WisCon!
Huzzah! I am starting to get my WisCon logistics in hand! So with no further ado, my 2012 WisCon logistics post!
I'm arriving in Madison on the evening of Tuesday, May 22, and leaving freakishly early on Monday, May 28 (No Monday programming for me. Sadface.) The delightful![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
were_duck is putting me up for the duration \o/. My early arrival means that I'll actually get to do things like karaoke--yay!
(Madisonians - if you have time, l'd love to have pre-con hangouts with you Wednesday or Thursday. And if you're looking at this and speculating that I will be available to help you with last-minute convention prep tasks, then... that is possible. As long as your task doesn't involve dust.)
I'm currently on the following two panels (I've offered a third, but have no idea if I'll land on it)
Feminist Open Source Fandom Sat, 4:00–5:15 pm
There have now been several excellent Open Source projects that both adopted explicitly-feminist policies and addressed pressing needs of fandom, most notably Archive of Our Own and Dreamwidth. It is proposed that fandom offers an alternative to the established open source software culture, one that is more welcoming of feminist ideals. How have these projects succeeded? In what ways did their feminist stance enable that success? In what ways do their products reflect these same ideals? How do open source and feminism complement or conflict? What can we, as both participants and users, do to extend, build on or replicate these successes? How can we extend this consciousness to other axes of oppression and under-representation?
Gender-Variant Characters in SF (moderator) Sun, 8:30–9:45 am
Let's explore how gender variance and/or variant/trans* characters are represented in Science Fiction. How often are gender-variant characters used for the purpose of examining the experiences of cisgender individuals? How often is the variance of these characters integrated into a character/individual level experience? The example of the former, a planet-of-hats scenario (such as was done on Star Trek) in which a whole society is genderless/gender-variant, comes to mind. Mass Effect is an example of the use of a "mono-gendered" (yet hyper-sexualized) race, the Asari. How about a story where a whole species is genderless or gender-variant? Dragon Age 2 has one of the most prominent examples of a trans* character, Serendipity.
Note: I would love your suggestions of books and other things I should take a look at for Gender-Variant Characters in SF. I've got some existing favorites but would love more.
I'm arriving in Madison on the evening of Tuesday, May 22, and leaving freakishly early on Monday, May 28 (No Monday programming for me. Sadface.) The delightful
were_duck is putting me up for the duration \o/. My early arrival means that I'll actually get to do things like karaoke--yay!(Madisonians - if you have time, l'd love to have pre-con hangouts with you Wednesday or Thursday. And if you're looking at this and speculating that I will be available to help you with last-minute convention prep tasks, then... that is possible. As long as your task doesn't involve dust.)
I'm currently on the following two panels (I've offered a third, but have no idea if I'll land on it)
Feminist Open Source Fandom Sat, 4:00–5:15 pm
There have now been several excellent Open Source projects that both adopted explicitly-feminist policies and addressed pressing needs of fandom, most notably Archive of Our Own and Dreamwidth. It is proposed that fandom offers an alternative to the established open source software culture, one that is more welcoming of feminist ideals. How have these projects succeeded? In what ways did their feminist stance enable that success? In what ways do their products reflect these same ideals? How do open source and feminism complement or conflict? What can we, as both participants and users, do to extend, build on or replicate these successes? How can we extend this consciousness to other axes of oppression and under-representation?
Gender-Variant Characters in SF (moderator) Sun, 8:30–9:45 am
Let's explore how gender variance and/or variant/trans* characters are represented in Science Fiction. How often are gender-variant characters used for the purpose of examining the experiences of cisgender individuals? How often is the variance of these characters integrated into a character/individual level experience? The example of the former, a planet-of-hats scenario (such as was done on Star Trek) in which a whole society is genderless/gender-variant, comes to mind. Mass Effect is an example of the use of a "mono-gendered" (yet hyper-sexualized) race, the Asari. How about a story where a whole species is genderless or gender-variant? Dragon Age 2 has one of the most prominent examples of a trans* character, Serendipity.
Note: I would love your suggestions of books and other things I should take a look at for Gender-Variant Characters in SF. I've got some existing favorites but would love more.
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I think Ammonite by Nicola Griffith has some gender variance in it--it's basically a planet of all women, and highlights that that means a spectrum of people.
There's a trans woman who is a protagonist of The Bone Palace by Amanda Downum, which is a book I liked! There's also an important secondary character who is intersex.
Speaking of intersex, Shadow Man by Melissa Scott is dated but I think it's still interesting! It's from the 90s and basically extrapolates Anne Fausto-Sterling and Cheryl Chase's back-and-forth on what it would mean for a society to recognize five sexes instead of two. It flips that back in some interesting ways, and I think Warreven's gender is CERTAINLY worth discussing.
Kelley Eskridge's short stories featuring the gender-unspecified character Mars would definitely be good to look at--I think they're in her collection Dangerous Space.
I really want someone to read Triptych and discuss it with meeee. It's the poly time travel space aliens one, and the aliens kind of shrug and take on whatever human gender. Interesting triad dynamics there. Not sure how useful that would be to your panel, though.
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Question: do you know who the author of the genderswap cancer treatment short story is? I don't THINK it's Tiptree but I can't figure out who else it could be.
(Also ZEROPHILIA ALL THE ZEROPHILIA REWATCHING EVARRRRRR)
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