse me of sexism and insensitivity anyway so I just decided to make your life a little easier when you do. Do too. And, as you have proven in this silly document, there's not a darn thing you can do about it. AND IT'S NOT BECAUSE YOU ARE A WOMAN --IT'S BECAUSE YOU HAVE SHOWN YOURSELF NOT TO BE A FUNCTIONING ADULT WHO CAN DEAL WITH SIMPLE SOCIAL INTERACTIONS THAT HAPPEN TO ALL PEOPLE ALL THE TIME., YOU LIVE IN A FANTASY WORLD AND WHEN YOU LIVE IN A FANTASY WORLD THEN REALITY OFTEN INTRUDES LEAVING THE PERSON FEELING CONFUSED, UNCOMFORTABLE AND TRYING TO CHANGE THE ENTIRE PLANET SO THAT IT WILL CONFORM TO YOUR FANTASY.
Ooooooooookay then. Just a little touchy, I see.
The touchiness, it seems, has expanded not to just Huston's blog but also Black Gate (see the comments section for same), genevievevalentine.com (see the comments, again) and probably the surface of the moon by now if Mr. Huston has enough abundant money to waste on expanding this campaign of his. Come to think of it, when you consider the fact that Mr. Huston has now posted no less than six lengthy diatribes on a subject he has next to no firsthand knowledge of (granted, neither do I, but I'm not the one questioning Ms. Valentine's psychological stability or Readercon's decision - he is), you begin to wonder more than a few things about him. But hey, I'm not willing to do what he did and diagnose him as Herr Doktor Sigmund Quak-Quak like he did with Ms. Valentine:
Why is Peter Huston so stuck on this subject?
It could be because he truly believes all of this stuff; in that case, he's sadly mistaken to do so for someone so removed from what actually happened at Readercon. Is he an Internet drama queen? Fuck if I know; I wouldn't know him from Adam and probably wouldn't want to know him if his attitude is anything to go by. Is he just some petulant asshole with a blog? He's got a blog, certainly. As for the "asshole" part of that equation...
Another observation: he's making Rene Walling almost look good in comparison. Funny, that. Walling, at least, can be accused of merely being extremely unsocialized and behaving in an incredibly inappropriate fashion as a result. To paraphrase an observation I made earlier, what's Huston's excuse?
Furthermore, does he even realize how he comes off when he writes this shit? On other people's blogs, for that matter?
